The Beauty Cult

What is beauty?

I mean, really, what on earth is beauty? And what are the ways in which we define it? And why do we define it as such?

Well, let’s start by breaking down the basics of beauty.

First, the dictionary definition:

Beauty (noun) : the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind.

So, something that gives pleasure or satisfaction to someone. OK, great. So that could mean any number of things, ranging from “sensory manifestations” and a “meaningful design or pattern” to something else, like a personality.

Now what do you think of when you think of beauty?

Does anyone immediately think of a beautiful woman?

What does the woman look like?

Is she young or old?

What color is her skin?

Is she thin or large or somewhere in between?

If you open any glossy magazine or look on billboards advertising various products, you’ll likely see a woman there to help sell it.

And she’ll likely be a thin, straight, young, and conventionally attractive white woman. Or if she’s not, she’ll (generally) be advertising something to help you be more like this fantasy, ‘ideal’ woman.

I recently poured over such magazines like Vogue and Glamour for an assignment in my Women’s Studies class and I found some interesting things.

The first thing I noticed was that a large majority of the ads featured young women and only a handful included women above the age of 40. And on top of that, the ads that featured older women, were only advertising products to de-age them.

Feminist filmmaker Jean Kilbourne says in her documentary Killing Us Softly that there is this “fear of aging” (Kilbourne) that starts in the beauty industry, and filters its way out into our society and culture. Catchphrases like “youth activating serum”, “outsmart aging”, and “make wrinkles look so last week” all encourage this notion that old is ugly and that to be beautiful, you must be young and if you’re not young, you must do everything you can to maintain the look of youth. It also assumes that of course you want everyone to think you’re beautiful! Because what would you be worth if you weren’t attractive?

Another thing that’s interesting about these ads is that of all the advertisements I saw, only a few of them featured celebrity women, like the ones above with Nicole Kidman and Kate Winslet. Both women are incredibly accomplished in their industry and are both Academy Award-winning actresses and here we see them, campaigning to look younger. They both have amazing careers and wonderful families, so what more could they want? Oh, no that’s right, they can’t yet be fulfilled in life until they are also ‘beautiful’ and ‘perfect’, and, young apparently.

There were also advertisements encouraging women to lose weight, from a drugs and diets, to a “lifestyle change” weight loss program. The first one, with the younger women, says “Ultra You”, as if you somehow aren’t fully yourself if you have excess body fat. The model is also looking tantalizingly at the camera and inviting the viewer to look at her new, sexy body, now that she has “validation” that she loves how she looks (thin). The second one features an older women, but my problem with this one is how it says it is a “whoa-my-beach-vacay-is-just- around-the-corner [weight loss] program”. It asks if your reason [for losing weight] is “a trip to the beach”, “doctor’s orders” or “stubborn baby weight”. Interesting how they combine a woman feeling inadequate and self-conscious about the way she looks in a bathing suit with an actual, doctor-reviewed issue that could cause serious health problems and put those two on the same level of importance (or what should be important). Furthermore, the fact that they mention the beach thing first and the woman in the picture is holding up a bathing suit bottom with an expression of disgust and surprise on her face, indicated that they want us to think the bathing suit issue is the most important one.

Size inclusivity was the section I found hardest in which to find any representations. As I said before, an overwhelming majority of all the models were very thin and were generally slim of figure. The exception would generally be as in the above right picture, which shows a woman who is not of this body type. However, the advertisement she is in is explicitly to be thinner. An active encouragement of losing weight to really ‘become yourself’ can be found in many weight loss program advertisements, that are also, for the most part, the only representations of women who do not fit the very rigid body standard of our media.

I did find though, much to my surprise and delight, one advertisement for clothing that featured a girl who was not extraordinarily thin. She looks like a normal person- like someone you might encounter on the street. This representation of real women and what they really look like is welcoming as a breath of fresh air in an industry that generally only values one specific body type.

The ads for clothing made up the bulk of content in Vogue, and there was a lot to go through. I was noticing that I kept seeing these female models propped in these precarious ways and as Kilbourne says it, their body language was “passive and vulnerable”. There was one of Gigi Hadid lying on the beach on her back with her legs open, her head back, and her eyes closed in a completely submissive and helpless position. Tell me, would you ever see a male model in this pose?

In one for Valentino, we see an inverted picture of a woman lying on her back on what looks to be the ground with her eyes lidded and her hand up by her face, possibly as if to block the camera. When I first saw this picture, I thought it was cool, but as I started to look at it more, I thought that if I didn’t know this was a professional model doing a shoot, this could very well be a picture taken of a possibly drugged or intoxicated women helplessly lying on the ground (possibly about to be assaulted?) and I became disgusted with this photo. I’ll ask you this again, can you picture a man in this pose?

This other, very weird picture for Neiman Marcus features a woman in heels on her back, precariously lying on the edge of a very tall building, and we can see the (obviously photoshopped) ground some hundreds of feet beneath her. This ad is so weird. Why does she look like she’s about to fall of the side of the building? Why does she need to look like she’s in danger? But then, I guess she probably just wants to be saved, right? That’s why she’s looking at the camera like that. She desires you, the viewer, and she wants you to watch her.

