Is beauty in the eye of the beholder or in the eye of marketing executives?

What is attractive? What is beautiful? While the answers to these questions may seemingly be subjective and variant to the person answering, the barrage of images in the media clearly defines for people what beauty looks like.

Although this is embarrassing for me to admit now, I feel it necessary to relate my own thought processes through the years. The only defense of character I have is that I was a young, confused child that wanted desperately to be liked. I wanted to be considered beautiful. Mind you, I wanted many other things, an Ivy League education not the least of my wishes, but being considered beautiful was one of my priorities. The heroines in the books I read and in the movies I watched were always described as “beautiful.” Granted, their physical appearance went hand in hand with their smart, brave, and sassy personalities, but beauty was undoubtedly a prerequisite. If I wanted to be a fearless, sarcastic, rebellion leader like Princess Leia in Star Wars, I also had to look good in a metal bikini. And if I wanted to the independent, smart, and defiant Ella in the book Ella Enchanted, I would have to be pretty enough to catch the eye of the hot, young prince.

As an adolescent, I merely wished for people to consider me beautiful. It never occurred to me that there were steps I could take to make people think this. I only knew that there were “pretty people” out there in the world and I wanted to be one of them. But as I got older and became more exposed to popular culture I increasingly realized that there were concrete physical attributes that came together to create a beautiful person.

By the age of 12, I was well aware of who, and what, was considered beautiful. I was told by TV specials like the E! Network’s “100 Most Beautiful Celebrity Bodies” that Jessica Alba’s skin had “a dewy glow” which was one reason why she was one of the “sexiest women alive.” I didn’t understand what “dewy glow” meant, but I knew that I wanted it. I was also told that large breasts, curvy hips, and a flat stomach were also viewed as physically appealing. After finding out that there were particular physical traits one needed to be pretty, I no longer wished for people to see me as beautiful. I now wished for specific physical traits that, if possessed, would automatically endow someone with beauty. From that point on I made an inventory in my head as to the physical characteristics I needed to have in order to get pretty. Looking back on this now, it is obvious that the traits I wanted to have did not originate from my own mind and were instead, planted into my consciousness by something said or seen in media images. For example, I wanted to have a long neck like Keria Knightley’s for it added a sense of femininity and delicacy to the figure that was attractive to guys. (Honestly, you think I could have come up with this stuff on my own!? It’s way to detailed and obscure for a 12 year old mind to analyze the human neck like that.) I wanted to be 5’6” tall because after a in depth logical analysis I decided that 5’6” was the perfect height, for it was not too tall as to make yourself tower over men, yet it was not too short to make your limbs appear stumpy. Among the myriad of other attributes I felt I needed to embody were: small feet, small nose, clear skin, etc.

The “ideal body” I envisioned would have ended up looking like a Frankenstein monster if it was to manifest in real life. Looking back, it seems perverted and unsettling that I broke down physical attributes of individuals in an attempt to form what I thought was the ideal.
The time and energy I put into thinking about all this was pointless. I spent most of my early teen years praying for a growth spurt that would put me inches above my current 5’3”. I wanted to be tall enough to model, or at least be a contestant on America’s Next Top Model even if it didn’t bring me any real modeling jobs. The probability of me ever growing to a height of model was pretty slim considering that the “tall one” in my family, my older brother, barely measures in at 5’9”.

My mindset was destructive for several reasons. First, I lost much time in my childhood that, if I could go back and redo my early teen years, I would spend time reading and studying. (Better yet, I could have developed a talent at speed reading – that way college might have ended up being a little easier for me now since I would be able to skim through course materials quickly.) Second, my self-esteem was lowered because I couldn’t reach that unreachable beauty standard.
I don’t believe this beauty standard was entirely my own conception. The messages I received from magazines, advertisements, films, television and other media sources provided me with images and commentary told me what was attractive. Entire magazine articles were devoted to distributing tips and guidelines on how to best achieve certain physical forms. I came to learn that it was my responsibility to ensure that others viewed me as pretty.

By the time I turned 17 I realized my insane ways and reformed. I started doing other things with my time than just reading magazines and watching TV. I became informed in the realities of the world, and how the media constructs how we view beauty in others. I also discovered that there were more important things in life to aspire to be than just pretty. That, I wanted people to like me for things that I could control, and not just judge me based on my body which is something a person cannot, to a large extent, control. I was born looking the way I do and no matter how much time, energy and money I devote to trying to change my looks I cannot completely morph into someone else body is. Dedicating my mind to achieving impossible beauty standards is pointless. If someone chooses to think of me as pretty then so be it; but if someone doesn’t think I’m pretty I shouldn’t care because there is nothing I could do about it anyways.

As we’ve discussed in class, media advertisements create and depict an image of what women and men should look like. The message these images send is that if one doesn’t look like the individuals in these pictures then that person is not the ideal that all should aspire to look like.

When I was in my teens, I was naïve and thought magazines and advertisements displayed how people are supposed to look. But now I see media images for what they are: inventions, formed from a media executives mind, that through the use of digital retouching, airbrushing, and makeup, can mix and match physical attributes to form an image that is impossible for a person to attain in real life. The people depicted in advertisements do not really exist, and thus the beauty those images represent is imaginary.

Nowadays, at the wise old age of 20, I can easily ignore magazines articles that list what is beautiful. But if people suggest that the images the media, advertisements, film, television, etc. produce have no effect on the conscious of the public I can use my own childhood turmoil as a counterargument.