IN HER PROVOCATIVE new book, "The Power of Beauty," Nancy Friday suggests that most women deny the power of their own beauty, yet she thinks they should use it to help them succeed in life. They should freely compete, she says, with men and other women, and use their beauty as an instrument of power.
To determine the accuracy of her opinions on the local scene, I approached several Salt Lake women I consider to be beautiful and asked them to react to Friday's interpretation. Without exception, these women all refused to acknowledge their own beauty, even though they consider it flattering to be called attractive by others.Ironically, all allowed that the cosmetic surgery that is so popular throughout the country today should be perfectly acceptable if it makes a woman feel better about herself.
Linda Warner said she had always been taught that it is vain for a woman to acknowledge her own beauty. Although she considers herself "somewhere in the middle" between attractive and unattractive, she admits to having been selected as a beauty queen in high school. She also remembers that when she was hired for her first job as an elementary school teacher, the principal looked her in the eye and said, "I always choose the best-looking one."
That was a highly negative experience for her, because she thought she was highly qualified for the position, and beauty was not supposed to be the ticket for her job. On the other hand, Warner has always tried to maintain an attractive appearance by eating right and getting regular exercise. For many years, she has taught classes in a dance-aerobics program called Jazzercize.
"I have to say my main motivation for Jazzercize is to look good, keeping the weight off. When I was a kid, I was chubby, from the time I was in second grade - kind of a little square, chubby kid. It's amazing how much that fear of being that way again can stay with you through your life. I was so happy when I grew taller and got thin that I still feel that way. Even now, when I see people from the old neighborhood, they will say, `Oh, you were a fat little girl' - and it still hurts."
Shauna Williams never even thought of entering a beauty contest. She did win elected office in high school, and thinks it was not because of her beauty but because she knew so many people. "I really hated that some of my friends would not associate with someone if they were not in the IN crowd."
Williams thinks "beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It's a very selective process. Someone may think a movie star is attractive and someone else may not. On one or two occasions I've sensed that someone was judging me by the way I looked. I do think being attractive opens doors, but it may not get you in all the way. It's a little bit sad to me, because I've come to think the outside beauty doesn't matter. It is someone's inner beauty that shines through."
According to Williams, it is sad that so many women accept the "mythology of beauty taught to them by our society and get stuck in that myth when they're teenagers. Beauty is a fleeting concept."
That said, Williams is committed to regular exercise, "to make me feel more healthy - not just for looks. I think if you feel good about yourself, you are going to look better."
Janna Watkins Ekins, a recent high school graduate, observed all through school that an attractive girl "was expected to do a lot less. It's just the norm. You're in a competitive world, but you don't have to compete. That's a disadvantage for me." An attractive girl could let things slide, get assignments in late, but still come out on top. She thinks beauty can be used as an instrument of power, but not for her. "I don't choose to get by with my looks."
Even so, Ekins thinks personal attractiveness helps her in her selling job at Nordstrom. "People are just more willing to approach an attractive person or be approached by an attractive person."
Eleanor Whisenant thinks beauty really has more to do with personality. "I don't judge people as to whether they are pretty or not. Once you know their personalities, it doesn't matter anyway."
On the other hand, Whisenant thinks it hard to be friends with "an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous woman," mostly because of the way men often react to her. "I often don't think of how pretty a woman may be until I notice a man's reaction to her. I'm not ugly, but I'm not beautiful either. I'm taller than most women, so I stick out. Sometimes people look at me with interest, and that can be a validation. But when I look in the mirror, I say, `I sure don't look WOW today.' "
In Whisenant's opinion, it is easier to have self-esteem and confidence if you feel good about the way you look. "But however much beauty you have, it doesn't matter if you don't have the intelligence to go with it."
Julie Simper Burns, a successful model for 15 years, says women have been "socialized" into thinking they should use their beauty for advantage. But she thinks a woman should use anything that is ethically and morally acceptable - and beauty is included under that umbrella.
She considers beauty a potentially powerful tool, "but it has a real downside. It gets your foot in the door, but then you have to try twice as hard, because they don't take you as seriously. They assume immediately that you have no intellect. They assume that you THINK you're very, very pretty. Men also tend to objectify you a little bit."
In Burns' entire modeling career, she has worked with many "breathtakingly beautiful women," and she knows of none of them who actually considered themselves to be pretty.
Burns believes she was a very unattractive little girl - "a real ugly duckling - skinny, gaunt, clumsy, and kids used to make fun of me mercilessly, and I would go home and cry and cry. Sometimes I think I got into the beauty business as a kind of `I'll show them.' I've been unattractive, so I've seen both sides of the coin.
She was so painfully shy as a young girl that when her mother forced her to enter her name for high school homecoming queen, she withdrew because she was "too timid to get on the stage. I never had any hopes or dreams of being a model. The thought never crossed my mind."
Burns asserts that most of her modeling opportunities came not because she is beautiful but because she is adaptable. "I'm blonde, and with no makeup, I can play the wife of an Iowa farmer with ponytail, Levi's and ragged shirt. Yet they can do my hair and make me up to look real glamorous."
Even though she has found modeling rewarding, it has also been difficult. "People say to me, `It must be an ego boost,' but it's just the opposite. It perpetuates the feeling that you're not good enough. For every audition you win, there are seven or eight who say, `No, you're too old, or you're too thin, or you're not thin enough. You're constantly hearing the negative things about yourself. You have to develop a thick skin. You have to reach inside and say, `Yeah, but I'm a good mom, and I'm bright and I'm funny and I'm nice, and people like me.' "
It's something every beautiful woman needs to hear.