Amongst all these images perpetuating a very narrow definition of women and feminity, we can also see certain brands who are doing their part to branch out and make their own collections more inclusive and body-positive. One of my favorite clothing companies to shop at is Aerie, which takes large measures to include models in their advertisements of all different body types, races, statures, etc. and makes them one of the most inclusive clothing brands currently operating. They feature models with physical disabilities, down syndrome, skin ‘imperfections’ like vitiligo and cellulite, and who are just normal, curvy (and, might I add, beautiful) women. These images of these real-looking women who are smiling and laughing and who genuinely look happy are a welcome breath of fresh air away from ads like Victoria’s Secret, Brandy Melville, and Urban Outfitters whose clothes generally only fit one body type and whose models always look like they’re trying to seduce the viewer.

Going hand-in-hand with these advertisements that feature women in submissive poses is this fascination with voyeurism, very much in particular with women. Voyeurism, or the practice of gaining sexual pleasure from watching others, is an extremely common theme in media, pop culture, and advertisements. In the documentary Dreamworlds 3:Desire, Sex, & Power in Music Video, filmmaker Sut Jhally focuses on the emphasis of the male adolescent pornographic imagination in music videos and the dangerous messages that sends people watching it. For boys, it tells them that they are allowed to and should treat women as objects and detracts from thinking of women as humans. For girls, it teaches them that it’s okay and it’s important for them to be presented as sexual beings, and only that.

Now, on the other side, these sorts of advertisements are art. Fashion, modeling, design are all experimented with to create something new. And of course, art is subjective, and there is always so much room for exploration and interpretation, and that’s what’s so cool about art. The trouble is, as art is subjective, so is beauty. And when these advertisements and ‘art’ are presented on the bodies of women, it creates a discourse on what feminine beauty is. And this discourse is generally very strict (i.e. the young, thin, white woman is the ‘perfect’ woman; women should care the most about what they look like). When the discourse is so rigid, things that fall outside of it or when someone does not align with it, they immediately become an outsider to the norms of beauty.

        This is especially detrimental to the psyches of impressionable, young minds (in both boys and girls) who are trying to find their place in this world. As I said before, in Jhally’s documentary on these ‘Dreamworlds’ in music videos, there are so many messages that are sent out through social media, music videos, video games, movies, television, etc. that all help perpetuate these ideas of what it means to be feminine and masculine.

        And, what it means to be beautiful.

However, this beauty standards are being recognized and people have begun to tear them down. Aerie, the clothing brand I mentioned earlier, abandoned Photoshop in 2014, and have since seen a skyrocket in sales while Victoria’s Secret, whose body-positivity campaign (“Perfect Body”) came under fire when it featured ten models who literally all had the same body type, has been suffering a hit in sales in the past few years. People are making their voices be heard, especially on social media, where clothing and underwear brands are called into question over the actual inclusivity of their products. Celebrities like Kate Winslet, Zendaya, Demi Lovato, and Jameela Jamil have been very outspoken about the harmful messages these images can send.

And it’s working; at least, to some extent. Aerie and other brands like Adore Me, Modcloth, and ASOS are changing the fashion industry, and maybe in doing so, can also change this culture of beauty that has for so long surrounded only the young, thin, and white. Maybe these little changes that these brands are making are the first steps that need to be taken so that we can someday live in a world in which everyone is beautiful.

        Beauty (noun): the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind.

Works Cited

Jhally, Sut, director. Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex, & Power in Music Video. 2007. Kanopy.

Killoy, Andrew, et al., directors. Killing Us Softly- Advertising’s Image of Women. Media Education Foundation, 2010. Kanopy, chapman.kanopy.com/video/killing-us-softly.

King, Elizabeth. “A Look Back at the Sexist, Racist History of Beauty Pageants.” Racked, Racked, 7 Mar. 2016, http://www.racked.com/2016/3/7/11157032/beauty-pageant-history.

LastWeekTonight, director. Miss America Pageant: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO). YouTube, YouTube, 21 Sept. 2014, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDPCmmZifE8.

LastWeekTonight, director. Sex Education: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO). YouTube, YouTube, 9 Aug. 2015, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0jQz6jqQS0&t=1043s.

“No More Miss America!” New York Free Press, 1968.

Paul, Sonia. “Bikinis and TED Talks: Can This All-Asian Competition Truly Disrupt Beauty Pageants?” Wired, Conde Nast, 21 Aug. 2018, http://www.wired.com/story/miss-asian-global-ted-talks-disrupt-beauty-pageants/.

Schlossberg, Mallory. “Victoria’s Secret Is Ignoring a Massive Shift in the Lingerie Industry, and It Could Be Costing It Tons of Money.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 23 July 2016, http://www.businessinsider.com/victorias-secrets-marketing-strategy-2016-7.

Torgovnick May, Kate. “6 TED Talks on Beauty.” TED Blog, TED Conferences, 30 Oct. 2014, blog.ted.com/6-talks-on-beauty/.

Valenti, Jessica. “Beauty Cult.” Full Frontal Feminism: a Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters, by Jessica Valenti, Seal Press, 2007, pp. 197–212.

Vietnam, Brands. Dove – Evolution Commercial. YouTube, YouTube, 8 Mar. 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN2yunRynks.

Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women. Vintage Classic, 2015.