big city beauty--it's hard out here for a lady

As you may know/may not care, I moved to Philly along with a few biddies from Smith. It has been a delightful freshman year of life, full of the requisite ups and downs, like learning how awful dating really can be in a male-dominated world, how to accidentally become locked in your own apartment (that would be the Sheriff that surmounted that life hurdle), and how to negotiate public transit.

Philly is extremely different from Smith. People think Philly, and they think of this guy

and these.

 But Philly is not just a gritty, manly, post-industrial city. It's also a place with a high concentration of people, and in some pockets, money, and a lot of that money appears to invested in beauty.

Cities seem to buy into the beauty myth far more than small towns and rural areas. Having not really live in suburbia, I can't speak to that, but the concentration of wealth and housewives would make me inclined to think that they also are riding on the strict beauty standard train.

There's gyms galore, and Lithe Method classes to attend, and facials to get (which are evidently a monthly necessity, according to a woman who gave me a much-needed massage recently). There's eyebrows to wax and other "unsightly" hair to deal with and teeth to bleach. I feel far more pressure here to maintain a certain standard than I have at any other point in my life.

Granted, I have so far lived primarily in a woodsy small town that had a shit ton of beauty salons and very few pretty people. I've also spent a few years in the lesbian capital of the U.S. where the beauty standard seemed to mostly hinge on brushing your teeth regularly. I went out dancing more than once in snowboots and ungroomed brows and had no trouble getting my drinks purchased for me, a fact that speaks to the more relaxed standards.

Cities are different. While the large number of sheer bodies increases the fact that there's someone out there who's going to find whatever look I'm putting out there sexy, regardless of if I'm wearing a bra of just ate garlic hummus, the general standard and expectation is elevated and closer to the bullshit we see portrayed in magazines. And that's dangerous. I don't think it's a coincidence that this nation's first eating disorder treatment facility, the Sheriff's own Renfrew Center, started in Philadelphia, a major city surrounded by a bunch of incredibly wealthy suburbs.

But that's just my theory. Have you found that to be true? Or do you think small towns can have poisonous beauty standards too?

Much love,
The Sheriff