An Introduction to My Studies

So What is Feminism, Anyway?

        

 According to one misinformed man, feminism is...
 "not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians," ("Robertson"). 
               On a lighter note, Webster gives a more approximate definition, "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities," ("Feminism" Merriam-Webster). The Urban Dictionary then extends upon that stating that "the basic idea of feminism revolves around the principle that just because human bodies are designed to perform certain procreative functions, biological elements need not dictate intellectual and social functions, capabilities, and rights," ("Feminism" Urban). Feminism is not in any way, shape, or form, what Mr. Robertson had classified it as in 1992. Feminism is about women having the freedom of choice without question or judgement. It's being treated equally to men, but in many more detailed ways. 

These are the "Femininjas." This video portrays two young ladies who perform a spoken word poem about feminism and the justice that women deserve in our society. This was done at the Philadelphia Youth Poetry Movement. These women express to the world the insanity of all of the injustices that women actually experience and how we can push past them.

         Throughout my life, I have always heard people mention the word, "feminism," and never really knew what it meant. To be honest, I still don't quite fully know what it means, which is why I'm creating this blog; to document everything I learn about it. 
         Anyway, any time I did hear about feminism or feminists, there was usually some sort of negative spin on it. Naomi Wolf discusses this in the introduction of her book, The Beauty Myth. She claims that during the "evil eighties, intense conservatism had become allied with strong anti-feminism in our culture, making arguments about feminine ideals seeming ill-mannered, even freakish," (Wolf). It was thought that being a feminist meant that those women were apparently "incapable" of satisfying a man. Not everyone was always as negative about feminism as Pat Robertson and people who shared his beliefs; however the idea itself was still mocked.

            In the image to the left, the assumption being made is that feminists are classified as ugly and angry man-haters. This cartoon is a prime example of the definition of feminism being twisted into something that it is not, by people who are ignorant to the real meaning of the word.
          
          I never really thought anything of feminism during those moments because I felt as though I could never quite contribute to the conversation, especially since I have a conservative background. However it was after becoming an English major, and actually becoming involved in conversations about feminism, that I began to understand the content and it was mind-blowing to me. One of my good friends, Allison, had always been talking about feminism and she was in a decent amount of my classes, so she would bring the topic up relatively frequently. Because of this, I started to get a general understanding of feminism and have become increasingly interested in the subject; the different waves, movements, the political aspect, religion, societal expectations of women, and ultimately the beauty culture of feminism.

            There are many silly assumptions that people make about feminists (just watch the video of all of the idiotic men above. There is also one confused woman who states she does not believe in women's rights, however her face tells a very different story when her husband says "the bible states very clear that the man is the head of the household"). One that I had heard before was that feminists do not want the support of a man in any aspect; an example being a man taking a woman out to dinner. This is an extreme embellishment of the actual feminist perspective. A woman would gladly take a male up on whatever offer he may have in supporting her, however, he must remember that she is fully capable of doing it herself, and it is her choice to allow him to support her. Men doing kind or generous acts for women is not a form of gender discrimination, it is simply being considerate.
          Another lie that I have heard is that feminists support "killing children," which is not what they are supporting. The idea of feminism and reproduction is that women should be able to have the choice of what they can and cannot do to their bodies. Of course, most men would not understand this because they do not have the possibility of getting pregnant and they also do not have any legal restrictions on what they can or cannot do to their own bodies. Sam Bennett from the Huffington Post stated "we can all agree that feminism is about equality. Where we all disagree is whether or not 'equality' extends to all aspects of a woman's life- including reproductive health choices," (Bennett). Bennett classifies women as disagreeing upon that topic because there are women who disagree with having the choice of whether or not they would like to go through with a pregnancy. This is a concern because it is perfectly acceptable for people to be morally pro-life, politically however, women should promote pro-choice because no matter what, a woman should be able to have the option of what she wants to do with her own body. 
  
Click here to read Sam Bennett's entire article on Huffington Post. 

         Feminists cannot be classified as man-haters or lesbians. Those types of feminists do exist, I'm sure, but not all feminists feel that way. They are not man-haters; they simply wish respect, equality, and freedom while being taken seriously. As for lesbians, lesbians are everywhere. Being a feminist does not change someone's sexual orientation, therefore being a feminist does not make a woman a lesbian. 
         Feminists are also not anti-family. They just request that society realize that a woman should not be expected to develop a family. If she wants to stay single and focus on her career, who is any male to tell her that she is unable when men do it all the time?

Audre Lorde

           So how are we able to reform a societal view on one gender? This is extremely complicated given that throughout history, men have conducted society. However, Audre Lorde words it very well by stating, "it is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support," (Lorde).                       

           It is hard to convey a feminine meaning to a man in a man's world, with man's language; hence why the word woman contains the word, "man." The word woman, pronounced wo-man, actually means "from man." Because of this, many women have begun trying to re-spell the word as "womyn," however it is almost impossible to officially change the spelling of a word in an entirely developed, and known, language. Since our language is derived by men, and they created the structured vocabulary, spelling "woman" in such a sexist way puts women into a negative light. Unfortunately, people like Pat Robertson would never take the time to educate themselves on the small, hidden, misogynistic features of society. However, my eyes have been opened to anything and everything regarding these feminine ideals that are so new to me. In all honesty, there really isn't any one, specific definition of feminism. Every person has their own detailed explanation of feminism and what it truly is to them, and also how it impacts them, but overall it comes down to the freedom of choice and freedom in general. Personally, I am interested in analyzing the beauty aspects and how society views women; or I should say how society views women through man's skewed eyes, but more on that to come.

