The Ugly Truth

 

Readers, think about it: when's the last time somebody really unattractive became famous?  Newt Gingrich?  He's been around awhile.  John Belushi?  He's been dead for decades.

It may be hard to believe, but in the early Nineteen-Thirties, comic actress Marie Dressler, already over sixty and with the face of an English Bulldog, was THE number one Hollywood box office attraction, which she remained until her death at sixty-five.  Watch an old movie of hers like Min and Bill or Dinner at Eight and you'll immediately understand why.  She was a powerhouse.



Do you remember Margaret Hamilton?  No beauty, she.  But Hamilton was one of the most beloved character actresses in Hollywood history, due primarily to her role as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.   (Parenthetically, isn't it spooky that she looks like the fraternal twin of co-star, scarecrow Ray Bolger, who was equally lacking in the looks department and even more popular than she, despite it?)

 

 

Both movies and television used to be teeming with, frankly, funny-looking women: Martha Raye (pictured up top), Ann B. Davis, Alice Pearce, Thelma Ritter, Kay Ballard, Imogene Coca, Alice Ghostley -- the list goes on and on.  Even some huge stars like Carol Burnett started out playing ugly ducklings and goofballs.

Kay Ballard

Alice Pearce as Gladys Kravitz on "Bewitched"

Alice Ghostley (Another "Betwitched" alum)

The young Carol Burnett

These actresses made a name for themselves based on their looks as surely as Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly did.  But these were women (primarily though not exclusively) who were not afraid to take their middle-of-the-road (or worse) looks to exaggerated extremes for comic effect.  They looked like people we really knew and we loved them for it.  Perhaps we didn't project our romantic fantasies on them, but they made us laugh and they made us cry.

Marjorie Main

Thelma Ritter

To some extent, this has been true for men as well.  So many beloved stars like Jimmy Durante, William Demarest, Jackie Gleason, and W.C. Fields were either fat, old, bald, or some combination thereof, and it made no difference.  Like a beloved uncle or grandfather, we took these funny-looking men to heart.  And they weren't all comics: think Edward G. Robinson or Charles Laughton.

William Demarest, Uncle Charlie on "My Three Sons"

It seems like today, we're surrounded by pretty faces.  Our media-saturated environment rarely makes room for the unattractive.  Even when an actor or actress becomes famous as a fat person -- think Jennifer Hudson, Ricky Lake, Star Jones -- they quickly drop weight faster than a high school wrestler.  Even Oprah has exploited her own weight problems to become the living embodiment of the Cinderella fantasy, albeit with quite a few bumps along the road (and she's exploited those too).

Television shows like Extreme Makeover and The Swan have been fixated on turning people with so-called physical flaws into pageant contestants.  As a culture, we seem to have few problems with extremes of economic inequality, but if a poor girl has a weak chin, by God, she deserves a chance in life!  (At least to look gorgeous at her high school reunion)

Of course, many funny-looking female comics have played right into this make-over obsession, becoming poster-children for radical plastic surgery: Phyllis Diller, Roseanne Barr, Kathy Griffin, Totie Fields (and the winner is...Joan Rivers!).   It's remarkable when you think about it.  Women comics may make a career out of knocking their looks, but given half a chance, off to the cosmetic surgeon they go.  Thoughts?

Remember when Roseanne Barr looked like this?

It's different for men, of course, though, obviously looks matter.  Still, there's plenty of room for a jowly Donald Trump or an octogenarian Regis Philbin on prime time.  

Its easier for men for one reason, I believe.  Heterosexual men are biologically hard-wired to seek out women who display the (youthful) traits associated with beauty, among them soft skin, thick hair, perky breasts, and shapely butts.  (This is all about sex and propagation, folks.)  While some historical eras have embraced heavier female bodies, the fixation on youthful women transcends culture, geography, and historic time.  Old women may be venerated, but they aren't desired like young women are.

Why else could Andy Rooney age naturally on 60 Minutes when Barbara Walters is expected to look eternally fifty-something-ish on every news show she appears on?  (She's eighty-two.)



 

Even female politicians like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann are made over and expected to be knockouts.  Where's the female equivalent of the Basset Hound-faced Ron Paul, I ask? 

I don't read a lot of blogs, but Sally McGraw's Already Pretty is one of my favorites.  Sometimes reading it, however, I'm struck by how hard it seems to be for so many women to feel good about their bodies and the way they look in general.  Young men may be obsessed with building muscles or comparing their sexual endowments, but men have nothing like Already Pretty (can you imagine a blog called Already Handsome?), or the scores of womens beauty and fitness magazines, diet books, and the like.

Perhaps it's time we restored our appreciation for the homely among us.  Maybe they have something to teach to us about self-acceptance, putting our looks in perspective, and having the last laugh.

In closing, do you agree that we seem to have less tolerance for unattractive people these days?  Is it harder today for someone who's not pretty or handsome than it was, say, a few generations ago?   Are we the same, but the media environment has changed?

If you're from a country other than the United States, are things different where you live, or would you say that beauty, and trying to look beautiful, is as much a cultural obsession there as it is here?

