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“You have the most marvelous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having. Someday
when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines
and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it. You will feel it terribly.
Now, wherever you go you charm the world. Will it always be so? You have a wonderfully
beautiful face, Mr. Gray.…And beauty is a form of genius-is higher, indeed, than genius, as it
needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight or springtime or the
reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the Moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its
divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. You smile-ah, when you have
lost it you won't smile. People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but
at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only
shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible,
not the invisible.”
invisible.”
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
This quote embodies the obsession that all of us have with beauty. We strive to look our
best; some of us go to the most extreme of measures to achieve it. It is precious and rare, and
given so much importance, probably more so than intelligence as the quote states. For one cannot
Since man has developed the ability of higher thought, he has had the ability to perceive
beauty as well. Beauty has been pondered, envied and written about for centuries by nobles,
poets, and authors. To have it is to be blessed, to be divinely favored—if one has nothing else to
boast, well they are beautiful, so why should it matter? Societies of every time and place have
chosen a set of characteristics that a woman must have to be considered beautiful—from bone
structure, to the fairness of her skin and even the redness of her lips. Men, yes men, place these
standards of beauty a top a pedestal so that women may spend their time working to achieve it;
for a woman’s duty above all else is to attract a husband. Modern times have shown the
desperation of women to achieve beauty. Contraptions have been made to lift, separate and
enhance, make-up is manufactured so that all women may have full, red lips and a youthful
glow, and the media perpetuates these standards. So when a woman gets up in the morning and
looks in her wardrobe, is she picking an outfit based on her own thoughts and feelings, or is it the
The reason I wrote of beauty in so much detail to begin with is to stress the importance
that is placed upon it. Physical beauty goes hand in hand with attraction and attracting a mate—
be it a husband, boyfriend, or “friends with benefits”. The human race has evolved to mate under
any of these circumstances because it is conducive to the continuation of the human race and is
much more effective than just the yearly mating rituals of other animals(Buss, 2007). Males have
it hard wired into the minds of what is the most “effective” mate, in other words the most fertile
or the one more likely to carry on their traits. Women with full breasts, full pink lips and wide,
child-bearing hips are thought to be the most fertile. Also a young looking woman is thought to
be more fertile than an older woman—which has been scientifically proven to be true. So
neoteny goes along with physical attraction as well. Neoteny is the “retention of juvenile
characteristics into adulthood… Adult women, for example, usually have higher voices like
children. Men and women agree that attractive women have the large eyes and lips and small
noses and chins of children. Attractive women's faces have the proportions of 11-to-14-year-old
children.” (David Brin, 1996) The way women dress and make themselves up is for the purpose
The basic, primal instinct of man is to plant his seed for the continuation of his genes; to
have many offspring as a male means power and that he is the alpha-male in the animal
kingdom. What is interesting is that in the animal kingdom, 80% of mating is initiated by the
female and in the cases of a “less worthy” male, that hasn’t been approached by any females,
these males go for the most attractive females. Translating this to human behavior, if one is an
attractive female, she has had her fair share of losers that none of the other females wanted—this
could be seen as a curse of beauty. So it is true that attractive women receive more attention, but
it is more attention from contemptible males instead of worthwhile males that can have long term
relationships. Going along with that, a study also showed that when males choose a very
attractive female it is to feel empowerment knowing that other men envy his ability to obtain
such a female. This being said, the male feels empowerment and his cerebral cortex lights up;
this part of the brain just basic consciousness and learning. Their brains do not light up in the
limbic region with an attractive woman; the limbic region is sometimes referred to as the
“emotional brain” and lights up when someone has a deep, emotional connection to the person
they are with. So when men or women are acting shallow they are simply stuck in their cerebral
characteristics” to attract a male, they must know that it isn’t an emotional attraction, it is just a
Society has placed such and importance on physical attractiveness that most women take
more time to exploit or enhance their looks rather than developing personalities that will attract
mates that they can have an emotional connection to. As a woman, I do this as well. I straighten
my hair so it looks lustrous and long, wear v-neck shirts and hip-hugger jeans to accentuate my
curves. I notice if I look one way I get a reaction in accordance with that dress. When I wear my
hair curly and thrown up in a ponytail with sweatpants on, I hardly get a passing glance. When
my hair is down, my make-up is done, and I’m wearing a cute outfit, I am approached more and
in turn feel more confident. I however do not expose myself like other women like to. My
midriff is always covered and my neckline covers up my breasts fully. I believe that dressing
cute will get me attention from guys that actually want to get to know me, as opposed to if I
dressed provocatively which will get me attention but from the wrong type of guy. Society and
the media perpetuate this idea of attractiveness, that someone has to dress a certain way to get
this attention, young men are groomed to look for certain characteristics and therefore give
positive affirmation to females who look that way—meaning they give attention to those
attractive females then those attractive females pick up on that affirmation and keep dressing that
way in order to feel wanted and in turn confident. We are groomed to dress so that our male
counterparts will notice and approve. How a woman dresses greatly influences how people react
Bibliography
Anonymous. "How Men Select Women." eioba.com (2007):
http://www.eioba.com/a70149/how_men_select_women.
David Brin, Ph.D. "Neoteny and Two-way Sexual Selection in Human Evolution."
Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 18 (1996): 257-276.