The Cause and Effects of Beauty and the Ideal Women

2294 Words5 Pages

Throughout history there have been many claims about what is beautiful and what is not on the face and body. America’s idea of beauty in the past changed many times from the fragileness of the Steel-engraving lady to the voluptuousness of the Greek slave. The ideal beauty in America is not so different from the ideal beauty of cultures around the world and follows many of the traditions practiced throughout history. The widespread of advertisement and technology is something that’s said to be the contributing problem to the ideal women phenomenon, but I believe history and trend plays the bigger role. Throughout history many researchers came up with ideas on what makes a person beautiful and what cause them to be unattractive. Plato, a famous philosopher, argued that the face that held the golden proportions was what made a person beautiful. “The width of the ideal face would be two –thirds its length and the nose no longer than the distance between the eyes” (Espejo 24). These are only a few things that make up the golden proportions. Researchers claim that averageness is what makes a person good looking (Espejo 24). However, according to Lisa DeBruine an experimental psychologist, “When it come to some key features, such as big eyes and small chins in women, being distinctly nonaverage can be better” (qtd. in Espejo 24). Big eyes and small chins are feminine traits. How masculine or how feminine a face is could determine how attractive the person is. Some researchers decided that beauty is not really about what’s on your face but beauty can be determined by the small things you do. According to Edward Morrison, how good a person looks determines how attractive a person is. Doing things like blinking, nodding and tilting the h... ... middle of paper ... ...f, 1983. Print. Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western culture, and the Body. London: University of California Press, 1959. Print. Brown, Ina. Understanding Other Cultures. New Jersey: prentice-Hall, 1963. Print. Espejo, Roman, ed. The Culture of Beauty: Opposing Viewpoints. Detroit: Christine Nasso, 2010. Print. Mao, John. “Foot Binding: Beauty and Culture”. Internet Journal of Biological Anthropology. 1.2. (2008): n. pag. Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 Dec 2011. Verrill, Alpheus. Strange Customs, Manners, and Beliefs: A Remarkable Account of Curious Beliefs and Odd Superstitions, Strange Ways of Living, and Amazing Customs and Manners of Many Peoples and Tribes around the Earth. New York: Books for Libraries, 1946. Print. Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are used Against Women. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991. Print

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