Our bodies, and our ideas about the size and shape of our bodies, are shaped by both ourselves and our culture. How we view our bodies and what personal worth we ascribe to ourselves because of our bodies and the standard of perfection society sets for us is called the beauty ideal. This bar for attractiveness has, in recent years, been set higher and higher, becoming more unattainable for the general population. Why is this? What is the current unattainable standard, and what can we do, if anything, to resist it?
[...] The patriarchy is trying to keep women skeletal and obsessed with beauty so that they cannot think about other, more important things like careers, political power, and unequivical equality. But is the beauty ideal really a part of some sort of vast male conspiracy of oppression, and how can we fight against such an organized and pervasive onslaught? The feminist perspective cited in Kirk and Okazawa-Rey (2007) suggest that the increasingly stringent body ideals are in response to women's growing independence and equality in the marketplace, in order to repress them by diverting their time, money, and attention to something completely unattainable. [...]
[...] Japanese secret for winning miss universe: look less Japanese.” Marie Claire Online. Retrieved October http://www.marieclaire.com/world/articles/ethnicity-eye-color Elliot, S For everyday products, ads using the everyday woman. The New York Times, August Retrieved November 2007: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/business/media/17adco.html Elliot, S The Body Shop's campaign offers reality, not miracles. The New York Times, August Fisher, H Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. Henry Holt & Company; New York, NY. Gorman, J Plastic surgery gets a new look. New York Times, April Haslam, [...]
[...] We may think and speak and feel and love and all the other higher things in life, but we are still animals, and the sooner this idea is accepted and understood by both the neo-con creationist fundamentalists and the everyone is a unique snowflake liberals, the sooner we can work toward teaching individuals to accept themselves for who and what they are, and accept that limitation is not failure, which really, seems to be the biggest problem with the beauty ideal it is one more thing at which we fail. [...]
[...] F.; & Johnson, C.M Cosmetic surgery procedures as luxury goods: measuring price and demand in facial plastic surgery. Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery 105-110. Author Unknown. 2007a. anal bleaching for Marie Claire Online. Retrieved October http://www.marieclaire.com/print- this/life/sex/advice/anal-bleaching Author Unknown. 2007a. the new status symbol.” Marie Claire Online. Retrieved October http://www.marieclaire.com/world/articles/ethnicity-skin-color Author Unknown. 2007b. “Natural color and texture: why don't we want Marie Claire Online. Retrieved October http://www.marieclaire.com/world/articles/ethnicity-hair-color-trend Author Unknown. 2007c. “What some women will do for beauty” Marie Claire Online. [...]
[...] Is it simply nature telling us what to do after millennia of natural selection, or are we being conditioned from birth by the media to accept the beauty standard and look for ways to adopt, conform to, and legitimize it? We are products of and slaves to our biology; raging hormones guide us from the womb, dictating our gender based upon whether the embryo is flooded with testosterone or left to the mother's body's hormonal influence. Yet, evolutionary psychology is simply a numbers game: cross-cultural studies are conducted and numbers crunched. [...]
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