Benchmark Beauty

Benchmark Beauty

In Thailand, women are urged to grow up wearing countless brass rings to elongate their necks. Young Mauritanian girls are sent to “weight-gain” camps by their parents if they are anywhere near slim. Ethiopia encourages women to practice self-scarring of the body in order to appeal sexually to men in their tribes. Last year, approximately 15.6 million cosmetic surgeries were conducted in the United States alone. All of this leads me to say that beauty is a sway for women in our world. The standards enforced by society put so much pressure on womankind that we tend to take in these prototypes and push out the ideals that we should have about self-acceptance, our right to individuality, and the principle that “different

isn’t unattractive”.
It is part of the Kayan culture for women to wear rings to elongate their necks. At the age of five, a young girl is given her first long brass spiral and every year or so it gets longer. Nineteen years later, the rings on her neck weight 25 pounds. She was one of the few to escape from a violent military city to a village that ended being what she called “a human zoo”. In these villages they put these women on display that tourist pay to see. This custom was established by the men of that community who found that the longer the women’s neck was the more appealing she was.
“It is very common in all cultures for women to adapt to male preference; they found that male attention defined whether or not they were beautiful. The Mauritanian people went as far as being obese to appeal to men in their country.”¹ Parents encourage and sometimes force their children to eat up the 16,000 calories a day that is more than 10 times the intake of a healthy 12 year old girl. Regardless of government efforts, social groups, obesity awareness campaigns, the majority of the community is determined to obtain what is set as the benchmark beauty in their culture. Some went as far as consuming appetite-inducing pills. “If a Mauritanian women doesn’t have fat legs and isn’t fat, she is not a woman”²
Another major prototype that was forced on women is “perfect hair”. This dated back to 1444, when Europeans began kidnapping African people to sell them off as slaves. The women had very complex and versatile hairstyles that traditionally showed their social class and the tribe they came from. To dehumanize them and keep control, slaves were forced by their owners to shave their heads. Upon arrival to the United States, African slaves were not permitted to speak their native language or follow their own customs. Women were often raped by their “masters”, leading to them having biracial children with lighter skin and fine and curly hair.
In the 1700s, freedwomen wore their hair in eye-catching & spontaneous ways which drew a lot of attention. And so the state of Louisiana forced black women to cover their hair with fabric under the Tignon Laws. Later in the mid-1800s, the French invented the “HotComb” to remove texture and straighten black hair. Even though they were free, the psychological scars that were put on the black community still remained. Fine and curly hair continued to depict what jobs women got and what schools, churches, and social groups they could enroll into. Countless efforts were made to help blacks embrace their kinky hair, but as the hair straightener and relaxer were invented these efforts became insignificant. And still, many women of all races continue to strive for looser, straighter hair for that is what is deemed beautiful in our society.
For a very long time, African American features were not deemed appealing in the United States.

Six centuries ago, slaves with fair skin were sold at higher prices, automating that darker skin had little to no value. The setting of the novel reflects to a time when black skin was deemed inferior, therefore black people were treated as so in comparison to those of lighter skin. Segregation formed and continued to feed at the psyche that being white and having white physique is being superior. What needs to be understood is that centuries of experience amongst a community travels through generations, and each generation was aggressed and belittled and in some way convinced that they were being treated as less then human not for who they are, but what they look like. In that setting, Pecola looked at herself then looked at those being uplifted and questioned why it is that way? Then she mirrors her mother, who, herself, had already made peace with the idea that she was doomed to live in misery because she wasn’t “beautiful”. Pauline unknowingly gave her daughter the preconceived notion that in order for her to deserve happiness or to be seen as beautiful she had to be white. Pecola wanted blue eyes because she felt it would not only change the way people see her but also the way that she sees herself. This mindset was passed on through generation, consciously and subconsciously, and still plagues our community

today.
The characters in the novel “ The Bluest Eyes” are proof of what happens when one is taught not to embrace one’s self. While this book exposed society’s impact on various merits, I chose to emphasize on the effect of beauty standards on women. My decision was based on the fact that as I read the book, the theme mostly targeted the female characters. For example, Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist, is a sensitive girl who was strongly influenced by the beauty benchmark that she belived it defined self-worth. “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different.”