How Should We Encounter Beauty Standards?
With the advancing technologies, the world reaches a new height of globalization that connects and unifies people from all over the world. However, in this flourishing environment, beauty standards have encountered a challenging issue of obtaining homogeneity in the world’s perceptions of beauty. In the effort to end this ceasing diversity in beauty, people have come up with many different solutions. Within the borders, individual countries’ governments, like the Chinese government, have publicly advocated for maintaining traditional cultural beauty standards. In the larger scope, people from all over the world have spread and publicized the importance of different countries’ individuality in beauty standards through media platforms like TikTok that are highly accessible to most parts of the world. Although some argue the national promotion of traditional culture components through government publicity broadens the awareness of different beauty standards, I believe the mass media exposure among worldwide platforms is a better method as it reaches a more extensive range of audiences which rapidly increases the acknowledgment of various beauty standards and successfully ceases the ongoing homogeneous trend.
Beauty standards are the physical attributes and outer appearances like clothes and decorations that make one person pretty and visually attractive. In detail, the facial features of big eyes with double eyelids, small nose, narrow facial shape, long and curly lashes, and prominent facial features are the apparent beauty standards prevailing in the current world. Facial surgery in many countries focuses on achieving the above features as these traits contribute to a so-called “perfect” face in many people’s minds. However, as we dig deeper into these seemingly normal rules, we will find out that many of the above features are inheritable genetics of western races, revealing the continuing strong western influence on the globe, including the perception of beauty, due to the long-term cultural dominance upon others.
As a result, the pursuit and praise of the western inherited traits that are considered the current beauty standards indicate a continuous underlying influence of the western gaze on people’s perception of beauty even though the world has already drastically evolved and revolutionized in many beliefs and aspects. Thus, the homogeneity of beauty standards that are biased from the root needs to be stopped to not only maintain the diversity of our ideas of beauty but also to add effort on ceasing the impacting western gaze within the globe.
In response, people implemented the use of worldwide social media platforms to promote and spread the awareness of different beauty standards with varied content that displays beauty from all parts of the world. Tiktok, which dominated the latest social media world, is one platform that contributes to this awareness. With the freedom of content and a large number of participants in this platform, the amount of targeted audience in this action increased expeditiously, helping to push different beauty standards out of their original countries and obstacles due to both territorial restrictions and language barriers.
For example, K-pop, competing with the long-established western music market, became highly successful in recent years, which is an unprecedented event as it is the first time that eastern Asian faces and music hold a strong influence on a global scale. Tiktok, in this sense, significantly helped the growth of K-pop and normalized the appearance of Asian facial traits like monolids in beauty standards as it provides a worldwide platform that countless people are viewing. A 15 seconds video edit of a kpop idol dancing has reached 76.8 million views and 10.7 million likes on Titok in just 5 months, showing the striking effect on the world’s perception of beauty. TikTok’s extensive range of appliances allowed a drastic increase in the number of people that are able to be aware and start to accept other beauty standards. Thus, Asian faces obtain greater acknowledgment for their beauty and help in ending the ongoing homogeneous beauty standards through the mass media platforms.
Admittedly, the national approach through government propaganda and advocation largely impacted and influenced people from their own countries, especially in countries like China and North Korea that the worldwide media platforms can’t reach due to political reasons. The Chinese government’s promotion of beauty standards through high media praising of Chinese Olympic competitors that are not considered “beautiful” under current beauty standards successfully encourages diverse views of beauty and intervenes with the western rooted beauty standards. However, considering the territorial restriction of the government’s promotion, the mass media platforms accessible to most parts of the world obtain a much more extensive range of appliances, which contribute to the substantial increase in the acknowledgment of different beauty standards around the globe. Furthermore, the media allowed high freedom on the measurement of beauty standards as they don’t restrict the perception of beauty based on gender, unlike the Chinese government that has advocated men to become less feminine, disregarding personal preferences, by not wearing makeup and acting in a muscular manner as it is the believed and promoted beauty standards for men in China.
In conclusion, worldwide media platforms like Tiktok are a better way to stop the homogeneous trend in beauty standards than government-promoted publicity in individual countries because the platforms reach a far more extensive range of audiences than individual governments’ promotion that may be biased and strict.
Beauty should be a diverse and inclusive idea that is different for everyone, as everyone is beautiful in their own way. By acknowledging beauty from all perspectives and moving away from a set of rigid and unlively beauty standards, we are able to appreciate the world more delightfully and pleasingly.
