...with a quick scroll down, there is an image of Misty Copeland standing on her toes yet still surrounded by images of white women on their toes. The image of a ballerina is steeped in centuries long ideas about what it means to be beautiful and who is able to be worthy of being beautiful. Due to this historical inequality and unequal opportunities, black dancers have been prevented from pursuing training and performance opportunities in dance. Institutionalized racism exists in the dance world due to a Eurocentric standard of beauty and dance which gives unequal attention and advantage to dancers based on their race. To start with, there is a Eurocentric ideal of beauty in the dance world that prohibits black dancers from accessing the same opportunities as their white counterparts. In her Op-Ed, Theresa Ruth Howard summarizes the image of the ballerina by writing that “The ‘ballerina’ represents the unattainable ideal of woman: the chaste, fragile beauty,...
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...JoAnn Ross Mr. Shaw Sociology 11 March 2014 The Origin of the Beauty Myth The origin of the beauty myth is an age old question. Some have said that it was around the 1830’s that this myth came to fruition. Some will argue that it has been around since the beginning of time. The beauty myth as we know is predicate around several sociological behaviors; work, culture, and religion to name a few. The main reason as we will see is that the beauty myth is not about how a woman looks, but man’ institution and power. So if the beauty myth is not based on evolution, sex, gender, aesthetics or God on what is it based? It claims to be about intimacy and sex and life a celebration of women. It is actually composed of emotion distance, politics, finance and sexual repression. The beauty myth tells a story: The quality called “beauty” objectively and universally exists. Women must want to embody it and men must want to possess women who embody it. This embodiment is an imperative for women and not for men, which situation is necessary and natural because it is biological, sexual, and evolutionary: Strong men battle for beautiful women, and beautiful women are more reproductively successful. Women’s beauty must correlate to their fertility, and since this system is based on sexual selection, it is inevitable and Changeless. None of this is true. “Beauty” is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West...
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...S******* Engl 1201 – 17 Chapter Four Paper October 11, 2013 Beauty Lies Within The Eyes Of The Beholder The year is now 2010 and as we enter this new decade, we encounter so many new trends, fashion and styles. No matter what your budget might be, it seems like everyone has the same goal in mind. They want to be beautiful and look “beautiful.” Grace Suh’s essay, “Eye of the Beholder,” details her struggle as a Korean girl to conform to a Western ideal of beauty. After her makeover, Suh felt negated and also felt like a stranger was staring back at her when she looked at herself in the mirror. Finally, she realizes that she was content with the way she naturally looked, which causes her to leave the makeup behind her on the commuter train. To me, beauty is not only something that pleases the eyes, but also pleases the other senses and the mind. I think true beauty makes you see beyond the lovely sight. It will give you insight or realization of something interesting beyond just the outward appearance. Think about the word beautiful for a moment, when we talk about beauty in people, we often refer to their physical attractiveness. Of course, a beautiful or handsome face is pleasant to look at. But I find that the most memorable "beautiful people" are the ones who have captivating personalities behind the beautiful faces. In my high school graduating class, there were two girls whose beauty just stood out among the rest, Chelsea and Tressa. Both had almost...
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...It seems humans are programmed with their own unique beauty detectors. Across cultures, there are variations of aesthetic preferences shaped by thousands of years of evolutionary standards, and now – in this modern age where technological advances influenced social ideals such as the mainstream media’s portrayal of physical beauty, it caused some of us to be subliminally fooled into copying unrealistic beauty standards of Photoshop and one of the solutions towards that insane goal of perfection is by using a wide selection of trendy makeups. We hear a lot of stories out there that tell women don’t really need makeup to look beautiful and it’s okay to have blackheads, acne and other image issues. Meanwhile, there are those girls who have a...
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...comes from, what motivates our feelings of affection for someone else. Specifically, it's about finding love in spite of (or maybe even because of) physical flaws. Appearances "Appearances" is a major theme in Sonnet 130, since our speaker spends a lot of the poem talking about what's wrong with his mistress's looks. He does a pretty complete dissection of her face, her body, and her smell. He doesn't say anything at all about her personality, but instead sticks to his laundry list of problems with her appearance. This gives Shakespeare a chance to poke fun at our obsession with looks and to show how ridiculous it is to ask any person to live up to some ideal of perfect beauty. Women and Femininity In Sonnet 130, the theme "Women and Femininity" is connected to the idea of appearances. This poem is all about female beauty and our expectations and stereotypes about the way women ought to look. You know how in magazines women pretty much tend to look the same? They all fit into a very narrow definition of what is beautiful. Essentially, the speaker in this poem is pointing out that love poetry does the same thing. It makes women into goddesses, not real human beings. He insists that his idea of beautiful femininity doesn't depend on fitting an abstract, unrealistic fantasy. Essay on theme of love in Sonnet 130 First of all I will be talking about William Shakespere’s Sonnet 130. Now this poem has a rather odd element to the other poems. Some may say this is romantic but...
