BEAUTY IDEALS
Beauty ideals through space and time
BEAUTY IDEALS THROUGH SPACE
Body Image Documentary: THE ILLUSIONISTS – on the globalization of beauty
The Illusionists is a documentary about the marketing of unattainable beauty ideals around the world. More than just a film, The Illusionists aims to build a movement, encouraging people to accept themselves for who they are and to “speak truth to media.”
Film Synopsis
Sex sells. What sells even more? Insecurity. Multi-billion dollar industries saturate our lives with images of unattainable beauty, exporting body hatred from New York to Beirut to Tokyo. Their target? Women, and increasingly men and children. The Illusionists turns the mirror on media, exposing the absurd, sometimes humorous, and shocking images that seek to enslave us.
BEAUTY IDEALS THROUGH TIME
WOMEN
What Is Beauty?
Our perception of beauty has changed throughout history, leaving women in constant pursuit of the ideal. The definition of beauty has changed a great deal over the centuries.
This artistic video posted by CNN Health shows the variety of body shapes, and what it tells its audience: That beauty fits ANY body!
How Women's Perfect Body Types Changed Throughout History
Tastes and perceptions are constantly changing in this modern world and throughout history. It also applies to our tastes and perceptions of beauty. When it comes to women’s bodies, what was a desired looked in one era of history may have been avoided in another.
Thankfully, today we are progressing towards embracing all types of perceptions of beauty. It still might take a while but at least we are starting to have the conversations that all body types are beautiful.
The problems with TikTok's controversial 'beauty filters'
By Amanda Ruggeri1st March 2023
Beauty filters like TikTok's new Bold Glamour can transform people's appearance, and the technology is now strikingly seamless. What can research tell us about the psychological consequences?
When I came across my first "beauty filter" – technology designed to "improve" your appearance, now popular on Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok – one of my first reactions was that it evened out the playing field and not, necessarily, in a bad way.
Before the pandemic, I usually put on some make-up before going out. It made me feel more attractive – and the different way people treated me when I put on a bit of mascara only bolstered that perception. But then came lockdown, working from home, and having a baby. Finding the time and motivation to apply lipstick felt like a thing of the past. And so, when I first saw a filter that did the work for me – or for my online presence, at least – I was amazed. And I had to wonder: was there really that much of a difference between spending 15 minutes applying make-up in the morning, and slapping a filter on my online persona? Or was the latter just an ingenious way to save time?
As beauty filters become more and more sophisticated, articles decrying their potential effect on everything from our self-esteem, to their power in popularising one particular beauty standard, are becoming more frequent. This week, the release of TikTok's "Bold Glamour" filter – which has a strikingly seamless effect – prompted many users to question if the technology has gone too far. It can turn anyone into an airbrushed top model. As one headline reads: "'This is a problem': A new hyper-realistic TikTok beauty filter is freaking people out".
These concerns and criticisms are valid, but often overlook a crucial component. Like so much else in technology, beauty filters weren't created in a bubble, separate from society, to then infect the rest of us. They reflect – and often worsen – the biases and issues we already have. Which is, of course, the problem.
Long before the Bold Glamour filter came along, our society fetishised beauty. And it isn't just about physical attraction: conventionally good-looking people are seen as everything from being more intelligent to earning a higher income. (Although for women, in some situations, beauty can backfire.)
The truth is that, whether with our choice of clothing or haircut, glasses or makeup, we all represent ourselves in a certain way – and, usually, in a way that is in accordance with current beauty standards. While we like to think that we make these choices based on our individual preferences, we've long known that those preferences are shaped by current styles. While there's plenty of research to prove this, you can also just look at the appearance of the people around you: even a feature as seemingly unchangeable as eyebrows has morphed from the skinny eyebrows of the 1990s to the super-bold in the 2010s (and it's already changing again).
Of course, there's a difference between following real-life beauty trends and applying online filters. Cosmetics can create the illusion of more chiselled cheekbones; a beauty filter actually (virtually) chisels them. But in an era in which minimally invasive, highly effective cosmetic procedures like Botox are becoming more and more popular, too, it's safe to say that more of the people you see in real life have had a bit more "help" than you might expect. As our real-world ability to shave years off and recreate beauty standards in our own lives has risen exponentially, it naturally follows that we're seeing the same phenomenon online.
