WP2: Western Beauty Standards at USC

By: Citlali Duran

Does everyone walk into campus with the same innate ability to be considered “beautiful?”

During my time at USC, from the moment I stepped on campus, I did not feel beautiful. Coming from a predominantly Hispanic city, I never questioned whether my ethnic features would make me any less attractive. I never walked into a party and felt like guys would immediately not find me attractive because of my physical appearance. I did not see other girls and immediately compare myself, pondering over ways to make myself “fit in.”

Now with the sudden desire to conform to eurocentric beauty standards, longing for lighter hair, pale skin, and colored eyes. A newfound pressure of molding my body thinner to satisfy the male gaze. Despite USC’s efforts to diversify the school, I continue to feel like my image does not capture the attention of others.

This video was used as a means to visually display this idea, to question if other women of color felt beautiful on campus and if they feel the pressures of Western beauty standards at USC.

A simple and basic aesthetic was used as inspiration for my project. Because of this, I constructed the questions to be a sentence long to leave room for interpretation. The questions centered around when they felt most beautiful and if that translated to how they felt on campus. I wanted to see if I could receive the answer I was looking for without directly asking the question itself. Creatively I wanted the video to feel raw in order to clearly convey the emotions of the interviewees. Accomplishing this by using close-up shots in an attempt to create a space of vulnerability and closeness that one doesn’t usually experience unless in an intimate relationship with another person. I edited the video in a simple shot-by-shot manner to match the minimalist aesthetic. In creating this video, I hope for the viewer to become aware of the heightened Western beauty standards on campus with the hope of starting a larger conversation.