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Katilyn Kinser
SOC 335 Application Paper
11/16/16
In the 21st century ideal beauty, or as some would label it, post-modern beauty, has
consisted of women who are skinny, healthy, have large breasts, a large butt, and a thigh gap
(Ryle, 2015). This ideal is nearly impossible for women to achieve, and even if they are born
with most these features, most women would likely still feel they were not beautiful enough. As
often as one will hear, “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder,” meaning that different people
have differing opinions about who or what is beautiful, people are still judging others
appearances, as well as their own, based on ‘ideal beauty’. The standards of beauty are the same
for all women, regardless of the race, sexuality, and class (Ryle, 2015). Many women find
themselves changing their appearances in small ways, such as make-up contouring, lightening
their skin tone, hair treatments, dieting, exercising, etc. In contrast to this, many women are selfconscious of their body to a point that they will undergo harsh procedures to change their
appearance, these procedures can include breast implants, butt implants, surgical weight-loss
procedures, eyelid surgery, skin bleaching, etc. These types of alterations to the body can be
harmful, and potentially life threatening.
The truth of the conceptualization of beauty is that it is a myth. The beauty myth belief
comes from Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, who explains it as: The belief in a quality
called beauty that is real and universal, and that women should desire to look like this, and men
should equally desire the women who look like this. The ideal of beauty is supposedly evolved
from biological, sexual, and evolutionary factors in this definition. However, what Wolf sets out
to explain is the reality of the situation. Beauty is in fact a myth, as there are no universal or true
measures of what beauty is (Ryle, 2015). In addition to this, the idea of ethnocentrism can come
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into play, meaning that people frequently will judge another culture at the standards of their own.
By considering different cultures and their standards of beauty, one can clearly see the disparities
between their own definition of beauty and others. Throughout history, European ideals of
beauty transitioned into many different forms, the first never being the same as the next.
Currently, the stage of ideal beauty that the world is in today is called post-modern beauty. This
ideal seems to be driving women more than ever to put their bodies through a series of
alterations, to meet these impossible expectations of beauty (Ryle, 2015).
This is at fault of multiple institutions, one being the male dominance it continues to
serve, and another being the many forms of media. The media perpetuates post-modern beauty
through advertisements, movie and television show portrayals, musicians, and other forms of art.
Women begin putting their energy towards achieving ideal beauty, although impossible, but if
men find women’s appearances as desirable, they are achieving some adoration for their body
(Ryle, 2015). This may lead one to believe that women are only beautiful when they are deemed
so by men. Men are continuing their dominance, as they have a large say in the matter of beauty,
and they are not distracted by these standards towards their own bodies as much, thus continuing
the existing gender inequalities in society. This causes beauty to become deeply gendered, and
heterosexualized, clearly in favor of men who are straight, while women are in submission of
being judged. Women cannot be beautiful if their existence is not for the pleasure of a man,
inadvertently causing women who are not interested in men to appear as less than feminine, and
undesirable.
It is true that men can become dissatisfied with their bodies, despite their ability to feign
carelessness of their appearance. Body dissatisfaction for both men and women have been
increasing, although women are experiencing it at a higher rate. In 1993 a study was conducted
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showing that 1 in 2 women are unhappy about their appearance (Ryle, 2015). Part of the
explanation is the ever-changing ideals of beauty throughout history. American and European
body ideals for women have went from a tiny-waist, to flat-chested and androgynous, to a large
bust and hourglass shape, to today’s skinny and large bust, all in a matter of almost 120 years.
Women are expected to attempt to achieve the ideal of beauty, when the ideal of beauty was
completely different, 10 or 20 years ago. They follow these changes in beauty ideals, putting
large effort in the current beauty standard. Although not all women are like this, nor care about
their appearance, the media portrays it as women should care. Children experience these pushes
at young ages, taking in what they see in the media and around them regularly. Adolescent girls
should not feel as if their appearances matter to a point that they want to make serious
alterations, but 76.8% of adolescent girls have reported that they wanted to be thinner (Ryle,
2015). Women become slaves to their bodies, and following this, they begin assume that their
bodies are all they are truly good for. Women’s bodies are then sexualized to a point that they are
used to sell products, movies, food, the possibilities are endless.
