In this consumerist society, our hopes and aspirations are mediated by unobtainable ideals from all directions. The insatiable desire for the latest gadget or fashion is forever unfulfilled because something new is always around the corner. The dreams of wealth and fame force-fed to us by Hollywood will never be realised no matter how much we wish for it. We will never live up to the impossible ideals of beauty personified by music videos and Supermodels. The lucky few, those beautiful, wealthy, famous people are held up, sycophantically worshipped as proof of the quintessential capitalist ideal that anyone can make it. But it’s all an illusion. Famous people long for normality. Billionaires obsess about how to make even more money. Even Supermodels have their pictures airbrushed and undergo cosmetic surgery. If the poster men and women of these ideals can’t live up to them then what chance have us mere mortals?
These false ideals affect us all in myriad ways, with greater impact on some than others. However, there is no question that the beauty ideal affects women more than men. I often hear the argument that in our ‘civilized’ Western Society sexism, for the most part, has been consigned to the dust-bin of history. Feminism is as much a dirty word amongst young aspirational women as it is for chauvinistic old men. But the asymmetric pressure on men and women with regards to their looks is just one striking example of how patriarchy is still alive and well. Patriarchy is not merely men being sexist towards women; it is an inherent feature of capitalism. It is systemic, operating from top to bottom, and as such, is internalised by women, many of whom unconsciously (re)produce it on a daily basis through their choices, discourse and consumptive habits.
We are constantly defining and redefining ourselves in relation to the media we consume, the music we like, the clothes we wear etc. This identity formation is an ongoing process which starts during childhood, we learn about who we are heavily configured around the social constructs of race, sexuality, gender and class. The first point of reference is usually our parents who implicitly teach us about gender roles, inform our racial identification and shape the aspirations which will come to define our class. Increasingly though, it is the media that plays a pivotal role in our identity formation, especially during our teenage years. It is also this demographic who are most aggressively marketed to, creating a dangerous cocktail of identity-seeking teens and image-laden media. Sex is used to sell products to teenage boys, supermodels are plastered across glossy magazines and air-brushed pop-stars dance semi-naked in music videos. All of these things combine to influence the identity and self-image of young women. Naturally, many aspire to live up to these warped ideals of beauty which are harvested purely for the profit of multiple industries from media outlets and cosmetics corporations all the way to companies selling sofas.
This ideal of beauty is not only sexist; it is also classist and racist. Even non-white models conform to a “white” notion of beauty; their skin is doctored so as to appear lighter, Caucasian facial features are favoured, straight hair is the norm and of course they are extremely skinny whilst often having (unnaturally) voluptuous features. The supermodel image is also about being affluent and so is classist in this sense. This creates compounded pressure on non-white, poor females wishing to conform to the image of beauty. The models themselves rely on professional make-up artists, routine air-brushing of images and often cosmetic surgery to live up to the standards set by society. And it’s no longer just teenagers feeling the pressure; recent studies have shown girls as young as six are concerned about their body image and consistently wish to be thinner. At the other end of the spectrum mums and even grandmothers calorie-count and fixate themselves on living up to our warped notion of beauty. When even their mothers and grandmothers are perpetuating these ideals in concert with the media, what chance do young females have of maintaining a healthy self-image?
It is of little surprise then that much of the Western world is in the midst of an epidemic of eating disorders. Records seem to be smashed year on year as levels of obesity and anorexia spiral out of control. Both are partly the product of not being able to live up to such warped standards of beauty. It is our responsibility as a society to teach young women that it is both normal and acceptable not to look like a supermodel. We have to reveal the unobtainable ideal of beauty for what it is: an illusion which is cultivated for profit. We must cast aside the homogenous ideal of beauty which is skinny, affluent and euro-centric and celebrate the beauty of diversity.
