Essay on Feminine Beauty

There is a cliché quote that people say, “Beauty is in the eye of beholder.” But in the essay “The Ugly Truth About Beauty” (1998) Dave Barry argues about how women who spend countless hours on their so called “beauty” whereas men seem not to care. Barry uses juxtaposition and exaggeration to poke fun at men and women behavior and shed light on the harm that the beauty industry is doing. When Barry argues his point of his essay he addresses both genders, but more specifically teenage to middle age men and women, but he writes about it in a humorous and light-hearted manner.

“The woman who does not require validation from anyone is the most feared individual on the planet” (Mohadesa Najumi). Essentially, femininity is the art of being a woman. Through fashion in the 1920’s, a new kind of femininity blossomed enthralling both men and women. As illustrated during the Jazz Age, a wave of women rejected the damsel in distress outlook and began channeling their inner Femme Fatale.

Society has created the stereotype that women are petite and dainty. “No Name Woman” emphasizes this expectation by elaborating on the extremes that women go to look beautiful. The author comments on the techniques used to pluck eyebrows saying “It especially hurt at the temples, but my mother said that we were lucky we didn’t have to have our feet bound” (Kingston 196). The expectations that society has for women to look beautiful are unfair because men put little effort into their appearance. In general, a woman with flawless appearance is favored over a woman that shows her natural

Throughout history, beauty standards have been enforced on females. They are taught what the ideal beauty is by the media and current culture of that time. Society creates certain expectations that require women to look a certain way to be beautiful and if not they are considered ugly. They change their appearances in order to conform to the established beauty standard and often lose a part of their identity in the process. In Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, she captures the struggle young girls and women face to meet the expectations that popular culture has on the ideal beauty in the early 1940s.

Prior to Betty Friedan’s, The Feminine Mystique, a fulfilling life for a woman consisted of a clean home, many children, a happy husband, and lots and lots of PTA meetings. Multiple media outlets portrayed the ideal life of a woman starting with magazines consisting of beauty tips, ways to keep the husband happy, and all things motherly. In essence, throughout the 1950’s women were force fed information on how they should live their life according to what was “feminine” and what was not. Friedan recognized the yearning for something hidden deep inside fellow women and conducted many surveys on the true wants and desires of women, and this will prove to be the basis of The Feminine Mystique, and Friedan will forever be credited for giving a name to the problem that did not have one (Divine 885). After Friedan’s novel was published, many laws and changes

Every women can find something wrong with her body. Women try to change, fix, or hide what they do not like about themselves. Women express what they love about their bodies as well. Therefore the roaring twenties ideal of beauty and fashion are similar to today’s society by what women do to their bodies. According to Alan Brinkley, one of the things women did in the twenties to enhance their beauty was wear make-up. Make-up is still a big thing for women in today’s society. Another aspect women changed about themselves is their hair style. In the nineteen-twenties, women “had their hair bobbed” (Zeitz). Bobbed hair was their new style, and it made a statement for their era. Women were taking control of their beauty. In today’s society, women take control of their beauty by dying, cutting, or simply straightening or curling their hair. For women the ideals of beauty were as important in the roaring twenties as it is today. Women will do what they can to make themselves beautiful and

Consumerism played a major part in the new era and was especially targeted towards women. A women’s role was now to play the perfect housewife and please their husbands, meaning they were also expected to look, dress and act in a certain way. Hollywood stars played a large role in the images reflected for women and an air of glamour was largely desired by every women. A new silhouette was formed for women, it included a thin waist, wide hips and a larger, cone shaped bust.

Throughout history, we see many variations in what is depicted to as the “ideal” body type for women. Historical evidence in literature and art shows that in early centuries, desirable women had voluptuous and rounded figures. In Ancient Greece 500-300 B.C., women were considered “disfigured” versions of men; as shown in sculptures and classical paintings, they were light skin, plump and full-bodied (Dovas, 2015). In the Italian Renaissance 1400-1700, we see fair-skinned women with ample bosoms, rounded bellies, and full hips. In his poem, Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare describes Venus, the Roman goddess, “My beauty as the spring doth yearly grow; My flesh is soft and plump, my marrow burning”. In Victorian England 1837-1901, women were also full-figured, desirably plump and compressed their torso with corsets to achieve a well-formed shape (Dovas, 2015). From her novel Little Women published in 1868, Louisa May Alcott described a character Margaret, “Margaret, the eldest of the four, was sixteen and very pretty, being plump and fair, with large eyes, plenty of soft brown hair, a sweet mouth, and white hands, of which she was rather vain.” These historical examples show that plump women were considered beautiful and attractive. The thin

