12. joulukuuta 2014

Kauneusihanteet


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Alla on sitten kauneusihanteita varsinkin Etelä-Koreassa ja Intiassa käsittelevä tutkimus. Alla olevissa lainauksissa tuodaan taas esille näitä tekijöitä naisen kauneudessa, josta ihmiset näyttävät yleisemmin tykkäävän. Tutkija tuo myös tyypilliseen tapaan esille kuinka kauneusihanteessa olisi kyse osaltaan kolonialismista ja mediasta. Tutkija mainitsee sanan delicate, jolla tutkija taitaa tarkoittaa siroja kasvoja ja onhan se totta, että varsinkin monilla afrikkalaisilla, itäaasialaisilla ja tunnetusti myös Australian alkuasukkailla ilmenee hyvin alkukantaista tai jykevää ulkonäköä, joka ei ole varsinkaan länsimaisen kauneusihanteen mukaista, mutta onhan se valitettavaa, jos tämä vaikuttaa hyvin kielteisesti ei eurooppalaisiin naisiin.
What is considered beautiful?

Unsurprisingly, specifics on what is considered beautiful differ from country to country and culture to culture; what is surprising are the numerous, striking similarities in beauty standards found despite these barriers. For example, fairer skin, large eyes, full lips and an angled nose are characteristics found in beauty ideals across many cultures. Why and how were these specific characteristics chosen to transverse cultural beauty standards? According to Kathy Davis, “originally the culprit was sought in the system of cultural beauty norms which demanded eternal youth and impossible beauty from women: slender but voluptuous shapes, faces unmarked by the passage of time, and, most of all, an appearance in keeping with the conventions of upper-class, Western femininity."

Thus, the origin of these facial characteristics is the West, more specifically America and Western Europe. A quick Google search of the western beauty ideal reveals that there is wide consensus among the search results on what that entails. Specifically, a symmetrical face that looks youthful, fair skin, almond-shaped eyes, straight hair, a long nose with small nostrils, full lips, thin eyebrows that have been well arched, and a low waist-to-hip ratio are common criteria found.

How was this western ideal proliferated across the globe?

Originally, it was through colonialism. The main players during the age of imperialism were Great Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal; however, the star was definitely Great Britain. When these explorers landed in a foreign land, they shocked the natives with their pale skin and delicate features. Additionally, whenever a country was made into a colony, the imperializing country set the standards for the natives to aspire to. This is true for more than just beauty—it extended to wealth and prosperity, fashion, etiquette, and modernization.

However, in this modern age, this western ideal is still maintained in countries that were colonized and even those that were not, despite a shift in global economics. This is largely due to the media. Those countries that were once the colonizers, including the United States, have the medias with the strongest global influence. Other nations are influenced by these medias and desire to be more like the images that they see. This is because they want to keep up with these powerhouse nations and rise in status. However, many countries that were once colonized and have since risen to a status that rivals their old colonizers, such as China and India, still continue to have beauty standards that are suspiciously similar to the western ideal. This shows that this desire to “keep up” economically is not the only factor at play when discussing the hold the western ideal has in other nations.
Tutkimuksessa mainitaan myös maailman kauneimpiin naisiin lukeutuva intialainen Aishwarya Rai. Aishwaryan ulkonäköä voi verrata vaikka noihin meksikolaisiin malleihin, että eipä siinä ole erityisen paljon eroa, joten tämä ulkonäkö on länsimaisen tai eurooppalaisen kauneusihanteen mukainen. Alla olevassa lainauksessa tuodaan esille kuinka kauneusihanne Etelä-Koreassa olisi eurasialainen. Näin olen tainnut itsekin todeta, että eivät nuo itäaasialaiset yleensä kauneusleikkausten jälkeen näytä eurooppalaisilta tai länsimaalaisilta vaan enemmän eurasialaisilta, mutta kyllä nuo korealaiset myös pyrkivät usein saamaan hyvin tyttömäisen ja siron ulkonäön itselleen, eikä varsinaisesti kauniin eurooppalaisen naisen ulkonäköä.