Here's to digging deeper on the next post!

Sincerely,

Samantha 

          
            
 

An Introduction into Beauty Culture

What is "Beauty Culture"?

                 Over many years, since basically the beginning of time, women have been criticized if they did not look a certain way in their physical appearance. Susan Bordo claims that "female bodies have become docile bodies- bodies whose forces and energies are habituated to external regulation, subjection, transformation, "improvement." Through the exacting and normalizing disciplines of diet, makeup, and dress- central organizing principles of time and space in the day of many women- we are rendered less socially oriented and more centripetally focused on self-modification," (Gilbert 745-746).

 The video above shows a woman performing her spoken word poem which is about her daily struggle of being a woman while trying to live up to society's expectation of what "pretty" is and how to become beautiful.

                 No matter what a woman looks like, she will always have something that she would change or improve upon on her body. This is the result of society's expectations becoming "naturalized" among women. The optimum portrayal of beauty in the United States culture is to be thin, have clear skin, larger breasts, long legs, and for them to be made up and cleanly shaven. Whenever a woman does not have all of these attributes up to society's standards, people tend to judge that woman and deem her as unattractive. 

              When I was younger and would complain about either having my hair done, or doing something unpleasant in order to "look nice" by mother had always said in a joking manner, "Suffer for beauty." I had never really thought much of that statement up until this point. Women are seemingly expected to go those extra miles and do whatever it takes in order to fit that one idea of beauty that everyone seems to be blinded by. Women become obsessed with trying to change themselves in order to become comfortable in their body, yet they never actually are happy with whatever they do because they constantly feel as though they are not beautiful due to the portrayal of beauty in the media. Singers like Christina Aguilera try to reach out to women through songs like "Beautiful" (as seen below), however it is still difficult for girls to feel connected to them, since they are already considered to be beautiful celebrities.

                   Christina Aguilera, for example, had gained weight previously and received a significant amount of criticism for it. There were an abundance of magazines which featured before and after pictures, questioning "what happened?!" while their actual meaning behind it is that they are questioning the fact that she is no longer considered beautiful because of her weight. In New York Daily, Aguilera claimed "The next time my label saw me, I was heavier, darker and full of piercings! Let me tell you, that wasn't an easy pill for them to swallow," and also "They called this serious emergency meeting about how there was a lot of backlash about my weight. Basically, they told me I would affect a lot of people if I gained weight - the production, musical directors," (Chen). Although the public thought that she sincerely meant it when she said that she loved her curves, just recently there have been pictures of Christina Aguilera that show her being much thinner again, similar to how she was before she had gained weight. It is obvious that society's expectations had gotten to her as well, and since they also impact her career quite unjustly, and began losing weight.

                  There are many celebrities that experience this struggle because the problem itself stems from the media industry that is promoting this specific look of "beauty". Bordo states "these associations are carried visually by the slender superwomen of prime-time television and popular movies and promoted explicitly in advertisements and articles appearing routinely in women's fashion magazines, diet books, and weight-training publications," (Gilbert 755). Anywhere women of today's society look, "everything that they are not" is constantly staring them in the face from every direction. Eve Ensler describes this type of entrapment in false beauty advertisement in her book, The Good Body when she states, "I'm limping down a New York City street, and I catch a glimpse of this blond, pointy-breasted, raisin-a-day-stomached smiling girl on the cover of the Cosmo magazine. She is there every minute, somewhere in the world, smiling down on me, on all of us. She's omnipresent. She's the American Dream, my personal nightmare. Pumped straight from the publishing power plant into the bloodstream of our culture and neurosis," (Ensler 9-10). What's more unfortunate is the fact that the specific girl on the cover of that magazine probably doesn't even look like her actual picture in real life, with so much photoshopping that is used to fix any possible "imperfection."
                    It was the idea of beauty being used against women which had been the motivator for feminists to protest against the Miss America pageant in 1968 and 1969. These women had thrown feminine objects that they deemed to be oppressive into a trashcan and had wanted to burn them, but since they were on the boardwalk it was considered a fire-hazard, so, they figuratively burned them. These objects are all average objects that most women have in their possession and don't believe them to be oppressive since they find it to be natural for them to use them, little do they know that society has instilled these ideas into them (and myself, for that matter). The items consisted of bras, girdles, high heels, and makeup.

Monique Wittig

                All of these beauty ideas that us, as women, continue to act upon have been slowly imprinted into our minds to be perceived as what is "normal" for women to do. Monique Wittig (as seen on the left of this text) discusses how women have been brainwashed by society in order to accept these ordeals as natural. Wittig states, “we have been compelled in our bodies and in our minds to correspond, feature by feature, with the idea of nature that has been established for us. Distorted to such an extent that our deformed body is what they call “natural,” what is supposed to exist as such before oppression,” (Gilbert 545). However, all of these ideas actually come from men and what they have classified as "beautiful". They expect women to live up to a certain standard of how they carry themselves in society. Due to the fact that it has been going on for so long, it is apparent that all women have come to believe that it is for themselves that they use these beauty tools in order to "fix" themselves. 
               I'm certainly a major culprit of this; contributing to society's unwritten rules of applying makeup, dressing, and doing my hair to the standard of what is considered "attractive". In order to feel better about being a woman in our modern society, we all try to live up to the expectation of society's version of "beauty". Unfortunately these are virtually unattainable due to the fact that all of the ideas originated from male beliefs. More to come on that in the next post!

