Beauty as a liability

published 16 Jun 2008, MST


On the second day of school, my daughter Sophia came home gushing at being elected muse of her third grade class. I was pleased to hear this and promptly congratulated her. Any mom would be happy to hear her daughter was adjudged prettiest.

But an hour later, she asked me if we could instead keep her first elective post a secret between the two of us. It was too late. I had already spread the word by texting my closest friends and her godmothers.

Could we then not inform the rest of the family, she asked, especially her ate, who was a high school junior, and her kuya, who was a freshman?

I was perplexed by this about-face. What was so embarrassing about being muse? I remembered being in school and wishing I would be named muse. Instead I got the square titles like class president or editor in chief. Oh well. It was a long shot -- I was fat and bespectacled and had frizzy hair. Go figure.

After much prodding, Sophia gave me a peek into the workings of her pretty eight-year-old head. She said she was afraid that people would say that she became muse because she could not be anything else. “What does a muse do, anyway?” she asked.

I grappled for an answer. “Well, you will represent your class in school programs. You will inspire your other officers to do their jobs well. You will promote goodwill and harmony and lessen conflicts. You...”

I stopped and shuddered at my explanation. How Imeldific. I wondered if I would have said something on the “true, the good and the beautiful” had I not caught myself on time.

I tried again. I said that more was expected of muses because they had to prove that while they can do all those things I earlier mentioned, their worth did not end there. “Being pretty is not an end,” I told her.

I did not know whether my daughter understood that part. I myself had not given the matter much prior thought. The thing is, most of us operate on the rather simplistic concept that girls have to be beautiful OR smart, but never both. Remember the stereotypical dumb blond? Booba? That contestant whose distraught answer to a pageant question made the rounds of YouTube? On the other hand, how can we forget those ferocious female lawyers who could clobber everybody else's argument except that, well, they were deemed not very pleasing to look at?

Ergo, if you are pretty, you have no business being smart, or talented, or both. All the other women who are smart and talented but homely are bound to pounce on you.

Worse still, no matter how hard you try to prove yourself, you will always, always be judged by men, who make up more or less half the workplace, according to their standards – standards that are determined by hormones. And then all you know and all you can deliver would be deemed secondary. Thus you will have to work really really hard just to be taken seriously. And even then, you could not be so sure.

Is it easier to champion gender equality if you are homely? When has beauty become such a liability?

**

According to Wikipedia, “the Muses are a sisterhood of goddesses or spirits,...who embody the arts and inspire the creation process with their graces through remembered and improvised song and stage, writing, traditional music, and dance.”

There are nine of them: Calliope, chief of the muses and the muse of epic or heroic poetry; Clio, of history; Erato, of love and erotic poetry; Euterpe, of music and lyric poetry; Melpomene, of tragedy; Polyhymnia, of sacred song; Terpsichore, of choral song and dance; Thalia, of comedy and bucolic poetry; and Urania, of astronomy.

Indeed, muses have been called “the key to the good life.” Think of the great artists who extolled their muses and credited them for enabling them to produce their work. For this I named my first-born Beatrice after the muse of Dante Aleghieri, of Paradiso and Infero fame.

Still, the word “amusement” is illustrative of how a muse is regarded as mere things to enable “great” men to do their thing. Herein lies the unflattering connotation that being a muse is, well, the cultural equivalent of dancing in short skirts, and waving pompoms and cheering on athletes or screaming over rock stars, following them wherever they went.

So on second thought, no, that's not the kind of muse I would like my Sophia to be.

Beauty provides false sense of security. Of course it does not hurt to be pretty. Beauty sells, after all. But the lovely features of your face or the proportion of your body parts does not define who you are. On the other hand, they do not also limit you from achieving more. Inasmuch as it should not be a source of false confidence, it should not be a dampener of one's dreams. No girl is “just a pretty face“ -- unless she deliberately chooses to stay that way.

Maybe labels such as “Class Muse” are irrelevant in this day and age.

In the meantime, Sophia holds on to her post as I convince her this school year -- and especially later when she ventures into the real world – that there are a few things that don't fade with time. One of these is self-possession, knowing oneself to be a gem with or without the incidentals of physical beauty, expensive education or a coveted talent. Each girl with a good heart, a sound mind and grounded feet is potentially a goddess.

Now that label is equally ancient, but immensely more flattering.

adelle_tulagan@yahoo.com