Ethnocentrism In Beauty

Ethnocentrism is the belief in the superiority of one’s own group. It’s a universal habit that ethnocentric individuals tend to compare and judge other cultural practices to be inferior. Ethnocentrism encourages the solidarity in groups; it creates the feeling of belonging and drives the individuals to build pride in the group. However, ethnocentrism hinders the understanding of the cooperation with other groups. With the sense of superiority, there is little incentive to interact with the inferior groups. While making generalization about the culture and customs of others, ethnocentric individuals aren’t being aware that they tend to make false assumptions regarding the cultural differences. Furthermore, extreme ethnocentrism is likely to

With the rise of colonial expansion and imperialism, Europeans were inspired by their encounters with both culturally and physically different people to categorize them; thus leading to the creation of race. While the construction of race started off as harmless, it has been used to in the defense of cultural erasure and the oppression of Non-White racial groups. Today, the aftereffects of colonialism, slavery, and imperialism are still felt with increasing racial tension, the perpetuation of racial stereotypes, and the existence of Eurocentric beauty standards: a concept where people with commonly white features (thin lips, narrow nose, light hair, etc.) are exalted and those who do not adhere to these beauty standards are marginalized. Although

As I was reading The Beauty Bias, by Deborah L. Rhodes, I came across a statistic that perplexed me, saying the total “annual global investment in grooming” comes to $115 billion (Rhodes, pg. 32). This shocking fact provokes a worrisome question: Why do we, humans, spend so much time, money, and thought on our appearance? As a complex question, there are several equally complex answers. However, the simple answer is that everyone else invests their time and thought into your outer shell, eliciting effort from you to improve what they study - your external image. The concern placed on one’s fashion choice or natural features by society takes away from larger, more pressing issues such as the declining economy, or feeding third-world countries.

However, the contrasting racial ideas of beauty are more than passive recepticals of societal change. Changing ideals of beauty are an effective method of social commentary and often change the values of society itself. Beyond being analytical antitheses of each other, the African-American and Caucasian-American ideals of beauty actively challenged the other throughout American history. Culturally, African-American ideals of beauty were often demonized by the white population who felt the ideas of Christian Europe were superior to the rich and diverse African culture. In retaliation, black artists and poets often marginalized the portrayal of white Americans and emphasized the eternal beauty of African-American ideals. In addition, white women often adopted African-American hair styles and physical traits of beauty, while black women changed their hair and clothing styles to gain acceptance from Caucasian-American society and change how African-Americans were perceived in Caucasian-American art. Even idealistically, the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s was the culmination of African American pride and ideas into a movement to revolutionize the standard American idea of

An example of ethnocentrism I experienced was when my cousin made a comment on Muslim women, saying why they just couldn’t take off their hijabs and look like everyone else. I thought that was a pretty inappropriate

This week we learned so many different terms related to culture. We talked about Enculturation, Acculturation & Ethnocentrism and so many others. What I find most interesting and true to many people is Ethnocentrism. It believes that our own culture is correct and that all others are wrong (Chaney & Martin, 2014). For instance, I find vegemite in crackers for breakfast is weird or bread as Australian table food is unacceptable for an Asian like me who loves rice for lunch and dinner is an example of ethnocentrism. Thinking that we are more superior than the other culture creates wrong assumptions about others behaviors.

African American artist Margaret Burroughs wrote, “What shall I tell my dear ones fruit of my womb, of how beautiful they are where everywhere they are faced with abhorrence of everything that is black…what shall I tell my dear ones raised in a white world?” (“What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black” 1). This is a prime example of the Eurocentric standards that permeate throughout daily life and into the homes of women and children, victims of a society in which lighter skin is prettier skin. Although geographic-specific standards of beauty remain in some remote communities such as tribes in Africa or South America, the standard of beauty worldwide is, regrettably, Eurocentric, with little regard to originality, demonstrated through the beauty industry, skin tone preferences, and psychological problems in women of color.

