A Painted Comedy of Womanhood

Our culture’s obsession with the appearance of women is nothing new. Many societies have long fixated on the female face and figure as the ideal and standard of physical beauty. But the value we place on beauty depends on its rarity—as well as on the existence of its inverse, ugliness. And just as women’s beauty is more heralded in art than that of men, its decline, decay, loss and absence are the objects of far more attention and mockery. Even today, women in public life are ridiculed both for doing too much to offset the effects of time, and too little.