In Consideration of Beauty

   There is a broad spectrum of reasons we react the way we do to body image, ours as well as others. What we find to be either acceptable or repulsive depends on our culture, race, gender, and age among other things. There are so many factors that influence our decisions and we are brought up to recognize certain features as “good” and others as “bad”. It is necessary to look at it from an intersectional point of view to fully comprehend our interpretation, however, because what is considered beautiful and acceptable in this society may not be the vision of beauty in another.



   In most cultures women are taught to suffer for the sake of beauty or at least for their society’s idea of beauty. At a global level this means many different things; Chinese foot binding, Burmese neck rings, African lip rings, the corsets of the Victorian era - the list goes on and on. We may consider these things oddities but to the women of their respective cultures they represent status. Achieving status, through beauty, seems to be the goal and there are plastic surgeons out there making millions of dollars on this concept. As Margaret Hunter points out in Black and Brown Bodies Under the Knife, “And just as skin color matters for access to resources, so does facial features” Hunter, 53). She notes that Anglo facial features are viewed as “high status”. My question is that if we keep pressing for equality and acceptance on all levels, why is this notion of conformity so overwhelming? We have young girls who want a Brittney Spears nose but what I don’t understand is why. Why have we become so superficial that our own individuality's can’t be considered beautiful? I hate when I hear people call them “flaws”. Are you any less intelligent if your nose is slightly large? Are you in a lower social class because your eyes are too close together? Are you less of a person because your lips are too thick or too thin? This is what is being preached in our society today. We must strive for the ideal and correct the imperfect. Hunter rightly suggests that while many people think plastic surgery represents freedom for women to be who they want to be, it is actually “domination” over women to conform to societies norms.


   Along the same lines, if a person is healthy, what does it matter what their weight is? It matters because this particular society says it does. This society is repulsed by overweight people, especially overweight women. It represents lack of self-control, rejection, self-loathing. “People who inhabit “dissimilar” bodies are read as both inferior and threatening; inferior in terms of beauty and threatening in terms of the suggestion of downward mobility” (LeBesco, 54). We are being taught to judge a person’s worth by their looks without regard to morals, ethics and potential. Rounder, softer bodies were once a sign of status but that concept has been replaced through the ages with the cliché “you can never be too rich or too thin” implying that the two go hand in hand.