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In this opinion article, Averie takes a deep-dive through generations of objectification and women's body standards.
the "Perfect" Body Saga
the "Perfect" Body Saga
By Averie Black
By Averie Black
There has always been weight put on women to look like what society considers beautiful. These ancient ideals have been carried down centuries, which eventually led to the beauty standards of today, but it was not always the same body shapes we currently think of as “perfect”.
The recurring trend of women’s beauty standards throughout history fluctuated between being full-bodied, with wide hips, round stomachs, and big breasts, and being thin, with narrow shoulders, small feet, and flat chests. Of course, different cultures have different ideals when it comes to beauty. For example, in South Korea, women are still expected to have narrow shoulders, thin waists, and flat chests that characterize a slender frame, while the current Western beauty standards have shifted. Historians have traced these constant changes to food shortages. According to the National Library of Medicine, “Past civilizations saw excess body fat as a symbol of wealth and prosperity as the general population struggled with food shortages and famine.” Some eras that valued these traits include: the Paleolithic Era, Ancient Greece, the Italian Renaissance, and the Golden Age of Hollywood. Meanwhile, in times when food is plentiful, thinner figures were more desirable. These were the epitome of beauty in Ancient Egypt, the Han Dynasty, The Victorian Era, and The Roaring Twenties.
Expecting anyone to change their body for aesthetic reasons is absurd. Though it is possible to gain and lose weight, fundamental body shapes cannot change, and it is an impossible expectation placed upon women. Social media has only made the standards worse by constantly exposing their audiences to the “perfect” body type and nothing else. Therefore, they make women feel unconfident and seek procedures such as plastic surgery. In our current society's awareness, we have moved away from the full-bodied or slender-bodied body shape, and instead created a whole new, even more impossible expectation– slim thick. This new standard for women’s bodies includes a flat stomach, wide hips, and a big chest and butt. In an attempt to be more inclusive, we have created something that is almost exclusively achievable through plastic surgery, more specifically, the BBL (Brazilian Butt Lift). According to Scripps, a non-profit health organization, “...this procedure removes excess fat from one area of the body and injects it into the buttocks.” It goes on to say the procedure takes fat from unwanted places such as the stomach to achieve the slim-thick look. Advertisers, especially for clothing, have been photoshopping models to achieve the BBL look and continue to push beauty standards.
Image by Piqsels
In 2012, an organization called the body positivity movement gained traction. In the fight against women’s beauty standards, the body positive movement centers around loving all shapes and sizes. Blogger Paige Fieldsted shared her experiences with self-love in her article titled How Body Positivity Changed My Life: “That self-acceptance gave me the confidence to finally be me. I could stop hiding behind layers and layers of insecurities and just be me. Body positivity gave me freedom.” Fieldsted, along with millions of other people, have shared their stories about how body positivity gave them back the confidence they needed to be happy. However, the movement has been thoroughly criticized. Many points have been brought up against the body positivity movement such as it encouraging unhealthy lifestyles, placing worth in one's beauty, and the lack of POC voices in the space. Daisy Maldonado, a pop culture writer for Style Caster, claims, “Big and small and everything in between is beautiful—but wouldn’t it be better if we all could all agree that our beauty doesn’t have to define our worth?” Soon enough, everyone turned to body neutrality. Body neutrality is a branch of body positivity that takes the spotlight off of beauty and onto function. Rather than praising the way your body looks, it praises how it keeps you alive. This has been more widely accepted than body positivity.
Beauty standards for women have been around since the Paleolithic Era. Although they have changed and shifted, our current era has landed on the nearly impossible to obtain BBL figure. Debated movements such as body positivity and body neutrality help counter some of these expectations, but it seems beauty standards are here to stay.
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