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Aishwarya Rai has been hailed in India, and around the globe, for her stunning beauty ever since she took home Miss Universe crown in 1994. Since then, she has won numerous awards for her beauty, including being voted Most Beautiful Miss World twice. Since then, she has set the standard of beauty within India. Her fair skin, full lips, big, bright eyes, dark, luscious hair, slender nose, and voluptuous, sexy figure have been both desired and envied by Indian women across the nation. In fact, beauty in general has increased in importance for Indian women in recent years, much more so than in time period prior. All Indian women are now expected to look like Mrs. Rai in order to be considered beautiful. But, because Mrs. Rai’s features are not typical within the country, Indian women (and men as well), have turned to cosmetic surgeries in order to make up for that.

[...]

Are the most popular surgeries performed in India ones that result features that are also in the Hindu texts?

For the most part, yes, they are. Using Kālidāsa’s quote as a reference, the criteria for ideal beauty include: full lips, full head of hair, small waist, large eyes, full breasts, and wide hips. Among India’s list of popular surgeries include injection of fillers in the lips, which would lead to full lips. Hair mesotherapy is intended to increase both density and volume to hair, so it too leads to a Hindu ideal set out by Kālidāsa. Breast augmentations increase the bust and both liposuctions and abdominoplasties lead to a smaller waist. And finally the usual fat graft performed is one around the eye area, which leads to a bigger, more awake-looking eye.

[...]

South Korea is one of the world’s largest producers of beauty and skin products and many of these beauty and skin products contain skin-whitening agents. Furthermore, many models used for various domestic products, beauty products included, are white. “In June 1944, changes in laws allowed the Korean advertising industry to use foreign models and celebrities (Byun, 1997: 32-3), which quickly led to a sharp increase in the used of foreign models to sell domestic wares.” Thus, the Western ideal of beauty can easily permeate, and has easily permeated, throughout the society. Many beauty icons that young Korean girls aspire to be like are white. Beauty icons that are of Korean descent often reach that status because they have achieved a look that is considered “Eurasian.” “While there does seem to have been a gradual increase in recent years of Korean models in domestic advertisements, these Korean models nearly all have features that have already been reconstructed to meet the prevailing standards of beauty which, if not totally white, are at least a melding of Asian and Western features, the ideal encapsulated by the increasingly popular ‘Eurasian’ look.” And, one crucial aspect of this Eurasian look is the being extremely fair.
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In today’s US culture, women are expected to be beautiful, and part of being beautiful is being thin. From media, messages and images emerge enforcing positive stereotypes of beauty and success. These images then create the idea of what a “socially ideal” body looks like, and the positive attributes associated with that body. Historically, thin has not always been “in.” For example, in the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe was a cultural icon of beauty, curves and all. However, since the 1960s, the ideal body type has become markedly slimmer and less curvaceous. Studies of Playboy centerfolds and Miss America contestants have found the women becoming markedly more slender since 1958. By the 1980s, found that visitors to Madame Tussaud’s London wax museum rated Twiggy as the most beautiful woman in the world. As the ideal body has slimmed down over the past few decades, it has moved further and further away from the average North American woman’s physical reality. This new ideal is placed before women as the mold into which their bodies should be constructed; however the reality is that the vast majority of women’s bodies will never fit this mold.

Certainly, the mass media have been implicated time and again in the formation of unrealistically thin body ideals The female body is reflected and portrayed in media as an object of desire, shown in pieces; generally, the focus on females is either on their face, or on parts of their bodies, rather than the female as a whole. The perfect body has flawless skin, a thin waist, long legs, well developed breasts and the attributes of “beauty” and “morality” has become equated with thinness. To be a good girl, one must remain thin. This pressure to remain thin is intensified by a prejudice against being fat and stereotypical “fat” qualities.
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Some members of stigmatized groups, such as Asian women, may be more likely to experience negative self-evaluations after exposure to a mainstream beauty standard than members of other stigmatized groups, such as Black women. In this study, 54 Asian women, 52 Black women, and 64 White women, were exposed to mainstream standards of beauty and compared themselves to these idealized images. It was hypothesized that although Black women would find these comparisons irrelevant, Asian women would see these targets as relevant for their comparisons, reflecting their striving for mainstream beauty standards. The results indicated that Black women did not find mainstream standards as relevant to themselves, and reported positive self-evaluations generally and about their bodies in particular. Asian women, on the other hand, responded differently than Black women and were more likely to endorse mainstream beauty standards in a similar fashion to White women. As predicted, Asian women also experienced greater dissatisfaction with their bodies than did Black women.
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