For the past two weeks we have been unpacking the impossibly heavy cargo that is society’s beauty ideals. We’ve talked about what they are, how they impact individuals, how they are impossible to meet, but with all of this a question was still left in my mind:
Where do they come from?
The more I thought about this question, the bigger I realized it was. Everything we explored this week posed a potential answer, but none addressed the question in full. Now that I have gathered enough of these pieces however, I feel ready to share my learning this week in an attempt of answering the question:
Who or what creates beauty ideals and how it is appropriate to appear?
Some of the things I found that influence appearance are:
Religion is a fundamental part of human society and thus many other fundamental parts of the human experience, such as how someone should look, are connected to it. I learned this from viewing the example of Naheed Mustafa’s essay My Body is my Own Business where she states that her faith as a Muslim requires her to wear the hijab, or a traditional body covering of modesty. She explains the reasoning behind this wearing this clothing to be “because I am a Muslim woman who believes her body is her own private concern” (Mustafa, para. 2) What I find interesting here is that she states her faith before her other beliefs surrounding the hijab, pointing to religion being a significant driver in her appearance choices.
One of the biggest influences on appearance is culture and cultural symbolism. I discovered this when exploring another essay by Catherine Pigott titled Chicken-Hips which contrasts the beauty ideals of Western and African societies. She describes that in Gambia, “it is beautiful — not shameful — to carry weight on the hips and thighs, to have a round stomach and heavy, swinging breasts” (Pigott, para. 6) but that in Canada “fat is feared and despised” (Pigott, para. 14). By contrasting words such as “beautiful” with “despised” she creates a strong juxtaposition which highlights that culture significantly changes one’s view on appearance. This essay also showed me how cultural symbolism comes into play, as apparently to Gambians, thinness was a symbol “of things they wanted to forget, such as poverty, drought and starvation” (Pigott, para. 5) and thus was unattractive. I can understand this as here in Canada, thinness represents fitness and the wealth to afford a balanced lifestyle and thus is considered attractive under this symbolism.
This piece of the puzzle was a little harder for me to recognize as I had to realize that beauty does not always describe physical traits. For example, in William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Bianca is constantly described with words such as “sweet” and “beauty” while her sister Katherina, who is also quite pretty, is not. This is because Bianca demonstrates what men consider inner beauty at the time by being modest, submissive and pleasant. These traits and enjoyed by men as it allows them to keep their power and for high dowry prices to be charged, and thus a women are encouraged to have this inner beauty as it helps both with politics and economic gain.
This piece of the puzzle also came to me more recently in reference to the movie Legally Blonde. In it, Californian girl Elle Woods wants to go to Harvard Law School to win back her ex-boyfriend. Her high intellect gets her in, but her west coast attitude and appearance (blonde styled hair, pink designer bags and bubbly personality) causes her to initially be shunned by the other students. Although she was the epitome of beauty and popularity back in her home, her appearance seemed beneath the clean-cut, intelligent-looking Harvard scholar and thus she was judged negatively. Even her own mother tells her “[l]aw school is for people who are boring and ugly and serious. And you, button, are none of those things” (Blonde, 2001). Although Elle is sure of herself and doesn’t let these pressures change her, she still faces many challenges as she doesn’t fit the stereotype image of her career path.
It was interesting to learn that ideas on how one should appear comes from a diversity of places along with the fact that these ideas aren’t always physical. What I found even more interesting to learn however was that the core ideals of beauty typically stay continuous throughout time and location while what promotes these can change drastically. For example,
Youth has stayed a continuous ideal of beauty:
Click pictures below for sources
In The Taming of the Shrew, a play representing Elizabethan views, the young were still favoured for their beauty over the old. Bianca, as a young girl, is pursued by suitors young and old and even she chooses the young Lucentio over older suitors such as Gremio. In modern day, articles like the one here can be found in magazines such as Cosmopolitan regularly, proving this ideal still holds true. This is an important continuity as it has been long lasting throughout all of humanity.
Health has stayed a continuous ideal of beauty:
Although it is not specifically stated, it is quite obvious that Bianca be Katherina are both healthy in The Taming of the Shrew, indicating that health was a contributing factor in attractiveness. This has become ever-more obvious in modern times, a perfect example being how different cultural ideas of health changing the ideals of beauty in the essay Chicken-Hips.
