You’d think that someone with a supportive family, a good brain and happy outlook on life would be in the best position to ignore media pressure to be conventionally beautiful. I’m afraid not. Despite all reason and logic, I have, at my core, tied no small measure of my sense of self-worth to how my skin is behaving, what my hair looks like, if the clothes I used to wear still fit, and if I can wear the clothes that people think I should wear.
I found this interesting — Dove’s Evolution Film. Women are told all the time, “It’s all make-up and Photoshop.” It’s one thing to be told. It’s another to see it.
Thanks to sharnofshade for the link.
Hmm.
It’s true that advertisement models can be unrealistic role models, but I’m not sure that we can blame companies for creating those models. Afterall, they’re just telling you what their product can do for you, just like any other business. Car makers are never chastised for advertising their products as something that makes a person powerful/classy/sexy — why shouldn’t beauty product maker be allowed to do the same?
I think it’s up to consumers to control their reaction to advertisements. We have to remember that our faces aren’t 5 metres high, and plastered on a freeway billboard, and that noone will be able to see a tiny blemish on our face from the passenger seat of their car. We have to remember that people don’t normally judge us in the 5 seconds that our face is in view as they drive past, and that people’s attention isn’t deliberately drawn to the condition of our skin.
Advertisements are always going to use beautiful people. Even the “real women” on the Dove website all have tight tummies, smooth skin and white teeth. People wanted to be beautiful (whatever beautiful meant) way before Photoshop came along. Maybe it’s just that we have more time or more money, or something, these days to worry about these details today.
I can understand why advertising companies will use beautiful people to sell products. I’m not concerned about advertisers using beauty/power to sell their products. Rather, I don’t like the way they define beauty, which results in the way society defines beauty.
I think the key problem is the lack of diversity in the models they choose. Nearly all ads will have slim tall people with big eyes, long necks, non-Asian/Indian/other ethnic and so on.
The proportion of people in real life who actually look like that is small. But when every ad has the same sort of person, then even the most confident person might start thinking, ‘Well, that’s what we should look like or want to look like.’ And men (usually) are given a yardstick — if they see a girl who actually does fit those specs, then she is ‘beautiful’.
So if you’re solid, you try to lose weight. If you’re short, you wear heels and stripy clothes. If you’re pale, you try to get a tan. If you’re darkskinned, you risk your life trying to bleach your skin white.
There should be different kinds of beauty. I think you’re beautiful, Vera, so why doesn’t a makeup company use you or someone like you for a model? Why don’t advertising campaigns for makeup or clothes or vacuum cleaners or banking use a pretty girl with freckles? Why don’t swimsuit ads use pale women? Why do you need to be tanned to be beautiful? Why are the swimsuit models slim? Can you be chubby and beautiful? According to the advertising industry — no. Is slimness something inherently beautiful or is it something we’ve been taught? What’s wrong with wrinkles? If you’re not advertising a youthening cream, what’s wrong with using a model with wrinkles?
I’ll give a final example. Glasses used to be uncool. You would get beaten up for wearing them. But now, you can see more advertisements positioning people with glasses as beautiful or powerful. Celebrities are using glasses as accessories (Anastacia is a good example).
Glasses are less uncool now. You can even be pretty and wear glasses. I think the media played a big role in removing the glasses stigma. The media and advertising does seem to influence the way people view themselves.
Man, my dad just said to me, “Have you gotten fatter?”
Haha… my parents have asked the same thing but they need to rely on my word. I’ve got a couple of months to get myself shipshape before they come visit 🙂
The worst thing is I’ve actually gotten *skinnier*! I fit back into the jeans that I “grew out of” in the winter!
As for the kind of beauty that advertisers promote — it’s a question as old as broadcast media itself — is it the people influencing the media, or the media influencing the people?
That is — maybe it is *because* people find freckles unattractive in the first place that advertisers never choose to use them in advertisements.
If a company advertised using a person with freckles now, would that change people’s opinions, or would people just be turned off the product?
(Not that I think freckles on a person is really bad enough to turn people off a product — that’s an exaggeration.)
