Feminine beauty ideal

The feminine beauty ideal is a specific set of beauty standards regarding traits that are ingrained in women throughout their lives and from a young age to increase their perceived physical attractiveness. It is experienced by many women in the world, though the traits change over time and vary in country and culture.^[1]

For the specific set of beauty ideal aimed at men, see masculine beauty ideal.

The prevailing beauty standard for women is heteronormative,^[2] but the extent to which it has influenced lesbian and bisexual women is debated.^[3]^[4] The feminine beauty ideal traits include but are not limited to: female body shape, facial feature, skin tones, height, clothing style, hairstyle and body weight.

With fairy tales, mass media, advertisements, fashion and beauty-centered dolls such as Barbie dolls playing a prominent role in women's lives, it adds to the pressure to conform to the feminine beauty ideal starting from a young age. Handling the pressure to conform to a certain definition of "beautiful" can have psychological effects on an individual, such as depression, eating disorders, body dysmorphia and low self-esteem that can start from an adolescent age and continue into adulthood.

Skin and hair color[edit]

Skin color contrast and cosmetics[edit]

Skin color contrast has been identified as a feminine beauty standard observed across multiple cultures.^[7] Women tend to have darker eyes and lips than men, especially relative to the rest of their facial features, and this attribute has been associated with female attractiveness and femininity,^[7] yet it also decreases male attractiveness according to one study.^[8] Women may use cosmetics such as lipstick and eye shadow to increase their facial color contrast, or to increase the apparent distance between their eyes and eyebrows.^[7] A 2009 study found that East Asian people had more facial skin contrast than white people, owing to their consistently darker eyes.^[8]

Hair color[edit]

A 2008 study sought to find whether blond or dark hair was a feminine beauty ideal in the Western world. The authors found that dark hair, rather than blond hair, was the feminine ideal. Women with dark hair were over-represented in Western fashion and pop-culture media, and this may explain the finding that men in England generally rated dark haired women as more attractive than women with blond hair.^[9]^[10] A 2018 study conducted in Florida produced similar results.^[11] In East Asia, women with black hair are presented as the beauty ideal, while blonde women have explicitly denied the ideal status; some blond-haired Western women have reported lowered self-esteem whilst living in Singapore.^[12]^[13] Japanese advertisements have occasionally depicted blonde women as envious of black-haired women.^[14]

Skin color standards[edit]

The practise of skin whitening is common amongst women in South Asia, Latin America and Africa,^[15] while sun tanning, indoor tanning and self tanning is common among white women in the Western world.^[16]

These beauty standards have also resulted in the creation of skin whitening and bleaching industries in Asian and African countries, including Ghana.^[17] Discrimination based on skin colour, also referred to as colourism, has been described by scholars as being conceptualized by deeming lighter-skinned individuals as superior in terms of beauty and responsibility compared to their darker-skinned counterparts. Favouritism based on colourism in terms of social and economic distributions of power was based on systems implemented during the colonisation of Africa by European powers, which established Eurocentric beauty standards.^[17]

However, the colonization of non-white countries by European migrants sometimes led to the establishment of reverse-colorism, such as in Dutch Indonesia, where Dutch white male colonists defined beauty standards that ranked mixed-race Southeast Asian women as more attractive than white women, on the basis of their darker skin and black hair color.^[18] Some studies using Caucasian male subjects from Western countries have identified a preference for women with darker skin, which indicates that there is no innate preference for lighter skin within the Western world.^[19] This has led some researchers to propose that Western culture may be unique in having a cultural preference for darker women.^[20] Some studies from Western countries have found that, among young women, those with a more tan skin color have higher self-perceived attractiveness.^[21]

Body and facial hair[edit]

Body hair and facial hair have long been stigmatized in women across many cultures, which regard them as masculine attributes that are undesirable in the opposite sex.^[95]^[96] For this reason, many women feel pressured to remove the body hair from their legs and arms,^[95]^[97] while those who do not are often scrutinized. The same standard does not exist for men, and although manscaping has existed since the early 20th century, it has never achieved popularity in the Western world.^[95]

Fairy tales[edit]

The feminine beauty ideal is portrayed in many children's fairy tales.^[1] It has been common in the Brothers Grimm fairy tales for physical attractiveness in female characters to be rewarded.^[113] In those fairy tales, "beauty is often associated with being white, economically privileged, and virtuous."^[113]

The Brothers Grimm fairy tales usually involve a beautiful heroine. In the story Snow White, the protagonist Snow White is described as having "skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony wood" and as being "beautiful as the light of day."^[114] By contrast, the antagonist of Brothers Grimm fairy tales is frequently described as old and physically unattractive, relating beauty with youth and goodness, and ugliness with aging and evil.^[113] Ultimately, this correlation puts an emphasis on the virtue of being beautiful, as defined by Grimm fairy tales.