Does the same double standard between men and women exist?

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The Demise of Dainty

Friends, whatever happened to dainty?

I am talking about the word dainty, used not to describe a porcelain tea set, but rather to describe women and all things female.


 



Just so we're all on the the same page, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word dainty as marked by delicate or diminutive beauty, form, or grace.  

Between the World Wars,  dainty became synonymous with "feminine hygiene" -- itself a rather dainty way of saying clean genitals.



Dainty was always an ideal; nobody's born dainty.

For decades it was a way to connote a certain kind of fragile beauty, a frilly femininity -- all ruffles, posies, and sweet smiles.  But, perhaps as a backlash, it eventually took on a negative meaning, synonymous with prissy, fussy, and fastidious, and is more likely to be used as a put-down today.

A very dainty Forties dress pattern.

Soprano singing star Jane Powell was the quintessence of Forties daintiness -- pretty (but not sexy), petite, and not too pushy -- in films like A Date With Judy.



Elizabeth Taylor started out as dainty, playing a fragile, sweet-tempered ingenue in Cynthia at age sixteen.  Just a few years later, however, in A Place in the Sun, a more voluptuous, confident Elizabeth represented something much more dangerous and decidedly less dainty.

 


Let's fact facts: nobody in the West expects women to be dainty anymore and perhaps that's a good thing.  There was something repressive about the very concept of dainty that denied women their own strength and sexuality.

But there was something optimistic about dainty, too, something youthful and appealingly innocent.

In 1945, Jeanne Crain, playing an Iowa farm girl (top pic) in the film State Fair. could sing, longingly:
 
I keep wishing I were somewhere else,
Walking down a strange new street.
Hearing words that I have never heard,
From a man I've yet to meet.

Eighteen years later we had the hip-swiveling bombshell Ann-Marget, playing a suburban teenager in Bye Bye Birdie crooning:

There are men of nineteen or twenty
Who are suave and reckless and true
Older men who give a girl plenty
I've gotta a lot of livin' to do

And we knew exactly what kind of livin' she was talking about.  Dainty was seriously endangered.

Today, Britney Spears, croaks the double-entendre'd:

If I said my heart was beating loud
If we could escape the crowd somehow
If I said I want your body now
Would you hold it against me.

Britney is to dainty what Agent Orange is to the California redwoods.

What a journey we've traveled in a just a few generations!
 

Even Walt Disney studios, which did more to extend the life of dainty than any other filmmaker, with its shiny re-tellings of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, all scrubbed of their gruesome bits, replaced the warbly, uber-dainty soprano sound of it's heroines (think Snow White) with a more confident Broadway-style belt (think The Little Mermaid).  Dainty went the way of the dodo.

Readers, just what killed off dainty?  I can identify a number of factors, none by themselves the proverbial nail in the coffin, but all contributing to dainty's (unavoidable) demise:  

a) World Wars I & II, which forced women into traditionally male roles;

b) The pill, which disconnected sex from the fear of pregnancy; 

c) Marilyn Monroe, whose joyful sexual expressiveness was a direct attack on the delicate, dainty ideal; 



d) Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita, which revealed that a dainty facade may be just that, a facade; 

e) Films like Rebel Without a Cause, that presented young people of both sexes as alienated from the adult world, and depicted them as multidimensional beings as opposed to sunny songbirds.

In closing, readers, is dainty something you ever aspired to be, or were taught you should be?

Is dainty truly dead, or does it live on in the cultural crevices: Disney princesses, Barbie pink, and Casey's Elegant Musings?

In your opinion, when we dumped dainty, did we throw out the baby with the bathwater, or was it good-bye and good riddance?    Do you ever feel nostalgic for dainty?

Speak up, Ladies (and Gents), but please, don't shout.

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On Male Beauty

Readers, do you subscribe to the belief that a man can be too good-looking?

I was reading an excerpt from Rob Lowe's critically-acclaimed autobiography, "Stories I Only Tell My Friends" recently, and he believes that his good looks kept him from having the kind of film career in his youth he had hoped for.  Indeed, it's easy to believe that Rob's beauty could have been an obstacle.  (The modified mullet and shark tooth earrings weren't doing him any favors either.)



There are lots of different kinds of good-looking men (as there are different kinds of good-looking women) but the kind of good looks that seems to cause the most trouble, not only for the man himself but, if he is an actor, for his audience too (keep reading), are the ones considered "pretty."

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes a handsome man pretty, but we know it when we see it.  Tyrone Power is a classic example of this phenomenon, and based on what I've read about his life, he suffered for it, both professionally and personally.



Power died young after a life of considerable self-abuse.  He was only in his mid-forties -- and considerably less pretty.



When you think about the most popular male movie stars of classic Hollywood cinema, they're generally not the best looking (and this holds true for the women as well, imo: think Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert) -- the more rugged actors held on the longest and are best remembered, men like Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Spencer Tracey.





Some actors started out as beauties -- Gary Cooper and John Wayne come to mind -- but aged rapidly into rugged-looking, craggy-faced heroes worshiped by men and women alike.





