I have been spreading a lie for quite some time now. While I have always maintained that standards of beauty are extremely subjective, I have also been asserting that within all the subjectivity, there is some universal or objective form of what makes someone beautiful or attractive. It has taken me a while, but I finally realize that standards of human physical beauty are ALL subjective.
Westernized aesthetics have long controlled our universal standards of beauty. White or fair skin with Anglo features, long hair, relative thinness and curves, have been the baseline in establishing the standards for feminine beauty in the world. This sweeping statement is made after taking into account the images of beauty that have been promoted and idolized throughout history and more specifically in the last hundred years in the standard of beauty that has been promoted in film, television and print.
Hollywood and films along with glamour and fashion magazines have long controlled the message of what is considered beautiful. Styles have changed and women with tan complexions are given some shine now when it comes to declarations of beauty, but that has been the exception not the rule. The images promoted that have been ingrained in all of us are of white or light features of Anglo or European descent. I cannot deny having drank the Kool Aid for many years until I became aware of the fact of what images were being forced fed into my consciousness defining what embodies beauty.
Black skin, dark complexion, native or indigenous people, Non-European, Asians are not promoted within the universal spectrum for standards of beauty. Of course within their own cultures or demographics their images of beauty are promoted, but that isn’t what is pushed as universal or objective standards of female beauty.
Non-European Anglos make up the vast majority of the world’s population. Yet westernized standards of beauty dominate what we have all been effectively brainwashed to view European looking women as the standard of beauty.
Other women and cultures are slowly being recognized outside the bounds of their own cultures, but even then the woman of color or other ethnicities are still promoted mostly when they most resemble the traits and features of European women. Dark complexioned and native or indigenous looking women rarely if ever make anyone’s objective lists of beauty.
What society thinks or deems as beautiful is entirely subjective. The images that we see in films and advertising campaigns do more to steer and influence what we individually process as beauty than anything innately within us. I do not have any type of scientific formula to extrapolate what percentage of our views of beauty are formulated naturally, but I do know that the brainwashing starts from our childhood and never stops.
Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. Understanding the influence that the media, film and advertising have on our mindsets is just another example of why we need to respect the views and opinions of others. Beauty comes in all different shapes, sizes, colors and ethnicities. Just accept the fact that what may not do it for you undoubtedly does for someone else.
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#beauty, #objectivity, #subjectivity, #respect
