Pretty Won't Please The Patriarchy

“Men are responsible for the high female beauty standards”

It used to be “beauty is within”, now beauty is only what a man finds beautiful. Women face unremarkably high beauty standards that can only be achieved with excruciating days of shaving, tearful nights of excessive skincare, gloomy years of restricted diets, and plenty of visits to the plastic surgeon. This process of flawlessness is not only expensive, but utterly impractical. But how have men had a say in how a woman must look?

Beauty standards date back to Ancient Greece, where status was exclusively determined by physical beauty. As art popularized in Greece,and as women were predominantly the focus of portraits, artists found that certain facial features did not translate well on canvas. Causing philosophers to question what is beautiful and what is not, to which Plato- A male philosopher- introduced the Golden Proportion: “Women’s faces should be two-thirds as wide as they are long, and both sides of the visage should be perfectly symmetrical”. Greek men constructed the single idea of female beauty off of a painting. Women were now expected to behold a perfectly symmetrical appearance in and out of the canvas. Here lies our dilemma; the artists were men, the critics of the portrait were men, and the philosophers who perfected the recipe of a goddess-like woman were men too. So the beauty standard greek women had to achieve, were simply preferences of greek men.The Golden Proportion was taught from parent to daughter, and brainwashed Greek society family by family to the extent that Ancient Greek couples expecting a child would place the statue of Aphrodite and Apollo (Deities of physical appearance) in their bedroom in hopes of a beautiful child.

Body hair plays a major role in gender identity in current society, but it never used to. During the prehistoric era, rocks would be scratched against the body for hair removal. Because methods were immensely brutal, cavemen and women would not perpetually remove hair, if they did it was done as a survival tactic as opponents would grab on body hair during battle. In Ancient Egypt, smooth hairless skin represented superiority so both sexes removed hair. In Ancient Rome, both sexes removed all body hair to portray prestige. However, in World War 2 women were not allowed to wear stockings and would show their bare legs. This was never seen as an issue until Gillette released a razor for women in 1915, hair removal cream advertisements shamed women for having body hair by exclaiming it as “ugly” and “uncivilised” in bold font. Transitively, the feminist movement would make its way into fashion encouraging women to wear clothes that show more skin, instead society took this social advancement as a way to remind women that they should not be exposing body hair. The origin of this chain reaction is all thanks to Gillete, a razor company owned by King Camp Gillete… a man. He instituted the standard that women must remain hairless just to promote his product. Over the years body hair has been manipulated into a male trait, we have socially constructed hair into a gender matter as before 1915, both sexes were growing out body hair and removing body hair. Hair is of human nature, we have it as a result of evolutionary leftovers from our ancestors, and our hair grows back after removal as a result of androgen in our bodies. The outdated 20th century standard implies hair on a woman as unhygienic and atrocious but when it grows at a larger quantity and at a thicker texture on a man it is considered “manly”.Despite men having more androgen and generally being hairier than women, they spend much less than the average woman on hair removal. The average man has to spend only 179 dollars on hair removal in a year whilst the average woman spends 23,000 dollars. To be expected to have perfect hairless skin is unfair as it can grow back on the daily, and spending so much money and time on a daily basis is impractical. The standard pressures women to spend far too much on only hair removal.

Current society has appreciated and respected the vast amount of body types, however the outdated beauty standard currently alienates anyone who does not fit the desired body shape. Men have been at the forefront of all industries due to the patriarchy, providing women with a single and only ultimatum of being a housewife during the 20th century. This housewife would do nothing but serve her usual domestic duties and look pretty for the hardworking husband who deserves to be rewarded by a hot meal and sexual gratification when he returns. Until the 1930’s, it was the pretty sex symbol of a wife and the honorable powerful husband. When women could work in the 1930’s, men could still not see past the image of a woman being a sex symbol, so when curvacious beautiful women began to make their debut on television- they were not seen as female representation but instead objectified. This has only exacerbated ever since: a study done by Hoff surveyed 1000 American men. Hoff found that their description of a woman is one who is 5’5 feet, 128 pounds, and has a 26 inch waist. This barbie-like proportion is impossible to effectuate without having to undergo dangerous surgeries and diets. But the beauty standards creates a culture where women feel the necessity to relentlessly pursue a standard set and dictated by the demands of those in power. This is evident all over social media, women who do not fit this restricted category of a body type are considered unattractive and receive malicious comments. Especially on Tik Tok, where there are 2 billion users on the application, women on the application are used for target practice by other women and toxic men, discriminative and disrespectful comments are left under their posts. Which proves that the first thing women are seen as are sexual objects, if they have the slightest difference to men’s perception of a woman then they must be made aware and insecure of so. Despite the forms of misogyny through beauty standards occurring differently than it did in the 20th century, the beauty standard still perpetuates the same false message that it did before.

Beauty standards are harmful regardless of how tame they may be. When women fail to meet the standard, they receive backlash, they feel unworthy, they feel ugly. Driving them to eating disorders, self harm, substance abuse, and suicide. We can not deny their existence, because progress is addressing and understanding that women face the pressure of meeting this due to beauty standards created by men. The only way we can challenge these standards is if we dismantle the patriarchy: the carrier of misogyny.

By Yusuf Kamran 12F