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...Alicia A. Smith October 29, 2014 Eng.4705/Essay #2 Beauty Complex The word beauty has many negative connotations for African American women. Over the years African American women have been subjected, misrepresented and also dehumanized by the exemplification of beauty and identity. This pattern of internalizing the perception of beauty to coincide with European standards have caused many African American women in the process to alter their physical appearances and personify a culture that has disregarded the uniqueness of being “ black and beautiful”. The cultural aesthetics of being “black and beautiful” has been distorted in literature, movies and television shows to appease an acceptable standard of beauty that in reality is unrealistic....
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...Running head: RACIALIZED REPRESENTATIONS OF FEMALE BEAUTY 1 Racialized Representations of Female Beauty in Popular Culture (Name) University of New Mexico RACIALIZED REPRESENTATIONS OF FEMALE BEAUTY Racialized Representations of Female Beauty in Popular Culture 2 For the past 22 years People magazine has composed a list of the 50 most beautiful people. The list typically includes movie and television stars, musicians, British royalty, models, and television personalities. Every year the magazine crowns the year’s “most beautiful” and features them on the cover. Of the 22 most beautiful 19 have been women and out of the 19 women 16 have been White. This signals to People’s readers that beautiful means White and everything else does not equate beauty. However, this is not unique to People or even magazines like it, but instead represents a larger trend that is present in all forms of Western popular culture. In the various mediums of popular culture, ideologies about female beauty are exceedingly prevalent and constantly managed and reproduced. These ideologies carry with them the notion that in order to obtain ideal female beauty one must be very thin, young, have long hair, and wear expensive or revealing clothing (Stern, 2004). In addition to this there is also a raced definition of beauty, which predominates Western popular culture and dictates that White women with light hair and eye color can only attain true beauty. By looking closely at fashion magazines, television...
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...from all his canvasses,” clearly shows the obsession that this artist has for the woman’s face that he continues to recreate in all of his portraits. He has such a strong obsession for this woman’s likeness, that he paints her face over and over again. Even though her character takes on various female forms as he paints them, the fact remains that the same features can be seen throughout his works of art. As he paints the Queen and the Saint, his obsession leads him to produce the same qualities within the facial structure. The woman was given many different forms, but her beauty on his canvasses always remained the same. Christina Rossetti says it best when she writes, “The same one meaning, neither more or less.” Her appearance, her face in particular, never changes and never appears older even if her figure changes, “One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans.” He is obsessed with her beauty and her face. The image of the artist “feeding upon her face by day and night,” also shows how obsessive and how much of a perfectionist he is. I view his obsession for this perfect face to be something that is possibly missing in his life, and her image on the canvas is providing him with whatever it appears to be. Again, his appetite for her face, fills him up every time he looks at her. He is so obsessed with the way she looks that when he isn’t drawing her face and trying to perfect her appearance, he gazes at her during the day and he dreams about her every night. He dreams...
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...In today’s social world there is a lot happening. It’s a busy world, with all this social influence there is a lot to take in, especially when it comes to the media’s influence in beauty. Most people think that they can decide what to take in from it all. Like all they have to do is to just say yes or no, like whether or not to buy something off a commercial. However, there is countless evidence that shows that it’s not that easy. Today’s media is influencing people’s perception of beauty without even realizing it. The way people are seeing themselves and others is being negatively impacted by media from media’s “ideal body image.” Thanks to the constant exposure everyday throughout our lives from early is radiating on people making them...
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...experience like no other. Vivere A jewel in southern Metro Manila, Vivere Hotel in Alabang is a towering 31-storey five star deluxe hotel. Featuring 200 elegantly appointed rooms and suites each with interiors that reverberates the beauty of the local culture, the hotel provides business facilities and recreational amenities for both business and leisure travelers. Make the most out of your stay as we invite you to re-kindle your love for sumptuous home cooking as we prepare all the elements for a great get together with family & friends amidst the scenic view of Laguna de Bay and the Metropolis. Crimson Discover true elegance at the new Crimson Hotel Filinvest City, Manila. We will create for you an atmosphere of tranquility, subdued elegance and new expression of cosmopolitan life at its finest in the vibrant and green Filinvest City. Crimson Hotel Filinvest City, Manila, is your urban sanctuary housed in the most stunning tower complex ever to grace the metropolis. Our iconic architecture in the heart of the cosmopolitan city of Alabang, Muntinlupa makes us a landmark hotel in Southern Metro Manila. We offer savvy business and leisure travelers alike with an elegant lifestyle of live-work-shop-play seamlessly. Our hub location is an ideal venue for...
