Beauty Standards

Beauty is a construction had made by the community, related to the physical form of women, internalized through social and cultural values, and spread by the mass media. Whether yes or not a woman is beautiful, depends on the standards and criteria of beauty that are believed, and the people who have an interest in beauty standards. Beauty standards can be relative because the beauty preferences of individuals and groups of people are different, and change over time. However, beauty standards can be universal because of the similarity of standards and criteria used to get a beautiful label (Aprilita & Listyani, 2016).

According to Wiasti (in Sari 2019), the beauty standards that apply in Indonesia are women who have olive skin, but in 1985 the beauty standards have changed to white women. Until now, white skin still being universal and the standard of female beauty, coupled with a thin body, flawless face without blemishes, and height. Beauty products marked with whitening skin, losing weight, and smoothing the face began to appear to support women’s efforts to be beautiful, according to universal beauty standards.

Women’s beauty standards affect their body image, such as how they see, feel, and perceive their beauty (Grogan in Prawono, 2013). Beauty standards also affect a person’s mental condition because it relates to a person’s satisfaction with the beauty they have. This condition is called body image satisfaction, which is a form of satisfaction felt by a person with his physical form (Prawono, 2013). Women who feel that they are belonging to applicable beauty standards will have positive body image satisfaction because they have high satisfaction with their face shape. Women who are not belonging to beauty standards have negative body image satisfaction because the level of satisfaction with their face shape is still low, so they make various efforts to get beautiful recognition from the community, such as buying beauty products, consuming drugs and diet foods, and to do plastic surgery.

Society will always demand women to be someone according to the prevailing values. The patriarchal conditions make women have the second position in society, so they have to live according to what people say. Likewise, beauty standards are the result of patriarchy because it aims to provide visual enjoyment for their community, and society will continue to demand women to be beautiful according to the standards and criteria of beauty standards set.

Beauty is pain is a proverb that describes the sacrifice of women to be beautiful. Women are willing to make efforts that require large costs and cause pain to get beautiful praise from society. The sacrifices often result in unwanted conditions, such as the appearance of acne due to the wrong use of beauty products, decreased health to underweight due to diet programs, and the failure of plastic surgery who make women far from beauty standards. This condition causes anxiety and self-doubt. However, these efforts like opium for women because they will continue to make these efforts, even though they know that they will get negative impacts. Nevertheless, women continue to suggest themselves that their efforts will give positive results. Thus, they will get recognition if their face is beautiful, according to the applicable beauty standards

This condition is like a vicious circle that keeps turning. Capitalism will certainly take advantage of women’s beauty standards to produce beauty products through advertising in the mass media. They claim that their products can change the shape of a person’s face in a short time. In this context, the mass media — and of course society, has great power to produce and disseminate women’s beauty standards. Therefore, women cannot escape this condition because society demands to always look pretty, and capitalism takes advantage of this condition using the mass media to gain profits.

At the end of the day, I ask myself. Can we live free without social constructions? Can we live by what we need, not what people need? and can we live without people’s force? Can we live with respect for each other’s choices?

Daftar Pustaka

Aprilita, D. (2016). Representasi Kecantikan Perempuan dalam Media Sosial Instagram (Analisis Semiotika Roland Barthes pada Akun@ mostbeautyindo,@ Bidadarisurga, dan@ papuan_girl). Paradigma, 4(3).

Prawono, V. I. (2013). Hubungan antara Body Image Satisfaction dan Self-Esteem pada Perempuan Dewasa Muda yang Berdiet di Jakarta. Psibernetika, 6(1).

Sari, I. P. (2019). Rekonstruksi dan Manipulasi Simbol Kecantikan. Jurnal Hawa: Studi Pengarus Utamaan Gender dan Anak, 1(1).