Globalization in the Beauty Industry: The Western Influence on the Perception of Beauty

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My mother didn’t let me wear makeup. No matter how many times I wrote “blue eye shadow” on my Christmas wish list, no matter how many “pretty pleases” I could say before I needed to take a gasp of air, no matter how much I begged and pleaded, she just wouldn’t budge on the issue. Granted I was eight at the time and I probably would have used that eye shadow once and then immediately forgot about it, but it still hurt knowing I wouldn’t be able to look like the beautiful models in my Mother’s latest issue of InStyle.
What my innocent little heart didn’t know though, is that not even makeup can make a person look like those women. Those women don’t even look like those women. This fantasy that I had built up in my eight-year-old head about magically turning into a perfect, airbrushed version of myself was not a realistic one. As it turns out, the figures in those magazines are not beautiful people; they are normal, ordinary human beings that were morphed into Western culture’s idea of beauty through the able abilities of Photoshop and makeup. How Westerners generally visualize beauty is simple to describe: narrow waist, large breasts, tanned skin free of blemishes, defined cheekbones, and an overall hourglass figure. Now that I am older and have experience with using beauty products, I know that this perception of beauty is still lusted after by almost all women.
Is that true, though? Do all women, regardless of where they are in the world, really idolize the same physical ideals? The answer is no. Beauty is a concept as diverse as you can get, and all cultures around the world have a unique definition of the word. Cross-cultural research done on the topic revealed that there are “no universal standards for beauty other than clea...

... middle of paper ...

...Women From Different Ethnic
Groups. International Journal of Cosmetic Science. 28(6): 427-437.
Frazier, Christopher
2006 Dynamic Beauty: Cultural Influences and Changing Perceptions-Becoming
Prettier or Erasing One’s Own Culture? Hohonu: A Journal of Academic
Writing. 4(1):5-7.
Hamed, Saja H, Reema Tayyem, Nisreen Niber, and Hatima S. AlKhatib.
2010. Skin-lightening Practice Among Women Living in Jordan: Prevalence,
Determinants, and User’s Awareness. International Journal of
Dermatology. 49(4): 414-420.
Jones, Geoffrey
2008 Blonde and blue-eyed globalizing beauty, c.1945- c.1980.
Economic History Review 61(1):125-154.
Jones, Geoffrey
2010 Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Miller, Laura
2006 Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics.
Berkeley: University of California Press.

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