Why the World's Definition of Beauty is All Wrong

Earlier this summer I finished my first year at university. I now realise that in such a setting – the eclectic pool of people which constitutes a university – identity becomes very important. For many it is a big change; the environment in which they now find themselves is utterly different to the one in which they have grown up, and now, pulled away from their parents and many of their friends, they are now called upon to present themselves for the first time to several new people. Now they must decide who they really are.

It is at university where I have found what really makes ME who I am. It is there that you meet both people that are very much like you, and also those who are very different to you; some of whom may have completely different worldviews and lifestyles to your own. It is there that you decide whether or not you want to live your life as they do, or whether you want to be who you are. To make that decision, you need to know who YOU are.

I know who I am. I am a Christian, a young British-Nigerian girl/woman, a keen singer, an aspiring writer, athletics fan, lover of books, drama buff… And I am happy to be who I am!

What I have found, however, is that many people are not happy to be who they are. What has struck me more than anything else is the role that their perceptions of their own image and beauty have to play in these battles with self-esteem.

From all my reflections I have come to conclude that our world’s definition of beauty is very wrong.

THE MEDIA

Why do I say this, you ask? If you see the same images and messages that are thrown into my line of sight or hearing each day, then you might understand where I’m coming from.

The media isn’t like it once was. In days gone by, the definition of the media was newspapers and posters. Now we have the telly, where shows, films and adverts can all act as a vector to stream through the ideas that the people in charge want us to hear. And of course the Internet tops the bill. Social media has reached whole new levels, with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr (and that’s only part of the list, believe me – I find out about a new one every other week) also acting as savvy platforms.

Though such social networks can certainly be appreciated for the ease they give to their users to keep connected with those important to them, and provide a platform for people to express themselves and their views, I am becoming more and more aware of their downsides.

I was already aware of the danger of becoming addicted to such networks. With new social media cropping up all the time, things are only getting worse. I’ve actually, on quite a few occasions, spending time with my friends, found myself essentially talking to myself because they’ve flown off to Snapchat land, or WhatsApp land, or whatever-land, and for the next few minutes they’ll spend their time taking selfies and sending them to their other friends. Fine, I appreciate you have other friends, but would it not be moderately enjoyable to have fun with the friend(s) that you’re with whilst you’re with them, rather than taking away from those moments you have together to relate with the other friends that aren’t in the room?

I don’t take an issue with this so much – I don’t mind people texting other people if they have to – as much as I do with what this new phenomenon imports about the nature of our society. It indicates that self-image and what we look like is at the forefront of our minds. That’s why girls will take significant amounts of time to primp themselves before they take a photo, because they need to look perfect and get LOTS of people to ‘like’ their picture on Facebook. Once they do, you can tell that’s what they wanted. The comments of their friends that call them ‘fine’, ‘sexy’, ‘fit’ – are followed up by gushing thank-you replies that show just how important their self-image is. 

I’m worried about this.

Here’s why: young girls and females are growing up with the idea that looking physically attractive is the most important thing in life. For some, it’s all that matters. As I’ve pinpointed, the media has a big part to play. But it’s not just the news media that’s to blame. What about all the MaxFactor© adverts in which the female lead vows that we can achieve ULTIMATE volume with this valiant mascara, a faithful amulet against the oh-so-terrible clumps, and marches on, magnetising the flock of men around her? The screen shouts out at us: ‘HAVE IT ALL’.

That’s just it. Our society has formulated the equation that:

What I find troubling is that thousands, millions even, of young girls and women buy into this notion, so craftily constructed by our society. For them, ensuring they are found physically attractive by members of the opposite sex first and foremost, but are also the envy of other girls, is the key to success in the world.

I beg to differ.

There is so much more to life than looking good. I for one, would much rather find my happiness and fulfilment in who I am than what I look like. Wouldn’t you rather be liked and appreciated for your character and abilities than your appearance?

I reckon the world’s obsession with physical beauty has a lot to do with the rising levels of depression and suicide in young people. There are numerous cases each year of young girls who have committed suicide after being bullied about their looks. 

https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20140307112718AAeuH65

Anorexia is afflicting more women day by day, breast implant requests are on the surge and other diverse types of plastic surgery too, all in the name of looking ‘beautiful’.

WHAT IS BEAUTIFUL?