Fair skin, long hair, light colored eyes, and thin bodies, all categories under the European ideal of beauty. While women who have these features are, of course, beautiful, the media and modeling industry have molded these ideals into the ultimate standard to compare the beauty of millions of women across the world. Whether consumers are flipping through channels on TV or pages of a magazine, European beauty standards are emulated in the actors and models the media cast, and with the rise of social media, these ideals have only become more prevalent. The use of these standards may seem harmless; however, Eurocentric beauty ideals have had devastating effects on both the women who do and do not fit within Eurocentric beauty standards.

As a consequence of history and European standards of beauty upheld in society black women are conditioned to loathe attributes “distinctive to their race” which, therefore, leads to low self-esteem. Black women today have a plethora of advertisements thrown at them that white-wash, body shame, and encourage them to assimilate to European standards of beauty for example straightening their hair which ultimately alters a woman’s outlook on self.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is a phrase commonly used in today 's society to make a politically correct assessment of our judgement of beauty. The popularity of this quote has helped convinced the general public that it is an universally truthful statement. This statement suggests that, the perception of beauty is based on an individuals subjective judgement rather than an any empirical justifications. If the majority of the worlds population believes this statement to be true, then why is beauty treated as if it is universal? When we analyze beauty campaigns, it is evident that major corporations are capitalizing on the predominate Euro American standard of beauty. Ad after Ad our minds are bombarded with notions of a hierarchical beauty standard. These ads function as representations of societies cultural values and thus help promote an unattainable standard beauty. This prompts the question of why does our theorization of aesthetic judgement not coordinate with how an individual makes judgements on beauty in the real world? One notion is that society has adopted the theory of eighteenth century philosopher Immanuel Kant 's judgement of taste. In Kant 's book Critique of the Power of Judgement he lays the foundations for the belief that our judgement of beauty has both subjective and objective properties. He supports his theory by claiming that our judgement of beauty is dependent on four main factors quality, necessity, universality, and purposiveness. In

Ethnocentrism is the belief that your own culture or ethnic group is superior to all others and that you have it “figured out”. All cultural groups are ethnocentric to a point, but it takes a great amount of cultural change and political leadership to realize when things aren’t working within a society. Islam has

“Your outer beauty will capture the eyes; your inner beauty will capture the heart.” Said by Steven Aitcheson. I believe that hair and beauty is related to cultural identity. Many People can be handsome and beautiful in their own little way. Being beautiful doesn’t mean to be beautiful from the outside only, but it also means to be beautiful from the inside. Your beauty is being who you are inside and out.

I don’t think there’s a solution for this problem because it is mostly depend on the individual and their background. I won’t lie, sometimes I judge people by their culture not because of hatred but I think appearances matters today. For example, when we see fashionable people we tend to say they are rich or they come from the higher class in the community and vice versa. Sometimes we falsely assume about cultural differences. When people judge someone based on their culture, they are missing a whole aspect of their life that might be even better than the judger. In my point of view, there’s nothing called less ethnocentrism, because you eventually are judging people upon their race, culture, and

A concept that has helped me to understand the social world is ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is defined as the attitude that one 's own culture is the best and others are inferior. On the micro level, it is now clear to me that I have demonstrated ethnocentrism in my dealings with individuals and this might account for some of the problems that have come about in individual friendships. On the macro level, ethnocentrism has helped me to understand why world peace is so elusive.

To start off, it is very known that Asian countries have very high standards when it comes to physical beauty since it’s been part of their cultural history as well. Asian beauty standards are described to have milky white skin, large bubbly eyes, small face, and having a slim body. Such descriptions are also mainly influenced by western Caucasian beauty for many decades. Often times, Asian women even go as far as to go under the knife and buy cosmetic products to whiten their skin, change their eye color and facial features. Such praised standard has come to the point that individuals believe that being white is the key to success and having dark skin its bashed and harshly criticized. This way of thinking and beliefs have had absolute numbers of backlash for portraying such racist remarks towards dark skin not only by individuals but also on advertisements and different types of media. According to Wilfred Chan, a Thai advertisement about skin whitening pills that portray a message that “Just being white you will win”, received many negative comments about the racial message that was portraying (Chan, 2016, YouTube). Because of advertisements and harsh mentalities like these, racism still continues to be a huge issue in our world that can not only prevent us to come together as a society but also can hurt an individual. It has evolved from a harmless cultural standard to a harsh way to say dark skin is not beautiful.