I read an article recently that reviewed a woman’s ‘most attractive’ features as represented in the world’s literature over the past century. It was pretty interesting to note the differences between the cultures (eg. some cultures prefer ‘full-bodied’ to ‘slimness’) and the different things they emphasize (eg. a nicely shaped calf), but the most frequently quoted feature was a slim waist line. Other more conventional female attributes that you hear guys carry on about (and girls act on, like breast implants etc) received only a handful of mentions. I thought that was pretty interesting.
And at the risk of sounding too much like a SNAG, I should probably say that I reckon this sort of external beauty fades and has no lasting value (eg. those photos of movie stars when they’ve just woken up in the morning), and that its probably better to cultivate internal beauty – that lasts for an age and is far more attractive than good hair or well-plucked eyebrows.
Though a good combination of both internal & external beauty is awesome too. Thankfully, you guys have that too 😉
On Beauty
My whole life, I thought I was very unattractive, nay, ugly even, all because my father used to poke fun at my chubby cheeks and complain about my baby fat. So growing up, I was always insecure about the way I looked, so insecure, that I finally decided that ‘looks don’t matter, only brains do’, and this at an age when every other young teenage girl was obsessing about the way s/he looked.
I was so convinced that I was ugly, that I used to work myself to sleeplessness – I would allow myself only 4 to 6 hours of sleep – almost insanity, just so I wouldn’t feel the pain of being ‘ugly’. I put myself under so much stress, that eventually my body gave in: Very early one morning, after a particularly intense insomniac night, I got up in a fit of anger and frustration and looked at myself in the mirror – my g##, what had happened to my once ‘beautiful’ young face – dark rings under puffy eyes; skin that was beginning to sag and looked mouldy with blemishes that once was clear and radiant with youthful health; hair that was dry and lifeless which was once soft and silky; and a face distorted from orthodontics gone wrong, because I needed straight teeth to not feel ‘ugly’. But how ugly I looked and how ugly I felt! So much stress, so little sleep, and the pain of getting straight teeth! All for what, an exchange of ‘beauty’ for ‘ugliness’?
Looking back, how I have played the fool! In believing I was ugly, I had made (italics) myself ugly. But whoever said I needed to react the way I did to other people’s reaction to me? Why place my self-esteem and self-worth in other people’s changeable opinions about that which inevitably changes? Surely, just waking up each morning from a good night’s rest, feeling refreshed, relaxed, happy and healthy, energized and excited to live a whole new day, is all I really need. It’s me at my natural best, the best I can possibly be and most ‘beautiful’ too.
Yeah I reckon that beauty is half attitude – that confidence and self assurance can be extremely appealing. Oh and I think cleanliness is impt too, nothing worse than a dirty, smelly person who thinks they’re gorgeous…
Hey Jon, in an effort to conserve water, I’ve resolved to wash my hair only once a week… 😛
On a spectrum of environmentally friendly to beautiful (a dichotomy that wasn’t obvious to me before), I suppose hippies from the 1970s were on the environmentally friendly side. Vera, you’re creeping towards that end 🙂
As for beauty versus attitude, I agree with you, Jon. I’ve said before that my criteria for an attractive person are intelligence and sense of humour.
I was speaking to a guy at the time and he agreed with a caveat. He also said that he would not go out with someone he didn’t think was beautiful/physically attracted to. Does this mean that looks are more important to guys?
And it’s all very well to say that intelligence and personality are important but the media doesn’t seem to be selling on these points as much as they are on sexiness and beauty. Maybe it’s because visual communication is that much more effective.
Only creeping very slowly, Joan — I wouldn’t do it if my hair looked gross! I found that it can decently withstand about a week without washing — it looks fine, even though it feels kind of ew. I used to wash my hair every two days (I looooove clean hair)…
I think you have to find someone SOMEwhat physically attractive to go out with them. I don’t think you could sustain a relationship with someone who repulsed you every time you looked at them. You’d probably be embarrassed to be seen with them if you didn’t consider them attractive.