As a young black woman I have come to realise that the world’s definition of beautiful only accommodates one type of beauty. If you see the same adverts that I do, you’ll have noted that the white model is the typical face of cosmetic products. Coco Chanel, Rimmel London, Dolce and Gabbana – they all exhibit their products as engendering beauty through sexiness, that we already know, but what is more, they exhibit beauty as being white.

So if you’re a female and you’re not white, you suffer a double blow.

You’re told that if you want to ever be attractive – which apparently is only measured by your physical appearance – not by your intelligence or achievements – you have to be sexy, and to be sexy, you have to be white.

Well, I’m sorry, but there’s a big problem right there.

Beyoncé is someone that to me is a significant example of a woman who has played along to both these distorted scripts. She uses her sexual appeal to promote her music and sends out the message to women and young girls that this is all that matters. I find her puzzling. She calls herself a feminist and says she wants to ‘empower women’, yet in her music videos, on stage and pretty much everywhere she goes she reduces herself to eye candy for the male gaze.

I found her song Pretty Hurts utterly ironic. In the song she disparages the way in which society convinces women that their physical appearance is all that matters. Sorry, isn’t this the woman that is never seen without full make-up? She sings with contempt, Blonder hair. Excuse me? Is this not the same woman that invariably maintains her hair in a blonde state, rather than her naturally dark, coiled locks? Is this not the same woman that has progressively lightened her skin as her career has developed?

The message being sent out to black females is, if you want to be successful in the world, you have to get as close to white as possible.

I’m black. And I can tell you with no problems whatsoever that black people have different physical traits to white people, and other races for that matter.

I know that. And I don’t see the big deal. Does everyone in the world have to look the same?

Well, I live in a culture where apparently everyone has to look the same to be considered beautiful. 

I can tell you that at secondary school, whilst lining up for school photographs, a girl in my class was in hysterics just at the sight of my nose, which was apparently hilariously big. I can also tell you that later in my school education, when I wore my hair ‘out’ (in two low bunches)  – after being pestered no end by my white schoolmates, who were curious and excited to see the texture of my natural hair – one ignorant guy told me that I looked as though I’d been ‘electrocuted’.

This is the kind of environment in which black girls, from a very young age, begin to belittle themselves to such an extent that their self-worth is little above zero. We’re surrounded all our lives by L’Oreal and Garnier adverts that convince us that beautiful, attractive hair has to be straight and long. So many of us go on to try to achieve this standard of beauty. Apparently white people are more beautiful so we have to look like them if we want to amount to anything.

BLACK HAIR

For those of you who don’t know, black hair is very different to the hair of other races. It is typically very curly and owing to this differing make-up, behaves VERY differently to other types of hair. The follicles from which afro hair sprouts have a flat, ribbon-like shape, which makes for a denser, thicker band of keratin (the protein which hair is made up of). The strands curl as they leave the follicle, making it much harder for the natural oils produced by the scalp to travel along the hair shaft. As a result, black people have to regularly oil and moisturise their hair, to prevent breakage. That’s why we don’t have to wash our hair as regularly as other races – doing so would strip our hair of the oil that it needs. The reverse is true for white people, I know, who have to wash their regularly because it’s TOO greasy!

Contrary to common belief, black people’s hair DOES grow. The thing is that its texture makes it difficult to retain length. The constant spiralling of the hair strand means that it is more prone to breakage and so it is MUCH harder work for black people to grow their hair long.

So black hair is VERY different. But just because it’s different doesn’t mean it’s not wonderful. I have natural afro hair and I love it! It’s funky; it’s cool! I mean, how many other races can say if they comb their hair up it will stay up there? How many other people can say that when they wash their hair it shrinks by 80% of its natural length? (Oh yeah, it does that.) My hair is about shoulder length and a few minutes after I’ve added water to it, it’s a few centimetres away from my scalp.

So my hair can be annoying. (And funny.) It’s pretty frustrating to go out and find the wind has blown your hair up to your ear and it has stayed up there. It’s annoying that when it rains your hair shrinks. But there are also loads of great things about afro hair. It’s pretty cool that I can plait my hair and don’t have to bother about putting little elastic bands or bobbles at the ends, because my hair will just stay that way, for weeks and even during a wash. It’s pretty cool that I don’t have to bother about putting spray in my hair for volume because it already has plenty.