Almost 100 years after the Grimm Brothers wrote their fairy tales, Walt Disney Animation Studios adapted these tales into animated feature films. Other common traits of female Disney characters include thin bodies with impossible bodily proportions, long, flowing hair, and large, round eyes.^[115] Disney animated princess films associate beauty with the good qualities in a character.^[116] A 2019 study suggests that Disney heroines have extremely small waists that are nearly impossible to achieve naturally.^[117]

Fashion and beauty-centred dolls[edit]

Throughout the world, fashion and beauty-centred dolls such as Barbie dolls have made their way into the lives of many young girls, perpetuating unrealistic beauty standards from looking at the physique of the Barbie dolls to the lack of diversity in the product line in terms of race and gender of Barbie dolls. From 2012 to 2020, the sale of Barbie dolls worldwide was $99.1 billion U.S. dollars.^[118]

When young girls are playing with fashion and beauty-centred dolls, they begin to idealize beauty standards and associate what they find "beautiful" in the doll with attributes that they feel that they need to uphold. At first glance, Barbie dolls look glamorous, with endless accessories, perfectly platinum straight blond hair, pink shiny lips, tiny waist, long legs, pointed toes and pink sparkly outfits. Girls who played with Barbie dolls reported lower body image and a greater desire to be thinner than the girls who played with a curvier doll or no doll at all.^[119]

When taking Barbie's "beautiful" proportions and translating that physique into an actual human, Barbie is estimated to be 5'9" (175 cm) tall, have a 39" bust, an 18" waist, 33" hips, children's size 3 feet, and her weight would be 110 pounds (50 kg).^[120] Taking into consideration Barbie's 'human' height and weight, Barbie would have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 16.24; this number fits the weight criteria for anorexia.^[120] Additionally, being below a BMI of 17 suggests that an individual cannot afford to lose more weight as it is detrimental to one's health and that they are severely underweight.^[121] Continuously playing with fashion and beauty-centred dolls with such idealistic body proportions can cause psychological effects to an individual and can later stem into the development of eating disorders and other negative mental health outcomes sch as depression and anxiety.^[122]^[123] They may also cause young girls to associate thinness with attractiveness, success, and happiness.^[124] Another study suggests that girls continue to internalize the thin ideal even after playing with more realistic dolls.^[125]

LGBT ideals[edit]

Transgender women[edit]

Within the transgender community and those attracted to trans women, women of East Asian descent are regarded as the feminine ideal, because there is a racialialized stereotype that Asian features are 'prettier' than white women's. According to Chong-suk Han, this explains why East Asian drag queens typically win trans beauty pageants, because they are thought to pass more easily as female.^[126] Charlie Anders notes that the best-selling transsexual pornographic films depict Asian trans women, and they are highly esteemed and sought after by men identifying as straight.^[127]

A 2020 study interviewed trans women from Black, Australian Aboriginal, South Asian, East Asian, and Middle Eastern trans women living in Australia.^[128] Researchers interviewed participants about the risk factors of transmisogyny and sexual violence.^[129] Trans women of East Asian or Southeast Asian descent felt that white Australian men tend to fetishize them.^[130] This fetishization and exoticization of trans women of color left them vulnerable to sexual violence as trans women, which some felt could have been avoided if they could pass as white.^[131] Ussher's research suggests that the poor health outcomes experienced by many trans women are closely associated with their exposure to sexual violence as well as the social inequities and transphobia to which they are subjected. Trans women of color experience additional prejudice and discrimination due to the intersection of gender, sexuality, race, and social class. Swami's research also suggests that understanding these intersectionalities is vital in understanding the sexual violence experiences of trans women of color.

The construction of femininity within the transgender community largely has to do with how well (or how poorly) they are able to utilise the tools of "corporeal beautification provided by the commercial industries."^[132] According to Lovelock, "trans women such as Jenner are accepted as women so long as they adhere to the visual codes of female attractiveness."^[132]

Drag queens[edit]

Studies of RuPaul's Drag Race, a show that features a competition between drag queens, notes that contestants who have a smaller/skinnier body type are treated as though their femininity is more valid than larger drag queens.^[133] RuPaul's Drag Race has also been known to encourage racialized performances that play into stereotypes based on the ethnicity of the queens performing; one incidence, a queen was discouraged from putting on an Amy Winehouse performance because the queen herself was a person of color.^[134] Although drag is an important part of the LGBTQ community, most of the inspiration from which drag queens draw to formulate their looks abides by the standard of heteronormative, western beauty.^[133]

Psychological effects[edit]

