If you’ve ever seen any sort of beauty pageant - be it Mr. World, Miss Universe, or even Putri Indonesia - you’re probably aware as to how similar the participants look. Smooth skin, symmetrical yet angular faces, toned arms, defined abs, perfectly white and straight teeth, you catch my drift.
It is obvious that the reason why these people are considered most beautiful, physically attractive, or even sexy is because they all follow the beauty standards set for them. The beauty bias refers to how individuals who have attributes of said beauty standard receive more benefits.
Fun fact: “beautiful” people tend to be more popular, they’re given higher grades and work performance evaluations, they’re more likely to be hired or promoted, and they make more money compared to their less attractive co-workers. In addition to that, descendants of the beauty standard associated in crimes are both found less likely to be found guilty and are given less severe sentences.
ALSO, you will always find that the protagonists in movies are much prettier as compared to their sidekicks or anti-heros. Why? Pretty people get better treatment. They get better resources, education, healthcare, and most of all: opportunities.
For thousands of years, humans have constructed these ideal standards of beauty, and have been doing everything imaginable to try to attain it. The most curious aspect of the beauty bias is that it’s a permanent concept; it has always been there and it will always be there. It’s no wonder that people have been altering their physical appearances for centuries now.
To prove the steadfastness of this phenomenon, here are some ancient beauty rituals, followed by their modern day evolutions:
Ideal: Porcelain skin
Old beauty ritual: Lead face painting
Evolution: skin whitening creams
It seems like fair skin has always been preferable. We see the first usage of white lead face painting in the Ancient Greeks, who found light complexions desirable. At around 1000 BCE, they replaced this with chalk, as they found women to be suffering from lead poisoning. Apparently, women of the Elizabethan era didn’t get the memo, because even up until the mid 17th century, the beauty treatment was to apply a powder-mix made of white lead, calcium carbonate and hydroxide to any and all surfaces of skin that was exposed. As the Roman philosopher Plautus said, "A woman without paint is like food without salt." (cringe!)
The phrase “blue blood” originates from here, because paler skin meant that one was wealthy enough to forgo that manual-labour summer job that meant standing out in the sun all day. The aim was to have skin so white and translucent, that you could even see one’s blue veins through it. Age-old beauty secret no one will tell you: sometimes, these veins were painted on. Shhh, don’t tell anybody.
Today, though, you could just walk into any supermarket to find a plethora of skin whitening products. Face washes, night creams, day creams, even ‘lightening’ deodorant. What you might not know about these products, though, is that a lot of them contain harmful substances such as hydroquinone, a bleaching agent that’s a cause of carcinogenic concern for the National Toxicology Program; mercury, which is downright poisonous; and clobetasol, which leads to paper thin, easily bruised skin, hypertension, elevated blood sugar, and stretch marks. Weirdly enough, though, some Asian users of skin lightening creams report that they are in fact ineffective in the long run, and the only fairness they receive out of them is how the whiteness of the cream layers onto their skin, and later gets washed off.
A total 180-degree controversial move that goes side by side with the insistence of fair skin is the prevalence of sun tanning. In the early 20th century, scientists began discovering the benefits of sunlight in connection with Vitamin D. Coupled with the rise of travelling and outdoor recreational activities, being tanned was a sign that you, well, had something going on in your lives. Coco Chanel also famously said in 1962, “Golden tan is the index of chic.” But, with the awareness of how tanning beds and excessive sunlight exposure correlated with skin cancer, teens and young adults alike today have taken to spray tanning, also known as the complete opposite of what the Ancient Greeks were trying to achieve.
What’s important in this ideal, though, is that it gives rise to a hefty lot of unnecessary colourism and racism.
Ideal: Hourglass figure
Old beauty ritual: Corsets, crinolines, fad diets
Evolution: Waist trainers, push-up bras, spanx, excessive exercise, more fad diets
Before you start hating on Barbie dolls for promoting an unrealistically thin body image for young women, let me burst right in and say that thin had been in for quite a while before that. The age of corsets and heavy garments, the notorious Victorian era, was an incredibly restrictive time frame which coincidentally (or not so much) involved a tie between one’s weight and their perceived morality. You were automatically overindulgent, gluttonous, lazy, and greedy if you were anywhere close to overweight!
