Glenda SimmsGlenda Simms
ANOTHER AUGUST 'mawnin' has come and gone. We have had some 'feel good' sessions, eaten some 'taste good' food and allowed our bodies to pulsate to the sounds of drums, as we tried desperately to really envision a time of true emancipation from the mental shackles of slavery and colonialism.
Within this midsummer celebratory and reflective space, my woman spirit ponders how to emancipate her body and soul from the shackles of sexism, racism, shadism, ageism and classism.
It is within this space reserved for historical and contemporary reflection during this season, that the film star Halle Berry intruded. Her pronouncement carried in a report out of London informs us that "being thought of as a beautiful woman" has not insulated her from heartaches and failures in her attempts to find love.
Halle Berry is reported to have pointed out to those women who want to listen that the obsession with beauty and youth is a dead end street, and she asserts that she is "saddened by the way women mutilate their faces" in order to fit the societal prescription of the sexy, the beautiful and the desirable.
I am always encouraged by those individual women and men who dare to tell their truths even when their societies are determined to dismiss their ideas.
Halle Berry is a film star and an African American woman whose features are considered 'exotic' by white folks and
highly desirable by even the blackest of black folks. Some women would go to any lengths to look like her. And now she is reaffirming for us that beauty is skin deep.
DUMB BLONDE MENTALITY
Berry's insights are more than personal. They are a summary of the experiences of women from different cultures and various ethnicities. Her insights capture the low self-esteem and marginalisation of the 'dumb blonde' who in reality is the 'bimbo' within the Caucasian imagination. Such a woman is desired by men of all ethnicity because she is caricatured as an 'empty-head' distraction and an appropriate decoration for public and private functions.
The bimbo is beautiful as long as she does not demonstrate that she has a brain. Sometimes she tries to liberate her soul and asks her man the million dollar question, 'What about my brain?' It is this question that signifies the death of her. After all, every red-blooded male wants her for one purpose her sexual and ego-satisfying potential. Who wants to know that she has a brain?
Get real, baby!
WOMEN STILL NOT FREE
I have no doubt that Berry's insights would also resonate with Crown Princess Masako of the Japanese Royal Household. A report written by Michael Lev of the Chicago Tribune and Anthony Faiola of the Washington Post, and
published in the June 27, 2004 edition of the Edmonton Journal, gives a view of the
life of another beautiful and intelligent woman who knows that being beautiful is not enough. She also knows that beauty and brain is a deadly combination for many women.
Crown Princess Masako was at one time an attractive, charming, Harvard University graduate. In 1993 she took a leap of faith and married Crown Prince Naruhito of tradition bound and male centred Japanese society.
Lev and Faiola have argued that the princess' life has moved from fable to misfortune. Apparently, she is today a
shell of her former self. She is reported to be grappling with a stress-related skin disorder, mental exhaustion-and clinical depression. Why is this fairy tale princess so distraught?
She is a failure in her role. She has not been able to present her country with a son who would inherit his father's throne.
Indeed, for Princess Masako, beauty and brain are not enough. She needs a boy child to make her worthy of her place in the Japanese scheme of things.
According to the writers of the article, The Princess Prisoner, the Crown Princess of Japan, a woman "who once savoured the freedom of flying" is now resting in the fortress-like Togu Palace which can aptly be described as a gilded cage.
In another society a beautiful, intelligent young Princess
produced sons but she did not find happiness. The life of Princess Diana of Britain also fits into Halle Berry's framework.
In Canada, Margaret Trudeau, the beautiful flower child who married her country's most charismatic leader, produced sons but happiness appears to have also evaded her. A recent report in the Ottawa Citizen informs us that she is currently experiencing serious personal and psychological problems.
Obviously, women of all classes and castes are in a
continuing struggle to
emancipate their souls from
the "mindless structures of
the patriarchal enterprise".
THE TYRANNY OF BEAUTY
Some poor women who are trying to find the next meal for themselves and their children will have no patience with
Halle Berry, Whitney Houston (the glamorous, famous,
battered trophy wife), or the other cultural female icons
who are complaining about
the burden of beauty and
fame.
For the majority of poor women of all ethnicities and racial groups any discussion
on beauty could be seen as frivolous and meaningless. While we can certainly
understand this position, women of all classes must
be sensitised to the soul destroying effects of low self-esteem, marginalisation and the commodification of women's bodies.
When all women can be
convinced of the tyranny of beauty then we will begin to unpackage the drivers which have taught us that it is
preferable to be ill, malnourished, obsessed, mutilated or dead rather than be considered ugly or undesirable because of the physical features that exemplify our biological and aesthetic connections to our ancestry.
EXPECTATIONS
At an earlier time, Candice Bergen the actress who was firmly placed on the pedestal of beauty, said of the beautiful, "People see you as an object, not as a person, and they
project a set of expectations on to you. People who don't have it think beauty is a blessing, but actually it sets you apart."
The voices of the beauty
icons are relevant in a
globalised environment where all women are being forced
by an overpowering culture
that threatens to reduce us
once again to be slaves to
consumerism, false images, and a sameness that is mindless and destructive to our humanity.
It is therefore timely for all women to revisit some of the notions that are rigidly implanted in our understanding of ourselves. We are once again being called upon to
find within ourselves the
psychic capacity to transcend physical barriers and images, to validate our essential
femininity, to liberate our sense of personhood and to find our self-worth outside of the established paradigms.
This road to 'womancipation' is a long, hard journey. We are such creatures of habit!
Some of us had better start on this road and leave a clearer path for another generation of young women.
Dr. Glenda Simms is the executive director of the Bureau of Women's Affairs. You can send your comments to infocus@gleanerjm.com.
