Striving (And Starving) For PerfectionWomen's Body Issues, Body Image and Health A History of Beauty Ideals and Women Struggling to Achieve Them: As the saying goes, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". There is no one notion of beauty that is accepted across all cultures, times, and places. For example, the European concept of a beautiful woman was one who was fair skinned and had a full figure. This showed that she was of affluent lineage, as her fair skin implied she did not have to do lowly outdoor manual work that would expose her to the sun, and her full figure showed that she was able to afford a wealth of food. This is a stark contrast to today's concept of feminine beauty as one which includes tan skin and almost no body fat (except, of course, for large breasts and maybe a nicely rounded behind). But here's the catch: it is almost impossible to look like this. Disregarding the rare exception, females cannot magically maintain the fat in their breasts and buttocks without maintaining it everywhere else on their body. Thus, women world wide are suffering mentally, physically and emotionally as they strive to achieve the impossible modern Western ideal of beauty.
Beauty then...
and beauty now.
If you find yourself doubting that body image is a real issue, check out this website: http://www.yourefatbecauseyourestupid.com/ Intersectionality & Beauty Websites like the one above are perpetuating the harmful idea that there is only one definition of beauty, and if someone isn't meeting that standard, they are to blame. Other issues, like lack of access to proper health care, nutritious food, and opportunities for exercise are overlooked. With subjects like these, it can be seen that not only is the modern Western beauty ideal hard to achieve from a biological standpoint, but also from a social and cultural one. Poor women and women of color are bound to have an especially difficult time looking like the Victoria's Secret "Angels" pictured above. They may naturally lack the typically Anglo-Saxon features that our society values, and additionally, the resources they would need to achieve them. To be "beautiful" today is difficult, painful, time-consuming and expensive. Many women do not have the luxury of being able to exercise at first-class gyms, pay a hundred dollars for brand-name shampoo or spend hours in a salon getting manicured, pedicured, waxed and massaged. The intersectionality of race and class plays a hugely important role in determining who even has a fighting chance at being "beautiful" in the first place.
Some eye-opening info about the cost of beauty...
With the new millenium came new ideas about beauty. Beauty was once something that only white women were capable of attaining. However, when Hollywood actress Halle Berry took center stage as the first ever African-American Bond girl in Die Another Day, things began to change. When the striking image below appeared on the big screen, the ideal of the exoticized woman was born.
Soon after Berry's Bond debut, "exotic" supermodels like Naomi Campbell and Tyra Banks rose to fame. Exocitizing these women also meant hypersexualizing them. They were portrayed as submissive but secretly harboring strong sexual urges. Ethnic women became a "fetish" for many men: something new, different and even deviant for them to fixate on sexually. Additionally, even though women of non-European descent were beginning to be portrayed in the media as beautiful, the majority of them exhibited some characteristically Anglo-Saxon features. African-American models had lighter complexion and lacked the typical traits of most black women. Their natural hair was either covered with a weave or trained to look less "ethnic". Even as beauty standards were supposedly changing to include women of other races, they continued to exclude a large majority of women and perpetuate the notion that only white women (or women who could manage to make themselves look white) could be beautiful.
Tyra Banks, Model
Here's what happens when you type "exotic women" into a Google search... Notice a common theme? Hint: Where is their clothing?!
Changing Your Body: The impossible notion of beauty that popular culture creates and perpetuates has led to the inevitable: people are desperately trying to find ways to change what their body naturally looks like in order to conform. Women (and even some men) are developing eating disorders in the hope that it will help them become thin and therefore "beautiful". Aside from the obvious problem that anorexia and bulimia result in serious health problems, the cold hard truth is that trying to lose weight by starving your body of the nutrients it needs to function usually backfires. In recent years, there has also been a huge increase in elective cosmetic surgeries that are needlessly risky for the patient's health, very difficult to afford and often painful to experience. Additionally, after undergoing such extreme measures to change their bodies to look "conventionally beautiful", many women continue to feel dissatisfied with their physique.
See the short clip below about "The Reality of Eating Disorders":
And this video of Heidi Montag, star of reality TV Show "The Hills":
Why Do We Care? Feminists have been especially interested in the perception, objectification, degradation and devaluing of women's bodies for multiple reasons. Beauty is so difficult to achieve today that it is driving people, and especially women, to great lengths to change the way they look "for the better". There is such a huge emphasis in today's society on "looking the part", and physical beauty seems to be one of our most valued traits. Eating disorders and cosmetic surgery, or changing your body through an unnatural means in general, is a feminist issue because women who have managed to change their body to reflect the "beauty norm" are still not happy with the way they look. What does this mean? It means that it's an issue of women never being able to feel beautiful, confident or perfect enough to please the rest of society-whether it be men, other women, institutions, the mass media, or whoever or whatever else might be looking to judge us by our appearances. Most importantly, it's an issue that women have turned this pressure by outside sources to look perfect into an internalized issue of self-hatred and blame. When some women can't seem to care about anything as much as they care about their looks, feminists have no choice but to address the issue.
