What to do about beauty and the beast?

A few weeks ago, I attended a discussion of beauty standards at Brighton Book Festival. Since then, I’ve been seeing b-standards applied everywhere I read. In fiction, journalism and Bluesky posts.

Gosh, there are so many rules. For our skin and hair, size and shape, facial features, hairiness, fingernails, youth, deportment and use of cosmetics. They vary between cultures and genders, shift over time, are wholly superficial but deeply problematic.

The reason being, compliance with b-standards is still used to measure success or status, value or virtue. Inverting the b-standards signals beastliness. Either way, they infer character. This is, I suppose, why writers use b-standards as shorthand, even if we loathe them in real life.

As we should, if we were ever judged against them, and found ourselves unlovely. If we’re persuaded to waste time and spend money, or to modify our unique selves in ways we don’t enjoy.

Yes, this includes me, though I’m old enough to vanish in public. I gleefully flout some b-standards, but I'm not bold enough to grow a twirly moustache, and there are many other made-up rules I struggle to ignore.

Because they’re everywhere. In our upbringings, the hundreds of ads we might see each day, in the boss’s gaze, in songs and movies and silly jokes. We’re not even safe from them inside our beloved books.

They’re even with me when I imagine a character. Beauty and the beast peep over my shoulders at the screen. Making their obvious suggestions. Add this charming feature, that so-called imperfection. People understand us, they whisper, they know exactly what we mean.

I can’t click my fingers and delete the b-standards, but I can avoid enforcing them. And when I write, I shall refuse to write in terms of beauties and beasts. Perhaps if enough of us do so, we’ll eventually send them to back to once upon a time.