That doesn't make it any less problematic. In fact, it can be a vicious cycle: beauty filters aren't just responding to existing beauty standards – offline beauty standards are changing in response to filters. Adolescent girls who use filters are more likely to consider cosmetic surgery, for example, and plastic surgeons have noted a rise in clients requesting surgery that makes them look more like their filters. This is even more concerning given that these filters tend to be racially biased, based on stereotypically "white" characteristics.
And these are just facial filters. There are plenty of ways that you can now tweak your body in social media apps, even in video, too. Again, in some ways, this is nothing new. Professional models and photographers long have known that specific poses and angles can elongate legs and tighten waists – and gone on to tweak images in post-editing with software. Today's social media influencers often rely on these strategies, too, as exposed by advocates like Dana Mercer Ricci. By making it so that anyone can nip their waist or plump their lips in an online video or photo, you could argue that these filters are just making industry tricks more accessible. While some may welcome the wider availability of the technology, it's also the case that these filters are too new for us to know exactly how they affect self-perception and mental health long-term.
The research done so far indicates that they could make users feel worse about themselves. Part of that is from seeing so many images of other people that are heavily filtered and perfect. Even before the rise of beauty filters, people who spent time on social media sites focusing on others' idealised lives were likely to have poorer psychological well-being. But it's also true even when looking at a filter applied to our own image.
Adolescent girls, who are especially vulnerable to internalising images they see in the media, are especially at risk. One study, for example, found that when girls aged 14-to-18 years old were shown either original selfies or those that had been retouched, they thought the retouched photos looked better – and those who had been shown retouched photos were less satisfied with their bodies afterwards than those who had not.
While TikTok's Bold Glamour is getting most of the press, there are other filters that are problematic in a different way. One of the most disturbing is the TikTok filter "Teen", which makes anyone look like an adolescent. Child safety experts have expressed concerns about this latest, most high-tech instalment of our obsession with youth. It can be used by adults in sexually enticing poses or clothing, for example, leading viewers to think the person posing is a teen. It once again highlights – and also augments – a dangerous aspect of society: in this case, the normalisation of the sexualisation of children.
Beauty filters may just be another step along the path of our cultural obsession with perfecting our appearance. But if the response so far is anything to judge by, they could be a step too far.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230301-the-problems-with-tiktoks-controversial-beauty-filters
MEN
The Ideal Man: Male Beauty Standards Through History
The desire to depict an ideal man has persisted since ancient times. This article will explore male beauty standards from the Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance eras.
Nov 9, 2021 • By Michaela Simonova, MA Comparative Religions & Museum Guide
Every culture has an idea of how the ideal man should look. Nowadays, we see beautiful people on social networks, television, catwalks, and walking the red carpet. We tend to see them as an ideal of beauty, creating a standard by which to judge whether or not other people are attractive. It was similar in the past, in each period of our history there existed an idea of how the ideal man should look. In this article, we will explore the idea of the perfect man and male beauty standards as viewed through European history, in ancient Greece and Rome, the Medieval Period, and the Renaissance Era.
The Ideal Man: Youth Equals Beauty
Our story begins in the 6th century BCE in Greece. Attica in particular was a region with strong artistic traditions and excellent sculpture. Here we can find numerous statues of young men in serious, uptight poses nicknamed the “kouros”, meaning “youth”.
The pose of these statues was most likely derived from ancient Egyptian art and provided a clear and easy-to-understand formula for viewers to interpret. They represented a small revolution since before the 6th century BCE, the basic style of art was geometrical, and human figures were mostly painted or depicted in highly stylized, almost abstract, forms. However, these kouros figures demonstrated an idealized version of young men without individual personalities. Their mysterious smile, left foot forward, arms at their sides, and slim bodies were very similar. Rather than depicting individuals, they symbolized a general idea of youthful beauty.
The connection between youth and beauty was important, conditioning the place of the individual in society, who had to live up to the ideal of “arete”, a combination of moral and physical beauty and nobility. Kouros were used as both dedications to the gods and as grave monuments. In time, Greek sculptors abandoned strict Egyptian geometry and began to study human musculature, thus creating a new “ideal”.
Muscles and Brains in the Ideal Man
After the transition from more geometric-oriented art toward the naturalistic depiction of the human body, we can observe one of the most famous and precise depictions of the naked male body in ancient art. Statues of athletes and deities even nowadays represent an ideal of the muscular male body. We need to keep in mind that the musculature was not to be overdone, since the ideal was an athletic healthy body. One exception was Heracles (or Hercules), whose strength and life were determined by physical power, thus his over-the-top muscles defined his character. Young men were encouraged to compete in gymnasiums and during sports games, to demonstrate their physical fitness.
