Not One to Judge
Somewhere along the way, the definition of the word “judge” – defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “to form an opinion through careful weighing of evidence and testing of premises” – was metaphorically scribbled out and rewritten as “to make a snap decision about someone’s worth based solely on how they look”. What has sparked this train of thought? I read a recent review of Love Island in the Sunday Times Culture magazine, in which the reviewer described the female contestants as “walking Picassos, disjointed assemblies of oddly inflated body parts”. Ouch, I thought. That may be a witty piece of copy, but it would be a devastating thing to read about yourself.
I wonder how many episodes of the “leg-over tournament”, as this journalist describes it, he’s watched? Maybe as many as I have, which is all 44 to date. If so, I find it hard to believe that the initial culture shock of those, admittedly, Barbie-doll facades, hasn’t faded to reveal the beautiful young women I think they are. If he’s only watched a single episode, I can understand his cursory summing up of the girls (and it’s the girls he’s referring to as they’ve openly admitted to having had boob jobs, Botox and lip fillers), because my initial impressions, too, during the first episode were of blow-up dolls and porn stars. I’m not proud of that but there it is. We’re all guilty of pigeonholing people based on first impressions.
It could be that I’m naive and easily taken in of course, because I believe that while the boobs may be fake, the emotions are not. You see, I recognise my 20-something self in many of these young women: defensive, guarded, insecure, fragile. Twenty years ago, I hid these insecurities behind blonde highlights, fake tan and trendy clothes. Today, this mix of millennials and Gen Z use botox and boob jobs to the same effect. Do we judge them more harshly because of it? Have we any right to, given that the beauty standards of today are so much more oppressive than they were in the late nineties and early noughties – be thinner, softer, smoother, shinier, blonder, bustier, brighter... is the chorus that rings in our ears from dawn till dusk.
In her 1999 feminist work The Whole Woman, Germaine Greer stated: “Every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful.” One generation of women after the next has been conditioned by patriarchal power structures to believe that they must be pretty to be valued. In the past century, especially, the advertising industry (which has always been run by men – who hasn’t seen Mad Men – and is still predominantly so) has taken this preoccupation and manipulated it into a punishing ideal that demands Margot Robbie-levels of perfection from each of us, and generates billions of euro of revenue for them. Red carpet standards of beauty are no longer just for Hollywood actresses, and this is visible in the Love Islander’s dressing room, where each contestant makes up her face with the artistry of a professional. They have the same expertise when applying eyelashes and tan, the latter of which is mostly fake too, according to Irish Love Island host Laura Whitmore.
Of course, the male contestants on Love Island are themselves as artificially fashioned as their female counterparts, but by way of excessive weight-lifting, extensive tattooing and all-over body-shaving. If the girls look like Barbie, then the boys are parodying Fred Flinstone. But we know that women have always borne the brunt of this kind of visual weighing-up – we are socialised from our youngest years to understand that we are being looked at. According to Psychology Today, both men and women “tend to establish the worth of individual women primarily by the way their body looks...We do not do this when we evaluate men.”
Social media has only made this worse, and given that the Love Islanders are all members of the digital generation, it’s no wonder they’ve succumbed to the perfectionist narrative and Barbie doll aesthetic many of these platforms espouse. It takes strength of character to go against the grain, and which one of us had dug deep enough to unearth that kind of courage by the age of 28? Not me, certainly. It also takes time and life experience to understand that perfection is, in fact, a crock. I’ve used this quote from Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth before, but I come back to it time and again because it’s so poignant: “She wins who calls herself beautiful and challenges the world to change to truly see her.” At 46, almost 47, I’m still working really hard to try to be this woman. I had no hope in my 20s. Is it any surprise that the Love Island ladies aren’t there yet either?
One of the wonderful things about midlife is understanding that we don’t have to be a part of any kind of enforced beauty contest if we don’t want to. Another gift of our middle years is that we judge less and empathise more (with ourselves and each other). Our opinions of peers are no longer shaped by our own self-doubt. When we look at another woman and size up her hair, her shape, her expression, her accent and her outfit – as women do – we don’t feel affronted or resentful as we might have when we were younger, we feel an affinity instead. We stop putting two and two together and coming up with five.
Shaking off the weight of those absolutist beliefs we held in our younger years helps us tread so much more lightly on other people’s feelings. I’ve learned many things from watching Love Island this summer, among them: nameplate necklaces are back in fashion, white trainers should not be worn with swimwear, and most of the men in the villa have a better blow-dry technique than I do. But most importantly, I’ve learned (once again) that as women, we’re all just doing the best we can with what we’ve got. With each generation, this differs depending on the pressures and standards of the day. The balance between self-acceptance and making the best of yourself is such a tricky one to navigate. At 40-odd, I’m still trying to find the sweet spot, and I’ve no doubt the Love Island ladies are too.
Marie Kelly, August 2021
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