Humans naturally gravitate towards things, places, and people they find beautiful. We seem to recognise beauty when we see it, even though defining it can be difficult. What may look attractive to one person may not be so for another.
Yet, is it true that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’? Not exactly. There are multiple sources of our perception of beauty. Some evidence suggests that the notion of beauty or what people find attractive are underpinned by evolution. People throughout history tend to pick partners who display certain physical traits that signal fertility or healthier offsprings. People also had to recognise patterns in nature to determine if something was safe to eat or if danger was looming. Being able to recognise beautiful patterns therefore helped our ancestors to survive.
Watch this video below that explains why we know what is beautiful when we see it, and how it affects our subconscious:
How have beauty standards changed over time?
Evolutionary explanation is where the universally agreed perception of beauty ends. In different societies at different times, individual standards of beauty can be shaped by cultural forces. We can trace back in time to look at how the definition of what is deemed beautiful changed throughout history as different body types were celebrated at each period.
A significant influencer of how we perceive ourselves is the media and advertising industry. Advertisements make us believe that we need a certain product to feel a certain way, or to look as glamorous as the model endorsing it. These models and social media influencers are believed to be the standards of beauty by the masses. However, therein lies the problem – a majority of people do not look like models or famous actors and actresses.
Issues with having a narrow view of beauty
As different aspects of physical traits are selected by the media to be attractive, people would go to all extents to surgically enhance their looks or buy more beauty products to create the illusion of beauty. Many people – both males and females – can suffer from low self-esteem and body image issues from feeling like they are not enough compared to what society thinks is attractive.
In South Korea, the standard of beauty is considered one of the harshest in the world, and it has a booming cosmetics industry to support it. It is almost a necessary virtue to look good in order to fit into society.
Interestingly, there is a recent movement started by a group of Korean women who are pushing back against such societal pressures. They call it ‘Escape The Corset’, by destroying makeup and throwing out all excessive beauty regimes that society considers necessary. These women are realising how much effort, time, and money they are spending just to feel that their looks are at socially acceptable standards. By fighting these societal norms, they feel liberated from the pressures. More people need to realise this, and not allow others to dictate how they feel about their looks or bodies.
Questions for further personal evaluation:
- What are the trends in Singapore that support the view that standards of beauty are shaped largely by culture and media?
- In your opinion, how important is it for a person to look attractive?
Useful vocabulary:
- ‘valorise’: give or ascribe value or validity to
- ‘inherently’: essentially, characteristically
Here are more related articles for further reading:
- Red and Black: a student journalist’s take on the problem of ‘skinny-shaming’ in the body-positive movement.
“While these songs and artists were praised for their unique celebrations of “more realistically proportioned” women, they present a concerning trend. Often in media, accepting one body type can mean largely invalidating another.
Pushing towards acceptance of larger people who don’t fit into the slim standards of pop-culture beauty is not a bad thing. On the contrary, accepting people of larger size is a necessary cultural recognition of the irrevocable harm such narrow-minded media can inflict on body-image and self-esteem.
However, many artists criticize one body type – skinniness – to display their size acceptance, which presents a problem.”
- Quartzy: beauty brands are now marketing their products to consumers as solutions to the pressure they themselves had caused.
“That said, there’s something a little rich about the beauty industry offering cures for our anxiety—given its own complicity in generating it. The cosmetic industry has always relied upon creating pressure to meet a beauty standard that it sets (with actors and supermodels as spokespeople) then airbrushes to poreless perfection.
Big Beauty has a long history of getting inside of peoples’ heads. The beauty industry wouldn’t be the behemoth it is today if it hadn’t created a culture where buying and using beauty products feels compulsory. Throughout most of the 20th century, beauty giants ran ads that equated beauty—achieved via a red lipstick, porcelain skin, or long, dark lashes—with success and happiness.”
Picture credits:https://pixabay.com/en/woman-girl-model-face-lips-makeup-1281830/