Worldviews began to change especially during the reign of Alexander the Great, when there was a mixture of beauty standards. Later, during the Roman period, the idea of ideal beauty was not the same. With the rise of powerful individuals who were not perfect in the sense of physical beauty, an idea of political power began to emerge. Thus, many portraits from the Roman era were surprisingly realistic, depicting bodily faults, signs of old age, or various “deformities”. Beauty could be “covered” with wealth and power, something that we will see again during the renaissance period.
The Medieval Period: The Divine Body and Cosmic Man
Quite unexpectedly, a new religious movement rose to power during the late years of the Roman Empire: Christianity. With ideas derived from the Middle East and Jewish heritage, these new ideals differed from the ones established by the Classical civilizations of Greece and Rome. The nudity appreciated by both the Greeks and Romans was seen as something shameful that had to be hidden. Of course, there were exceptions — as you can see in depictions of the crucified Christ or John the Baptist, dressed only in a loincloth or animal skin. A naked body itself was not a mark of shame if painted or sculptured in the right context.
The body of Jesus Christ was supposed to be perfect since he was the son of God. Therefore, an ideal man was not a muscular or intellectual man like he was during antiquity, but someone representing spiritual perfection. Jesus Christ was also considered to be born as a perfect man, which is why he was depicted as a full-grown man in numerous Medieval paintings of the Virgin Mary and infant Jesus.
A famous medieval drawing from the mystic Hildegarde of Bingen depicts a man in harmony with the universe. It was not important to show perfect musculature, but perfect symbolism. A man was in the center of the cosmos and his soul was the most important part of his beauty and grace, within a larger cycle of life and the divine plan. Of course, that does not mean that artists during the Medieval Period could not appreciate the beauty of the body, it was just that their focus shifted to the inner human world rather than its external demonstration. People were encouraged to care for their souls more than their bodies, inspired by portraits of Christ and the saints who were seen as ideal men, not because of their outside, but because of their insides. External beauty was still much appreciated, but not so much in visual art.
Vitruvius and Geometry
The scientific observation of the human body and the world around us encouraged renaissance men to resurrect interest in the human body as an example of perfection. One of the greatest polymaths of his time, Leonardo da Vinci, drew a perfect man, nowadays known as the Vitruvian man. A standing nude male with a frowning face, two pairs of arms, and legs are drawn in a perfect circle and a square. It was viewed as an homage to the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius. However, Leonardo’s observations were based more on scientific evidence and his studies of human anatomy. His unique approach combined mathematics and art to demonstrate his understanding of proportion and an attempt to relate man to nature.
His notes, written in mirror writing, state that the drawing was a study of the proportions as described in Vitruvius’s work De Architectura. When we look closer at the text and compare it to Leonardo’s drawing, we can see a few differences in the height of the raised arms and the square and circle centered at the man’s groin. It appears that Leonardo da Vinci improved the model based on his observations, using his incredible skill set.
Male Beauty Standards: Perfection is Hidden in Imperfections
Another famous example of the ideal man from this period is Michelangelo’s David. A tall marble statue (more than five meters/16 feet), of the biblical David shows a young nude man, most likely in preparation for a battle with his giant foe, Goliath. His contrapposto pose, with one leg holding his full weight while the other leg moves slightly forward, gives us an impression of the Classical ideal of beauty. Despite this ideal, the body itself is not perfect when we look at David’s proportions. His head and hands are exaggerated compared to the rest of the body, while the penis is smaller in accordance with the ancient Greek idea of civilization. It could also have been due to David’s historic nickname “strong hand”, or because the viewer had to look at the statue from below.
Overall, the statue has an unusually slender torso, legs, and neck — yet, Michelangelo was a master sculptor and we should not see these disproportions as unintentional. On the contrary, he was aware of them and they played in his favor — after all, David is one of the most recognizable statues in the world to this day. We can see that the ideal man did not need perfect mathematical proportions like the Vitruvian man, but more importantly, his pose, his gesture, and his importance determined whether or not he was considered as an ideal man. This philosophy was also applied to civil portraits at that time, with the ideal shifting from physical or inner beauty to a demonstration of wealth and power.
