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I like going on dating subreddits and I see the phrase “Western Beauty Standard” come up occasionally.
Idk how real that concept is in America at least. Attractive people of all races have 0 issue getting laid, finding partners, etc.
Googling “Western Beauty Standards” for men and women mainly brings up skin color, big eyes, small nose, skinny, big boobs, big butt, etc. I’m not sure how much those are “standards” imposed by Western Countries over general things people naturally prefer. I’m not even sure how universal those standards even are.
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The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
I like going on dating subreddits and I see the phrase “Western Beauty Standard” come up occasionally.
Idk how real that concept is in America at least. Attractive people of all races have 0 issue getting laid, finding partners, etc.
Googling “Western Beauty Standards” for men and women mainly brings up skin color, big eyes, small nose, skinny, big boobs, big butt, etc. I’m not sure how much those are “standards” imposed by Western Countries over general things people naturally prefer. I’m not even sure how universal those standards even are.
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Yes, 100%. Every culture has their own beauty and aesthetic standards. It's not an unusual thing. We live in the west, so we're more attuned to western standards.
I don't think the concept is "imposed" on people. There's not a "Western Beauty Standard Council" that determines what is or is not attractive. It's just how the culture has worked out what is generally pleasing.
The standards are not universal. People have all sorts of different preferences related to physical appearance. There are definitely attractive people/features/aesthetics in some cultures that are not part of the mainstream in others.
A good example would be that in western culture, tattoos are often considered a positive aesthetic. In Japan, however, they are associated with criminals, and so you would never see a "traditional Japanese model" sporting them.
Just because it changes organically doesn't mean it's not imposed on people. Fashion is similar... there's not a committee that decides what people should or shouldn't wear, but generally speaking, you're definitely getting judged if you show up to somebody's wedding in sweat pants.
Perhaps an imprecise phrase. Society definitely pushes beauty standards to people through peer pressure, marketing, etc. We as a culture do this.
I mean that there is not some "top-down rulebook" that dictates what beauty is. Society has a constantly evolving set of standards.
Wouldn’t the fact that it’s often “set” by fashion houses and media be top down? Obviously there’s not a beauty standards and practices committee but if the trend is low rise jeans, that’s what’s on the racks, despite consumer complaints.
While that’s shifting a bit with social media, for the most part, advertisers and the entertainment industry are still the primary drivers of the standard.
Is that a “western standard” though? Like I think every society has something in it about showing up to special occasions like “funerals” not dressed in sweatpants.
Unless sweatpants are funeral attire somewhere.
The sweatpants thing was just an example to illustrate the point. But I've never been to any other country, so I can't say how their fashion standards compare/contrast to ours. (And if I were being honest, I really don't know much about ours. lol)
Ehh - tattoos is not the best example at all of a positive aesthetic, it's still very much split generationally and by race/class in the US. I mean just last week there was the whole viral video of the gal with the ugly face tattoos bitching and moaning that no one would hire her.
No aesthetic is universally popular. I think tattoos are a great example of an evolving beauty standard.
The oldest generation pretty much hates them. They were for sailors and women of ill repute. The sort of Gen X crowd started to experiment with them in limited fashion, getting into having tribal designs or Asian characters.
From there, tattoos went from taboo to somewhat acceptable. Like you could have 1-3 of them without it being a big deal, but someone covered in them was still viewed as a crazy person.
From there, we've seen tattoo standards continually evolve in aesthetic, with it becoming far more acceptable to have lots of them. We see athletes and artists positively covered in tattoos now - and we see tattoo artists becoming famous and sought out for their work.
We still haven't made face or neck tattoos a real part of the standard, so yeah, the lady with ugly face tattoos is still gonna have a problem.
It's the same as any other fashion choice. A dress can be any length, but there is a length where it is deemed too long or too short.
Are tattoos considered a positive aesthetic here? Some people like them, some people don’t from my experience. I think in the Japanese example it’s less a “beauty” thing and more a concern for organized crime.
I think there’s a few universal standards people generally prefer in America. I might have to rethink this about cultures abroad, but I feel like even that is changing.
I would say they are considered a positive aesthetic here in the under-40 crowd, based on the proliferation of them, evolving styles, and public acceptance.
No standard is universally accepted. Plenty of people have skin or eye color preferences, weight preferences, etc. that are not what we consider the western standard. My parents were vehemently anti-tattoo people. I don't have any, but I'm fairly neutral on the subject.