A History of Beauty Ideals and Women Struggling to Achieve Them:
As the saying goes, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". There is no one notion of beauty that is accepted across all cultures, times, and places. For example, the European concept of a beautiful woman was one who was fair skinned and had a full figure. This showed that she was of affluent lineage, as her fair skin implied she did not have to do lowly outdoor manual work that would expose her to the sun, and her full figure showed that she was able to afford a wealth of food. This is a stark contrast to today's concept of feminine beauty as one which includes tan skin and almost no body fat (except, of course, for large breasts and maybe a nicely rounded behind). But here's the catch: it is almost impossible to look like this. Disregarding the rare exception, females cannot magically maintain the fat in their breasts and buttocks without maintaining it everywhere else on their body. Thus, women world wide are suffering mentally, physically and emotionally as they strive to achieve the impossible modern Western ideal of beauty.
If you find yourself doubting that body image is a real issue, check out this website: http://www.yourefatbecauseyourestupid.com/
Intersectionality & Beauty
Websites like the one above are perpetuating the harmful idea that there is only one definition of beauty, and if someone isn't meeting that standard, they are to blame. Other issues, like lack of access to proper health care, nutritious food, and opportunities for exercise are overlooked. With subjects like these, it can be seen that not only is the modern Western beauty ideal hard to achieve from a biological standpoint, but also from a social and cultural one. Poor women and women of color are bound to have an especially difficult time looking like the Victoria's Secret "Angels" pictured above. They may naturally lack the typically Anglo-Saxon features that our society values, and additionally, the resources they would need to achieve them. To be "beautiful" today is difficult, painful, time-consuming and expensive. Many women do not have the luxury of being able to exercise at first-class gyms, pay a hundred dollars for brand-name shampoo or spend hours in a salon getting manicured, pedicured, waxed and massaged. The intersectionality of race and class plays a hugely important role in determining who even has a fighting chance at being "beautiful" in the first place.
Some eye-opening info about the cost of beauty...
With the new millenium came new ideas about beauty. Beauty was once something that only white women were capable of attaining. However, when Hollywood actress Halle Berry took center stage as the first ever African-American Bond girl in Die Another Day, things began to change. When the striking image below appeared on the big screen, the ideal of the exoticized woman was born.
Soon after Berry's Bond debut, "exotic" supermodels like Naomi Campbell and Tyra Banks rose to fame. Exocitizing these women also meant hypersexualizing them. They were portrayed as submissive but secretly harboring strong sexual urges. Ethnic women became a "fetish" for many men: something new, different and even deviant for them to fixate on sexually. Additionally, even though women of non-European descent were beginning to be portrayed in the media as beautiful, the majority of them exhibited some characteristically Anglo-Saxon features. African-American models had lighter complexion and lacked the typical traits of most black women. Their natural hair was either covered with a weave or trained to look less "ethnic". Even as beauty standards were supposedly changing to include women of other races, they continued to exclude a large majority of women and perpetuate the notion that only white women (or women who could manage to make themselves look white) could be beautiful.
Here's what happens when you type "exotic women" into a Google search... Notice a common theme? Hint: Where is their clothing?!
Changing Your Body:
The impossible notion of beauty that popular culture creates and perpetuates has led to the inevitable: people are desperately trying to find ways to change what their body naturally looks like in order to conform. Women (and even some men) are developing eating disorders in the hope that it will help them become thin and therefore "beautiful". Aside from the obvious problem that anorexia and bulimia result in serious health problems, the cold hard truth is that trying to lose weight by starving your body of the nutrients it needs to function usually backfires. In recent years, there has also been a huge increase in elective cosmetic surgeries that are needlessly risky for the patient's health, very difficult to afford and often painful to experience. Additionally, after undergoing such extreme measures to change their bodies to look "conventionally beautiful", many women continue to feel dissatisfied with their physique.
See the short clip below about "The Reality of Eating Disorders":
And this video of Heidi Montag, star of reality TV Show "The Hills":
Why Do We Care?
Feminists have been especially interested in the perception, objectification, degradation and devaluing of women's bodies for multiple reasons. Beauty is so difficult to achieve today that it is driving people, and especially women, to great lengths to change the way they look "for the better". There is such a huge emphasis in today's society on "looking the part", and physical beauty seems to be one of our most valued traits. Eating disorders and cosmetic surgery, or changing your body through an unnatural means in general, is a feminist issue because women who have managed to change their body to reflect the "beauty norm" are still not happy with the way they look. What does this mean? It means that it's an issue of women never being able to feel beautiful, confident or perfect enough to please the rest of society-whether it be men, other women, institutions, the mass media, or whoever or whatever else might be looking to judge us by our appearances. Most importantly, it's an issue that women have turned this pressure by outside sources to look perfect into an internalized issue of self-hatred and blame. When some women can't seem to care about anything as much as they care about their looks, feminists have no choice but to address the issue.
Now that you know what the problem is, check out our suggestions for solutions: Solutions to Women's Body Issues