5x03 Belleza en política

¿Elegimos a nuestros presidentes por su belleza? La importancia del aspecto físico se mete en temas tan trascendentales como la política de un país. En este episodio te cuento más sobre esto. 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Beauty is so important to our societythat it can even influence politics. People
vote not only for ideals, butalso for the physical aspect, especially if
there are women in politics. Hence, things like fashion, weight, physical
appearance, hairstyle and even uncontrollable elementssuch as eye color or whiteness, have
a huge weight in chemical beauty politics. Imagine if the appearance of politicians will

(00:29):
be important for modern life and especiallyfor men who, when we got the
vote, were afraid that we wouldonly vote for the handsome. This widespread
idea that women voted for how cutethe candidates were is totally false, because
it' s not just us whoare guided by appearances. The gender gap
in the female vote did not endup fulfilling anything men expected. Of us,

(00:53):
neither politicians more like brad biet normore conservative ones. The vote of
women usually goes towards those parties thatreadied, distributed wealth and made strong social
proposals, that is, leftist parties, probably because we know more than anyone
else what it is to be womenand what can generate us economically a more
conservative party. Different is the thingif the sex of the electoral candidate is

(01:18):
female. Women need not only tobe competent, but also attractive to win
votes. According to the policy studyof Gendarca. The study showed people all
candidates to the U S Congress ofthe election of two thousand and six,
and asked them to raise their competenceas politicians based on their appeal, dominance,
and accessibility. The results showed thatvoters perceived male faces as more competent,

(01:41):
while women were more attractive and accessible. However, voters chose men more
often as potential candidates for President ofthe United States. Therefore, in order
for a woman to be elected topolitical office, she must not only be
competent and perceived as competent, butalso be beautiful. And while for women
in politics, the physical appeal canbe such in their career and public scrutiny

(02:04):
is much more harmful. In general, the most attractive men also tend to
win more choices, and this isseen to be one of the few things
that less informed voters can know,and that physical aspect can often show the
candidate' s ideology more. Forexample, if we think of a long
- haired or bearded male candidate,surely we think of a left- wing

(02:27):
political party. However, if wesee a white candidate with clear eyes in
a suit, we think of amore conservative or right- wing party.
The problem with this is not onlythat people who are very well prepared,
who are very capable, but whoare not attractive or ill- advised,
lose choices or lose positions of power, but also that less informed people can

(02:47):
be manipulated by people who are simplypretty like this. There are several studies
that show that the physical appearance ofcandidates, especially women, is very important,
but the conditions under which these studiesare carried out are quite artificial.
They usually show photographs and not muchmore. We don' t have all

(03:09):
the data and we know that peoplecan choose differently from their politicians knowing more
than their physical appearance, dad sex, political party, oratory career, etcetera.
These are things that influence and arenot in these studies that are usually
done. So studies aren' t100 percent conclusive, as it' s
unsorcerer that someone chooses a candidate aspresident just in case it' s cute

(03:30):
or not. Let' s saythen that the most important thing in politics
is not how cute or how ugly, but rather if your physical appearance conveys
confidence, competence and other desirable characteristics. And there comes a very important factor,
which is fashion. Fashion is entirelypolitical, even though we try hard

(03:53):
to say it' s a frivolity. The hair, makeup and clothing politicians
wear, especially women, communicate alot. Fashion is inherently semiotic. Alexandro
Ocasio Cortés and his red lipstick,which is considered unprofessional for a political woman
Merkel, in her boring and almostmasculine costumes, the repetition of garments of
the leticia queen of Spain. Michel, we' re showing him his afro

(04:16):
- natural hair. All this isin the mouth of people and the media.
Fashion is politics of many senses.It is used to manifest itself from
the time of the suffragists and isalso used by politicians to prove something to
us. For example, Kennedy,who was always impeccable with his image against
a sweaty Nixon, laid the foundationsfor a policy of aesthetics. The American

(04:39):
dream had a great component of fashionand beauty and he, Kennedy and his
family had it very clear. But, as I mentioned, with houses like
Alexandro Ocasio Cortés, but also withmistakes and dramas like those starring Melania Trump,
fashion has always had a very importantvalue in politics. Sociologist Gils Lipo
Betski, in his work The ThirdWoman, says that it is necessary to

(05:01):
understand the cult of beauty and fashionand its democratization thanks to the industrial revolution
and the mass media, which,moreover, are linked to the growing role
of women in public life. Onthe one hand, we have slogans like
the feminist to the personal is politicalwhere we can consider beauty and fashion as
molders of the feminine and masculine identityand the problematic, that is the frivolity

(05:25):
and the vanity in excess. But, on the other hand, fashion has
been democratized, so it has asocial reading in the broadest sense, affecting
society to the role of individuals,generating a conquest of beauty by the working
class that is closely linked to thedevelopment of democracy. Like fashion, in
addition to transmitting a lot, itcan be a bit problematic with very high

(05:46):
cases of overexpenditure. Politicians today havea challenge to avoid economic dispensary and frivolity
while they want to communicate something andmake a use of eloquent fashion, but
it is reasonable not directly related tofashion or to the beauty industry, but
redenciar talks about the politics of aestheticsin art. For him aesthetics is intimately

(06:08):
linked to reality. Speaker, politicallyand ethically. The aesthetic has not only
to do with art, but itis part of the whole society and the
affect attached to it is Walter Benhaming, who speaks of the aestheticization of politics,
generating an alienating art reduced to therole of political propaganda and contrasting it
to the politicization of art, whereit is ended up being an agent of

(06:30):
liberation. While I feel that theseconcepts are more linked to art itself than
to beauty or fashion, they canmake sense in this world where we constantly
want to make everything political. Seizingfashion or beauty from politics to demonstrate certain
things could become problematic and we talked, for example, about cultural self-
reliance. But at this point Ithink I' m already rambling a little

(06:51):
bit and maybe it' s bestto continue on other roads, not the
blue eyes of my price. Ido not know if this will happen in
other parts of the world, becauseall the sources I found speak of Latin
America, but in the countries ofSouth America the candidates who win the elections
the most are those white and blue- eyed, even when the majority of

(07:12):
the population is not usually so.This probably has a lot to do with
the pritty privilege we talked about inthe previous episode, with the beauty ideals
that pose the caut causian as beautiful, and that effect something we talked about
in other episodes. If being richwhite with blue eyes is more eye-
catching. In the countries of LatinAmerica, that effect is surely produced so
that people consider them also more intelligent, more capable, more reliable and,

(07:34):
logically also works as a bit ofracism, but well, it is something
that happens a lot in Latin America. I hope you liked this episode,
the third one in the podcast.Several more remain to continue analyzing beauty from

(07:58):
different points of view. Don't forget to follow me on social media,
both on Instagram and on tiktok.Look me up as chemical beauty.
I have the same name everywhere andyou' re gonna find me to keep
talking about beauty. Don' tforget, this is an original Uicast production.