I also don't know that it matters why something is considered unpleasant, only that it is or isn't. We considered big beards to be unpleasant for a long time, because they were associated with "mountain man" aesthetics. We considered tattoos unpleasant because they were for sailors and other... interesting people. Some people consider urban/hip hop fashion to be unpleasant because of its association with crime/drugs/etc.
Definitely.
We have a shared cultural idea of what constitutes beauty. The "beauty standards" for women, notoriously, change over time.
...and it is reasonable to think that our shared "Western" culture has its own "beauty standards" that would be different in other cultures.
...and this is all complicated by the guttural dominance of Hollywood, which serves to export our “Western beauty standards” abroad.
That's not what “Western beauty standards” means.
It means that Western culture has its own “beauty standards” and non-white people are often considered beautiful (or not) based on their adherence to those standards.
For example, the pursuit of “Western beauty standards” are probably a reason why 'skin lightening' beauty products exist.
For an extreme example:
The movie "Mongol" seemed to imply that Mongolian's view larger eyes as less beautiful, and accompanied this standard with a myth that 'larger eyes let more evil spirits in' to add to its cultural enforcement.
That doesn't mean an ethnically Mongolian woman couldn't become an American supermodel -- one absolutely could -- it only means that she would become a supermodel based on our standards of beauty, not the standards of Mongolians.
This can be further illustrated by the West's occasional fetishization of East Asian women.
We adopted “Western beauty standards” that valued slender bodies, so when we saw a bunch of slender East Asian women, we judged them as achieving those “Western beauty standards”.
...not being 'unattractive because they are non-Western'.
FYI: I'm old enough to remember when Western women considered "big butt" to be an insult, not an aspiration.
The Western world has become more diverse, and -- in doing so -- “Western Beauty Standards” have shifted to reflect some qualities that are not seen in people of 'white European' descent as often as in other ethnic groups.
(For anyone unfamiliar...)
For much of Western history, women were largely expected to be 'plump' to be considered attractive. They probably associated 'being skinny' with 'being too poor to afford food', so viewed it as a negative. This continued well into the 1950s, when you could still see ads like this:
Twiggy was largely seen as the icon of the shift, as women on magazine covers looked more like her than the more curvaceous icons of feminine beauty from the decade before her debut (Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren, Bridget Bardot, etc.).
In the Eighties, 'being fit' seemed to become a cultural signifier of wealth and social status, so our beauty standards shifted to include ostentatious displays of fitness, like visible abs or 'wearing workout clothes when not working out':
We've also seen more incremental movements in "beauty standards".
Sir-Mix-a-Lot and J-Lo helped us appreciate bigger butts. More recently, I would argue that Beyonce helped add 'thicc thighs' to our "beauty standards".
I even remember when Gwyneth Paltrow became famous, and for a couple of years thereafter, the women on the covers of fashion magazines all looked just a little more like her!
Aite wait one sec, is that lady supposed to be an example of what was “plump” in the past?
Dude she’d be faaaaaaar below average weight in modern America.
So did guys stop wanting plump women on the whole, or did the definition of plump change?
No.
The point is that her figure was aspirational in that era. Women who were skinnier than her would pay money to gain more weight in order to look more like her.
(Today, presumably, a girl with that body shape would pay money to become skinnier than her.)
That seems like a coding for white people.
Yeah, somehow tall, dark, and handsome means white.
That's what western beauty standards are.
Although I entirely agree, can you elaborate on what you mean by "Attractive"? Specifically, what standards of beauty are you applying?
This is an interesting claim. Do you think people naturally have always preferred the same thing, and it has never changed across cultures or over time?
Dude, talk about "tell me you haven't spent significant time outside the US without telling me you haven't spent significant time outside the US"... you're so drowning in the beauty standards you can't even fathom anything different.
Ever see videos of African women with all the neck rings and really long necks? In that culture the very long neck and those neck rings are beautiful.
Did you never read up on how certain cultures like China had such an obsession with small feet being feminine and desirable that they did barbaric things like foot binding?
Are there certain things that tend to be universally considered attractive to humans across cultures? Yes - facial symmetry and .7 / golden hip to waist ratio being the most mathematically demonstrable ones.
But yeah, just check this old Quora thread for some examples:
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-beauty-standards-of-various-non-white-cultures
I wasn’t born in America lol.
I feel like those are fairly fringe practices or no longer apply.
Maybe I’m just on one, but would smash all of the examples from the Quora thing you sent. Like the Tajik, Korean, black examples of “beauty standards” all look hot and all look different even within the same race.
So I’m thinking is it “standards” imposed, or just people finding well-put together people of all races attractive. “Well-put together” I guess being dependent on symmetry, ratios lol, etc.