“I felt very ugly in Argentina”: the viral release of a sociologist living in Barcelona

During the 10 years she has been living abroad, Catalina Singer (39) visited the country on several occasions but she never felt “as out of place” as she did last time when she saw the high standards of beauty that Argentinian women hold.

Although the dominant aesthetic paradigm is changing and from social networks different activisms break down stereotypes and promoting self-acceptance, women experienced that what happens in reality is far from the expectations that many feminist collectives militate.

“I felt very ugly throughout my stay in Argentina, I came back and it went away. I feel that aesthetic standards there are dictatorship,” the sociologist tweeted from her home in Barcelona, as a way to do catharsis, without realizing that her comment would go viral.

Catalina, who was passing through the City of Buenos Aires in mid-February to visit some friends, finally stayed in Córdoba City where she spent a month with her family, who live in that city. “I arrived in Spain last week and I am still amazed at how self-demanding women are to be beautiful,” she admitted to Infobae.

Ironed hair, sculpted nails, false eyelashes, botoxed faces, tuned bodies and bleached teeth. The blockbuster of Argentine women when they step on the street is something that Catalina is unaccustomed to and launched a reflection: “I see that people spend a lot of money on their physical appearance. Girls are produced at all times of the day. It is very much installed in society that you have to be impeccable all the time, not just when you have a party or go to a meeting.”

Although Catalina left her profession as a sociologist several years ago and now dedicates herself to astrology, such thoughts arose innately when she tried to analyze how Argentinian women behave compared to Spanish women. In his opinion, in Barcelona they are “more relaxed” with beauty patterns.

Although she does not share the banners of hegemonic beauty (the most beautiful are the skinny, white, young and tall), when she was in Cordoba she ended up blending in with the environment and felt that her ego had been hurt when her friends pointed out that she had gray hair.

“I see that it is something very internalized in Argentines to comment on the physical aspect, something that I had already become unaccustomed to. It was like very shocking because I was very relaxed and those comments were quite dislodged. They forced me to look at myself from that side that Argentines look at you, that they put a very high aesthetic rod,” he lamented.

He even confessed that he even asked for a turn in a hairdresser to take a keratin bath so that “gray hair was softened and not so noticeable”. It was never in his plans to dye himself. Nor was she persuaded by the stylist's suggestion, to whom she went to get some blue highlights.

“I couldn't quite understand why so many people had stopped making such a superficial comment. Here it doesn't matter if you are not waxed and go to an event with hairs on your legs and armpits, no one pays attention to it. There is not so much value judgment about that,” she exclaimed surprised at the unexpected role her hair had taken.

They also made comments to Catalina because of her way of dressing. “When I was a girl, my friends joked that my dressing room was like a costume shop. My dress was always a little more alternative and they looked at me as a little weird,” said the woman, who is a fan of second-hand clothing.

“In Spain, you don't dress differently to go out at night or day. We don't have those categories of clothing, unless it's a wedding,” he said. And he recalled that what struck him most about Argentine clothing stores is that the outfits are well differentiated for each occasion.

Catalina understands that the constant bombardment of images with high aesthetic content, where the choice of clothing, hair color, lip shape or breast size begin to delineate in the collective imagination a format that is extremely demanding to achieve a dangerous standard of beauty, borders on discrimination.

“I still remember when a friend who was sightseeing in Argentina told me that she had to go urgently to buy clothes because she didn't have clothes to go out at night. I needed to put on some shine so as not to disengage with the rest,” he graphed.

Although Catalina defines herself as a flirtatious woman - who likes to wear mascara and paint her lips - she says that she doesn't usually spend much time looking and that she often goes out to “washed face” without getting a problem.

His time in Argentina also made him relive a time of his adolescence that he preferred to forget. “I had eating disorders from 14 to 21 years old that luckily I was able to overcome. Here, in Barcelona, I feel freer. I regret that in Argentina something is so installed and naturalized that it can be harmful,” the woman concluded, hoping that on her next visit to the country society will surprise her again; but for the better.

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