Linda Wells: We Are Dwelling within the Golden Age of Magnificence

Possibly the explanation so many individuals conflate magnificence with vainness is as a result of it permits them to dismiss the entire emotionally fraught mess. Tending to your look is superficial, the considering goes; it is time-consuming, it will get in the way in which of huge, essential issues. It is useless. And who desires to be useless, standing in a membership in a zebra-print skirt, with the satan holding your mirror?

We wish to reject magnificence as a result of we imagine it rejects us. For hundreds of years, magnificence was particular, measurable in inches, sized up with ratios. It had requirements. It required conformity. The internalization of these requirements accounts for lots of distress, together with my mom’s facelift.

The sweetness-vanity entanglement hit me once more when, in 1990, I used to be placing collectively a crew to create Attract. One promising journalist after one other declined my supply of employment with what they thought was pure logic. Their causes had been variations on, “I do not even put on lipstick.” Many spoke these actual phrases. I doubt these journalists would’ve objected to masking the opioid disaster as a result of they did not carry a bottle of OxyContin. However magnificence was totally different; it was private. And collaborating in it was in some way diminishing and — this is that phrase once more — useless.

However concepts about magnificence aren’t static. One thing began shifting over the previous 10 years or so. Magnificence wriggled unfastened of conformist requirements in pores and skin coloration, hair coloration, hair texture, race, ethnicity, gender, dimension, age guidelines, and laws. Magnificence grew to become democratic and accessible. Individualistic magnificence by its very nature defies calculation and definition. This variation did not occur as a result of some divine decree fell out of the sky. It occurred as a result of it needed to. The outdated requirements by no means mirrored the inhabitants in all its selection. A number of folks proudly claimed magnificence on their very own phrases, and an increasing number of folks awoke and took discover.

Then all the things began to speed up. Magnificence grew to become joyful, celebratory, a type of self-expression that transcended vainness. It grew to become kooky and bizarre. It even acquired a humorousness. The ponderous Miss America pageant was packed away in mothballs, changed by the exuberance of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Proper right here, proper now, we’re in a golden age of magnificence. Make-up has by no means been extra wildly colourful or creatively inviting. Pores and skin and hair care are stuffed with potent elements and a luscious richness, with imaginative names and packaging that carry them out of their bland performance. Hairstyles, colours, and ornamentation fill YouTube movies in addition to Instagram and TikTok feeds like elaborately wrapped presents. Even the funding world loves magnificence.