Perfection. A myth. An unattainable goal.
And yet, something so many of us strive for.
My first issue is the definition. In my opinion, every instance in which we deem something ‘perfect’, it’s a lie. The idea of perfection is completely unique within the mind of every single individual and context. Despite this, not only do we devote ourselves to someone else’s view of perfection, we idolise it. We allow it to devour us.
The process of foot binding was prominent in the Tang Dynasty
We can see it in the way we view our bodies. Not only are our societal expectations for the way men and women look unrealistic and unhealthy, but also constantly changing. From foot binding in ancient China to the use of skin bleaching creams; it is not new for people to disfigure themselves in an attempt to conform to a beauty ‘standard’. Yet, this supposedly concrete image has been proven to dissolve and evolve. Therefore, how do we ever hope to realise it? And why?
Logo from the Second International Eugenics Conference, 1921
We can see it in the horrific history of eugenics. Literally translated to “good creation”, the practice of creating a superior society by ‘breeding out’ what those in power consider ‘undesirable traits’ did not start nor stop with Hitler’s obsession with a Master Race. In fact, despite being traced as far back as Plato, Hitler attributes American Eugenics as his core inspiration. In the US, tens of thousands of forced sterilizations of immigrants, minorities, poor and the mentally ill have occurred legally as recently as 1979. We ridicule these histories wherein one group of people in power created a standard and decided they had a right to enforce it, and yet do we not fall for this farce over and over again?
Haven’t you ever discovered a mutant M&M in a package and savoured it all the more for being different? The most ridiculous thing about perfection is how hard we strive to define it, despite our natural attraction to imperfection.
Maybe this is accentuated in modern manufacturing culture where technology has set a new standard of production – quality is configured to mean the homogenisation of every product. However, we have always cherished the unique, the misfits and the deformities that make a piece significant.
Film adaptation of the novel ‘Call Me By Your Name’ directed by Luca Guadagnino
At its core, art has always been an expression of humanity.
Luca Guadagnino, director of the critically-acclaimed ‘Call Me By Your Name’ said in an interview at the NY Film Festival footage of one of the scenes was accidentally damaged in the film’s editing process, but that he kept it in because he loved that the unintentional effect fit the timing and aesthetics of the scene. There is a flaw, and yet Guadagnino felt the scene was perfect, not despite but because of it.
“To err is human, to forgive divine”
– Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, Part II , 1711
If being flawed is imbedded in our very codes, do we not owe ourselves kindness in our shortcomings?
The truth is that all we can ever be is human. No matter what we do and what we create to make up for our inadequacies, being human is synonymous with being imperfect; and there is beauty in our acceptance and celebration of our flaws.
I encourage you to find something you’ve thought of as perfect. A movie you love, or a person you admire, and take a closer look.
What does ‘perfect’ mean to you?
There is so much more to this conversation that I couldn’t include but here are a couple of super interesting links to check out if you’re interested:
https://www.history.com/topics/germany/eugenics
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-footbinding-persisted-china-millennium-180953971/
I agree with the idea that perfection is ingrained in our society in some ugly and detrimental fashions, to the point of pain and suffering such as foot binding as you mentioned. The number of people on Instagram beginning to Photoshop their bodies to reach those impossible goals is climbing and beginning to rival that of magazines and professional editorial companies, before turning around and preaching self love and acceptance. Yes, there are people who truly believe the good messages they send while having hangups about their own appearances, but talking one way and performing another only sends mixed messages to those who need it.
I would like to add on to your comment about out love for misfits. There has been a huge shift in recent years when regarding how we react to different people and their place in the world. We still have many ugly-duckling stories, where only once the duckling grows into a socially fit swan is it recognised as good, but there are more people each day realising that perfect isn’t all that life is about. Being alive by default means that things will not be perfect, whether it be internally or externally. Recently the focus has been much more on appreciating life and all the hiccups and pitfalls along the way.
Eugenics is also a good point to bring up here. Where people like Hitler and others desired to use eugenics for their own gain, they thankfully lived in a time where they didn’t have the technology we have today. Prenatal screenings, genetic tests and a whole slew of other modern tools have been very useful in recent years, but it sends shivers up my spine to imagine what people who sought to eliminate parts of the population would have done with access to them. Hopefully with a rise in acceptance that isn’t a future that needs to be considered.
Here is an article which goes into a little more detail about how Iceland has used prenatal screening to almost eliminate people with Down Syndrome and what else the technology can be used for.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-intuitive-parent/201801/iceland-cures-down-syndrome-should-america-do-the-same
I think it’s precisely because of cookie-cutter consumerism that we can find perfection in things that are flawed. Mass produced products may look good, but beauty is a personal thing. In the face of mass production, we’re coming to think of handmade and individualised creations as superior to things that aren’t so unique. Under this ideology, if perfection is possible, it’s made up of lots of imperfect parts.
Eugenicists always miss the fact that “good”/”eu-” is a subjective quantity. Hitler had a system for determining that, but a lot of people disagree with that system. Eugenicists say that some people are more worthy of life than others based on their own perspective. If we tried to do eugenics the right way as an entertaining holiday project, we’d have to ask everybody about who should live. I think every person would consider themself worthy of life, so we’d end up murdering no one. We shouldn’t favour one person’s opinion over someone else’s (or we’d be back where we started deciding arbitrarily) so either everyone dies or no one does. (Killing everyone is less eugenics and more unashamed genocide.)
I’m getting sidetracked. Eugenics is useless because it’s impossible to have an objective measure of what’s good and what’s bad.
So many awesome points made, it’s such an interesting topic and I loved all the examples (though I am now hungry for that imperfect m&m). The tone of your writing is beautiful and I felt automatically engaged. I think the idea of beauty standards throughout history is really interesting and something I’d love to read about in more detail!
Creation of and conformity to standards of goodness or ‘perfection’ are fascinating, as they are arguably the basis from which all human conflicts arise. In their broadest social forms, conflicts arising from a lack of aesthetic conformity are often the most vicious. We see this in your examples of gender, where victims are queer-bashed or harassed for their non-conforming appearances; women and girls in historical China having their feet bound to be more ‘beautiful’ and having to endure constant pain to achieve femininity; and the ‘racially impure’ and ‘undesirables’ treated lesser than for their possession of different abilities and appearances in the United States. What all these examples share is a pattern of violence towards ‘the other’, or the nonconformist, whether that be queers, un-feminine women and girls, or the ethnically, racially, nationally, and ably different.
These examples help to demonstrate some of the different forms of identity groups there are, how they form themselves off of what they are aesthetically not, and how they other nonconformists which may have as reasonable a basis for looking how they do as the observer.
Hey, I’m a 200 student but this article is wicked! Reminds me of Kintsugi, the Japanese technique of filling the cracks of broken ceramic bowls with liquid gold. The imperfections make the bowl more beautiful and more valuable <3
Keep it up!