Beauty distorted? Examining shifting perceptions of beauty

Kgalalelo Morwe takes us through different perceptions of beauty across the world.

Is our perception of beauty distorted? Often you hear people say beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, beauty is only skin deep. Beauty takes many forms. Beauty lies inside a person. To what extent is this all true?  The degree to which women and even men go to look beautiful is very appalling. Beauty is no longer about women. Yes ladies, it is not only us but men too have gone to the extreme of going under the knife just to look handsome and some to look young. What does beauty mean? What makes someone beautiful? Is it the clothes they wear or is beauty within?

Media have also done their bit to circulate images of what is beauty. Media tend to valorise the conventional ideas of what it means to be beautiful. The globalisation of cultural products has not only promoted a homogenized view of beauty but has projected Western images of how women and men should look. If you do not subscribe to these constructed images of beauty, then you are not beautiful. The so-called ‘ideal’ women and men can be seen on billboards, cover of glossy magazines, advertisements – the list goes on.

It is very rare to page through a magazine and find a person who is ugly or who does not embrace the certain features required for one to be on the glossy pages. High cheekbones, tall, perfect size 2 or 4, flawless skin, pretty eyes, sharp nose, super white teeth, and of course a beautiful smile – with these features you cannot go wrong. One cannot page through a magazine and see a woman with crocket teeth. That will be the worst crime ever committed against beauty. The beauty product company Dove has been carrying out a campaign in which they challenge these ideals: the ‘real beauty’ campaign. Dove billboards can be seen to have women of all shapes and sizes.

I say beauty is a social construct. The society that we live in today has a set of ideas that define how a beautiful woman should look. These ideas are often used as yardsticks of beauty. A typical African woman, for example, should be one who has ‘African’ features with well-defined curves, a well protruding behind and God knows what else.

Pure Magazine looked at the issue of what exactly beauty is and what different regions across the world define as beauty. What they discovered was that most women are willing to do just about anything and I MEAN ANYTHING to be seen as beautiful. For example, the Maori in New Zealand believe women are beautiful only when they tattoo their lips blue and tattoo their chins. While in Ethiopia, women are forced from a very young age to agree to their elders to cut their stomachs in order to make scars, also called scarification. The more scars a woman has, the more beautiful she is, it is believed. Once she has the correct amount of scars, she is able to marry and have children. The scarring is therefore not only a beauty routine but a rite of passage to womanhood.

In Japan, women really value having radiant, soft, white, porcelain skin and a slim face. By eating food containing collagen some Japanese women believe that their skin will become as smooth as velvet. To top it all, they have invented a device generally known as the ‘face belt’ which is a face-slimming contraption designed to make their faces more proportionate. Talk about facelifts!

“Kill me, but make me beautiful”, one Iranian proverb goes. ”The beautiful face soothes the tired heart and opens the closed door”, goes another. In Iran, women are beautiful if they have small noses. There have apparently been more nose jobs in Iran recently than in any other country in the world. Burma is also not immune to these beauty escapades. Women are seen as beautiful when they have elongated necks. The assumption behind all this is that the more rings a woman can fit on her neck, the more beautiful she becomes.

In Mauritania, a woman is considered beautiful if she is plump. The bigger you are, the better. And the better the prospects of you getting married. Even in Mauritania’s more progressive cities, some women are prepared to do anything for a fuller figure, including buying black-market drugs meant for animals. Chunky ankles, chubby arms and a big butt are considered the most beautiful parts of a woman. This is however different in Paris where if your slim, you are fit to be called sexy. Most clothing shops only carry up to a size 12.

They concentrate on being sexy, having a well-rounded behind and large breasts. “They are the largest diet pill consumers in the world”. Take a guess…Yes it is none other than Brazil. Can you believe it? In Brazil, a woman is considered overweight if she is above 120 pounds.

Zooming in on Africa, the Sara Kaba of the Central African Republic put plates in the lips of their women. The idea is that the larger the plate, the more beautiful you are. This beauty regimen is carried out on young girls – usually between the ages 6 and 8 years old – by their future husbands (usually a young man of 13-17 years old).

In my opinion, with regard to the lengths that women go to in order to look beautiful, China is the most despicable of all. Foot binding was considered as an aesthetic used by many women in China. The smaller your feet, the more beautiful you are. This act is practiced from early childhood in order to stop them from developing. Many Chinese women are either crippled, sick or have died as a result of this deed.

If that is what it takes to be beautiful than being beautiful is not worth it. Let us know what you consider beautiful!

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