Sincerely,
Samantha

What Society Thinks Women Should Be

Societal Expectations of Women

                So besides being consistently compared to these other "beauty" icons and getting criticized by others for not living up to those standards, the idea of "beauty" in and of itself ultimately consumes women who become crushed under that pressure. This burden that has been placed on modern women eats away at them any time they look into the mirror since they are constantly thinking about that one particular "American Dream" of a woman and how they wished they looked more like them. Most advertisements play up on this as well. Not only is male attention captured when an attractive female is displayed in an advertisement, but female attention is attracted as well, however in a completely different way. 

              It is always somewhat awkward when that kind of moment comes about. For example, I'll be sitting with my boyfriend watching T.V. and a commercial comes on displaying an attractive woman. The camera starts at her stiletto heels and slowly pans up as the audience begins to see her toned legs that show from her shortly cut dress. Then the camera continues higher, to her perfectly perky and endowed chest (my main issue with most women on advertisements), then her full, flowing hair, and her face. When the camera finally reaches her perfectly air-brushed face, her mouth is open and then the audience sees that she is about to eat a cheeseburger. Then there's of course the semi-awkward silence between my boyfriend and I. He's probably not necessarily thinking anything specific about the woman on T.V. other than the fact that she is stereotypically attractive. I, on the other hand, wanted to curl up into a ball and sink as far down into the couch as I could. I felt embarrassed, almost, for looking how I do and felt as though I wasn't good enough because I didn't look as beautiful as Miss Alabama did in her Hardee's commercial. I'm honestly cringing as I about to post the picture of her onto this blog site... but here it is: 

             My boyfriend hadn't expressed any sort of interest, probably out of consideration, but even so, then why does this type of advertisement get under my skin so badly? Naomi Wolf states that "the qualities that a given period calls beautiful in women are merely symbols of the female behavior that that period considers desirable: The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behavior and not appearance. Competition between women has been made part of the myth so that women will be divided from one another," (Wolf 13-14). This certainly makes sense since our mainstream society is obsessed with sex and images of people who can be associated with sex. The main issue I think I had with it is the element of desire that the advertisement tries to create while using the female as a tool. Unfortunately that's all they see her as, and same with anyone who is watching the commercial, but it will always rattle even the most confident female's ego, especially if it occurs while she's with her significant other. 

               As for keeping women apart, beauty culture sure does an excellent job. Wolf also stated that beauty is similar to that of a currency system for women, that men have assigned to us. She claims that "like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West it is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance in tact. In assigning value to women in a vertical hierarchy according to a culturally imposed physical standard, it is an expression of power relations in which women must unnaturally compete for resources that men have appropriated for themselves," (Wolf 12). Unfortunately since these types of situations occur fairly frequently, at least in my paranoid and insecure mind, a woman can't help it but feel as though she has lost some sort of competition when another woman is viewed as "more beautiful" than her, even though the truth is that she is only beautiful in her own way (but that phrase doesn't make me feel any better about the situation). It certainly allows for men to continue to hold the power of deciding what is beautiful and what isn't by allowing for other women who don't fit the picture-perfect standard to become beaten down to the point of feeling as though they are lucky if someone tells them that they are beautiful. However, it should be the complete opposite; women should not feel lucky, they should be responding with, "I know."

 Above is a video on Jean Kilbourne and her input on beauty in the media and how it provides a negative affect on women throughout the world. She describes the process in which women absorb the ideas of flawless beauty and become upset, frustrated, and in some cases depressed, when we are unable to obtain it.

             These comparisons of beauty lead to a large amount of women who develop all sorts of eating disorders or even developing anxiety of not being beautiful enough. Susan Bordo states that "the thousands of slender girls and women who strive to embody these images and who in that service suffer from eating disorders, exercise compulsions, and continual self-scrutiny and self-castigation are anything but the "masters" of their lives," (Gilbert 755). When women are consumed by the beauty ideal that they believe they need to be living up to, they become obsessed with trying to fulfill it any way they can. When they do not reach the standards that they want to be at (which they never will because there will always be a new ad on television with a woman with a more appealing bosom or derriere) they become depressed and feel as though since they are not up to society's standards of beauty, they are worthless. However, it then becomes a vicious cycle of constantly trying to make improvements on themselves which causes them to lose control of what their main focuses in life should really be. Bordo offers reassurance to women who experience this by continuing with "popular representations, as we have seen, may forcefully employ the rhetoric and symbolism of empowerment, personal freedom, "having it all." Yet female bodies, pursuing these ideals, may find themselves as distracted, depressed, and physically ill as female bodies in the nineteenth century were made when pursuing a feminine ideal of dependency, domesticity, and delicacy," (Gilbert 756). It makes no sense for women to be basically killing themselves in order to, ironically enough, feel better about themselves, yet every single one of us does it to some extent. All of us fearing the idea of being unappealing to any sort of individual we wish to attract and not seeming good enough for them to be with. 

              Women are constantly told by the media that we need to change things about ourselves. We need to lose weight, clear up our skin, put on makeup, de-frizz our hair, put on a push up bra, or wear shoes that tone your glutes; and that fulfilling all of these things will make us "happy."  It makes me feel better as a female who constantly is comparing myself to these unattainable standards (even though I know that they are unattainable) that I am not alone in feeling this way. In order for the beauty myth to be altered, media itself needs to change the way in which it portrays women, both as sex symbols and also as life-sized barbie dolls. However, a lot of the body image expectations had begun arising through the pornography industry and how they display women's bodies; but more on that to come in the next post!