The Ideal Man: Power and wealth
You are rich and powerful and you are not afraid to show it — this life motto can be applied to nobility during the renaissance era. It was not a shame to demonstrate your power through wealth, and they did not need to idealize their appearance too much in portraits. If we look back, it was a similar philosophy to that held during the Roman Republic, when realistic busts were fashionable.
The powerful middle class began to rise in power and accumulate their wealth, investing in art and talented artists. They were not interested in being portrayed as idealized men, but rather their powerful selves. Their intention was to be individually recognized and not to represent some generalized idea of beauty and perfection. Demonstrations of wealth and power were at the center of painting and brought power to the personalities of their subjects.
The ideal man shifted from a perfect youth to a mature man. This can also be seen outside Italy, as we can observe in the artworks of Jan van Eyck, Hans von Holbein, and Albrecht Dürer. Of course, Jesus Christ or ancient sculptures were still admired and in their view seen as “ideals”, as we can see in early renaissance painting and frescoes with religious scenes, supplemented by patrons who commissioned artwork. Yet, they were aware of their imperfection as well as their power. A portrait was meant to depict the unique appearance of a person with symbols and backgrounds emphasizing a man’s strength. This shift meant that the ideal man was not recognized as a mere symbol, but as an individual who had power in his hands. A focus on inner or outer beauty was overshadowed by individual strength.
To summarize the ideal man concept, we can apply these ideas to current society. How would an ideal man from the periods mentioned above look on modern social media? In the first case, he would be working out in a gym while reading Plato, while the Medieval ideal would be a spiritual man trying to connect with his inner beauty and self (and ideally be slim), and the Renaissance man would show his wealth and success. In time, the idea of a man was individualized and hard to keep track of, but I believe that the ideals of Classical Greece, Medieval spirituality, and Renaissance naturalism are up to this day three cornerstones that define the male ideal.
Source: https://www.thecollector.com/idealized-man-male-beauty-standards-through-history/
The Pressure of Male Beauty Standards
Society's unrealistic beauty standards affect teen boys, too. We sat down with three teens to hear how societal standards around male beauty and masculinity are proliferated in the media today and how it impacts their self-esteem. Dr. David Bell of Columbia University Medical Center joined in to discuss the history of beauty standards, toxic masculinity, and to share advice for parents on opening up the conversation about body image with their children.
True beauty is so much more than skin deep. Watch to learn how these teens (and a parent!) are pushing back against societal pressures and opening up a dialogue on the pressure of male beauty standards.
CONCLUSION: THE COMPLICATED TRUTH ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA AND BODY IMAGE
By Kelly Oakes12th March 2019
Many of us suspect that the beautiful, often highly-edited images of people we see on social media make us feel worse about our own bodies. But what does the research say?
If you mindlessly scroll through Instagram or Facebook whenever you get a few seconds of downtime, you’re far from alone. But have you ever wondered how all those images of other people’s bodies – whether your friend’s holiday snap or a celebrity’s gym selfie – could be affecting how you view your own?
Much has been made over the years about how mainstream media presents unrealistic beauty standards in the form of photoshopped celebrities or stick-thin fashion models. Now that influencers fill up our feeds, it's easy to imagine that social media, too, is all bad when it comes to body image.
But the reality is more nuanced, and there may be ways to curate your Instagram feed to make you feel happier in your own skin – or, at least, stop you feeling worse.
It’s important to note that research into social media and body image is still in its early stages, and most studies are correlational. This means we can’t prove whether, for example, Facebook causes someone to have negative feelings about their appearance, or whether people who are concerned about their appearance are more likely to use Facebook.
That being said, using social media does appear to be correlated with body image concerns. A systematic review of 20 papers published in 2016 found that photo-based activities, like scrolling through Instagram or posting pictures of yourself, were a particular problem when it came to negative thoughts about your body.
But there are many different ways to use social media – are you just consuming what others post, or are you taking, editing and uploading selfies? Are you following close friends and family, or a laundry list of celebrities and influencers?
Research suggests that who we compare ourselves to is key.
“People are comparing their appearance to people in Instagram images, or whatever platform they're on, and they often judge themselves to be worse off,” says Jasmine Fardouly, a postdoctoral researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.
