Although beauty pageants have evolved over times and the definition of beauty became more accepting of inner beauty, personality, race, and other traits of women that are truly beautiful, the fact that such tournaments are mainly focused on women's outer looks never changed. With the premise that Marston had supported to women's suffrage movement, it came as a shock to me that he described the Amazons, the strong and courgeous women of the mysterious island, to be no different from the competitors of a beauty pageant, as if their beauty makes them stronger.
This idea becomes more confusing as Diane is given a costume that has vibrant colors and proceeds to take her unconscious lover back to America, only to support him and literally buy a false identity to spend time with him.
This confusing comparison keeps getting more complicated and a question arises.
Would I have ever thought that Marston was a supporter of the women's suffrage movement if I had not read about it?
I definitely agree with you that there are a lot of issues where image and beauty are concerned. It occurs to me that the definition of beauty and appearance is something of a more modern phenomenon than it was in the past. If we look at Etta Candy, there again we have some issues of where to draw the line between female empowerment and stereotypical body images. I think for Marsden, tying beauty to power might be his way of saying that females should own their beauty. Perhaps by including Etta Candy as part of that "beautiful team", he implies that (yes why she is stereotypical) the idea of focusing on beauty is to be proud of oneself. I think this is touching upon Marsden's idea of a feminist (owning one's sexuality/being sexually active is good).
ReplyDeleteIn short, I certainly agree that the beauty pageant seems wrong on many levels. However, this is because beauty (and its many definitions vs. just the barbie type) has more recently become an issue for feminism.