Reflection+on+The+American+Beauty

A Reflection on “The American Beauty”

When asked to describe “The American Beauty,” most Americans will generally include a Hollywood starlet that incarnates the physical characteristics that they feel make women beautiful. These women represent beauty and glamor to most Americans. Almost all Americans define beauty by external appearance. They look for someone with a perfect nose, bright eyes, and a pretty smile. In contrast, you will almost never hear an American describe Sojourner Truth or Rosa Parks as beautiful. Because, Americans do not regard a person’s remarkable accomplishments as making them beautiful. Beauty is based only on physical human characteristics.

Hollywood starlets such as Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and Grace Kelly define the American standard of beauty. They were young women with lovely figures and beautiful faces. The billboards and movie posters of their faces that were plastered all over America communicated to the American consumer that only people who looked like these women could be truly beautiful. The image of a blue-eyed, blonde haired, heart-shaped lipped woman is presented as the only woman that is seen as beautiful in contemporary American culture. Those who did not posses these features are to believe that they are unattractive and unworthy of love and admiration for their “beauty.”

The introduction of the Barbie Doll into popular American culture also influenced the way that Americans define beauty. Barbie is an extremely thin, blonde, and blue-eyed woman. She always looked glamorous in her many outfits. She was the first mass produced doll that every young girl in America owned or wanted to own. "Barbie Doll" advertisements called her "beautiful." This taught viewers of these commercials and purchasers of Barbie dolls, that this is what someone beautiful looks like. Here, we see that the media is continuing to perpetuate the myth that being "beautiful" is about having specific external features that make you an attractive person. The myth that n order to be beautiful, one must have light hair, light skin, and light eyes has been portrayed through the media and imbedded in the consumer culture for decades. This has unfortunately caused millions of Americans to feel that they are ugly, because they do not fit the mold of "The American Beauty."

In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Morrison illustrates the life of young Pecola Breedlove and her desire to gain blue eyes as a way of escaping the harsh reality of her life only to be finally seen by those around her as beautiful. The resentment of this forced conformity is expressed by the character Claudia when she explains her utter hatred of all white baby dolls. She is trying to understand what makes people adore the white little baby doll, while they ignore or show indifference to the image of Claudia as a young black girl.

In this exhibit I show the cost of trying to be "beautiful." The pressure to be thin in America is what drives many women to suffer from eating disorders. Americans are so desperate to attain physical beauty that they are willing to die in order to achieve this goal. They starve themselves because they are told by American society that being thin is beautiful. This ideal consumes many women who become obsessed with becoming beautiful. The image of beauty within our society has been and will continue to be perpetuated by what the media tells Americans is beautiful. The devastating effects that this image is having on those who did not fit this small window of beauty are catastrophic. The image of being white is equated with being beautiful and good. Those who are dark skinned feel that they are ugly and evil. This is obviously untrue, however, the unfortunate reality is that these ideas of beauty have already been ingrained in the American psyche. Therefore, these ideas will continue to perpetuate until the media begins to portray other kinds beauty.

Rachel