There is freedom in the fro.

And something else I’ve realised is, my hair is very versatile.  Sure, maybe you don’t realise that when you’re a kid and you always get your hair done by your mum in cornrows, but if you look around now there is PLENTY you can do with natural hair. Twist outs, flat twists, afro puffs, blow outs… The list goes on.

Another myth is that black hair is unprofessional. I say the kind of society that dictates that the hair you were born with is not fit to be seen is one that has very warped ideas.

But most black people conform to this lie. Apparently their hair is something to be ashamed of. So they do all they can to ‘tame’ their wild tresses. If you’re not black, you may not know what black girls and women suffer to look ‘beautiful’.

Relaxing is the most common and first step. ‘Relaxing’ refers to a permanent process which completely alters the texture of afro hair, making it sleek and straight instead of kinky and funky. Some mothers are known to relax their daughters’ hair even before they reach two years. The process involves applying a deeply chemical cream, made up of the toxic chemical sodium hydroxide to the hair and leaving for up to 30 minutes. The strong solution becomes extremely hot and frequently leaves serious scalp burns. Relaxer can cause complete hair loss in some people and even blindness. It has also been found to be linked to lung damage and cancer. I recently watched the documentary Good Hair, in which comedian Chris Rock examines the hair issues of black women. In it many of the women interviewed refer to relaxer as ‘creamy crack’: It’s so addictive once you’ve started, you can’t stop. Relaxer treatment is also known to produce severe hair breakage, owing to the grave thinning that occurs as a result of the multiple chemicals that soak into the hair. But many still put themselves through this painful procedure (not to mention expensive), dubbed a ‘torture process’ by one, so that they can get rid of their ‘nappy, bad’ hair.

Texturiser is another way of altering the curl pattern of black hair. It is often opted for instead of relaxer to ‘define curl pattern’ and ‘make it more manageable’. Honestly, why do black people talk about their hair as though it’s some sort of wild animal?

When I went to get my hair professionally trimmed last year, at a salon where natural afro hair clearly wasn’t understood (or much appreciated), the white salon owner told me, as she battled to blow-dry my hair (which was shrinking about 2 minutes after it had been combed thoroughly through) that I should relax it – to ‘make it more manageable’. For goodness’ sake, black people despise their hair enough that white people think they have the right to tell them to change it!

Relaxing and texturizing aren’t the only things black women do to make their hair more acceptable to the world. Extensions and ‘weaves’ are also common. Because most black girls are fooled into thinking that they can’t grow their hair long, they instead choose to wear someone else’s hair and pass it off as their own. Braided extensions have been popular for as long as I can remember. Women braid them into their own hair and then remove the attachments some weeks later. When they do, they often end up pulling their own hair out. But it’s all done in the name of beauty, so what does a little bit of self-harm matter?

I had a conversation about this recently with one of my friends (hair is a common topic amongst black females), who five years ago decided to stop relaxing her hair and wearing extensions. She told me about some of the things that prompted her decision. “I always felt kind of fake, like I was trying to be someone that I wasn’t.”

‘Weaves’ take the whole cover-up issue to a whole new level. If you don’t know what these are, I’ll explain. They are basically entire heads of hair that black women (most commonly) sew onto their scalps to cover up their own hair. Sometimes heavy glues are involved. It’s no surprise that such hairstyles can lead to receding hairlines. Naomi Campbell is known to have seriously thinning hair due to her decades as a supermodel wearing other people’s hair over her own. Those of you that didn’t know, Rihanna, Beyoncé, Kelly Rowland, yeah, they all do it. Why do you think most of the time you can never see their scalp?

Most black girls will say they’re not ashamed of their hair. Just like women that wear make-up at all times will say it's not because they don't feel good without it. But there’s an underlying message to such actions, I think. If you feel that to look your best you have to cover up your natural beauty, then I think that shows you don’t feel beautiful (or not beautiful enough) without it. A defining moment for my friend was the time when one of her white friends said the words, “At least I don’t have to wear fake hair because I’m ashamed of my own hair.”

Many people of other races have no clue that black people go to all these effort to fit in with society’s ideals. I have friends and family that tell me that their white friends are puzzled by how one day they can be wearing a short style and the next their hair’s all down to their backs. The constant changing means that the ‘Did you cut your hair?’ question crops up no end.