Yeah, I think there needs to be an initial physical attraction too. Although I’ve noticed that I tend to find people more and more attractive once I get to know them, and their looks cease to have such a big impact on me beyond a certain point in our friendship, even if I didn’t find the person physically attractive to begin with. In fact, sometimes I even find that people I didn’t find physically attractive on first meeting, can become more attractive than people who I thought were very physically attractive. Sometimes people can grow on you, I guess.
“Sometimes people can grow on you, I guess.”
Like mould, I guess. Mould is useful stuff — penicillin comes from mould. I think mushrooms are a type of mould too. Or something.
I can identify people as attractive but I feel like I observe it, rather than be affected by it. That is, “He’s cute.” Then I think about something else. So for me, looks are not the ‘hook’ for me being attracted to someone. I often don’t even notice if someone is attractive — or at least, I don’t think about it consciously.
My first reply wasn’t too clear. I didn’t mean to say I find people attractive based on good (=pleasing/harmonious/balanced etc) looks, but I’m guessing it must be some initial ‘physical’ attraction (i.e. chemistry, which could include exuding an interesting/introspective/comtemplative/intelligent etc presence) that would interest me in getting to know someone. However, people can grow on me, like a perfume or a scent can grow on me, who I don’t find initially attractive in the above sense, because of other factors, e.g. they’re kind and caring and are comforting to be around, and can be very good looking too, but just not physically attractive to me. But that said, physical attractiveness tends to lose its hold on me after awhile, probably because that person just becomes ‘my friend’ and not ‘that attractive guy/girl’ I’m getting to know.
No way — you mean to say if someone is physically attractive to you, but say, is boring, they are more likely to become your friend?
By the way, Joan — Viki’s theory on my apparent “fatness” is that I’ve built up more muscle, but haven’t lost any fat, so I’m more padded out in general. 🙂
Ewww on the washing of hair! Use a bucket and recycle the greywater and use that to wash your hair! 🙂
And kudos to the more muscle, I’m afraid you’d beat me in arm wrestling matches now Vera!
And yeah I went to a seminar a while back which was looking at the different brain chemistries between male & female brains, and many positive ‘drug-like’ endorphins are directly tied to the visual cortex in men, as opposed to women, which have a slightly more complex arrangement (effectively more touchy feely). That’s why guys can look at a magazine and find that highly arousing but generally they don’t do much for ladies.
… Not that I look at those ‘sort’ of magazines…
You prefer the videos, right Jon? 😛
I’m progressive like that 🙂
Beauty is a funny thing really. I don’t know. An interesting thing to observe is the kind of people they pick for leading roles in movies. I think attitudes are changing slowly, probably too slowly.
Our media is heavily influenced by the US, as is Mexico’s. But I’ve been to places with very different influences and things are… well… different.
It is interesting. We had a discussion here recently about beauty and alot of the south americans said that they thought the scandinavians were all very beautiful with their blue eyes and blonde hair. Interestingly, the scandinavians said that they thought the south americans, particularly the brazillians were very beautiful with their darker skin and darker eyes. I think, to an extent, we tend to like something that is rarer. Something also tells me that somewhere in our evolved subconscious, we look for people who are healthy and have genes that complement our own. I read somewhere that you’re supposed to be more attracted to someone who smelled a certain way which indicated that their immune system was most unlike yours which would result in your offspring’s immune system being stronger… or something like that.
I don’t know… I’m rambling now. Personally I think people of mixed ethnicity are very beautiful. Not sure why. Maybe because they’re rare perhaps… there are any number of reasons. I’m almost sure that the whole tall-skinny thing has its origins with people’s health. Generally, tall skinny people have more HGH than shorter stockier people. There are obviously exceptions to all of these rules, but… I don’t know. I can’t even remember what my whole point was…
Well I’m ethnically mixed – so that’s a good! but I’m also short and stocky, so that sucks…
But yeah agree with the whole ‘unique’ thing, doesn’t have to be spectacular, just have something slightly special or different about them.