A lot of this "curse of the beautiful male" thing has to do with homophobia: there's a sense that a beautiful man is likely to be homosexual or -- due to his almost feminine looks (long lashes, bright, light eyes) -- not sufficiently masculine.  Americans like their men to look like men.  Actually, I think it's that heterosexual American males like their heroes to look more rugged for fear of being labeled homosexual themselves.  It's all a bit headache-inducing.

Of course, the fact that many beautiful male actors are now known to have been -- or consistently rumored to be -- gay (or its mid-Twentieth Century equivalent), doesn't help matters.  Tyrone Power, Montgomery Clift, and the late Farley Granger come to mind.  Even in the gay male community, many put a lot of value on being "straight-looking," i.e., traditionally masculine.  (Clifton Webb need not apply.)

What is a beautiful man supposed to do?  Facial hair seems to help -- or does it only call attention to precisely the features they're trying to hide?  (Think Johnny Depp and Zac Efron.)





I've often read that teen idols are usually of the pretty type because young girls find them less sexually threatening (subconsciously, of course).  This would apply to everyone from Troy Donahue to Ricky Nelson (remember him?) to Justin Bieber.

When these teen fans grow up, however, they prefer Clark Gable.

Friends of the man-loving persuasion, how do you like your men?

Do you have a preference for the iconic strong, silent type?  Are you uncomfortable around a man who might be considered prettier than you are?  Do you have nothing but empathy for Joanne Woodward (who wasn't exactly homely but she was no Paul Newman)?



Are you suspicious of a man who's too good looking, either because you think he's likely to be stuck up, or the constant target of the attention of decorators, florists, and male sewing bloggers?  (And he might like it.)

Can a man be too beautiful?

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Are you sophisticated?

Reading blog comments in response to recent posts about summer comfort and contemporary style, I noticed that most of you are relieved to be able to wear what feels comfortable to you.

Many of you, however, aren't pleased with a world where people let it all hang out -- literally -- and think that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of casualness.

This got me thinking about what's been lost since the days when men wore hats outside and ladies squeezed themselves into girdles and garter belts. It isn't so much what people wear that has changed (though that's part of it), as much as the way they wear it.

We've lost a sense of sophistication.

Sophistication is defined as "enlightenment or education; cultivated intellectual worldliness; savoir-faire."

It connotes "having, revealing, or proceeding from a great deal of worldly experience and knowledge of fashion and culture."

What was it that made, say, Marlene Dietrich seem sophisticated -- the knowing glance, the cigarette, or the German accent?

Parenthetically, I watched "Burlesque" last night on DVD, and rarely has a film tried so hard to evoke an air of sophistication and failed so miserably.  That said, I was never bored.

Maybe the problem is Christina Aguilera.  She's about as sophisticated as....well, Christina Aguilera.

Part of what's missing -- and some of you alluded to this in your comments -- is a lack of role models.  We've experienced real cultural losses in the past three or four decades.  There are things most men and women no longer know how to do, and dressing elegantly is only one of them.

Hence the ubiquity of the celebrity stylist.  But even then, the results look effortful rather than effortless.  The clothes are striking, but the result looks only superficially sophisticated to me.

Did the old stars seem sophisticated because we associated them with their on-screen personas (and all that witty dialogue), or is it something else, something on the inside they projected out?

Reader Toby recommended an excellent book to me a few weeks ago, "Elegance: the Seeberger Brothers and the Birth of Fashion Photography," and I recently found it at the library.



It's full of gorgeous photographs taken primarily during the Teens to late Thirties of European high society at leisure.  Of course we're going to expect them to look better than the rest of us, but these photographs really capture something special; it's not just the clothes -- it's an attitude.









Can some wise reader please define why these people look so friggin' sophisticated -- if you think they do?

I think sophistication, and sophisticated style, have to do with intelligence, particularly about oneself.  It's not so much getting it "right" -- which seems to be what so many celebrities today are obsessed with on the red carpet -- as expressing something unique about yourself.  It's knowing who you are and what you're about and expressing it through the language of fashion.

That's why this leaves me utterly cold:

And this evokes delight:

Perhaps actresses today aren't allowed to play fully fleshed-out characters and that's why they seem like paper dolls when they dress up.  We don't really know them -- or just the opposite: we know them too well to really care.

Once America became suburban, people spent more times tending their yards and driving their cars than strolling the streets.  Private space became more valued than public space, the latter sometimes lacking entirely (i.e, no sidewalks).

We're more likely bump into each other in the snack aisle of the 7-Eleven than dressed up to be seen.  We mainly move from one air conditioned space to another with a car trip in between, and there's nowhere to go but the mall.  It doesn't really inspire a person to take pains.

Then...

Now...

Readers, what do you think?  What is sophisticated style all about and where can you find it today?  Does it still exist in your corner of the world?

Do you consider yourself sophisticated in your style or approach to life?

If you had to blame one thing for the loss of sophistication today, would it be:

1) Reality TV

2) Stretch denim

3) Petticoat Junction

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