Beauty, especially physical beauty, is often dictated by universal standards. But the particular culture, history and social sensibilities of a community do also play a role in defining beauty. In the modern social context, the public relations industry plays an influential role in setting and imposing standards of beauty weather people agree with it or not. Hence, there is a dialectical engagement between ethno-centric sense of beauty and that offered by the consumerist model. Often, it is the financial imperatives of mass consumerism that gains the upper hand. As a consequence, ethno-cultural idea of beauty is in a process of losing its prominence. This essay will further substantiate this claim, namely, that ethnic identity mediated notions of beauty is challenged and weakened in contemporary America.
To begin with, let us take the case of the United States which has evolved as a melting pot of cultures, races and ethnicities. As a result, American society has developed the aesthetics that is based on inclusiveness as opposed to exclusiveness. While this inclusiveness is a sign of racial equality in one sense, it has less noble connotations, too. In other words, the assimilation of African Americans into mainstream culture is as much a reflection of social progress as it is a measure of commercial opportunity.
“As minority spending power and social interactions of different racial groups in America have increased over time, advertisers have increasingly been concerned with reaching minority ethnic groups through visual inclusion. With minority purchasing power increasing, this contingency could no longer be ignored by marketers. However, many companies were initially leery of offending the White majority that was their consumer base. In a 1953 study, only 0.6% of ads contained African Americans. By 1980, that frequency had increased to approximately 5.7%, indicating that the country was becoming more comfortable with the use of Blacks in advertisements.”
One of the key features of ethnic identity is skin tone. It is also a key factor in racial classification. Skin tone is not merely a statistical or academic detail in practical life. For an individual, his or her skin tone has implications in all realms of life – be it social, official or political. Skin tone is also identified as a specific variable at the root of racially related issues. Hence, while universality of beauty is a laudable idea, the flip side of it is discouraging. For example, researchers have correlated skin tone with “feelings of self worth, attractiveness, self control, satisfaction, and with quality of life.” The theory of ‘colorism’ is of salience here, which states that people of lighter-skin tone (across ethnicities) are given privilege over dark-skinned members of the same community. The interesting finding here is the applicability of this concept across and between ethnic groups. For example,
“African American’s tend to feel more favorable towards Black models with a lighter skin tone. This phenomenon is not exclusive to African Americans because colorism is concerned with actual skin tone, as opposed to racial or ethnic identity. Research done by Shyon Baumann (2008) has shown that people within our culture, regardless of race, have a set of ideals about how people should ideally look, including judgments regarding skin color. Lightness and darkness of skin tone have specific meanings attached to them and we subconsciously relate those meanings to those we encounter.”
The statistical veracity of the theory of colorism is a setback to ethnically identified notions of beauty. It is a serious dent to the preservation of authenticity and nativity in an atmosphere saturated with uniformity and conformity. There are qualifications to the theory of colorism though for people with strong ethnic identification feel more affinity towards a model which resembles their own features. Likewise, black consumers generally respond well to advertisements featuring black models compared to models of other ethnicities. What is important from a sociological viewpoint is the fact that “one’s level of ethnic identity may dictate his/her preference for and judgments about their group. In terms of skin color, this stream of research suggests that Blacks who identify strongly with their ethnicity will feel more positively towards darker models than will Blacks who identify less with their ethnicity.”
A study of Chinese American women born and brought up in the Chinatowns of major cities in the United States offers key insights into the topic. The annual Miss Chinatown USA Beauty Pageant event is well-attended by the community. The competition seeks to find “the most beautiful Chinese girl with the right proportion of beauty, personality and talent.” As one winner of the competition explained, the pageant was not as much as beauty contest as it is ‘a matter of ethnic representation.’ Hence, beauty, in an ethnic context, can be a force of solidarity and an expression of collective pride. Ever since the success of the first edition of Miss Chinatown U.S.A., the beauty pageant had become an integral part of the Chinese New Year celebrations in the country. As one organizer of the event elaborated, the celebrations would have no focus otherwise:
“no pageant, no coronation ball, no Miss Chinatown float for the annual parade, and no fashion show. These Chinese New Year events draw hundreds of thousands of tourists into San Francisco’s Chinatown, serving the dual purposes of educating the public about Chinese American culture and attracting business for Chinatown merchants.”
What is noteworthy about Miss Chinatown USA contest is its unique expression of ethnic pride. Whereas ethnic beauty is largely studied today in the context of targeting a particular niche market, Miss Chinatown USA has fought this tendency and has served to promote tourism and celebrating Chinese culture. Due to the reach and importance of the event, it is interesting to analyze it as a way of gaining insights into
“Chinese American efforts to construct both gender and ethnic identity during the post-World-War-II era. In defining the ideal woman to represent Chinatown, pageant organizers responded to developing cultural, economic, and political tensions within the Chinese American community and the broader American society. In turn, these efforts to represent Chinese American womanhood generated a variety of responses, which reflected community conflicts surrounding not only gender roles and ethnic identity but also class divisions and international politics.”
What is evident with respect to Miss Chinatown USA pageant is its role in creating constructive dialogue among members of the community. It has aided intellectual discourse concerning Chinese ethnicity and culture in the American context. On the flip side, critics pointed to how the event is clinging steadfast to an anachronistic and exotic idea of beauty that is of little practical relevance. There were Marxist criticisms of the pageant as well, as it was seen as promoting elitist perspectives of physical beauty, which most of the working class women of Chinatowns could not aspire to. But in the final analysis, the community is better as a result of the event, for it has at least opened up dialogue on key topics concerning the community. It has also clearly demonstrated that there is no consensus on the topic of ethnic identity defined idea of beauty.
