KEATS SAID, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." According to all those who are writing about beauty these days, in numerous magazines and books, the poet was right. The truth is that beauty is very powerful, and that people everywhere are delighted by beautiful things and beautiful people.
This is hardly an earthshaking conclusion. Most people have been painfully aware of how much their beauty or lack thereof affects other people. But recent studies have gone a step farther - to suggest that all people, regardless of race, class or age, share a universal sense of what is attractive. Not only that, but we judge each other by a set of universal rules we may not even understand.Mostly we have thought these rules of beauty applied only to women. But the accelerating interest on the part of men in physical fitness and cosmetic surgery belie that theory. More and more executives, for instance, are using large portions of their substantial salaries to try to look younger, to get smoother skin, to acquire a full head of hair or a taut stomach.
Plastic surgery today offers pectoral implants to make the chest appear more muscular and calf muscle implants to give the leg a body-builder shape. There is even liposuction to counter thickening middles and accumulating breast and fatty tissue in the chest. There are many different surgical methods to tighten skin and try to delay the aging process on the face.
This is happening because the 50-year-old is competing with the 30-year-old in the workplace, and many businessmen are convinced they will succeed more easily in their work or come closer to making an important sale if they look good.
For those who shun the cosmetic surgical techniques, there are hairpieces, hair coloring, moisturizing cream and slim designer suits - suits with a cut that makes a man look like he takes better care of himself than he does. Men in the workplace are becoming more conscious of the fact that they are competing not only with younger men, but with women, who society expects to wear the latest fashions, put on makeup to hide wrinkles and walk around in high heels that give their legs more definition.
Statistics suggest that every year, 400,000 Americans, including 48,000 men, are flocking to cosmetic surgeons, millions are sweating away in gyms and health clubs, nearly everybody's dieting, and anorexia and bulimia are epidemic, especially among young women.
No wonder so many articles and books are centered on the power of beauty.
Nancy Friday, a writer and "social observer," author of six other books, including "My Mother, Myself" and `My Secret Garden," has written a new one called "The Power of Beauty" (HarperCollins, 589 pages, $27.50). Written in Friday's typically earthy, outspoken style, the book is billed as part personal odyssey and part cultural memoir.
Friday uses her own personal experiences to comment on fashion, the feminist revolution, male bashing, women's fear of competition, and other aspects of beauty as it relates to contemporary society, from high art to pop.
Friday's essential theme is that beauty matters, and she, for one, is glad. She can't stand feminists like Susan Faludi and Naomi Wolf, both of whom have written best-selling books suggesting beauty's power is politically suspect.
Faludi's controversial 1991 study, "Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women," is a frank examination of what she sees as the declining condition of women in American life. She argued there is a backlash against women evident in all aspects of society, including the fashion and beauty industries. She said women should be free to define themselves, but instead their identity is being defined for them by their culture and their men.
Wolf's 1991 book, "The Beauty Myth," argued that the prevailing images of beauty are used to exploit women. She wrote how the prevailing definitions of female beauty undermine women in their professions, how the culture alienates women from their own bodies and sexuality, and how little choice women really have about the predictable obsessions with their appearances.
Friday isn't buying it. In a telephone conversation from San Francisco, she expressed her wish that women would stop pretending looks aren't important and just compete openly with men and other women in the workplace and in society. She characterizes her book as a study of how our looks affect our lives and how our lives affect our looks.
Friday was inspired to write the book when she noticed the fashion world designing unabashedly sexy clothing intended to be worn in the workplace. "It seemed to me that many women, particularly if they weren't around before the Women's Movement, might not comprehend the problems they were causing. And men might not understand the anger they felt when they turned away from a beautiful woman in the office, or when that woman sued them for sexual harassment after they admired or ogled her. That's when I decided it was time to write a book about the power of beauty."
Friday believes women regularly deny the power of their own beauty. She says that for several hundred years, beauty was all women had going for them. That meant that the power of beauty was enormous. In earlier times, women had no money and could not buy their own bread. The only way they acquired a name or achieved a place in the community was through marriage.