Sincerely,

Samantha  

Sex/Pornography Industry

The Contribution from the

Pornography Industry

                     Pornography is a very successful industry which doesn't seem to be ceasing any time soon. Pornography, itself, is not necessarily a problem as much as what society seems to take from it and how it portrays women. I don't mean this by women being viewed as sex objects, although most of the time they are, but the bodily beauty expectations which arise from porn. All of the top-notch female porn stars have large, perfectly symmetrical breasts, a thin waist, a plump and round bottom, and perfect skin which is then coated by a crazy amount of makeup. Because of these women, since they seem natural given that they are completely naked while being viewed, there are many people who believe that women are actually supposed to look like that. If they don't, well then they are just considered to be unattractive, just like the rest of us flat chested and untoned busy women who actually have lives to lead. From being exposed to this type of unattainable body type, many women feel as though they need to improve upon themselves in order to appear more similar to these "fake" women and how they carry themselves. Jean Kilbourne builds upon this by stating, "women are constantly exhorted to emulate this ideal, to feel ashamed and guilty if they fail, and to feel that their desirability and lovability are contingent upon physical perfection," (Kilbourne). In the picture to the left of this text, the woman is certainly well-endowed with a tiny waist, this certainly seems un-proportional to her body... as well as her poreless face. This is a prime example of why women feel as though they cannot meet the particular standard that society has laid out for them. However, we should not be trying to meet this standard, we should be trying to beat it since we have one thing that they do not; the fact that we are real people, never photoshopped or "perfected" by anyone else, just ourselves.

                    There have always been events or rules in society that have limited a woman's sexuality and enjoyment in sexual pleasure, however we've been able to surpass them and receive access to birth control methods and break through other societal sexual boundaries, so a woman was finally "allowed" to enjoy sex again without worry. However, "that sexuality was quickly restrained once again by the new social forces of beauty pornography and beauty sadomasochism, which arose to put the guilt, shame, and pain back into women's experience of sex," (Wolf 132). It wouldn't be as bad if people weren't always giving such positive responses to absolute fakeness being displayed through media. It's very easy to pick out a stereotypically attractive woman, however it's the somewhat degrading notion of hearing men announce "oh, she's so hot." What about her is actually "hot?" Is it her fake breasts? Her fake puffy lips created by lip augmentation? Her poreless face, created by a shield of makeup? Or maybe it's her unproportional body and unrealistic body shape? Why is it that this particular "look" is so appealing to our society? In all honesty, there is nothing sexy or attractive about anything artificial being added to a woman's body. Of course I say this and then look at more pictures of these women and still cannot help myself but think that I am still not attractive enough; damn society staining my subconscious with insecurities about myself. 
                   Vogue was the first magazine which displayed naked women that other women would be comparing themselves to. Naomi Wolf has written that "Helmut Newton's leather-adorned nudes appeared in Vogue, and David Hamilton's photographs of naked preadolescents were sold in bookstores. The "ideal" female body was stripped down and on display all over. That gave for a woman, for the first time in history, the graphic details of perfection against which to measure herself, and introduced a new female experience, the anxious minute scrutiny of the body as intricately connected to female sexual pleasure," (Wolf 134). This breakthrough in beauty culture media is what has fueled the fire of all women's insecurities. 
                  The problem is not the sex or porn itself, there is no problem with that since we are in the United States and it is perfectly legal. The problem is how women are portrayed and the idea that if they do not look like these stereotypical pornstars or models that they are not considered beautiful or attractive by society. Wolf continues with "if there were a full spectrum of erotic images of uncoerced real women and real men in contexts of sexual trust, beauty pornography could theoretically hurt no one," (Wolf 135). It is the way in which these women are portrayed that is so disturbing.The video to the right and above this text is titled Miss Representation and it is an excellent video which demonstrates the ways in which mass media takes advantage of the woman's body and basically uses it against us. Jean Kilbourne speaks in this video as well, and as I've been looking more into her research I have become very fond of her as well and her works. One part of her article, "Beauty and the Beast of Advertising," mentioned that,"Advertising images do not cause these problems, but they contribute to them by creating a climate in which the marketing of women's bodies--the sexual sell and dismemberment, distorted body image ideals and the use of children as sex objects--is seen as acceptable," (Kilbourne). This relates greatly to Naomi Wolf as well when she discusses the representations of the female body in advertisement as well or even in pornography. Wolf mentions that "rather than seeing images of female desire or that cater to female desire, we see mock-ups of living mannequins, made to contort and grimace, immobilized and uncomfortable under hot lights, professional set-pieces that reveal little about female sexuality," (Wolf 136). Although the media tries to make it seem like they create their films and advertisements with women in mind, it is completely false because anything that they create has no truth to it. Wolf continues with "female nakedness became inhuman, "perfected" beyond

