pathologizes more women as standards of normality become more rigid due to more and more women undergoing cosmetic surgery (Wendell, 2009). Thus, many cosmetic surgeries reinforce oppressive beauty norms that vary depending on a woman‟s identity. 4. Resistance Many feminists have outlined various forms of resistance women can take to challenge Western beauty pressures. Some of the ways in which women do this includes making radical changes to their appearance by defying family, peer and sexual norms, making connections with people who give them positive messages about themselves, and engaging in rebellious behaviour such as smoking, drinking, tattooing and piercing (Rice, 2009). 4 International Journal of Gender and Women‟s Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2, December 2018 Women also engage in consciousness raising by reading, speaking and listening to one another in order to discover differences and similarities in their experiences to create strategies for resistance (Rice, 2009). To resist, women also often redirect their energy to other things they can base their self-worth on other than their physical appearance (Rice, 2010). Lastly, not all women aspire to meet the thin Western beauty standard. Gurrieri & Cherrier (2013) found that many fat women resist the association of fat with ugliness by creating alternative spaces in which many different bodies are beautiful. In these spaces, they challenge the idea that fat women should not wear swimsuits, tight clothing or colours and styles that attract attention by flaunting their fat. Flaunting fat provides women a visible way of rejecting the normative thin beauty standard in advertising and in popular culture (Gurrieri & Cherrier, 2013). Hence, many women resist Western beauty pressures on their own terms, depending on what is effective for them at the time (Rice, 2009). Women‟s race, class, culture, age, sexuality, size, gender identity and ability all largely shape their experiences with Western beauty pressures (Buchanan, 1993; hooks, 1992; Kelly, 2007; Newsom, 2011; Odette, 1994; Patton, 2006; Rice, 2009; Rice, 2010; Rossini, 2015; Siebler, 2012). I will expand on previous feminist literature by utilizing an intersectional analysis of oppression to discuss the ways in which women, depending on their race, class, culture and size, experience Western beauty pressures. Intersectionality is “the interaction between gender, race, and other categories of difference in individual lives, social practices, institutional arrangements, and cultural ideologies and the outcomes of these interactions in terms of power” (Davis, 2008, p. 68). My research demonstrates how women experience Western beauty pressures differently and at different intensity levels based on their intersecting identities. 5. Methods In order to answer my research question, I utilized an exploratory qualitative method by conducting semistructured interviews with female university students. I interviewed thirteen young women who permanently reside in Canada. All thirteen participants were students at Brock University, and were between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. Eight out of the thirteen women interviewed were white, two women were bi-racial (White and AfricanCanadian, Jamaican and Filipino-Canadian), two women were Indian-Canadian, and one woman was FilipinoCanadian. All of the women were either working or middle-class. All of the women were able-bodied with a cisgender identity. The research was completed in 2014. I analysed the interviews using step two, three and four of the voicecentred relational method of data analysis (Mauthner & Doucet, 1998). After obtaining ethical clearance from Brock University‟s Research Ethics Board, I utilized twelve questions for the interviews (Appendix A). In order to recruit participants, I put posters up around Brock University and made an announcement on the Brock University Women‟s and Gender Studies Facebook page. Brock University counselling information was on the participants‟ copy of the consent form and all participants received a one-page summary of the results once the project was completed. 6. Findings * All of the names have been changed to ensure anonymity. 6.1. Gender Roles and Beauty Beauty practices are the main instrument by which the “difference” between the sexes is created and maintained. They create the stereotyped role for women of being sex and beauty objects, having to spend insubordinate amounts of time and money on makeup, hairstyles, depilation, creams and potions, fashion, botox and cosmetic surgery (Jeffreys, 2005, p. 29-30). One of the women that I interviewed discussed the challenges of being a female athlete while trying to meet Western standards of idealized femininity. Kim said: Umm, but because we‟re playing sports, and it is considered a masculine activity,