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...The standards of beauty incessantly change decade after decade. Today, society portrays beauty as having flawless skin, long hair and exquisite tans. Women try to mirror this “ideal” image of beauty by using tanning beds, hair extensions and pounds of expensive makeup. However, in the Elizabethan era, being beautiful was declared as having distinct pale skin, bright eyes, colorful lips and cheeks and hair in a mesmeric up do. Having a colorless tint of the skin was said to show nobility and power. The more pale a person’s skin was, the more accepted they were in the Elizabethan society. Women often functioned behind the scenes of their husbands. They were urged to be obedient and virginal. Women were often accessories to the men in every aspect...
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...Perfection is the ultimate addiction, in the eyes of the media. Body image is a problem that women and even men have been struggling with for as long as the media has been around. The media constantly puts pressure on young men and women brainwashing them into thinking that the ideal body image for women is small and slim and the ideal image for men is muscular. The media uses interesting standards to define beauty. There are different aspects to beauty that a lot of times, the media does not exhibit. For instance true beauty comes through dignity and character, not necessarily through how a person looks. Nevertheless, there is no denying that ads do affect some of us. Women and young girls all around the world are suffering from eating disorders because they are dying to have the perfect bodies, like supermodels. Flip through a few pages of a magazine and you will surly come across seductive looking models. Turning on your television you can find shows that gladly promote skinny people. Music videos are filled with scandalous women dancing seductively. There is no denying that the media does not promote healthy, realistic physical role models for young men and women. " Perfection- It's classified in medical journals as the extreme need to be more perfect than is humanly possible. My perfection resulted in a four-decades- long struggle for sanity, starting with my childhood and zooming in on my long nights and days of model-mania". ( Janis Dickinson ) Perception...
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...How do religious/social norms impact the definition of beauty? The common saying that, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” may hold steadfast to those who believe in a lie, as stated on in Katz example of the blind date. Today people may say they believe that saying; in actuality, physical appearance effects beauty’s perception. Religious norms cause people to perceive another’s opinion of beauty as altered because their definition of beauty is different. Religious norms effect the definition of beauty as a means of changing the perceptions in the mind of the people. People participate in different religious practices in different religions: Muslim women wear draping clothes to cover up and some Chinese women have their feet bound. Religious practices cause some people following that religion to have a different mentality of beauty. The meaning of beauty is also altered in different societies due to a distorted belief of beauty. In Saudi Arabia, women must wear full clothing because their laws forbid women to show skin. A woman clothed in all black may be perceived as containing some beauty to the men in Muslim countries; however, women and men in America perceive beauty in a woman as wearing tight, small clothes. Social norms distract other attributes in a person because of all the media. Magazines, movies, and advertisement all have a typical person they portray as beautiful. These people are supposed to be emulated by the mass in America by conforming to skinny bodies...
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...19 November 2010 Definition Essay Beauty To say that beauty is defined through the eye of the beholder is an accurate statement, yet quite cliche. Beauty is a something in a person or a thing that gives great pleasure to the mind and senses. Beauty is youth, a captivating smile, an alluring waterfall, and a sunset overlooking the vast ocean. There is no simple definition for this word and that in and of its self is beautiful. Although our worldly views of beauty have been shaken, twisted and contorted, the true meaning of beauty is beyond the single sentence Websters definition. Ideal beauty of the physical body is strived for daily in our society and all over the world. We have constructed our own meaning of beauty and strive for it. To us, beauty is pleasing eyes and a warm smile. Beauty is long blonde hair with bronze skin and skyscraper legs.To some, beauty is association with other people who have been defined as beautiful by others, because of their physical features. To be included with them, comes the title of beauty. Although these physical features are attractive, they do not accurately define beauty. This is such a shallow definition of the word. Overtimes, the meaning and definition of this word has been altered and redefined according to society and what it deems as attractive. Having an emotional well-belling is attractive to some. In history, symmetry of the body has been viewed as beautiful since it suggest the absence of physical defects and deformities...
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...in magazines, in the fashion shows, in the streets and even at school or at workplace. There is a fact that most people want to look like the models. Men and women are alike, a smooth and bright skin with an ideal body shape for a wonderful life. This desire and trends are growing and seen as a gold mine for the beauty care market. Beauty care products imply psychologically that customers are taking care of their hygiene, beauty and healthiness by using some products to support this care. The beauty industry in women has been obviously growing since long ago, whereas the men’s market has just started blooming lately. Currently men are more aware of their body and the demand for beauty, aesthetics, youthfulness, healthiness, and fitness which can bring them away from the old opinion about “only cleanliness”. The advancement of fashion magazines for men emphasizes this point of view in a widespread arena. The explosion of the male press commonly affects more or less the consumption of men’s beauty products. As a result, men pay more attention to patterns of beauty and are more sensitive to the products alternatives, like many products are launched to the market to convince customers to believe that it can improve their appearance. Nevertheless, even though men buy more beauty products as grooming and skincare products, it is predicted that these products are still bought approximately 80% by their wife or companion. Like other marketing considerations, it supposes to have a...
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