Jean Kilbourne

  familiarity, freakishly like a sculpture in plastic, and often degraded or violated," (Wolf 137). This ties into another aspect of the porn industry, which is the fact that they, a majority of the time, make it look as though women are powerless and enjoy being completely submissive and controlled by men, sometimes even through violence. 
             Media makes it seem as though women want to be thrown around or violated by men which is completely not the case, and they make it seem as though the men have all of the power and that it is okay for them to do so. This is an awful idea to portray to society since this is not at all the case. Violence and control have no part in a female's sexuality and it should not be made for people to interpret it that way because it sends across a horrible message which makes it seem as though rape or persuasion/pushing a woman to commit a sexual act. Naomi Wolf touches upon this as well in her book The Beauty Myth by including that "where beautiful women in 1950s culture got married or seduced, in modern culture the beauty gets raped. Even if we never seek out pornography, we often see rape where sex should be... even if she avoids pornography, a woman will, by watching mainstream, middle-brow plays, films, and TV, learn the conventions of her threatened rape in detail, close up," (Wolf 137). The influences that these types of media have on women are profound, whether they realize it or not. 
                      Many women believe that they just have simple insecurities, with nothing sparking them except for the fact that they are too fat, or their breasts aren't big enough, or they're not sexy enough. The real reason is the subliminal messaging that gets shoved through the poor woman's brain every single day, reminding her of all of the reasons why she should feel that way. Women try to actualize the images that they are seeing and believe that they want to become these women instead of themselves which is a cyclical, infinite battle that the poor woman will fight until she realizes that the women she has been comparing herself to are nothing but silicone enhancements, extensions, and makeup; nothing like the real woman that she actually has built herself to be...which is much more beautiful. Kilbourne adds that "By remaining unaware of the profound seriousness of the ubiquitous influence, the redundant message and the subliminal impact of advertisements, we ignore one of the most powerful "educational" forces in the culture -- one that greatly affects our self-images, our ability to relate to each other, and effectively destroys any awareness and action that might help to change that climate," (Kilbourne). The women believe the stereotypes, believe that they can achieve them, and see themselves as being worth so much less than they truly are. However it is not only the pornography industry that shows women that her beauty is the only important aspect of her life, the same lesson is taught in beauty pageants as well. However, more on that to come in my next post! 

Sincerely,
Samantha                      

What About Beauty Pageants?

The Negative Effects of

Beauty Pageants

     Honestly and sincerely, what on earth is the point of beauty pageants? All it does is collect a group of girls, have them compete against each other to determine who is the most beautiful and talented, all mostly based off of physical appearance... or I should say how similar they are to society's expectations of physical perfection. The women who perform in the Miss America pageants are not at all what the majority of American women actually look like. It is an awful lesson to teach women in society that they are only worth as well as they match up to society's standards of beauty. The beauty pageants are overall an entertaining spectacle, however the main focus always seems to be the section where the women display themselves in their swimsuits (these took up a majority of the photos when I was searching for photos to use on this article). An article from the Journal of Popular Culture reinforces this with "although the contest rhetoric, the composition of the parade, and the festival setting were all attempts to make a display of women's bodies respectable, they did not overshadow the fact that the contestants were being judged on how they looked in bathing suits. Even when later pageants added a talent division and gave college scholarships as prizes, the review of the contestants in bathing suits was still the most important part of the competition. Despite pretensions to intellect and talent, physical beauty remained the overriding feature of the ideal American woman," (Watson). With a pageant that derives from strictly physical features, there is no way that anyone could change the meaning of it to try and make it as though it is actually personal and about the lives that they lead for themselves. It is made worse this way because since they are applying these additional "meanings" to these women, women who are watching the pageants are soaking in all of the information on how they can change themselves in order to look like and be more similar to these women who are considered to be perfect examples of the American woman in our society. The Journal of Popular Culture also adds that "The history of beauty contests tells us much about American attitudes toward physical appearance and women's expected roles. Rituals following set procedures, beauty contests have long existed to legitimize the Cinderella mythology for women, to make it seem that beauty is all a woman needs for success and, as a corollary, that beauty ought to be a major pursuit of all women," (Watson). This is an unrealistic ideal of how anyone should live their life, let alone any woman. When a woman is told that all she needs in order to succeed is beauty, she is being set up for disappointment, failure, and ultimately depression, since beauty is always in the eye of the beholder and no one can ever validate what "beauty" itself actually is.

              These types of images of women are displayed everywhere and a competition that focuses on physical "beauty" does not help any woman's cause of getting past the point of feeling like she is worthless since she does not measure up to society's expectations. Naomi Wolf claims that the more these images are forced into a woman's life, "the further it will drive her at the same time down the troubled route of her beauty addiction. And as the experiences along the way become ever more extreme, the stronger will grow women's maddening sense that our culture has a split personality, which it seeks to convey to us through a seductive, embarrassing, challenging, and guilt-laden pro quo between dazzling covers," (Wolf 85). A woman can only be subjected to so much of being told "you need to be _______ to be beautiful" before she completely loses all of her own self worth. The same goes for young girls. How are children supposed to view themselves if their "real" role models, like their mothers and older sisters, are constantly describing themselves as ugly or "not good enough?" Beauty pageants not only have a negative effect on women and our culture, but they are basically the stepping stone for young girls to begin their journey of "improvement" that they will continue to perform for the rest of their lives. However, more on that to come in the next post with beauty pageants and their impacts on young girls! 

