If you read any blogs that discuss feminism or body work, you’re surely aware of the controversy around Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. Just to summarize what this controversy is about, for those of you not in the know, this ad campaign (for products intended to minimize the appearance of “cellulite”) features “real” sized women who are not professional models. There is controversy surrounding the question of whether or not the women are fat; there is controversy surrounding the question of whether or not an advertising campaign using images of “real” women is a step in the right direction for feminism.

I’m not going to address the controversy surrounding the campaign. I think the discussion surrounding the campaign, while interesting, is a distraction. The question shouldn’t be whether the women are beautiful or whether “real” women used in advertising advances the feminist agenda by sanctioning a more “realistic” notion of beauty. The question should be whether or not beauty is something to strive for in the first place. I say it’s not.

Although I’m not a Buddhist, one idea from Buddhism that I’ve incorporated into my personal philosophy is that desire is the root of unhappiness. If you can extinguish desire, you can extinguish suffering (I haven’t quite figured out how to do that yet, unfortunately!). Just like getting a new, coveted Jaguar isn’t going to make a rich person happy, achieving beauty isn’t going to make a woman happy. Just like there’s always going to be some new, expensive trinket to be bought, there’ll always be some new physical imperfection to be dealt with. The only way to win at the beauty game is not to play. A woman isn’t going to be happy until it no longer matters to her whether or not she’s considered beautiful–by others or herself.

Or herself: this last part is particularly important. I previously thought that I’d made a lot of progress in my life, that I’d achieved something, because I generally found myself attractive, despite my “flaws”. I felt really good for a while–I did truly find myself beautiful, a lot of the time. Now that I’ve gained weight from this newest antidepressant, however, I find myself beautiful a lot less often. Even my own sense of my beauty is contingent upon external factors! How could it not be? That’s the definition of beauty as we’re talking about it here: pleasure in external appearance.

Women will suffer as long as they desire beauty, regardless of what the current beauty standard may be. And given that beauty is usually defined by what is rare, a lot of women will suffer. Even women who have deprogrammed themselves from desiring the current beauty standard and seek only to please themselves with their appearance will suffer. The secret is to quash the desire. I wish I knew how to do so. It’s at least a consolation that I now realize what my goal should be.

What does this mean in practice? Wear clothes because you like the fabric and color, and because they’re physically comfortable. Wear jewelry because it pleases you to look at it. Paint your nails because the color draws you. Pull your hair back to keep it from getting in your face, or let it down because you like the way it feels when it blows in the wind. Take pleasure in things, including your body, for their inherent qualities, not not because of how they measure up to any standard, external or internal.

What do you think? Am I totally off my rocker?