The Ugly Duckling

Jessica Valenti's chapter on beauty gets right to the point of what and where America gets its ideas of beauty. No matter what we do, I think that the woman will always be concerned about how she looks or how she wants to look. Politically, women will be seen as an ugly duckling always because we can't make everyone happy. As Valenti says, either you're too naturally pretty or you fixed yourself to look that way and people will always criticize.
Naomi Wolf compares the African societies of Nigeria to our society and she says that in the Woodabe tribe the men spend much of their time putting on make-up or doing their hair all to lead up to a beauty contest judged by women! This to us may seem a bit odd and because of the gender stereotypes we have here, it may seem a bit feminine coming from the men who do it. But in this tribe they give the female power, the power to choose. In a video I saw last semester about this tribe, it portrays the people equal and they both seek out to look beautiful for each other. The women wear their best clothing and accessories and the men compete to see who looks better. In a ceremony the men dance and who ever is chosen the winner gets to spend time with the chosen female of that year. Surprisingly the female chooses whether or not to have sex with him and she even gets to pick how many men she wants to have sex with at the same time and is NOT seen as a whore. That could be a little too much for us but what would happen if we did admire male beauty? I guess the real question is: Could we admire male beauty without classifying men as gay or metrosexual? Perhaps we should turn the tables and call the men the ugly ones. How much damage would it cause them if we called them UGLY? We see how it causes disorders and surgeries on females but would the men go to that extreme?