To understand the enforcement of beauty standards today, one must look at how we have
decided which woman’s appearance constitutes the era’s definition of beauty. An unchanging
ideal of what it means to be beautiful, is that these women are all white (Ryle, 2015). Over time,
the ideal body type has not been easily achievable for women of color, until the most current
beauty standard, consisting of a curvy body with large breasts and butt. However, one must then
look past the shape of a body, and towards the aesthetic form of this idealized beauty. In these
modern beauty standards, women are meant to be tan, which a person of color can easily
achieve, unless they are darker than what is presumably beautiful. How can one understand this,
when in previous standards of beauty, it was ideal for women to be light skinned? Women of
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color are in a predicament of many wanting to lighten their skin in the past to appear as beautiful,
and in the present they are being told that their skin tone is desirable, if it is not on them.
In addition to this confusion, women of African heritage are seeing white women desire
their full lips, and increasingly white women are also appropriating their hairstyles. Prior to this,
women of African heritage were called, “Unkempt and unattractive,” and seen as undesirable
(Blay, 2015). However, this almost remains true to this modern idea of beauty. Women of color
are still not able to meet the beauty standards, even when they are upholding them for the most
part. The only reasoning behind this is the fact that they are of color. The idea that only white
women can meet the standard ideal of beauty is racist, and it is continuing to happen.
Appropriation of women of color’s features are enabling white women to make certain
appearances, that were previously labeled undesirable, as desirable, unless they are on a person
of color. This can bring one to conclude that only white women can look beautiful to society’s
standards.
Adding to the cultural relativism and ethnocentrism of post-modern beauty standards,
women who live in areas not in European or North American areas are still experiencing our
media. This affects them in the same ways that it affects children. Once people see it, and see the
way women are made desirable because of their appearances, they will desire to look like them
as well. As the media is responsible for many of the standards that women feel they must uphold
to be beautiful, we are unintentionally passing these standards on to people in other areas of the
world. The women that the media reaches are affected mentally and physically, just as women
and young girls are in America and Europe. These women have less of an ability of achieving
these beauty standards, and thus are more prone to eating disorders and psychological distress
because of their inability to look like the Euro-American white woman (Ryle, 2015). Women of
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these areas will undergo procedures to make themselves fit into the category of modern beauty.
Women who are of Asian descent are known to get an ‘Asian Blepharoplasty’, or double eyelid
surgery. 1 in 4 people in the world are Chinese, meaning that 1 in 4 people in the world are likely
to be single-lidded, rather than the double-lidded. This does not take into consideration the
people that are Asian, but not Chinese (Ryle, 2015). Being double-lidded is not a rarity, but it is
not a norm either. Asian women are getting this surgery to appear as more like white women,
showing that race and globalization have a strong role in the beauty myth.
The frequent alterations of what beauty is shows that there is no true ongoing definition
of beauty, aside from whiteness. Many know that they have no probable way of achieving the
goals to look like a ‘perfect’ woman in today’s culture. The question then becomes, why are we
still showing the impossible woman idealization in our media? We are aware of the physical
detriments and mental harm it does to women everywhere. Is there a reason, aside from male
dominance, the successful marketing of beauty, and the money made from cosmetic procedures,
that we continue to idolize impossible bodies? It is evident that any form of media containing a
woman has been edited in some way, as photoshop is a common tool in the media industry
today. Not even the actual women that appear in these forms of media look like the women on
the screen or in the magazine. It is next to impossible for any woman to appear as what the media
portrays, so why are women still trying to reach this impossible goal? The beauty myth is
powerful in all aspects, women and men continue to believe this universal ideal of beauty, when
the reality is there is no biological, sexual, or evolutionary factors that come into play. As
women and men continue to believe in this myth, beauty remains as being gendered, raced,
heterosexualized, and globalized.
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References
Blay, Z. (2015). It's A Slap in The Face When White Women Wear Black Hairstyles. Retrieved
November 16, 2016, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Ryle, R. (2015). Questioning gender: A sociological exploration. Thousand Oaks, CA:
SAGE/Pine Forge Press.