Societal Beauty Standards

It's easy for us to name beautiful people in our life. But what makes them beautiful? Why does society agree that one look is ‘more beautiful’ than another? How does social media affect this idea? Our aim was to understand beauty standards in four contextes: historical and racial context, social media in today’s world, the patriarchy’s effect on the image of beauty, and emphasized eurocentric standards. Our research questions are: 1. To what extent the body positivity movement on social media has a positive effect on adolescent girls? 2. How internalized eurocentric beauty standards are in adolescent girls? 3. To what extent does the male gaze influence the behavior of adolescent girls? Data was collected from our original survey exploring the implications of beauty standards on females and individuals who identify as non-binary between the ages of 14-22. Using a two-way ANOVA statistical significance was found between ethnicity and the modes of communication of beauty standards- social media and television (p<0.05). This shows how the media has ingrained the beauty standard that several participants have identified as the “hourglass” body shape and with the high number of participants responding that they have been body shamed or have felt objected/harassed by a man it shows how the male gaze has affected the daily lives of females. Limitations of this study was that only 97 females were surveyed primarily in the United States, thus we were only able to draw conclusions based on how females are affected in this region. Additionally, further research can be done to determine how the beauty standard is introduced to females before their adolescent years.