WOMEN AND BEAUTY STANDARDS 2

Women and Beauty Standards

Debra Gimlin characterizes the body as a symbol of “selfhood, but its relation to its
inhabitants is shaped primarily by the individuals capacity for material consumption” (Gimlin,
2002). The first part of the statement “body as a symbol of selfhood”, can be interpreted as
meaning that a body represents a unique identity of a person that makes one different from
others. In the second part of the statement, “its relation to its inhabitants is shaped primarily by
the individual’s capacity for material consumption”, Gimlin means that the female body has
been reduced to a commodity like a house or car. Just like a commodity can be modified to
meet the tastes of consumers, the body of a woman too has been reduced to a state where it
can be modified or upgraded in order to meet prevailing tastes in the society.
Gimlin, therefore, finds fault with attaching women’s value to their appearance. In
order to achieve desired appearance which is standard, women have been forced to do away
with their “selfhood”, their uniqueness, in pursuit of a standard of beauty or appearance that
all women are judged against. This view is also shared by Naomi Wolf who argues that
women have been forced to seek an unattainable standard of beauty (Wolf, 1991). Given the
very high standard of beauty, women frequently find fault in their appearance. To remove the
fault and come nearer to the high beauty standards, women have been forced to take risky
measures, such as plastic surgery (Gimlin, 2002). They have also adopted unhealthy behaviors
such as staying without food for long in order to slim and get the appearance of beauty.
Both Gimlin and Wolf contend that the decision of many women to take risky
measures in order to appear beautiful is primarily shaped by cultural considerations which
create unattainable notions of what constitutes beauty. Wolf goes farther to claim that these
unattainable notions of beauty have been created to prevent women from playing an effective

WOMEN AND BEAUTY STANDARDS 3
role in the society (Wolf, 1991). She argues that these notions of beauty emerged at a time
when women were making grand strides towards greater involvement at all levels of society.
Just as more women were breaking material and legal hindrances that had held them back for
long, a new barrier emerged. This barrier is the strict standards of female beauty that many
women cannot achieve. Thus, even as women increased their prominence and social power as
seen in the increase of
women’s faces in top echelons of professions like law and medicine, business,
government, and politics, their self-esteem reduced to a level that is lower than that of women
of previous generations (Wolf, 1991). The high beauty standards and the extreme societal
pressure that women face to conform to them has also led to women directing their energy
away from important pursuits to simply seeking to enhance their appearance (Wolf, 1991).
The ultimate result of preoccupation with appearance is that women are going to eventually
return to a level where they are subordinate to men in all areas.
The unattainable standards of beauty promoted by, among others, the media are,
therefore, not just a simple matter of beauty. They have far-reaching effects on women’s
identity, self-perception, and their ability to effectively play important role in society as equals
of men. In order for women to achieve equality with men, their body’s should not be treated as
commodities whose values increase and decrease by appearances. It is, therefore, important
that society relaxes its standards of beauty.

WOMEN AND BEAUTY STANDARDS 4

References

Gimlin, D. (2002). Body work: Beauty and self-image in American culture. University of
California Press.
Wolf, N. (1991). The beauty myth: How images of beauty are used against women. Random
House.