In a survey of 227 female university students, women reported that they tend to compare their own appearance negatively with their peer group and with celebrities, but not with family members, while browsing Facebook. The comparison group that had the strongest link to body image concerns was distant peers, or acquaintances.
Fardouly puts this down to the fact that people present a one-sided version of their life online. If you know someone well, you’ll know they’re only showing the best bits – but if they’re an acquaintance, you won’t have any other information to go on.
Negative influence
When it comes to the wider circle of influencers and accounts you follow, not all types of content are equal.
Research suggests that “fitspiration” images in particular – which typically feature beautiful people doing exercise, or at least pretending to – might make you harsher on yourself.
Amy Slater, an associate professor at the University of West England, Bristol, published a study in 2017 in which 160 female undergraduates viewed either #fitspo, self compassion quotes, or a mix of both, all sourced from real accounts on Instagram. Those who viewed only #fitspo scored lower on self-compassion, but those who viewed the compassionate quotes (e.g. “You’re perfect just the way you are”) were nicer to themselves – and felt better about their bodies.
For those who viewed both the #fitspo and the self-compassion quotes, the benefits of the latter appeared to outweigh the negatives of the former.
Another study published earlier this year involved showing 195 young women either body-positive content from popular accounts like @bodyposipanda, photos showing thin women in bikinis or fitness gear, or neutral images of nature. The researchers found that exposing women to #bodypositive Instagram content appeared to boost their satisfaction with their own bodies.
“Those two things together are starting to build a little bit of a story that there may be some content that actually is useful for body image,” says Slater.
But there may be a downside to body-positive images, too: they’re still focusing on bodies. The same study found that women who’d seen the body-positive photos still ended up objectifying themselves – measured when, after looking at the images, the participants were asked to write 10 statements about themselves. The more the statements focussed on their appearance rather than their skills or personality, the higher that participant scored on self-objectification.
That means when someone wrote “I am beautiful” it got lumped in with negative things people said about their bodies. But those people could be taking a broader view of where their beauty comes from, including internal as well as physical attributes, says Slater.
Either way, this fixation with looks is a criticism of the body-positive movement that does seem to hold true. “It is about loving the body, but it is still very much about a focus on appearance,” says Fardouly.
Self(ie) love
When it comes to posting our own pictures on social media, selfies tend to be the focus.
For a study published last year, Jennifer Mills, an associate professor at York University, Toronto, asked female undergraduates to take a selfie on an iPad and upload it to either Facebook or Instagram. One group could only take a single picture and upload it without editing, but the other had a chance to take as many as they wanted and retouch their selfie using an app.
Mills and her colleagues found that all the selfie takers felt less attractive and less confident after posting than when they’d walked into the experiment – even those who’d been allowed to edit their photos to their heart’s content. “Even though they can make the end result look ‘better’, they still are focused on aspects of what they don't like about the way they look,” she says.
Some of the participants wanted to know if anyone had liked their photo before deciding how they felt about having posted it, although looking at interactions wasn’t part of the study.
“There’s this rollercoaster of feeling anxious and then getting reassurance from other people that you look good,” says Mills. “But that probably doesn’t last forever, and then you take another selfie.”
In previous work published in 2017, researchers found that spending a lot of time perfecting selfies could be a sign that someone is struggling with body dissatisfaction.
Still, some big holes remain in the research on social media and body image.
Most of the work so far has focused on young women, as traditionally they have been the age group most affected by body image concerns. But research including men is starting to show they’re not immune. For example, a study found that men who reported looking at male #fitspo content more frequently said they compared their own appearance to others more often and cared about having muscles more.
Longer term research is also an important next step, because lab experiments can only provide a snapshot of any possible effects. “We don't really know whether over time [social media] has a cumulative effect on people or not,” says Fardouly.
So, for now, how should you curate your own social media feeds if you don’t want to come away feeling bad about your body?
Mills has one takeaway that should work for everyone: put down your phone.
“Take a break and engage in other activities that have nothing to do with appearance and comparing yourself to other people,” she says.
The next best thing would be to think critically about who you follow – and, if you find yourself facing an endless stream of appearance-focussed photos next time you scroll, add some nature or travel into the mix.
After all, giving up social media altogether is probably too big of an ask for most people – especially while the long term effects of using it are still unclear. But finding inspiring landscapes, delicious food, and cute dogs to fill your Instagram feed might just help you remember there’s more to life than what you look like.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190311-how-social-media-affects-body-image