A Big Gap Between Real Beauty, Reel Beauty

Jim Morrison sang about building a woman 10 feet tall.

Frankenstein got his bride with a beehive in overdrive.

The Stepford Wives came off the line as sexy, submissive homemakers.

But usually when the entertainment and advertising industries construct their women from scratch, the results are pretty predictable. Just look at the latest model in theaters. “Simone” is a honey-blond, blue-eyed, smooth-skinned goddess in the flesh.

The movie’s twist is that Simone is a fake, a digital rendering of a beautiful actress who becomes wildly popular with the gullible masses and press.

Though it’s meant to satirize our slathering appetite for celebrity in any form, “Simone” is itself another glossy page in the mass media catalog of stereotypical feminine beauty.

“If I’ve only one life, let me live it as a blonde!” So read the caption in a magazine ad for Ultra Blue Lady Clairol. That was in 1958. The clay was still wet on our model of the perfect American woman. She’d been taking shape for years.

Grable’s legs. Hayworth’s curves. Monroe’s platinum tresses (not to mention her aura of vapid fun). Soon to come was the sun-kissed skin and carefree spirit of the Beach Boys’ California Girls. Take off some pounds with Twiggy, and we’re getting close to the look of today.

Every year, more than $1 billion is spent on hair-color products. Though only 19% of American women were born blond, shades of blond make up 39% of hair color sales, compared with 37% for brown and 18% for red, according to Clairol. But one study showed that although 84% of women think that most men prefer blonds, in reality, only 35% of the men interviewed said that was true.

What about the body? Only 3% to 5% of American women between 20 and 29 have the type of body idealized by models and the more sculpted celebrities, says Lisa Berzins, a West Hartford psychologist who specializes in eating disorders. Research has shown that men are attracted to women more curvaceous than the waifs they’re presented with, says Stacey Tantleff-Dunn, a psychologist at the University of Central Florida.

So do we really want to be with WASPy Gwyneth Paltrow, or is her image in the movies and elsewhere just telling us so?

The answer--for both sexes--has been lost somewhere between the buff and buxom “Baywatch” patrol and our primitive attraction to signs of fertility. Along the way, these unattainable images of beauty do their damage.

Research has shown how television and movies can particularly undermine the self-esteem of young women.

The digital star of “Simone” is Rachel Roberts, a Canadian model whose contract included a gag order. To market the movie, its producers downplayed her flesh-and-blood status. The end credits list only “Simone as Herself.” To play the part, Roberts was pixilated liberally, of course, her parts enhanced or smoothed wherever necessary.