Zoe Strimpel
The landscape in which female beauty trends play out is increasingly mean and ludicrous, just when it should be less prone to obsession and caricature than ever before. We should be seeing thick hairy legs on urban streets, not just on LGBTQ activists. We should barely be hearing normal women talking about facial ageing or getting regular poison-loaded needles injected into their faces for the sake of the blandest type of beauty. And we should definitely not be seeing the rise of teenagers making millions from hawking anti-ageing skin products to other children. And yet, here we are. What is obvious is that a female body is still the most powerful asset a human being can have, if presented correctly.
There is something especially powerful, of course, about the female athlete’s physicality, as suggested by the hubbub surrounding tennis star Naomi Osaka sashaying into the French Open in a series of glinting net trains and sexy couture tops – one of which was aptly labeled ‘the Eiffel Tower at night’. Cue much fury and condemnation from traditionalists, sexists, and even her (defeated) first round opponent Laura Siegemund who complained that Osaka’s statement fashion tripled the time it took her to change for the court, an allowance, felt Siegemund, that suggested it’s one rule for them (big names) and another for the rest.