“It may give you the shape you desire! Tighten it up, child!” Yeah, that phrase wasn’t uncommon when it came to lacey, cumbersome garments. The thing is: corsets weren’t only used in ballrooms and the high courts, but literally in everyday wear. This goes up to the point of the production of a maternity corset, which is one that’s slightly looser on the front.
Moving onto the literal hourglass framework, crinolines were another popular undergarment in that age. These were essentially steel bird cages worn under a dress or skirt to widen the radius of it, away from a woman’s feet. Talk about restrictive!
In today’s time, women are still actively pursuing this ideal hourglass figure, even to the extreme. Waist-trainers, promoted by the social media ever-present Kardashians, have been booming in sales on instagrams. How these differ from corsets is the additional strength it uses to literally crush your ribcage to provide for an extremely narrow waist. Clearly super dangerous, especially when they’re used during strenuous exercise, and for over 8 hours.
Ever since Sylvester Graham (of the cracker sort) suggested in the 1840s that women especially should maintain a plain, abstinent diet as they key to health and morality, the regime of a weight-loss epidemic began, obviously to shield away evil corpulence. What followed suit were ridiculous meal plans such as the grapefruit diet, the tapeworm diet, the cotton ball diet, juice cleanses, liquid diets, appetite suppressants, Gwyneth Paltrow’s nonsense, and even smoking. A vintage ad for Lucky Strike had the slogan, “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet,” to promote how their cigarettes cuts down one’s appetite.
Of course, this goes hand in hand with the exercise movement; starting with simple stretches and moving onto the tummy trimmer, Jazzercise, aerobics, tae bo, street dance, zumba, aquarobics, and the latest trend: crossfit. I’m not saying these aspects of weight loss are unhealthy because they actually are, but there have been tons of cases of obsessive and excessive exercises that do more harm than good.
This ideal gives rise to a spike in levels of eating disorders, including anorexia and bulimia, which are more common than they need to be today. These, unfortunately, go hand in hand with anxiety, depression, and suicide rates.
Ideal: Noticeable facial features
Old beauty ritual: The dimple machine, the chin reducer, the nose harness
Evolution: weird Japanese face products, cosmetic surgery
Noticeable facial features always gave women that slick competitive edge, as a face is literally what’s seen first when you meet someone for the first time. This provoked a revolution in face-enhancing machines, to give you that look you so desire. Or, at least you think you do because that’s what the beauty industry says you must. If there’s one thing we must learn, though, is that promoting self-esteem and confidence in one’s own untweaked appearance is not very profitable. If you want a woman to purchase your product, you’ve got to make her worry about what happens if she doesn’t, about getting left behind.
In 1936, the dimple machine was pioneered by Isabella Gilbert. It was described as “a face-fitting spring carrying two tiny knobs which press into the cheeks.” Call it a cheeky fad, maybe? There’s one thing for sure though, and it’s that vintage beauty products such as these are both terrifying, and don’t work. Neither this, nor the Professor Eugene Mack’s invention, the chin reducer. This one was said to eliminate double chins by continuous massage of the chin and neck. A belt is secured around one’s head, and a chin strap is attached to cords to pull, all for the sake of reducing “enlarged glands.”
Of course, we can’t forget the nose harness, which was a popular device to purchase in 1918-1928, you know, if you were pretty but . . . oh, poor thing, your nose! This worked by stretching the bejeezus out of your nose, pulling it back and pressing it down. It was no big deal whatsoever walking around town with a muzzle on your face back then, I guess!
It is probably conspicuous that fixations such as this gave rise to what is now the preferred nose-shaping method; the ever-so sought after rhinoplasty. It is frightening how common cosmetic surgery is nowadays, especially when you hear about nose jobs and facial reconstruction surgery packages given as gifts to South Korean fresh high school graduates.