Society has always been preoccupied with defining the “ideal woman”. Numerous artists from varies time periods have all had their go at trying to depict the perfect woman. Prior to the 20th century, curvy and voluptuous women were considered ideally beautiful. They used the term “rubenesque” to describe such women. Artists like Peter Paul Rubens, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, were famous for their illustrations of “rubenesque" women. Curviness was a desirable attribute for quite a while. The most iconic female figure of the early 60’s was Marilyn Monroe. The curvy blonde was the pinnacle of attractiveness back then and still remains one of the most beautiful women in American history. Although the beauty standards might have been different, women were still just as sexualized and pressurized as they are now. For example, pin-up girls, who were famous models or actresses whose photos were mass-produced, were under immense pressure to attain “perfection”. Their photos were highly retouched and stylized mostly by male artists who eventually create an unattainable human form. The ideal female form might have been heavier back then but it was just a scrutinized and retouched as it is now. Ironically, these years also saw society shaming

These changes of the 1920s have led fashion in modern time away from the classic conservative look to the more common risqué look. The hairstyle changes, newly founded makeup and clothing changes led women throughout time to take on freedom in their look. Women took these postwar styles and used them as a way to express their own freedoms and have control over how they looked and acted. The women of the 1920s have forever changed fashion and women’s

“The rejection of the small, thin, and retiring female image came at a time when women were, in every way, becoming more visible.” The Gilded age was a time when larger women were seen as more attractive. However with photography becoming popular and women who wished to embrace curves would utilize padding, cosmetics, fake hair and even

Professor of American history from the University of Pennsylvania explores the marketing of American cosmetics abroad and the influence of Western, “modern” ideals on the women of these cultures. She uses the Afghanistan War as a starting point to relate the importing process of American beauty idols and images across the Atlantic and into foreign land. The author reflects on the now hyper sexualized images that are imported now almost without thought across global markets.Overall, the paper examines the export of American beauty ideals through politics and war time media.

Think about what you consider to be beautiful. The majority of people will say something along the lines of a good personality is attractive. Every person that says this is lying to some degree. Our primordial nature as a species causes us to be predisposed to judge others based on their appearance. This was developed as a survival tactic in order to choose the best mate who would be most likely to ensure the survival of the species. Today being beautiful means being thin, feminine, and curvy. To be beautiful means to wear makeup, but not too much, and to have high cheekbones and sparkling eyes. To be beautiful means to have straight, white teeth and a proud smile. But how can our society expect to find a smile on the face of someone who is constantly bombarded with images of photoshopped, unrealistic beauty? The amount of compiled research on women who are found to have low self-esteem is massive, and yet we still continue to wonder “why?”. As a culture we turn a blind eye to the fact that the expectations of beauty and feminism that are enforced on the female mind daily are mentally harmful. The constant pressure to think, act, and look a certain way is reason enough to know why women struggle with self-esteem, depression, and eating disorders, among many other things as a result. The constant bombardment of society’s standards of beauty on women is negatively affecting the mental well being of the female population in the United States.

In today’s society we are more concerned about how we look and how people perceive us, rather than the true issues that are happening at that moment. We pay more attention to the standards of “perfect”, which unknowingly creates insecurities on us and starts to consume us and control our lives. In society’s standards, the image of a “perfect” and or “beautiful” woman is someone who has soft flowy hair, long legs, and most importantly, is skinny. Therefore, whenever someone looks at a magazine while they are in the checkout line at the grocery store, the woman presented has most of those traits. After a while, we become so accustomed to what the women look like on the magazines that they do not draw us in anymore and it starts to become easy to look past them. They all start to look the same and it literally becomes boring. We want diversity; women of all shapes and sizes, races, ethnicities, and styles. We want to showcase women with the intention of celebrating them and their uniqueness.

Though war contributed to changes in society, the media was the driving factor behind changes including the fixation with beauty among women. Magazines had the ability to perpetuate the already emerging ideals. The idea of self-improvement became a very popular topic in the 1920s seen across all women’s magazines, contributing to the progression from the middle class women to the New Woman. This “New Woman” was one of beauty and fun with “admiration and lasting popularity” as stated in International Women’s News magazine, promoting fragrances that made such claims. The emergence of products and methods to attain the arising beauty standards fared well in combination with advertising that enforced fears and vanity associated with such.