Sincerely,

Samantha

Beauty Pageants and Beauty Culture and Their Effect on Children

What Beauty Pageants and Beauty Culture 

 Are Teaching Young Girls

 

     With the obsession of beauty that is occurring in our society today, we have to stop and wonder about the impact it is having on children, especially young girls. With barbies and makeup sets, girls are already taught at a young age what is considered to be "beautiful." They see it on TV and witness other women participating in their own beauty enhancements; these become their role models. Once a girl witnesses a woman who is considered to be beautiful on TV, she also believes, just like the rest of us, that she wants to grow up to look just like her. This is where it all begins, where she starts setting a standard for herself to meet. They watch their mothers, sisters, pretty much any older woman or girl, and soak in every little technique they do like a sponge. The mass market acknowledges this as well, and feeds fuel to the fire by promoting makeup kits strictly for young girls. The video underneath this text is a commercial for a Bratz (Bratz are a certain brand of dolls that are similar to barbies, but portray an edgier sort of look) makeup kit. The toy itself includes fake makeup for young girls' Bratz dolls as well as real makeup that can be used on their own faces. This teaches children at a very early age that in order to feel beautiful, or feminine, they need to wear makeup. They also feel as though this is what they have to do and what they are expected to do as girls, thanks to society shoving those expectations down their throats through media.

           For most young girls, their main role model is their mother. Since our society is completely obsessed with beauty culture and has such high expectations for women to meet these beauty standards, these rub off onto the younger generation of girls as well. Nancy Chodorow explains this type of mother-daughter relationship by stating, "a girl's gender and gender role identification are mediated by and depend upon real affective relations. Identification with her mother is not positional- the narrow learning of particular role behaviors- but rather a personal identification with her mother's general  traits of character and values. Feminine identification is based not on fantasied or externally defined characteristics and negative identification, but on the gradual learning of a way of being familiar in every day life, and exemplified by the person (or kind of people- women) with whom she has been most involved," (Gilbert 374). Without even trying, all women are seen as role models to younger girls. The majority of women that they are exposed to are all involved in society's beauty culture and so they pick up the trait simply from the exposure. I know for myself when I was younger, I couldn't wait until I was allowed to wear makeup. I used to watch my mother and my aunts apply their makeup before they would go out and I would be in awe, and was always eager to try it for myself. My mother, however, would always tell me that I was too young and that I didn't "need" makeup. But I of course believed that I did and that I wouldn't be beautiful unless I was wearing it as well. The same goes for my younger sister; I'm a terrible role model. She constantly witnesses me spending hours on straightening my hair and perfecting my makeup. Marlena is nine-years-old and finds great joy in painting her nails and smearing hot pink lipstick on her lips (she looked quite festive at the last holiday get together). She just thinks of it as fun, and it makes her feel feminine and as though she fits in with the rest of society. In my opinion, it probably makes her feel like she's "mature." In her young mind, she is fulfilling what she needs in order to fit into the look of the rest of the women in our society. However this is an unhealthy ritual for girls to get involved in if they get too carried away. 

            As soon as young girls begin to absorb the essence of beauty culture, they also begin processing body image. They see older women and analyze their entire being, from their hair to their face and makeup, to their breasts, down to their legs and pretty shoes. The next experiment that young girls begin conducting is "stuffing their bras/shirts." They begin comparing themselves to all of the older women that they are seeing and realize that there is a large difference between their bodies and their own bodies: breasts. I know I did it as a little girl and I'm sure every girl has when she was growing up. They crumple up tissues, cotton balls, socks, whatever they can get their hands on, and shove it in their shirts to make it look as though they have breasts. My sister actually just recently did this as well (except she doesn't even wear a training bra yet). It was humorous at the time but when you actually stop to think about it, it's somewhat sad because subconsciously it's like she feels as though she isn't feminine enough and is doing it to feel more like a "woman." This just proves that beauty culture absorbs so much of the popular media that is being engraved into young girls' brains that they already are performing their own little "enhancements" to their prepubescent bodies.  

         Additionally to this, what makes it all increasingly worse is the idea of children's beauty pageants. Little girls who participate in these pageants are subjected to complete scrutiny on their physical appearance, and they are only children! These types of pageants bring to home the idea that the only important aspect of a girl's whole being is her physical appearance. A girl's femininity is implanted into her subconscious at a very young age. Chodorow expands upon this by stating, "there is a sense in which their schooling is pseudo-training. It is not meant to interfere with the much more important training to be "feminine" and a wife and a mother, which is embedded in the girl's unconscious development and which her mother teachers her in a family context where she is clearly the salient parent," (Gilbert 377). Mothers who put their daughters through any type of beauty competition are displaying to them that beauty truly is more important than their schooling. These competitions put all sorts of unnecessary stress onto the young girls' lives when what they should really be worrying about is having fun as a child, playing games, engaging in hobbies, sports and activities, and focusing on school and developing their intelligence. However, the childhood of any young girl who competes in beauty competitions is completely ripped away from them because that becomes their main priority; normally because of the parent's involvement and pushing the child to excel in them. The child unfortunately does not realize that it is unnatural for them to be engaged in such activities, so they just obey their parent that is directing them, since they are their parent and the child simply assumes that whatever they is what they should be participating in. 
 

This poor girl is only seven-years-old. For how much she is made up (and probably has a spray tan) she looks as though she could be much older. No seven-year-old should ever look like this or be placed on display in such a way.