I kid you not, my friends. This is all very real. Plastic surgery has become part of today’s culture. The question is, though, if cosmetic surgery and facial reconstruction is so popular, and they all point towards an ideal face, how do one’s facial features become noticeable anymore? If everyone strives to look the same, how can we even tell each other apart anymore?
The most common operations when it comes to plastic surgery include breast augmentation, liposuction, nose jobs, face lifts, chin augmentation, double eyelid surgery, and non-invasive procedures such as fillers and botox. What’s recently been a trending topic in the field of reconstruction has been lip injections and labiaplasties. Popularised by Kylie Jenner, youths of today are seriously under the impression that lip injections are the key to both looking and feeling beautiful. Scary? I know.
On a lighter note, though, how about the fact that there’s an entire Japanese industry devoted to exercising and/or massaging your face? I mean, some of them look like they’re just for giggles, but others, like eyelid trainers, seem like they’re a temporary solution for what seems to be the biggest disadvantage one could be born with in East Asia: the monolid. *gasp*
Okay, so what are the worst possible outcomes of incessantly trying to achieve the ideal of noticeable facial features? Probably plastic surgery horror stories (think Michael Jackson, or Jocelyn Wildenstein), or maybe even broken bones or weird facial imprints due to these strange devices. In a social sense, however, the pursuit of this ideal becomes dangerous when parents push facial reconstruction on their children, or when it becomes impossible to differentiate human beings because of it.
Ideal: Gorgeous thick hair, but only at the right places
Old beauty ritual: wigs, permanent wave machine, pumice stones, arsenic, sand paper
Evolution: hair curlers and straighteners, hair extensions, brow tint, shaving, waxing, laser hair removal
As you can see, the embodiment of this ideal is literally impossible without a strict regimen of either volumising hair spray or rigorous body hair removal. What we want here is both beautiful lucious locks, but not a single strand elsewhere. Got it? Good.
So, as we all know, big beautiful hair has always been a thing. One could even trace it to the lush wigs of the Victorian era, when every woman wanted elaborate and complicated hairstyles which just weren’t feasible without one. To hold it together, wooden frames were used and dusted with white powder. Then, animal fat was used to glue the hair in place. Unfortunately, rodents and vermin were especially fond of the taste of lard, so would contaminate the wigs, often whilst the user had it on. This led to scalp infections, head lice, and ringworm.
In came the permanent wave machine (photo can be found on the website used for the vintage beauty face things), a device invented in 1909 that tugs on your hair, effectively making you look like medusa. In fact, one of the test users noted that the wires felt like they were pulling her head right off her shoulders.
Hair salons today make it much simpler and less painful to look just like those Pantene hair commercials. Spritzes and sprays, keratin shampoo, curlers, straighteners, blowdryers, you name it, your hair can go from flat as a pancake to thick, voluminous, and full of life within a matter of minutes. You go, technology!
Regretably, though, the people with the most heavenly locks are also the ones to bear the pain of removing it from places that aren’t their heads. What’s interesting is that American and European women have only been stripping off their body hair for the last hundred years ago, who would have known? Today, though, female body hair removal is “so normative that it goes almost unmarked in casual discourse or in the research of casual literature,” notes Michael S. Boroughs in his thesis on body depilation among men and women.
It all started in Ancient Egypt, wherein women would not only remove all their body hair except for their eyebrows, but also their head hair, as it was considered uncivilised otherwise. This was also the beginning of men shaving off their scruffy beards, both to show class and for hygenic reasons; preventing lice and mites. The Egyptians discovered ways to literally scruff off their hair with pumice stones, flint blades, or sea shells. A method called sugaring, which is very similar to waxing today, was developed by the women (for the women). A sticky paste of sugar or beeswax was applied onto the skin, a piece of cloth was pressed above it, and yanked out. It is noteworthy here that the Ancient Greeks followed suit; it is even visble as women in their sculptures were completely hairless!
