Download 3rd draft-beauty standards

Alexandria Jones
Dempster
UNIV 200
5 April 2016
Happiness and Beauty Standards
Walt Whitman once wrote, “A morning-glory at my window satisfies me
more than the metaphysics of books.” One can gather that Whitman values the
importance of the ‘little things’ more than the flashiness that other aspects of life can
bring; moreover, it is proposed that Whitman would agree that not much is required
for one to feel satisfaction, and in turn, happiness. However, society has created
standards of beauty that tend to bring unhappiness instead of satisfaction to people,
so that begs the question of how beauty standards affect the way that people live
and the difficulties they may encounter as a result. I wanted to explore this thought
in relation to people from different countries to study the differences that may be
encountered when discussing beauty standards, as they are certainly not the same
everywhere; furthermore, beauty standards vary from country to country, as well as
the levels of happiness encountered by world citizens as a result.
Dissatisfaction often leads to change. In South Korea getting plastic surgery is
seen as something normal to do when people find dissatisfaction in the way they
look; moreover, this brews a culture of accepted superficiality in order to achieve
happiness. The beauty practice spans across age groups and is carried out by both
men and women, surprisingly only becoming popularized and accepted within the
last ten years, according to author Joyce Nishioka of the publication Asianweek. The
relatively recent emergence of the trend can be attributed to the integration of
Korea into the Western world, the impact of the media altering traditional views
when it came to appearance (Nishioka). Dr. Charles Sun-Chull Lee reveals that “the
classic” plastic surgery procedure among Koreans is the cosmetic eyelid surgery, it
“estimated that 40 percent of the women [from the Asian population] undergo
eyelid reshaping, usually to create a crease above the eye that makes it look bigger”
(Nishioka). With plastic surgery being such a large phenomenon in South Korea, it
can create large amounts of pressure on people who live there to also alter their
features in order to have “idol-like” features and to appear more attractive to others,
some going as far to reason that South Koreans are seeking out Western features
(“South Korea’s Growing Obsession with Cosmetic Surgery”). For example, 19-yearold Christina Lim, who spoke with ABC News correspondent Juju Chang before
undergoing plastic surgery, explained to the reporter the normalcy of the procedure.
She stated how sometimes after going on vacation, her friends would return with a
new face and that that was a normal thing in South Korea; moreover, Lim described
that she received hate comments after appearing on Korean television as a
translator, people bluntly commenting on her figure, which made her feel the need
to take action (“South Korea’s Growing Obsession with Cosmetic Surgery”). This
shows the negative influence that plastic surgery can have on self-esteem and one’s
feeling of connectedness, which can be taken away completely with the ostracism
that can come from a culture so welcoming of plastic surgery.
On the other hand, Nishioka writes about Dr. Charles Sun-Chull Lee, a plastic
surgeon of Honolulu, who brings up the contending point that "the biggest
misconception is that Asians want to look Caucasian” and are unhappy about the
features they were born with (Nishioka). According to Nishioka, “it is estimated that
half of all Asian women are born with double eyelids and others develop them as
they age”, which means that the procedure for attaining double eyelids is not as
needed as one may have thought (Nishioka). The reasoning that Dr. Lee provides is
that plenty of clients simply want "to look like their friends [with double eyelids]”,
showing how plastic surgery can actually lead to a feeling of connectedness and
benefit an individual who feels different from others. While the negative effects that
plastic surgery can possibly have are much more evident, there still exist positives
to a country that values beauty in this way.
However, not all people value these “traditional” standards of beauty, as seen
in the small rural towns of Mauritania, where the longstanding practice of forcibly
fattening young girls continues to thrive. As Claire Soares, a correspondent of the
Christian Science Monitor, writes, she compares this process of weight gain to food,
writing how “the French word [gavage] describes the process of fattening up geese
to produce foie gras”; furthermore, the institutionalized process of force-feeding
girls to become large, plump women can by association be visualized as something
daunting and somewhat inhumane (Soares 1). This sentiment can also be backed by
the fact that the practice is somewhat dying out. Pascale Harter, who has served as a
news correspondent for the BBC in Morocco with an extensive knowledge of African
culture, mentions in her article, “Mauritania’s ‘wife-fattening’ farm,” a girl named
Leila, one force-fed herself as a girl, who says, “that's not how people think now,” in
reference to the traditional ideal of fatness as beauty (Harter). She goes on to say
that, “traditionally a fat wife was a symbol of wealth. Now we've got another vision,
another criteria for beauty”, which presents the reader with the idea that major
ideological changes have taken place in Mauritania; more people view force-feeding
as unhealthy and unnecessary to be beautiful (Harter). This in relation to happiness
can also mean that women no longer need to be fat to be happy in Mauritania; they
do not have to play the role as the ‘fat wife’ to achieve high self-worth in their minds.
However, the fact still remains that this practice continues to persist today in
the smaller areas of Mauritania left untouched by outside ideas where tradition
prevails, and in these areas, there is no negative connotation to being overweight. In
these areas, women love their “fatness” and couldn’t imagine another way of living;
moreover, they find great joy in their bodies, happy that they could achieve what
their mothers and grandmothers told them is the most beautiful a woman could be.
Fatematou, a large older woman who continues the practice of force-feeding by
running a “fat-farm”, notes the aspect of fattening the young girls that pertains to
their futures as wives when she states, “They are proud and show off their good size
to make men dribble. Don't you think that's good?” (Harter). Fatematou relays the
love she has for the girls she helps to fatten by continuing to carry on the tradition,
knowing that in the end they will feel so much happiness for a body they will grow
to adore. As these girls get older they feel happy with their obesity and use it to get
men. They flaunt the size of their bodies proudly, while western society places value
on thinness, and even though the government in recent years has been cracking
down on the practice, girls still find ways to self-fatten, “[taking] pills, some of them
ones you usually give to an animal” (Soares). All in all, with the roots that forcibly
fattening girls has in wealth and high class, those women who grow up in the
tradition, for the most part see their weight as a positive rather than a negative;
moreover, the happiness attained from their weight gain outweighs the risks that
come with their beauty goals. In Mauritania, tradition has not lost its effect, despite
its obscureness to people outside the country’s borders.
In India, one beauty standard appears to outweigh the rest. The desire for
fair skin has long existed in the country, people scouring the shelves for beauty
products like Fair & Lovely and homemade specialties claiming to lighten one’s
pigment. Gawle Rupa of India Abroad shares a personal anecdote of time spent with
her family as a young girl in India, citing how “[her] grandmother used to often say…
“Don't go out in the sun. You'll get dark”” (Rupa). This shows the older generation’s
impact on the way that the youth were conditioned to believe in a certain ideal, one
that is for most still unattainable by nature. What this beauty ideal shows, leads one
to infer a dissatisfaction in self-image; moreover,
It seems that the merge of beauty and health in many of these situations has
negative results, and this sentiment is continued in the United States where the
world of science clashes with personal health and beauty with the development of
Botox. “[The] product of a highly toxic microorganism, Clostridium botulinum”,
Botox,