            There is a television show called Toddlers & Tiaras which is featured on the TLC television network. The show focuses on young girls and their mothers and all of the efforts that they go through in order to prep them for an upcoming beauty pageant. There are many people who believe that this whole concept is completely unmoral, but for some reason these children-based beauty pageants still continue. One woman named Michelle Trincia had written an article conveying a valid point about preserving the innocence in children and how these types of competitions are ripping it away from them. Trincia states, "There is social pressure everywhere, especially on women, to look and dress a certain way for a majority of our lives. So why would a parent take one of the few members of society lucky enough to still be blissfully ignorant of these pressures and throw them into the fire at such a young age?" (Trincia). This is a completely valid statement. Why would anyone wish to force a young girl to face the harsh reality that is our society and how well you meet its standards, at such an innocent moment in their life time? They're already going to experience all of the beauty pressures once they are actually old enough to somewhat comprehend them. For their childhood, we should allow for them to hold onto their innocence and carefree lifestyles for as long as possible. 

 

          The video seen above this text is a snippet from the show Toddlers & Tiaras. It shows a mother preparing her daughter for a beauty pageant by whitening her teeth. This goes to show what extreme measures some mothers go to in order to "perfect" their child's "image." The mother first bleaches her son's teeth in order to show her daughter how much whiter his teeth are than hers. She even states, "see how yellow your teeth are compared to his?" No child should ever be forced to whiten their teeth. Come to mention it, I don't even whiten my own teeth! The mother claims that this is an alternative to "flippers" which is apparently what all of the other pageant girls wear in their mouth (flippers are like tiny dentures made for children). 

        As a child, a young girl is still forming her own identity and getting a feel for herself as a human being. She is just starting to develop her own "look" which displays her personality and how she wishes to represent herself. With all of these adjustments and alterations being made to such a naive mind, the child has no other choice but to feel as though there is something wrong with her naturally and that she needs to change herself in order to be considered beautiful or accepted in society. For average young girls, "puberty is often a time when girls in the process of being socialized into their gender are also politicized by it... They challenge the lessons of sex, race, manners, mores, and everything else about girlhood that we learn everywhere from MTV to Tiger Beats to Toys "R" Us. They offer clear insights on crucial intersections of feminist consciousness and pop product," (Jervis 5). Unfortunately for these beauty pageant girls, these ideals are being burned into their brains much sooner than that. It

This eight-year-old girl is receiving botox surgery, thanks to her mother

strips them of the little freedom that they have of feeling good in their own skin before they get old enough to wear society's ideals begin to wear down their self esteems. Jervis continues with "the blurring boundaries between childhood and adulthood in pop representations is sometimes cute and poignant, as in movies like Freaky Friday and its remake or those wacky Gilmore Girls, but much more disturbing- as when frat-house retailer Abercrombie & Fitch began peddling tween-size thong panties printed with cutesy come-ons for the training bra set," (Jervis 5). There is nothing that is "okay" about young girls being subjected to such criticism and pressure being put on how they look; they are children. Some parents try to justify putting their children through such havoc by saying the pageants promote necessary skills for when they become older; like building interviewing skills or gaining confidence. However in actuality, the beauty competition as a whole is completely undermining their self-confidence since they are constantly being told how they can and should improve themselves.
           On top of the pageants demeaning a young girl's self confidence, "many psychologists believe that developmental and emotional problems can stem from the pressure and value system that pageants embody... parents who put their daughters in pageants can contribute "in very direct and concrete ways" to "the precocious sexualization" of their daughters," (Hollandsworth). The girls are taught to be superficial and basically fall into every single negative, female-based, gender stereotype. Hollandsworth continues with a quote by Mary E. Doheney, Ph.D., of the Family Institute at Northwestern University, "They are presented in a hypersexualized manner that is completely inappropriate to their ages," (Hollandsworth). This  opens the door to possibilities of sexual predators who may be honing in on the pageant girls as well, but that's besides the point. 
         The problem itself usually resides within the mother's unhappiness with her own being. Mothers become so entranced in the idea of her daughter being "the most beautiful" because they feel as though their daughter is basically a copy of themselves. Nancy Chodorow explains this boundary confusion with the "mothers' not completely conscious reactions to their daughters' bodies as their own (over-identification and therefor often unnecessary concern with supposed weight or skin problems, which the mother is really worried about in herself)," (Gilbert 379). The type of pressure that this puts on the girls is astronomical. Not only are they trying to keep their mothers happy, which is just about impossible since they always have a critique to make on the pageant girls, but they also begin to blame themselves for not being pretty enough if they do not succeed in the pageant, resulting in the beginning of an everlasting insecurity issue in the young girl. 
          Something that I have found shocking after reviewing information on adult beauty pageants and child beauty pageants is the lack of African-American women and young girls. In my next post, I will be digging to find out why that is; until next time!

Sincerely,
Samantha

What About Black Beauty Culture?

 The African-American Role

in Beauty Culture

         Throughout my studies so far, there have been a very minimal amount of pictures and information on African-American women and their role in our insane beauty culture. This may have a message in itself, of the stereotypical American beauty being white, slim but curvacious in the right areas, with flowing sheen hair, and colorful eyes. Being a white female, I am unable to say that I have ever experienced this type of beauty concern. Since society's standard of beauty has basically been revolving around white women, there comes a difficulty when measuring up an African-American woman's beauty to society's beauty standards. How do our society's beauty ideals effect these women and what do they take from it? A quote from Michele Wallace, taken from the NWSA Journal, states, "The black woman had not failed to be aware of America’s standard of beauty nor the fact that she was not included in it; television and motion pictures had made this information very available to her... America had room among its beauty contestants for buxom Mae West, the bug eyes of Bette Davis, the masculinity of Joan Crawford, but the black woman was only allowed entry if her hair was straight, her skin light, and her features European; in other words, if she was as nearly indistinguishable from a white woman as possible," (Patton). Unfortunately in media, this assumption runs true. After googling the top African-American celebrities