The influence of the media on beauty ideals has changed:
It is quite obvious that the influence of media has changed overtime due to the simple fact that media as we know it today did not exist for most of humanity. People in the Elizabethan era weren’t scrolling articles on the top ten beauty tricks that doctors don’t want you to know and thus their cues for appearance were from their family, peers and cultural traditions rather than from the few forms of media that existed at the time. Now however, magazines like Cosmopolitan and social media platforms such as Instagram influence even the most minute details of how we look and thus have changed the beauty landscape forever. This is a hugely significant change as media is now widespread across the world and, from what we can tell now, it will be a permanent change.
The influence of music on beauty ideals has changed
Just like with media, music once did not influence beauty ideals to the same extent it does today. In old popular love songs, such as Now is the Month of Maying by Thomas Morley (see above), you hear less about appearance as the focus is more on love as a whole. In modern songs however, such as Timber by Pitbull, the lyrics are heavily focused on describing the physical attributes that make a women attractive, such as “the bigger they are, the harder they fall” (Pitbull, 2013).
Overall, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this past week of diving deeper into beauty ideals. Through reading the number of essays we were given to explore this week and doing research, I have learned a valuable new technique to retrieve and retain information. It involves first reading the questions after a text, then reading the headings and bold text, then the first and last sentence of every paragraph and then reading the text the whole way through. I find this helps me better understand the structure of a text and retain the information more easily. I also have learned new versions of citation, such as how to cite a class lecture and videos. I have also learned, through leading a team in the creation of a poster on historical women’s rights, something new about group work. This is that class time is valuable to be used for organization, brainstorming, clarifying and debating but that research is best to be done at home. I will keep this in mind for future projects. Overall though, I am proud that I was able to identify a common thread between all of the learning we did this week and bring it together in a flushed out reflection post, an improvement from my first reflection which did not have a driving idea.
A Commentary on Legally Blonde
Photos are from the movie
Legally Blonde is an entertaining, uplifting and powerful movie which presents comedy and feminism in a perfect balance. There is a lot to talk about which doesn’t fall under beauty ideals, which is why I wanted to do a brief commentary at the end of my post. I want to specifically highlight how it demonstrates continuity and change for women’s rights historically and presently.
A Change; Giving Women a Voice
In the film, just when Elle thinks she is about to secure a spot in Professor Callahan’s internship he starts to hit on her and says going along with this is her gateway to success as a lawyer. Elle however refuses, calls him out and gets him fired, eluding to a change which was beginning to occur in women’s rights. Throughout most of history, women would be ignored or even blamed for accusing men of sexual assault and thus they were silenced. With the arrival of movements such as MeToo and Times Up however, there was finally an avenue for female voices to fight against this injustice. I know that this change is important as it has made a significant and widespread difference. According to the Time Ups Annual Report of 2018, 3,755 women spoke up, 792 attorneys were brought to the organization and 75 cases against sexual assault were funded.
A Continuity; Sexism in Education
As Elle tries to get into school, interacts with her classmates and boyfriend and tries to succeed as a lawyer she is repeatedly challenged with sexism. Unfortunately, sexism in academia is something that has stayed continuous throughout history and still exists today. Women were not allowed to be educated in western society in the same was as men were until the 20th century and even then they were given different treatment (such as how I spoke about the Dean of Women in my last weekly reflection). If we look today, we can see that sexism is still a problem as represented by the article linked in the picture above. This is an important continuity to recognize as it has a widespread and profound impact on women’s lives everywhere, with many women globally still being uneducated.
Resources:
To ensure the resources I used were accurate, reliable and relevant I:
- Picked sources from university scholar articles when possible
- Looked at similar sources to compare and contrast information
- Checked out the sources inside sources
- Used primary sources to evaluate them personally
Works Cited:
Elizabeth.wasson. “Renaissance Love Songs.” Common Errors in English Usage and More | Washington State University, 17 Oct. 2016, https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/10/17/renaissance-love-songs/.
“First Take: The Politics of Beauty.” David Rockefeller Center | HARVARD.EDU David Rockefeller Center | HARVARD.EDU Copyright © 2020 The President and Fellows of Harvard College | Accessibility | Digital Accessibility | Report Copyright Infringement, https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/book/first-take-politics-beauty. Accessed 11 Jan. 2020.
Legally Blonde . MGM Distribution Co., 2001.
“Pitbull – Timber Ft. Ke$ha (Official Video).” YouTube, 25 Nov. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHUbLv4ThOo.
Shakespeare, William. The Taming of a Shrew. Cambridge University Press, 1998.
“TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund Annual Report 2018 | NWLC.” NWLC, https://nwlc.org/resources/times-up-legal-defense-fund-annual-report-2018/. Accessed 11 Jan. 2020.