Smell idea is fantastic 🙂 I’ve gotta start paying attention to the deoderant/colognes I wear etc 😛
The Japanese perception of beauty has changed since the Edo period (the era where everyone was wearing kimonos and geishas and samurais were common). Apparenly in those days, it was beautiful to have thin eyes, and small/flat? nose, pale skin and quite a flat face – just like the traditional Japanese dolls. Now it’s the opposite, a more european look is popular with big eyes, tall nose, and more curves on your face. Although both dark skin and fair skin is popular with different sorts of people. I guess beauty changes with fashion.
Unfortunately, Jon, deoderant and cologne doesn’t tell the other person anything about your immune system (other than, perhaps, that you aren’t allergic to the stuff), so should have no effect on your attractiveness.
In fact, you probably shouldn’t wear deoderant at all, because it masks your body’s natural odour with that magical immune system signal that brings in all the girls… unless you are trying to date your cousin, of course, in which case the more deoderant the better. 😛
I think my cousin is seeing someone, damn it! Not sure if my natural body odour is all that magical…I’m willing to try it! Does the potency of the body odour increase its effectiveness? I could do a quick jog around the block before I meet up with prospective partners? 🙂
Yeah I don’t find flat faces very appealing, although pugs are kinda cute.
I bite my tongue. The media is embracing ‘ugly’! See Face it, things are getting ugly.
How long before ugly becomes the new beautiful, and girls want braces even though they have perfectly straight teeth?
And is calling someone with glasses and braces “ugly” really *embracing* the ugly?
haha when I read ’embracing the ugly’ I thought of someone hugging a fat guy, that’s so wrong, I apologise for my thoughts.
and yeah glasses can look very attractive, though I don’t think braces work the same way. I don’t think ‘beautiful’ ever really changes – different things get emphasized, but its essentially the same thing. Like grape fanta and ordinary fanta. Grape fanta is best btw.
What do you mean, “different things get emphasised, but its essentially the same thing”?
One thing that that makes me think of is how in Classical paintings, the beautiful women were often quite rotund, whereas these days slimness is considered beautiful.
Now, are you saying fatness and thinness is part of the “same thing”, weight??
LOL No, I wouldn’t call the women in classical paintings (venus etc) fat at all, they’re more curved and full bodied, but they still have the traditional hourglass figure, with slight varying of proportions.
But yeah I was thinking of something else, I heard on the radio a while ago that small…chesty parts were in a few decades ago, and then slightly fuller chesty parts were becoming more fashionable (supposedly there’s a 20-30 year cycle or something). What I meant is that what is considered to be attractive will always include stuff like eyes, mouth, smile, chesty parts, posterior, and legs. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a guy saying that he’s attracted to a girl’s elbow, or that he finds her shin quite appealing…some may be more drawn to one thing or another, but its in essence the same.
Is there a general preference for shortness or tallness? Most models are tall but plenty of men are attracted to petite women, right? And surely men don’t usually go for women taller than themselves?
Large breasts and curvy shapes and clear skin… I can understand why we find that biologically attractive (more babies!). Do you think the lack of clear preference for tallness or shortness is because height conveys no evolutionary advantage?
But the reason for models being tall is a practical one — they show off clothes better! If you sent me down a catwalk, people up the back probably wouldn’t even see me…
Don’t guys prefer girls that are shorter than them?
And for the record, Jon, I like good forearms. 😛
Yeah girls are bizarre like that, they’re into fingernails and eyelashes and all these random small, insignificant things! Andrea, my dance partner, was carrying on about the slight bit of fat that she had between under her arm which showed when she was wearing those shoe-string tops, and I didn’t even realise it was there still she started obsessing.
And yeah I’ve heard girls say they’re attracted to a guy’s walk, or to his hands, all sorts of weird crap.
So yeah, in conclusion, I don’t understand woman and can only speak for what men find attractive, which is fairly easy to figure out 🙂
And yeah, generally most guys prefer a girl that is roughly the same height or shorter, but there’s like a bit of ‘kudos’ for shorter guys that go out with gorgeous taller women – most tall women just don’t seem to be interested in me though 🙂