The truth is, the black female’s constant efforts to change and cover up her own natural locks reveal issues with her own self-assurance. I recently finished reading a book called Thank God I’m Natural, in which the author, Chris-Tia Donaldson, talks frankly about her own issues with her hair. She labels her efforts as an ‘all-consuming crutch’, and details the effect that her worries about not measuring up to the white people at her law firm and the consequent enslavement she was bound by – paying for countless wigs and agonising over whether or not they would blow off – had on her. ‘Needless to say, wearing a wig had taken a major toll on my self-esteem, and was affecting me on many levels, both personally and professionally’. Even her family and friends didn’t know that she’d been wearing wigs for years.

As crazy as it seems, this is the case for lots of other women of black heritage. The family friend with whom I get my hair done told me of an extremely sad case of another woman whose hair she does. This young woman, whose partner is white, disclosed that whenever she wants to remove her extensions from her hair she crafts an argument between herself and her boyfriend, creating a disagreement so grievous that her boyfriend ends up leaving for the night to stay at a friend’s. This leaves with enough time to undo her extensions, get rid of the added hair, and go away to get her hair re-done, so that by the time her partner next sees her, she looks the same as he left her. Isn’t that heart-breaking?

Sure, not everyone goes to that extent. But a good number go to the extent of spending figures ending in 000s each year on their hair, to talk less of countless hours (such hairstyles can take around eight hours or more than a day to complete), to keep the deception going. 

COMPLEXION AND BEAUTY

Some people do even more to conform to the notion that white beauty is the standard which every woman should attain to. The skin-lightening business earns millions each year, with not only black people, but also East Asian women (Chinese, Japanese...) being big buyers. The deeply moving documentary Dark Girls shows how deeply entrenched attitudes towards dark skin are: they link back to slavery times, when the white slave-owner would decide who could serve in the house and who had to work on the plantations outside depending on whether or not one passed or failed the ‘brown paper-bag’ test. Hand in hand with this was the ‘snow and blow’ test, which was another way of classifying black people and reinforcing the superiority of the white race. If your skin was close to ‘as white as snow’ and your hair blew in the wind, you were considered better than those with darker features or curlier hair.

A poignant moment in this documentary is when a young girl who looks no more than four years old is shown five cartoon girls, all dressed in the same blue dress. There is only one difference between them: their skin colour. The girl on the left has the lightest skin, and the gradation goes all the way up to the darkest shade of black skin. A woman asks the young child to show her ‘the smart child’. The girl points to the girl on the left. “Why is she the smart child?” the psychologist asks her. “Because she is white”, the girl replies. “Show me the dumb child.” The girl points to the girl on the right, who is the darkest of all the little figures. “Why is she the dumb child?”

“Because she’s black.”

The next questions reveal that in this poor girl’s mind, the dark-skinned girl is also the ugly one. The lightest-skinned girl is the ‘good-looking’ child. Let me give you one more bit of info on this – this four-year-old is black.

What does that say about the self-esteem of black girls? If a girl as young as four has convinced herself that she is dumb and ugly and that her white counterpart is the exact opposite, she’s going to spend the rest of her life trying to become white – in so doing changing what makes her her. The 12 Years A Slave actress Lupita Nyong'o has talked openly about her personal experiences with low self-worth due to her dark skin. The star has now come to embrace her rich complexion as beautiful.

We ALL need to stop comparing ourselves to other people. Black ladies, why not embrace your natural hair? Learn how to love it and handle it. Experiment with different styles. It is part of the uniqueness and wonderfulness of being black. It neither makes you inferior nor superior to other people. It makes you different. The words of my friend express this beautifully: ‘I was comparing myself to people of different races who had naturally straight hair. My hair was never going to be as long, it was always going to be inferior. What I needed to realise was that our hair doesn’t grow down, it hangs up!’

Why don’t we stop reading out the lines of the script that society has written for us? Why does the fact that we are women have to mean that we’re made for sex and little else? Why don’t we invest in what makes us unique and celebrate our diverse talents? In doing so, we can prove that there isn’t only one type of beauty. Beauty can be found in all different forms and in all different races. But more than anywhere else it can be found in the strength of your character.

So, are you with me on changing the world’s definition of beauty?