We see more gruesome methods of hair removal in the Middle Ages, when Queen Elizabeth became the symbol for eternal youth and beauty. It was the trend back then to remove one’s eyebrows, as it would make the forehead appear larger, so women used all sorts of dangerous practices to get them off their faces. This includes endlessly rubbing them with walnut oil, or even a highly poisonous mixture of quicklime and arsenic. This was quickly replaced with the friction of sandpaper as soon as they figured its danger.
The first ever razor was invented by French barber Jean Jacques Perret in the 1760s. A revised version, causing less cuts was later released by Gilette in the 1880s. Not long after that, the women’s razor was introduced into the market, and in that same year, Harper’s Bazaar magazine featured a cover of a woman wearing a sleeveless dress, with - you guessed it - hairless armpits!
In a recent British survey, results found that women spend an average of 72 days of their lives shaving their legs. 72 days! Not to mention, the thousands of dollars being spent on hair removal products like waxing strips, new razors, shaving gel or cream, depilating creams, and not to forget: laser hair removal. About 20 million American women remove their facial hair at least once a week, and surveys have found that women with visible facial hair consider it embarrassing, unfeminine, and a hinderance to their career goals and relationships.
Why such a stigma against body hair though? If you Google “dark arm hair embarrassment,” it yields 18.3 million search results. There is an unimaginable amount of disgust towards female body hair, which is really unecessary because it’s such a normal aspect of life. In truth, friends, women naturally do look a little bit like men.
This ideal not only throws ridiculous amounts of time and money down the drain, but also hits hard to women with hairy genes, and women suffering from polycystic ovarian sydrome or alopecia. A 2013 study on women’s attitudes towards body hair showed “overwhelming negativity towards women growing body hair,” including, “a sense of internalised disgust and dirtiness.” This must surely be at least a form of discrimination, especially to those who can’t manage their body hair as easily as most women do.
It’s pretty conspicuous how these beauty ideals have evolved for thousands of years, but the difference between those times and now is the pervasiveness the mass-media indoctrination of today. On average, we are hit with 3000 advertisements a day, most of which telling us that we should be more like these models, that we’re too fat or our faces are too round or our body hair is disgusting or just that we are not enough.
Studies have found that over 70% of American girls have tried dieting by the age of 10, and two-thirds of underweight 12 year olds think they’re too fat. By the age of 13, 50% of girls report to be unhappy with their appearance, and this number increases 80% by age 18.
The fact is that it’s not just about women now, men too are facing tremendous difficulties with adhering to their own set of beauty standards. More than 1/3rd of elementary school boys say that they wish they had bulkier bodies than they already do, 38% of boys ages 12 to 18 use protein supplements, 6% of which use steriods. Additionally, 90% of these boys exercise to gain muscle, whilst 15% of them are also concerned with being more “trim”.
The worst part of it all is that this doesn’t even include transgender kids who already suffer insanely with dysphoria and gender expression on top of these preposterously polar beauty standards. Research shows that trans* folk with poor body image are also in danger of being more depressed, anxious, and suicidal.
We must take a step back and see how our beauty goals are innately similar to propaganda. Why are we enduring so much pain and spending so much money just to be treated better? Wouldn’t we rathers spend that time, money, and energy working hard to achieve our own success? Being born into a genetic lottery is something beyond our control, and, sure, we can mould our bodies to be as perfect as possible, but in all those endeavours, we have to realise that we leave our identities behind.
So, what’s next? How can we escape this worm hole of slow-induced subconsious messages telling us we’re not good enough, just the way we are? Primarily, we can’t dismiss the fact that, yes, our appearances are important. Thus, if someone is chasing external validation by undergoing all these procdures or buying expensive clothes and make up, it’s because they would like to feel better about themselves, and it’s okay. Secondly, we should take a complete inventory of our own bodies. Notice what’s unique, how your tongue rolls or your elbows are double jointed, or even how expressive your face is. Comfort in your own body lies in the careful understanding of it.
Lastly, just watch. Reset your mind into looking at the other ninety percent of the world; the people with different ethnicities, identities, ages, etc. You might even see the beauty of it, the sort of beauty that isn’t imposed on you.
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