Is the Media Expanding our Perceptions of Beauty Beyond A Caucasian Standard?

Beauty
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Beauty
Is the Media Expanding our Perceptions of Beauty Beyond A Caucasian Standard?
The word ‘beauty’ is least understood, misused and poorly defined. Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder is a common phrase that asserts that there is no universal definition of beauty. Though, in my opinion the phrase is wrong and deceitful. Perception is key in defining beauty and what lies in the eyes of the beholder is ‘perception of beauty.’ Everyone has a different perception of beauty depending on personal preferences, social, cultural and demographic factors that have forged a mental picture of what they perceive as beautiful or not. These perceptions are derived mostly from visual experiences that continually create a non-existent definition of beauty. In a society more interconnected than ever before, we often find ourselves overwhelmed by our diversity as a people. We tend to drop our tastes, likes, dislikes and perception of beauty and adopt new ideas. The media has become ‘beauty authority’ which propagates the ‘standard’ definition of beauty. This has increasingly influenced the perception of people of what they consider as beautiful and in the recent past most people have gone to extremes in an attempt to measure up to the ideals of beauty depicted by the media. The media has successfully managed to propagate these ‘standards’ of beauty to advance their personal interest or of the privileged few who seek to exploit the people to their own advantage. Unfortunately, the media portrayal or coverage of beauty has been biased often promoting Caucasian beauty standards. Caucasian beauty standards have dominated the media and seeks to inculcate their standards as the ideals of beauty while demonizing other racial beauty standards. Thus, this article seeks to show how the media is expanding the Caucasian beauty standards to influence our perception of beauty.
Most advertisements which run on all forms of media have been partial to advance the Caucasian beauty standard. The developers of these ads often find and feature slim female Caucasian models with the aim of attracting more viewers but unknowingly to them, they often are promoting or upholding the Caucasian beauty standard. Objectifying the Caucasian race is an asset to the advertising industry. This is primarily because they have been dominant in the media industry and their presence has come with various stereotypes and fallacies that are exploited by the advertising industry for their own advantage. Caucasian has been branded to be superior to other races by the media and inculcated the idea to objectify them for their selfish gains. Some elements of beauty appear to be universal, symmetry and unblemished skin (O’ Connor, p. 294). Every race is beautiful in its own way and promoting a specific idealism promoting a single race is wrong. The other races have fallen for this trick and they have unconsciously been promoting the Caucasian standards of beauty while quashing their own. Coupling feminism and Caucasian beauty standards has been a driver in the advertising industry and it has become a dominant feature in any form of visual media consumption. Some people are deceived to believe even these ultra-perfected appearance of the Caucasian look is normal. “It’s kind of a race issue and definitely and explosive issue for some, but it doesn’t indicate self-hatred” (295). The author understandably asserts that blepharoplasty is a race issue that affects those that do not have the 'standard' look. The assertion is not meant to demean any race but to encourage them to understand that the physicality of races is normal. The author acknowledges that the issue is perceived differently by different people and it shouldn’t create controversy as it does not indicate self-hatred. Rather, it should be perceived as a normal activity that some people do to change their looks and not necessarily to show how they hate themselves. The combination of Caucasian and feminism with a touch of editing and modification has become an asset to the industry and has been infused directly or indirectly to promote sales. Some people have become obsessed by these definitions of beauty and sought to invest in modifying their looks to have the Caucasian look.
Currently, beauty has been reduced and made to echo the opinions of only a few people. It is not a secret that people are made to believe that anything beautiful has to be white or at least possess the features reminiscent to being white. When one closely analyzes a majority of television shows and the rate at which young g...