The Fashion Industry and Its Unrealistic Beauty Standards

The Fashion Industry and Its Unrealistic Beauty Standards
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The fashion industry, and by extension, the media is often criticised for promoting unrealistic beauty standards. To what extent do you think this criticism is justified?
The Fashion Industry and Its Unrealistic Beauty Standards
The stereotypes of beauty are based on Western beauty standards, and the western feminine aesthetics are tall and thin body archetypes with smooth and silky hair. The slender body type is shown as the ideal, and the fashion industry focuses more on the female body than the male body. Male models are mostly shown as ripped and chiselled. While there has been more focus on representing different body types and inclusivity showing women from different ethnic backgrounds, the idea of beauty is still Eurocentric in the fashion industry. Additionally, the catwalks and the media still amplify the message that a "size zero" is the perfect body size for girls and women. The body size, height, weight, eye colour, hair colour, and skin colour are some of the elements to which it is considered in beauty standards. The thin-ideal body type among girls and women is the most common in the fashion industry. The fashion industry, advertising, and the media still emphasize photographic retouching and unrealistic beauty standards where the image of extremely slender women is naturally unattainable.
The fashion industry influences beauty standards and advertising, where there is an overrepresentation of being beautiful—slender, tall, and without marks. In addition, there are gender stereotypes closely associated with beauty standards. It is no surprise that girls feel pressure to represent certain appearances based on beauty ideals and the gender stereotypes reflected in advertising. In any case, the fashion industry's beauty standards are reinforced through advertising and may cause girls and women who are different from the ideal beauty standards to have low self-esteem. The fashion and advertising industry have influenced people to hold unhealthy ideas on beauty.
The fashion industry is one of the main channels through which perception of beauty standards is modified. In the past few years, there has been a greater willingness to open diversity in the fashion industry and promote inclusion. This extends to defining beauty and the ideal body associated with gender. Physical beauty is one of the main features when identifying the lead models, and the photography focuses on the "ideal" slender bodies (MacCallum and Widdows, 2018, p. 236). However, the industry is pushing unrealistic beauty standards promoting the models and advertising clothes that are the best fit for the few very slim women. Since the industry shapes attitudes and options on beauty, when people internalize unrealistic beauty standards, they are more likely to perceive these images as the ideal reflection of beauty. Still, these bodies are unachievable for most people.
Beauty is subjective, but the fashion industry sets the standards of "ideal" beauty, and the advertising industry has aesthetic standards of beauty. The fashion and media industries standardize and impose models of beauty, where the fashion models are expected to meet high standards of perfection (Mills et al., 2017, p. 147). In the digital era, where it is easier to disseminate information on standardized ideal beauty, those who face difficulties find their unique voices and be represented. Yet, each society has had its own beauty models, and attitudes on who is considered beautiful change over time. However, the fashion industry has normalized the unrealistic beauty standards that young people, in particular, are under pressure to conform to the beauty standards.
The beauty industry tends to categorise bodies that do not fall with the ideal body archetype as unprofessional, and this normalizes the skin body type among women. Yet, what is depicted as the "normal" body size simply represents slender idealizations, and this accounts for only a small proportion of women with these body types. There are created unattainable fantasies around unrealistic body proportions, yet curvy women are healthier than some slender and slim fashion models that starve themselves and eat unhealthy foods. At the same time, there is the objectification and hypersexualisation of women while they are overly scrutinized and watched (Guizzo, F. and Cadinu, 2017, p. 182). The ideal standard of beauty is applied to women of colour and their traits are wrongly assumed to represent what is unhealthy considered.
In a more open world, where there is a focus on inclusivity, there ought to be a representation of more actresses and models of sizes and shapes as it is common in the real world. However, in actuality, this is not the case. The ideal body type is the most visible in the media and fashion industry. Consequently, women who are not tall and slender are underrepresented and sometimes not recognized. There are new standards of beauty in the fashion world that are more inclusive and appeal to individual beauty, including different perceptions of beauty based on gender, skin colour, identity, age, physical condition, height, and weight. Yet, despite the new concept highlighting that everyone fits in her unique way, the dominant beauty standards are still unrealistic and even unachievable for most people.
There is an obsession with straight hair in the fashion industry, which excludes people of African descent. Fashion magazines mostly focus on the white target market and rarely have advice. While they rarely have articles with advice for women of colour on hairstyles and grooming, this is especially for black women. Western beauty standards for girls and women are pressured to strive for unattainable body ideals representing Western beauty standards, including being slender, fair-skinned, and having straight hair. Those who keep their natural hair are at times harshly judged where there is pressure on black women to have straight hair and conform to the ideal beauty standards.
The fashion industry influences expectations about certain physical features and looks into ways to reinforce unrealistic beauty standards. Everyone deserves bodily autonomy without being harshly judged, fetishized, or ostracized because they do not follow the Eurocentric standards of beauty. Yet, conventional modelling agencies often focus on constantly searching for pe...