considered to be most attractive in our society, the top women came up as Paula Patton, Beyonce Knowles, Zoe Saldana, Sonia Rolland, Naomie Harris, Taraji P. Henson, Meagan Good, Halle Berry, Rosario Dawson, and Kerry Washington (as seen to the right of this text). After viewing all of these women's pictures, it is very apparent that all of them match Wallace's description. This is very unfortunate, as it creates too many insecurities for any average African-American woman who is developing in our society. A black woman should not be told that she is not beautiful simply because her dark skin and features do not match that of a white woman's. It is absolutely ridiculous to hold them to the same beauty standards, since they have significantly different qualities about them. It is almost like comparing the beauty of an orange to that of an apple; it is impossible.
          A theory of the reasoning for this race-based beauty expectation is that it stems from the slavery background of African-Americans. Patton continues with, "During slavery, Black women who were lighter-skinned and had features that were associated with mixed progeny (e.g., wavy or straight hair, White/European facial features) tended to be house slaves and those Black women with darker-skin hues, kinky hair, and broader facial features tended to be field slaves," (Patton). Given this information, white people are biased towards the African-American people who more-so resemble themselves. It is absolutely insane that this trend has continued this far, however not completely unheard of, unfortunately, since racism still continues to linger in the United States. This type of beauty standard places so much pressure onto black women, resulting in them taking extreme measures in order to fit "the look." One major alteration that these women make is to their hair; by chemically straightening, braiding, or getting extensions and weaves. These women go to such greater lengths to fit the beauty standard in order to be considered "beautiful" by society.
         It is obvious in media that African-Americans are seen much less than Caucasians. This is of course with the exception of any shows or films that involve an all-black cast (basically, there is either a very minimal number of African-Americans, or none at all, in a film, or the majority of the cast is African-American). It is strange to me why there is no middle ground where there is an equal number of each, however I guess that is where the prejudices on the lightness of skin come into play. Lori L. Tharps expands upon this with her own experiences in the book, Bitchfest, claiming, "I'm looking for black characters I can identify with and respect; what I find instead are black comic actors who have been reinvented as homeboys and hoochie mamas ghettoized on inferior networks created just for colored folk. The number one show in black households, UPN's The Parkers, offers us a single mom raising a daughter who's dumb as dirt," (Jervis 308). I feel extremely ignorant, to be honest, for never taking notice to any of these types of instances on television. It is indeed very apparent that the majority of actors and actresses being publicized are white, however I never realized that the roles that African-Americans do play are stereotyping themselves. Tharps continues by stating, "Shows featuring black and white actors together on a regular basis- a la Diff'rent Strokes and The Jeffersons- have been eliminated. According to a recent survey conducted by child-advocacy group Children Now, white shows are getting whiter and black shows are getting blacker," (Jervis 308-309). This backs up my previous statement of shows either being primarily white or black, with no in-between. The shows that engage in this are all displaying a completely false reality of how the world truly is today. However there is also a difference in how black males are viewed on television versus how black females are viewed on television. 
         Overall, the black American male actor is significantly more notable than the black American female, thanks to the roles that the media has limited the women to. Honestly, if someone were to hold up a picture of Will Smith next to a picture of Paula Patton and requested someone to name each of them, they would most likely say Will Smith as the first name. Lori Tharps gives examples of certain television shows where the black woman is never able to surpass being simply the supporting role, claiming, "The Bernie Mac Show and My Wife and Kids, driven by the talent of their I-was-a-comedian-in-a-former-life leads (Bernie Mac and Damon Wayans, respectively), have been well received by black and white audiences, but the actors playing these men's wives- Kellita Smith and Tisha Campbell-Martin- never rise above supporting-role status," (Jervis 310). The Cosby Show was a huge hit with all audiences  and created a huge spark in the media, causing directors to re-think white-washed television. However when they began developing new shows, they were simply backtracking right back into the stereotypes again. The new shows that were focused on African-Americans made them out to be everything they were not. One example is actually a cartoon from the Disney Channel called, The Proud Family. In that particular TV show, the black American women are portrayed with a distinct attitude that is associated with the stereotypes made about how they act or speak; the grandmother and the mother, in particular. However there are also a group of girls who bully the main character, Penny (a young girl), and they are made to look, as Tharps had put it, "ghettoized." Tharps describes that in these types of shows, "black women had to be neck-rolling, finger-snapping, loudmouthed aggressors, while their men, for the most part, were clowns, ministers, or working-class cliches. In addition, these new sitcoms were more urban-focused and less mainstream-friendly," (Jervis 310). Tharps nails it on the head with the male character role as well. In The Proud Family the father is a relatively goofy character who runs a snack business. 
           Black American women in the United States are not represented fairly at all in today's media, which results in pressure from society to fit the beauty standards of the women that are being portrayed on television. Tracey Owen Patton remarks that because of this, "many African American women (younger and older generation), including those who grow up in predominantly Euro-American areas, state that they are beginning to feel pressure to conform to the White standard of beauty," (Patton). It is extremely unfortunate that media is backsliding and is participating more in the separation of the races as opposed to the inclusion. Hopefully as time progresses, the media will have their reality check and develop television shows that have an equal amount of African-Americans as they do Caucasians. However in my next post, I will be analyzing the primarily white show, Gossip Girl and how it feeds into society's issues regarding beauty culture.

Sincerely,
Samantha