Are Beauty Standards?

are beauty ideals? They are the guidelines for how people of each gender, race, sexuality and nationality are supposed to look based on the patriarchal standards set in today society and reinforced through modern institutions. Beauty ideals start with gender. In western culture young, blonde or brunette, skinny, “tan” white women are idolized, and young, extremely fit, tall, blonde or brunette, “tan” white men are idolized. So what happens if you don’t possess some or any of these characteristics? You are without the privilege of being the ideal beauty standard in the United States. You may fit these descriptions of the beauty ideal for the U.S.; however, if you are not straight or able-bodied, you lose the beauty ideal because these don 't

In example of race, If you are black, lighter skin is preferred to darker skin. Different races have different preferential beauty ideals. Beauty ideals can even pair with sexual scripts. Black women are either hyper sexualized or asexualized; they must be curvy and sexual or masculine/shapeless and asexual. Lesbian identifying people are stereotyped as having to be masculine, while gay identifying people are stereotyped as feminine. Nationality largely affects beauty ideals as well. The “ideal” Pakistani woman will dress and look much different than the “ideal” U.S.

“Institutions are social organizations that involve established patterns of behavior organized around particular purposes.” (WVFV, Page 63) When we think of institutions, we think of religion and education, but there are so many more. For instance, family is a social institution. We are born into a family whether it be biological, adopted, assumed or other forms of family. We suck from the metaphorical teat of family starting at birth and ending at death. Family provides us with food, shelter, love and comfort, but it also provides assumed identities and opinions. If a mother of a young daughter is constantly worrying about her looks or weight, this will be instilled in the daughter. Usually one of two things happens she grows up trying to be her mother or trying to be the exact opposite of her mother. When we are young, we say we will raise our kids how we wanted to be raised, but when we are older, we joke we are becoming more like our parents day by day. The family is one of, if not the most important and influential institutions we face. Education is an institution that perpetuates oppression created by the institution of family. For example, when women are made to feel secondary at home, it leaks into the classroom by girls not raising their hands until boys in the class have gave a go at the question. Women are oppressed at schools when they are told hiding their bodies’ in order to accommodate to the men in their