Between 2011 and 2016, Betty Finke was a regular columnist for The Arabian Magazine. Some fifteen years down the line, we thought that now would be a good time to share Betty’s articles, which remain as pertinent as ever.
There is a joke that goes like this.
Question: “Why do men prefer beautiful women to smart women?”
Answer: “Because men’s eyes work better than their brains.”
Which, with apologies to the gentlemen, very nicely illustrated an unspoken ‘fact’ that seems to be impossible to shake: women are either beautiful or smart. Meaning, if they are beautiful, they don’t actually need brains and/or talent; if not, they’d better at least be smart.
The astounding thing is that even in our enlightened times, the former alternative appears to be the more popular. The media are crawling with women who are termed ‘stars’ and make buckets of money simply by being a) pretty and b) highly visible, without displaying a single sign of talent.
What’s all that got to do with Arabians horses? Quite a bit, when you come to think of it. Arabians, like women in the media, are subject to the curse of beauty. That is to say, they are expected to be beautiful, and the more beautiful they are, the less they need in the way of talent. They are polished and made up – often with a little artificial help, not to mention silicone – get to wear eye shadow and lip gloss, and parade on the catwalk/show-ring to be admired and cheered and win lots of prizes simply for looking gorgeous. They may be required to exercise, of course, but only enough to keep their figures perfect. Arabian horses – the supermodels and tabloid stars of the equine world…
And of course, there are the others: the silent, honest, hard-working majority that lead a perfectly ordinary life. In the case of Arabians, they are riding horses or even sports horses, and the latter can even be very successful at what they do. They don’t need to be beautiful. Racehorses have to run fast; it doesn’t matter if they have heads like sledgehammers and tails set halfway down their quarters. Sports horses in general need lot of admirable qualities, not including prettiness. Same parallel again: some top female human athletes don’t even look like women; some top Arabian athletes don’t look like Arabians, either. Or do they? Perhaps we should amend this to say: they don’t look like what most of us think Arabians should look like. That is, they don’t look like show horses.
So, will the real Arabian horse please stand up? We seem to be arriving at exactly the polarity illustrated in the joke above: beauty or brains – the ones you want to just look at against the ones you want to work with. The show horses on the one side, the doing horses on the other, with a genuine gap between the two, and two entirely different sets of people involved. Show people don’t attend races, endurance rides, or even regular ridden horse shows. Riders don’t attend shows. You even have one side looking down upon the other, from both directions. Riders look down on show horses as useless ornaments, while some show trainers and breeders speak of ridden Arabians in a derogatory manner. For some of them riding horses, especially geldings, are just a by-product in the serious business of breeding show horses. If it’s not good enough for the show-ring, it gets sold for riding.
There is a lot that is wrong with this kind of thinking. For one thing, it gets things backwards. Originally, Arabian horses were meant for riding. They were the original equine athletes, the horses that improved all other breeds with their toughness and stamina – and yes, their beauty and refinement, too. Because they happened to be beautiful, and this beauty was actually a by-product of the environmental conditions they were originally bred in.
Unfortunately, today we have become totally focussed on beauty above everything else. There is nothing wrong with beauty as such, or with showing in general. Horse shows have been around ever since men started to breed horses. But they used to be a means of evaluating future breeding stock, not an end in themselves.
Nowadays Arabian shows have become their own industry, and the requirements for show horses are diverging from the requirements for riding horses. A show horse doesn’t need functional conformation and correct legs, as long as it is beautiful; just like the beautiful woman doesn’t need brains.
Where it becomes a problem is when you get those by-products that aren’t ‘good enough’ for the show-ring, so they get sold off to someone who puts a saddle on a back that’s not really made for a saddle, and even if the horse is perfectly willing to oblige – as Arabians mostly are – its incorrectly aligned legs and weak joints might just not make it. At least not for long. You get the picture…
There really isn’t any need for this. Pretty women may not be required to be smart, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not – sometimes they’re smart enough to pretend to be dumb. Same with Arabians, a breed originally bred to be both beautiful and a talented performer. The one thing doesn’t have to exclude the other, unless we make it that way.
There are plenty of beautiful performance horses, as well as show winners that go on to perform under saddle. We should keep the larger picture in mind, remember that the Arabian is more than just a show horse, just an endurance horse, just a racehorse, just a lovely friend and pet. He is all of this – and more.
At least he is as long as we don’t let our eyes get in the way of our brains.
Printed in The Arabian Magazine February 2012
