Beauty's Only Skin Deep

“Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.”
-- Ava Gardner

Ava Gardner was a legendary beauty.  She had it all, looks, sophistication, fame, money; she could have any man she wanted and she ended up marrying a succession of self-involved creeps:

Ava Gardner Reflects on Ava Gardner

Fame and money are a heady brew and before too long Gardner was drinking heavily, dancing all night, and being courted by Mickey Rooney, MGM's biggest little star. Her marriage to Rooney—he relentlessly cheated on her—lasted a year.

She did even worse by marrying crazy man, Artie Shaw, real name: Arthur Jacob Arshawsky, who was determined to educate his tobacco road wife. On their honeymoon, Shaw gave her a stack of books that included War and Peace and Das Kapital.

Ava yawned.

The egomaniacal band leader was further upset when he discovered that his movie star wife had no idea how to iron his shirts, and this seething cauldron was enraged when she didn't fill his coffee cup to the precise level he indicated. Their disastrous marriage also lasted one year.

Can a woman do worse than Artie Show?

Sadly, she could and she did.  Ava Gardner destroyed her career with alcohol.

Ava Gardner, from what little I know of her, may well have been an example of the beautiful woman whose beauty allows her to remain superficial and shallow; a woman like this is an exemplar of a type of narcissistic Psychopathology in which the surface (looks, attributes) is over-valued in the service of using the environment (other people) to support self esteem.  It is not at all unusual for such women to find men who value them primarily for the way that their beauty reflects well upon the man who has obtained her.  In this way, the man is able to prove his worth to others; if he can get a beautiful woman, he is elevated in the eyes of his audience.  In both cases, their self esteem, even when superficially high, rather fragile.  At the core, the narcissist fears he is worthless and unlovable and spends most of his or her life trying to entice or force the environment to offer them tribute. 

It is never a surprise to find that relationships between mutually needy Narcissists are rarely successful.  For the narcissists, other people are not fully three dimensional; rather their value lies in how they affect the Narcissist.  The tragedy of narcissism is that as we age and inevitably lose those superficial attributes that have attracted acclaim and celebrity, the Narcissist lacks the inner resources to maintain their self-esteem and self regard as the "flush of youth" fades.  The aging actress or beauty who desperately resorts to plastic surgery to delay the inevitable decline can become almost addicted to the process in the belief that she will be able to preserve her youth and looks forever.  When it fails, as it must, depression (or its evil twins of drug and alcohol abuse) is common.  Likewise the professional athlete who needs the adulation of the crowd may hang on long past the time his skills have eroded; once in retirement, depression often beckons.  We have seen so many tragic examples that such personal disasters, beyond their utility for schadenfreude, have become trivialized.

Other forms of narcissistic pathology are more commonly seen in our politicians, who believe that they are above the rules.  The feelings of power that come with being able to control people, deliver largess to great applause and sycophancy while being elevated above the concerns of the mundane can be intoxicating.  A classic case was the former Governor of New York who not only needed a beautiful prostitute to make him feel more manly but was destroyed by the very laws he championed.  Hubris is often a sign of Narcissism run wild.

We all contain Narcissistic tendencies and vulnerabilities.  Our current zeitgeist encourages those who do not appreciate the distinction between the surface and the depths of a person.  Ava Gardner's comment would be taken as a post-modern insight of great depth were she a celebrity alive today prattling on during some day time talk show. 

When young we all tend to be at our most Narcissistic; adolescents, almost by definition, suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, where their moods and self esteem depend on the state of their social life and their standing in the hierarchy at any given moment.  Americans have a special proclivity to becoming trapped in extended adolescence.  (And apparently we no longer even expect 26 year olds to be able to survive on their own; eg, Obamacare.) 

Cassandra linked to a remarkable news story and tried to address it seriously:

Looks, Men, Women: Blah, Blah, Blah

So are women who work hard to look good insecure, or do they just understand market forces? The older I get, the more value I see in examining the adaptive value of male and female behaviors that cause conflict and misunderstanding. While I'm not a big fan of rigid stereotypes, is it really reasonable to assume that people do things we don't understand/agree with for no reason (the old, "He/she only acts that way b/c men/women are insane/irrational/overemotional/not reasonable like I am").

What's interesting to me is the area of overlap. Today women are completing school in record numbers. We have careers, in most cases, before we marry and have children. This makes pregnancy a lot less risky because for the first time we can support ourselves and any children we might bear, if need be. That reduces the value of a man's earning potential and forces him, if he wants to win the best quality female (however he defines that), to bring additional qualities to the table.

I'm often bemused when I hear men go on about how women only care about the size of a man's wallet. When I fell in love with my husband, it was tremendously important to me that he have integrity and be dependable because when a woman is pregnant or has small children, she makes herself enormously vulnerable in a way I don't think a lot of men understand. His earning power was not something I even thought of. My assumption was that if he was dependable, he'd keep a roof over our heads if I needed to stay home and care for our children. But I also thought of wage earning as a shared and negotiated responsibility neither of us could unilaterally delegate away.

Modern feminism presented women with a binary choice.  Either tend to your looks and define yourself as non-serious and defendant or ignore your looks and declare your independence.  Cassandra has it almost right.  In fact some women work hard to look good because they are terribly insecure (ie for primarily narcissistic reasons) while others like to look their best for their own pleasure and to please their man.  Likewise, men do many things to increase their appeal to women, sometimes for purely narcissistic reasons (to acquire a beautiful women for display) but more often out of a combination of reasons, including the desire for a truly intimate relationship with someone who can become their closest confidante and best friend.  Those who never progress from the superficial will never be able to achieve intimacy.  Those who fail to grasp this end up writing articles like this:

Why Beauties Get Cheated On Big Time!

Guess what girls -- don't be envious of the most beautiful women in the world

Look at Elin, look at Sandra Bullock, look at Halle, Britney, JLo, Reese, Julia Roberts, Jessica Simpson -- they've ALL been cheated on!

It's become irrevocably clear -- beauty is no vaccination against having your man cheat, and it's happened in every public area.

Models — gorgeous supermodel Christie Brinkley cheated on by her architect husband Peter Cook.

Politics -- stunning Silda Spitzer cheated on by her husband Eliot Spitzer.

Sports -- head turner Cynthia Rodriguez cheated on by her Yankee star A-Rod, and then when it comes to the world of celebrity, the list goes on and on with Jesse James' transgressions against his beautiful Oscar-winning wife Sandra, who thanked him in her acceptance speech, is just the latest jaw-dropper. So why doesn't beauty confer ANY protection against a cheating spouse, fiance or boyfriend?

It is not beauties who get cheated on all the time but people for whom relationships are primarily Narcissistic exercises, where the value of the other lies in how they make the Narcissist appear to the world.  (NB: At any given moment, the world can be as small as a hotel room.)  Since such relationships are firmly rooted in the superficial, deeper desires for connection and intimacy are rarely possible once the initial flush of physical intimacy relents.  The headline might better have explored: Why Narcissists Get Cheated On Big Time!