It is interesting to study how ethnic identity affects the idea of beauty cross-culturally from the Arab American experience. Suheir Hammad, an Arab-American scholar, has written an interesting book about cultural aesthetics titled Drops of This Story. Hair and nose were chosen as motifs throughout the book for conveying cultural sensibilities. Hammad has had a share of problems in growing up. An area of conflict with her conservative minded father is her tendency to wear her hair fashionably and attractively. But eventually she is forced to reduce her hair to abide by her father’s dictate. Her father would scold her by saying that loose hair meant a ‘loose woman’ – an understanding that is lost to modern Western women. But such were the social norms of previous generation of Arabs. Talking about the caustic nature of her father’s putdowns, Hammad recounts,
“They (her father’s harsh criticisms) forced me to think about my own journey with my hair and, by extension, my ethnic identity and how it is shaped by aesthetics. At this point, my hair has been fried, dyed, laid to the side and chopped up. Until the time I started college, it was long – very long. The first time it was even cut, I was nearly 10 years old, and that was just for a trim. But it wasn’t just the fact that my hair was long, oppressive and certainly a pain on hot summer days that bothered me. It was the fact that I wasn’t allowed to cut it by my father’s edict…It was a form of control: he wanted to tell me what to do with every aspect of my life.”
Hence, it is also possible that what constitutes as cultural markers of beauty, may be no more that forms of parental or paternal control. This view is validated by the fact that one of the first actions performed by Suheir upon entering college (which was away from home), was to cut it in half – “When I went away to college, my father could no longer control virtually every aspect of my life, so off the hair went. It was symbolic of a new sort of freedom, or so I like to think.”
That culturally defined notions of aesthetic are on shaky ground is attested by recent trends in cosmetic surgery. Once a preserve of Caucasian Americans, recent years has seen more and more blacks go under the knife. To an extent, popular TV shows such as Fox’s The Swan and ABC’s Extreme Makeover have shaped this trend. The influence of these shows is such that many Americans no longer think twice before visiting a plastic surgeon. Even blacks have joined the bandwagon, whereby they get “nipped, tucked, injected, peeled, plumped and plucked in an effort to preserve their youth, turn back the clock or change the face and body that time, gravity and genetics have seemingly abandoned.” To illustrate, in the year 2002 alone, there were “375,025 Black cosmetic surgery patients, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the largest plastic surgery organization in the world. Last year, that number jumped to 487,887–an increase of about 30 percent. They were among the more than 8.7 million Americans who reportedly had cosmetic procedures last year.”
Interestingly, the fastest growing market is that of black men. Black men, who had traditionally endorsed a carefree and macho approach to their looks are now undergoing a transition in attitude. So cosmetic surgery is no longer a secret affair not to be discussed openly for fear of ridicule or censure. It is spoken about freely among black families and friends. Previously, black Americans feared cosmetic enhancement for fear of coming out looking ‘too White’ or ‘too Caucasian’. There was also the issue of ethnic fidelity and pride. Elder members of the community felt that the surgical option is a symbolic rejection of one’s original ethnic identity. While this sentiment is still in currency, attitudes are slowly but surely changing, much to the prosperity of the $8.4 billion strong cosmetic surgery industry.
Hence, what we witness from the Chinese, Arab and Black American experience of recent decades is the serious threat to ethnically understood standards of beauty. Even worse, the rampant advertising and campaigning on part of cosmetic surgeons has created a feeling of inferiority among people from minority communities. So much so that people from Asia and the Global South are made to feel “aesthetically and even biologically inferior to white females”. In the postmodern, postcolonial, progressive of today, skin color continues to remain a privilege or burden depending on what its tone is. In this superficial milieu a fake tan scores higher than an authentic brown skin. Then there are “those flat noses, or big fleshy ones; thick lips (considered gorgeous on Scarlett Johansson but not on Whoopi Goldberg); short necks and legs; apple and plum shapes. What a lot of uglies we are, so far removed from the perfect womanhood of Charlize Theron and Helen Mirren.”
It is high time that men and women paused and thought critically about what is sweeping aside their traditional understanding of beauty. If they devote some time to critical thinking, they will realize that their changes in aesthetic sensibilities are more a function of money-muscled marketing campaigns and low self-esteem than any real substance. Once they realize the absurdity and superficiality of pop cultural currents, they will gain moral strength to appreciate time-tested and socio-historically informed idea of beauty – something which is more enduring and meaningful than consumerist fads.
Bibliography
• Alibhai-Brown, Yasmin. “Why Does Self-Hatred Afflict So Many Non-White People?” The Independent (London, England), November 2, 2009. Print.
• Davis, Kimberly. “Why More Blacks Are Choosing Plastic Surgery.” Ebony, August 2004, 100+. Print.
• Meyers, Yuvay Jeanine. “Skin Tone as the Signifier of Race: The Effect of Consumer Ethnic Identity on Targeted Marketing.” Academy of Marketing Studies Journal 15, no. S2 (2011): 77+. Print.
• Wu, Judy Tzu-Chun. “”Loveliest Daughter of Our Ancient Cathay!”: Representations of Ethnic and Gender Identity in the Miss Chinatown U.S.A. Beauty Pageant.” Journal of Social History 31, no. 1 (1997): 5+. Print.
• Zohny, Josephine. “Sometimes, I Straighten: My Journey with My Hair Has Shown Me How Much Ethnic Identity Is Entangled in Aesthetics.” Colorlines Magazine, Winter 2005, 5+. Print.