Measured beauty

Winner, Lifestyle Journalism Awards 2006 sponsored by The Philippine Star, Stores Specialists, Inc. and HSBC

Cristina Maria Inocentes Jacinto is a 2006 AB Broadcast Communication graduate of UP Diliman. A magna cum laude, her overall GPA was 1.32. After interning at ABS-CBN and RJTV, she is ready to face the camera.

There is no place on earth where beauty is more exploited than within the walls of an all-girls’ high school, where the barriers of exclusivity trap students in a world of petty competition and secret scandal.

Based on my own high school experience, I remember a number of requirements that a girl had to comply with in order to achieve the highest honor imaginable, one that exceeded even martyrdom and sainthood: to be called "beautiful." This accolade was of utmost importance and was definitely not something to be taken lightly. It created the mechanics for the invisible competition that every high school girl subconsciously aspired to win. Many desired this award of great distinction, though very few were chosen.

If a girl even wanted a chance at this holy grail of physical merit, the first requirement was that she be thin. It was applauded if she could sit down and not have her belly suddenly morph into a series of folds, no matter how tiny or inconspicuous, even if this actually went against the natural anatomical make-up of the human body. For the 99 percent of the population not born this way, there was no need to despair! The wonderful world of dieting held all the answers to their prayers of fat eradication and calorie consumption.

When the lunch bell sounded, soups of awful orange colors with cabbage or whatever other miracle ingredient floating about, along with Sky Flakes and bottled water, littered the corridors. After eating, some girls would even jog around the field in hopes of burning the two or three calories they gained over lunch. And if all this failed, Bangkok pills, Xenical and laxatives were always willing to work their magic.

In order to be beautiful, a girl also had to have flawless skin. One blemish every now and then was understandable, but to exceed this was a fate worse than death, one that could only be remedied with about three pounds of concealer and a trip to the bathroom mirror every five minutes.

Her smile had to be perfect, without those dreadful gaps in between teeth or random fangs sticking out here and there. Braces were acceptable because it was far better to see a girl with awful teeth wearing braces than a girl with a mildly unpleasant smile just allowing it to appall the world without even exerting the slightest effort to find a solution to its unattractiveness. The least she could do was have some consideration for the feelings of others!

The perfect smile went hand in hand with a perfect pout, always just the right shade of pinkish-red, enough to make outsiders believe it was natural, even if it was just the product of a careful mix of Bonne Belle, Revlon and several thimblefuls of lip gloss (which decreased the number of trips pimple-prone girls made to the bathroom because when the gloss was applied generously, the girls’ lips were sometimes mistaken for mirrors).

As for eyebrows, it was a mortal sin to wear them "bushy," a term spoken only in whispers because its occurrence was too devastatingly horrid to say aloud. They had to be thin and perfectly plucked, God forbid a strand fall out of place. Their arcs needed to appear natural, as if they had been that way since birth, because we all know that infants with immaculate eyebrows are a dime a dozen. Tweezers were a staple in every school bag. To forget a book or activity sheet was forgivable, but to arrive at school without tweezers meant to risk being cast off into the world of the bushy-eyebrowed people, a place so dreadful some people claimed it only existed in myth. Some girls were so afraid of this land of horror that they tweezed and tweezed relentlessly, sometimes leaving only four or five strands of hair over each eye. Better bald than bushy.

When it came to clothes, there was not much to do because we were all required to wear the same uniform. But one should never underestimate the resourcefulness of a girl who aspires to be beautiful. Sweaters and jackets of every style and color were more important than the uniforms themselves. Eyeglasses were not used to see but to be seen, creating fashion statements through their trendy shapes and designs. Even perfume was used as a means to be distinguished, peach and pear, vanilla and jasmine, enough to suffocate the sensitive noses and trigger a million allergies in the aromatically challenged.

And then of course, the most important part of the beautiful package, every girl’s crowning glory: her hair. In grade school it was all about color and cut. "The Rachel," bangs and Gwyneth’s boy-cut bob were among the biggest hits, along with brown highlights and blow-dried locks. Later on, rebonding and relaxing were practically mandatory in order to be socially acceptable.

Though the measure of mane magnificence always changed, one thing you could always count on was that when something was "in," everyone would have it. Thus my memory is a blur of trying-hard celebrity look-alikes and girls who looked like they replaced their hair brushes with clothes irons.

Of course, everything I’ve stated is an exaggeration, an attempt to poke fun at the strange way that beauty has evolved in the 21st century, and perhaps an endeavor to conceal the fact that I myself was a willing participant in the insane pursuit of prettiness.

An exclusive girls’ school is the microcosm of our society of beauty, an entity that automatically opens doors to the physically blessed and shuts them rudely on anyone outside this category. Thus the race to be beautiful is actually a fight for acceptance, a silent plea not to be ridiculed and to be allowed to live a life of ease, with sprinkles of admiration and praise. It is a cause that is overanxiously supported by makeup companies, salons and plastic surgeons, to the point that they have gained enough control to dictate the rules of the game, and they alone can provide the necessary tools to meet these requirements.

The truth of the matter is that, when I was in high school, in my opinion, the winners of the subconscious beauty pageant were not the ones with the slimmest waistlines, clearest complexions, perfect smiles, or best clothes. The only thing I can think of that they all had in common is… happiness. I remember whenever my friends were in love (especially if the relationship was still in the honeymoon phase) they would come to class with no makeup, hair tied in messy buns, and still be the most gorgeous girls in the entire school. I have always wondered why when people are happy their eyes tend to brighten, their smiles appear so much lovelier, and they seem to have a glow that is both subtly mysterious and blatantly enchanting.

My only hope is that the secret to such beauty is never revealed, so it may never be repackaged and bought over the counter by those undeserving of it. More importantly, however, with the existence of such beauty, there is hope that these petty wars of attractiveness will one day be eradicated by the power of its mystery, for through it girls might finally realize that real beauty, whether it be in the 21st or 210th century, cannot be explained, and in the same way, it can never, ever be measured. If we only had the power to control our delusions we would see that what we believe to be measures of beauty are merely measures of individual perception, tragically flawed by partiality, and secretly enhanced by lunacy.