Feminine beauty ideals have been shown to have correlations with many psychological disorders, including lowered self-esteem and eating disorders. Western cultural standards of beauty and attractiveness promote unhealthy and unattainable body ideals that motivate women to seek perfection.^[135] Since 1972, there has been a dramatic increase in the percentage of women in the United States who experience dissatisfaction with their bodies.^[88] Research indicates that women's exposure to television, even for a very short time, can experience decreased mood and self-esteem.^[136] It has been consistently found that perceived appearance is the single strongest predictor of global self-esteem among young adults.^[88] Awareness of the ideal female shape is linked to increasingly negative self-esteem.^[88] Through peer interaction and an environment of continual comparison to those portrayed in the media, women are often made to feel inadequate, and thus their self-esteem can decrease from their negative self-image. A negative body image can result in adverse psychosocial consequences, including depression, poor self-esteem, and diminished quality of life.^[137]

There is significant pressure for girls to conform to feminine beauty ideals, and, since thinness is prized as feminine, many women feel dissatisfied with their body shape. Body dissatisfaction has been found to be a precursor to serious psychological problems such as depression, social anxiety, and eating disorders.^[138] Feminine beauty ideals have influenced women, particularly younger women, to partake in extreme measures. Some of these extreme measures include limiting their food intake, participating in excessive physical activity, or fixating on one's diet to try to achieve what is considered the "ideal beauty standards". One aspect of the feminine beauty ideal includes having a thin waist, which is causing women to participate in these behaviors. When trying to achieve these unnatural standards, these dangerous practices are put into place. These practices can eventually lead to the woman developing eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. With eating disorders as such, the obsession over one's body image and being thin reaches new levels, evolving into a rational fear of putting on weight. As achieving the "beauty ideal" becomes a more popular phenomenon, these eating disorders are becoming more prevalent, especially in young women.^[139] Researchers have found that magazine advertisements promoting dieting and thinness are far more prevalent in women's magazines than in men's magazines, and that female television characters are far more likely to be thin than male characters.^[140] Eating disorders stem from individual body dysmorphia, or an excessive preoccupation with perceived flaws in appearance.^[135] Researchers suggest that this behavior strongly correlates with societal pressure for women to live up to the standards of beauty set by a culture obsessed with being thin.^[135] Research has shown that people have subconsciously associated heavier body sizes with negative personality characteristics such as laziness and lack of self-control.^[141] Fat-body prejudice appears as young as early childhood and continues into adult years.^[141] Negative body image worsens as females go through puberty; girls in adolescence frequently report being dissatisfied with their weight and fear future weight gain.^[142] According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD), the age of the onset of eating disorders is getting younger.^[135] Girls as young as elementary-school age report body dissatisfaction and dieting in order to look like magazine models.^[141]

Ellen Staurowsky characterized serious psychological and physical health risks that are associated with girls' negative body images. Negative body image is often associated with disordered eating, depression, and even substance abuse. There is widespread evidence of damaging dissatisfaction among women and young girls with their appearance.^[143]

Evolutionary perspectives[edit]

Ideas of feminine beauty may have originated from features that correlate with fertility and health.^[144] These features include a figure where there is more fat distribution in the hip and thigh area, and vary between different cultures. In both Western and Eastern cultures, having a larger waist to hip ratio (WHR) is considered attractive.^[145] While it has been shown consistently that men find women with larger WHR more attractive, this body feature does not actually show any indication of health or fertility. It is more agreeably hypothesized that attraction to WHR is an adaptive cue of parity or current pregnancy, rather than a cue of fertility.^[146] The heterosexual evolutionary perspective suggests that men, over time and across cultures, prefer youthful features (smooth skin, white eyes, full lips, good muscle tone, leg length, lumbar curvature, facial symmetry, long/full hair, feminine voice) as indications of fertility or healthy genes.^[147] These physical cues pair with behavior cues of youth (high energy, short stride, animated facial expressions) to ancestrally assess a woman's "reproductive value."^[148] These theories can help us understand why certain beauty or body trends fluctuate or remain stagnant, but some scholars argue that "unsound theoretical foundations will lead to imprecise predictions which cannot properly be tested, thus ultimately resulting in the premature rejection of an evolutionary explanation to human mate preferences."^[146]

Venus at a Mirror, Peter Paul Rubens, 1615. In the 17th century, fleshier bodies were idealized.^[149]

Victorian women were highly body conscious. They wore corsets to reduce their waistline, and bustles that magnified their buttocks.^[149]

During the 1920s, women aimed to hide their curves, bobbed their hair and wore bold makeup.^[149] The feminine ideal was no longer "frail and sickly" like in the Victorian era, so women danced and did sports.^[150]

Actress Marilyn Monroe was perceived as the queen of curves in the 1950s.^[150] Her image has been used to popularize the hourglass figure.

Farrah Fawcett and Cher in 1976. From the 1960s up to the 1980s, women aimed to look skinny. Tanned skin also became popular.^[149]

The 1980s beauty ideal was still thin, but toned without being too muscular; thus aerobics became popular. The decade also epitomized over-the-top fashion.^[149]