Research Paper

Submitted By Katie-Betterton
Words: 1604
Pages: 7

What Is Beautiful?

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Katie Betterton
Mr. Halter
What Is Beautiful
November 5 2014
What Is Beautiful?
Imagine a world where makeup did not exist, and no matter your size you were treated the same, not looked down on or felt bad for. Imagine if clothes did not have anything to do with status, and we only wanted to stay thin to be healthy. What if people fell in love with people for their inside beauty only? Girls would not go to such extremes to meet these beauty standards.
They would not think that self worth had to do with being beautiful and that a life without beauty is a life without fun.
A life like this will never happen, and that is nobody's fault. People are attracted to each other for biological reasons. For instance, symmetry plays a big role in making someone attractive. It shows that there were good conditions in the womb and no dangerous environmental stimuli. A face is like a health certificate. Also, estrogen and testosterone play role too. A woman's face is said to have a lot of estrogen when her eyebrows are high, and her lips are big, like Angelina Jolie. A sign of testosterone in men is a big jaw, and cheekbone prominence, like
Channing Tatum (Penton, Voak, Ian, and David I Perrett). Though there are biological reasons for attraction, many people in America today are affected by such high beauty standards created by cosmetic ads, modeling agencies, fairy tales, Barbies, and Americas need to be "perfect".

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Throughout history, beauty standards have changed. Surprisingly, a bigger, pale woman was preferred in the 1600s (news.discovery.com). Being bigger showed that they had enough power and money to have plenty of food, while today, it is the opposite. Being thin shows the person has self control, is ambitious, and has enough money to buy healthy food and has the leisure time to work out for two hours a day (Coping). In the 1800s, less focus was given to the body and an emphasis was put on facial features. Makeup was only worn by prostitutes and actresses on stage. They wore corsets to show a slender waist but still appreciated a bigger bust and thighs. In 1920, they started liking a more boyish figure instead of a frail one. Woman were sort of rebelling at the time and liked to cut their hair short.
For the first time, in the 1940s, tanned skin became associated with the upper class, and in the 1950s, the ideal woman was a domesticated homemaker who still managed to look glamorous without a hair out of place. A bigger figure was accepted. In fact, Marilyn Monroe would be considered a plus sized model today. People became more judging of a bigger body after twiggy, a very slim model became popular in the 1960s. A well kept hairdo and cat eyes were still popular then, but hippies began to ditch the cosmetics and had a wild, unkept look.
In the 1980s, a strong, athletic, and tan body was popular, and even worse, in the 1990s,
Kate Moss encouraged the look of being extremely skinny. Many models took after her.
(UKhairdressers.com). However, society is starting to appreciate a more curvy body thanks to icons such as Beyoncé and Kim Kardashian (ideabite.com).
As technology advances and creating a perfect body on Photoshop becomes easier, the standards of beauty are almost unreal today. A lot of models have or have had eating disorders.
How is that beautiful? Models are made to look like twelve year olds with breasts and makeup. If

What Is Beautiful?

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something is not good enough, they can just fix it with photoshop. They do not eat, do not work, do not have kids, spend tons of money on their looks, and even then any imperfections are fixed with Photoshop (ideabite.com). Can we compete with that?
The main offender of photoshopping is cosmetic ads. It is as if they are saying buy this and you will look perfect like our photoshopped model, and it works. Woman spend tons of money trying to look good. Looking a certain way to gain self worth has been ingrained in women's heads ever since