Confidence is Beautiful

Hello, World.

       I would like to discuss one of the most important aspects of both female daily life and feminism: beauty. I also feel like this would be a good preliminary writing to a book I'm about to read entirely dedicated to beauty, especially its role and consequences in female life, called The Beauty Myth, by Naomi Wolf. For centuries, the importance of beauty amongst women has been prevalent: being fat in the 17-18th centuries (because it showed you were wealthy), being pale in the Victorian times (symbolic for pure), and even in our modern day, where girls constantly invest in fashion, cosmetics, even surgery to constantly attempt to reach that level of ideal beauty.
       Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women, although not directed and focused on beauty discussion, the physical appearance of women is often touched on and mentioned. Her main argument, presented to us in the very first few pages of the book, is that "women [are] intoxicated by the adoration [of men]" (3). Women, triggered by an inequality between the two sexes, have constantly tried to win the approval of men, since they are the 'greater sex', and therefore widen the gap by admitting and enforcing that women are only great if the men say so. In fact, she later says that men "find their happiness in the gratification of their appetites" (50). She says that in addition to women constantly fighting for male approval, men have  become complacent with women's efforts and have evolved into beings who believe the only way to be happy is if their woman have tried hard enough to earn their counterpart's appreciation.
       In addition, Wollstonecraft makes the point that if an ideal woman is pretty, if her surface, her perception is aesthetic, then she merely becomes something to look at: an object in theory. She says that men "render [women] alluring objects for a moment", that is when they are scrutinising and analysing a female's beauty (3). This is important, and rather sad in my opinion, because due to maple supremacy, and then due to a need for male approval, women increasingly aspire to an ideal judged by men. Now, since men powerfully associate this ideal with beauty, a superficial view of the physical aspect of somebody, women therefore aspire and surprisingly yet actively pursuit this surface view. Not only do men create a social chasm between the sexes and encourage women to become a superficial ideal, women embrace this and encourage this pursuit instead of fighting.
       Using Wollstonecraft's argument to support my opinion, I believe that beauty should be an ideal created by yourself, that should only compliment rather than invade your life, in order to increase confidence and show effort and care to the people you love.

Goodbye, World.