"But when a woman got older and her husband left her for someone younger - a not infrequent occurrence - she turned to her peers for solace and sustenance. That is why women refused to compete with each other over beauty. They feared offending their sisters, because they knew eventually they would have to rely on them for psychic support."
Friday says whenever a woman is complimented on her looks, "she will frequently deflect the praise by drawing attention to a perceived physical fault or by mentioning someone else she feels is much more beautiful than she is."
Unfortunately, Friday may be her own worst enemy. She allows the personal, far too graphic details of her life to overshadow her book's message.
Friday says she uses autobiographical material "not because it is fascinating, but because it is applicable to many other people. It's amazing to me that I get letters from Uganda or Norway, and they say, `It's me.' They think they're the only one. Honey, you ain't the only one!"
Friday says she does not subscribe to the popular idea that beauty is some universal ideal. `I'm not talking about goddess type beauty. It is an extraordinary power that beauty has on all of us. Writers say, `I fell in love with him because he really SAW ME.' I understood what that meant, that phrase, `He saw me,' that simple sentence. I think we all want to be seen - not just the surface appearance, but in toto, as a person, deep inside. I think that draws love out of us for that person who sees us, and it's a very powerful phrase."
Friday says women hate it when their husbands or lovers look at another woman. "Well, he's only looking. But then I would say, Only? Women know what that means when his eyes turn away. And our eyes, men and women, do turn to beauty."
Friday cherishes having grown up in the South, in Charleston, S.C., "a perfect place for a young girl to grow into adolescence. There is something wonderful and mystical about it. There is a true reverence for beauty down there. The women I know down there who support themselves do so very well while seeming to hang on to the old ways. They look at the same TV as we do up North, but it has a different meaning. There is a respect and adoration for beautiful women."
Maybe it is that Southern upbringing that has inspired Friday to take regular cracks at feminism. "I was considered questionable as a feminist, because I still liked to slip into my jersey Halston dress and put on some heels and go out. I was accused of not being serious. I thought, `Too bad, ladies, I need this.' And I felt my work spoke for my seriousness."
Friday is very much aware that it is now "OK" for men to care about their looks. The Armani suit helps get the business contract. Friday says many men are now schooled by imagemakers. Before a man goes to Tokyo for a business meeting, he is told not to wear a Ban-Lon shirt or carry a plastic pen in his pocket. He must not wear short socks, and when he gets off the plane the man who meets him will give him a quick once-over and notice the tie, the watch, whatever - and it all matters.
Even though keeping up with fashion is a relatively new thing to men, Friday believes men will master it because they understand competition. "They may not like the competitive feeling that they have opposite the better-looking guy, but they watch him. And they watch what he does, and they learn this from games when they're boys."
In Friday's opinion, women must exercise the same willingness to engage in competition, even though, unlike men, they have not been raised with a competitive spirit. Friday is especially convinced that feminism has encouraged women to decry competition, which is wrong, in her opinion, because competition is a "just another human emotion."
Despite her respect for beauty, Friday argues the need for balance and laments the extremes often evident among those who spend a good part of every day at the gym, where she sees a disturbing exhibitionism.
"It is LOOK AT ME, as if the packaging is everything." Unfortunately, it is often empty packaging. On the other hand, Friday thinks working out contributes to a more vital person, and "when you feel vital and alive, you look better. Your eyes are alive, and the blood is rushing through your body. You're thinking, and the thinking mind energizes the body. People like to be around other people who are easy in their skin."
Finally, Friday believes that the propensity of a beautiful woman to latch onto "a little bald guy who's not very attractive" says a great deal about beauty and power. "We sort of expect he owns an airline, or a country or something. But in this sense, it is a trade-off. I know love conquers all. But very often, without citing names, we know these are not love matches. These are deals. And in that sense, beauty is indeed power."