The place in society you grew up in plays a key role in our perception of beauty, since the very ideas surrounding beauty are culturally influenced. Even within the African American community people with lighter skin and more Eurocentric features are seen as more attractive, by both other African Americans and by white.
This research took photographs that were digitally altered. So, it's the same basic facial structure with same clothing, same hair, and really only altered the darkness or lightness of the skin as well as certain features. For example, the width of the nose and a few features around the eyes. And asked people to rate: 'How attractive is this person?' To understand the diversity of beauty, wider research needs to be carried out across continents where the influence of Eurocentrism isn't skewing the results. Currently, we simply don't have enough data. I know some studies are showing that if you expose the participants to a bunch of TV shows with a lot of white people, you can actually change the preferences of the participants because, yes, you have an influence of what you're exposed to.
We see that when people are exposed to Western beauty standards, they start to prefer white faces. Certainly, in many countries in the world, you can see the damaging effects of colourism. This idea that anyone who has fairer skin is superior to those who have darker skin, but those ideas “ they don't just come from the West, they're also a product of the fact that historically, perhaps a couple of thousand years, there was a tendency for wealthier people to stay indoors, wealthier women in particular, to stay indoors and for poorer women to be working outside so your skin shade is obviously affected by how much you were out in the sun “ would be a reflection of your status. If you wanted to be seen as higher status, then fairer skin became associated with that.
But, I think we have to be careful about tracing the lineage of these ideas, because they do exist in societies even prior to colonialism and prior to Western hegemony. I do think colonialism did export certain ideas of beauty, racialised ideas of beauty to the rest of the world, and we still live with the impact of that. The appropriation of non-Western norms by Westerners is also part of the dangers of colonialism.
The idea that certain Instagram influencers are using tanning and skin darkening to look more black or to look less white that itself is problematic and a product of colonialism. The West is clearly influential on a global stage, but it doesn't mean that being white or having Eurocentric features is deemed more beautiful everywhere, despite what some studies have shown, as the researchers and their studies are influenced by the very biases we have explored.
Beauty standards evolve and change through time, but the way they do so is also changing. The 20th Century onwards “ the speed of changes has sped up because of mass media. This kind of cultural impetus is something that's very recognisable in art and culture more generally. Furniture from a particular period looks similar, fashions exist. And the way fashion works is complicated and of course it's linked in with capitalism, and it's linked in with consumerism, and it's linked in with colonialism and all these other things. Ideas about beauty change more and more rapidly all the time. That is, there was a pretty long period of human history when the same characteristics were seen as attractive. We see trends in terms of, and this is often led by someone who is seen as a popular figure, someone people want to emulate, will embrace a certain look, even a body type or a way of dressing.
The pressure to conform to these trends is extremely strong, it can feel empowering for some, but it can also be damaging. We don't just all wear bin bags, don't bother with our hair or our make-up, we make an effort, and that effort is prescribed by the cultures that we are in, what other people find attractive, we try to live up to that. All this suggests that what we understand as beauty could look very different in the future. Beauty is inescapable and it's as old as we are, as a species. But it certainly can be an empowering thing to take control of one's own body and fashion forge one's own body. What's negative is when those instincts that we all have are constrained. So, beauty practices can be racist, they can be very psychologically self-injurious, if people feel they can't achieve some perfection.
One particular feminist reading of that would be to say we need to get away from beauty beauty culture entirely, I think that is impossible and even if it was possible it would be awful. We're a social species, we communicate with each other and part of the way we do that, is through our bodies and the things we wear and put and do to our bodies.
Our society is going to be less dominated by Eurocentric individuals, it's going to be much more diverse in lots of ways, and I think that's going to play out in our ideas about what beauty is or what it means to be attractive. I'm wondering, the older I get, the more I think that it really doesn't matter what anybody else thinks it's really about how you feel about yourself. Beauty is certainly complicated. It's judged by cultural and societal norms, the representation of status and is infused with gender-based assumptions and expectations as well as racial exclusion and bias. However, as cultural norms shift and evolve, people's perception of beauty and attraction has also shifted and perhaps the future holds a much wider, more diverse and inclusive take on what it means to beautiful.
Posts
0 Comments