Let’s talk about beauty. Beauty is big business in America. In the year 2010, Americans spent 33.3 billion dollars on cosmetics and other beauty products (see Smart Money, April 20, 2011, Ten Things The Beauty Industry Won’t Tell You). That’s a lot of eyeliner. Sales in 2010 were up 6% over 2009 so however ugly the economy is, people are looking good. And we’re not just talking adults. Girls, aged eight through 12, spend 40 million dollars a month on beauty products while young ladies, aged 13 to 17, spend 100 million dollars a month. Wow--when I was that age, I was lucky to afford a bottle of coke and Mad magazine.
Beauty is a topic of interest this week because of our matriarch, Sarah, who was according to the Torah, a real beauty. Abraham seemed to have it all—wealth, power, and a knock-out of a wife. So concerned was he of her beauty that twice he passed her off as his sister, fearing that the Godless of the land would kill him in order to capture her—a real prize wife.
In today’s parashah, Hayyei Sarah, the Torah uses an odd description of Sarah’s age at the time of her death. It reads that Sarah’s lifetime “came to one hundred years and twenty years and seven years” (Genesis 23:1). Why the Torah inserts a math problem into the middle of a sad story is beyond me, but it wasn’t beyond Rashi who explained this rather strange formulation. He wrote that Sarah was as free of sin at the age of 100 as she was at the age of 20. And she was as beautiful at the age of twenty as she was at the age of seven. The Torah specifies each age group to give us some information about Sarah’s life. I wonder if she ever used mascara, blush, lip gloss, or body glitter.
I don’t see any moral problem in wanting to look more attractive or even spending a few bucks for beauty. But the whole issue does raise a few questions. For example, when we expect beauty of ourselves, particularly women, is that a message of any value at all? And who is determining exactly what the standards of beauty are? And would people feel differently about beauty products if they knew they were first tested on animals, to the animals’ detriment, as some are? And finally, having spent all this money on cosmetics, do they work?
The Torah is not an illustrated scroll. We do not know how beautiful Sarah was. But if she was as beautiful as the Torah claims her to be, then that beauty must have been of the most authentic beauty that exists, and that is hardly a physical phenomenon. Cosmetics cannot hide an angry soul or a bitter disposition, lipstick does not put a smile on a face nor glitter a twinkle in the eye. In actuality, cosmetics may actually have a detrimental effect on one’s natural beauty if they are seen as a cover up. If one’s beauty does not emanate from within outward, beauty products will be of no effect. Do we really want to tell young girls that they need to be more beautiful or that their natural beauty is in some way deficient? What a horrible message. Beauty is not so much in the eye of the beholder as it is in the heart of the beholden. Ladies—you’re natural beauty is all you need. Finally—a Devar Torah that can really save you a few bucks.
