The notion and understanding is beauty is one of the most complex and disputable questions today. Philosophers and designers, ordinary citizens and musicians try to establish certain standards and principles of beauty derived from social and cultural values. Naomi Wolf argues that the “beauty myth is always actually prescribing behavior and not appearance”. It is possible to disagree with this statement because at the beginning of the 21st century, beauty myth is appearance prescribed by fashion designers and cultural trends rather than a certain behavior.
Cultural trends suggest that beauty myth is appearance based on the sweeping skirts, elaborate hats, and tight-waisted blouses of the fashionable ladies. When fashion changes, appearance is also changed. Sharpley-Whiting portrays that black women might prefer the hip-hop or break-dancing look-parachute pants, bandanas tied around the wrists and ankles, a loose sports jacket, and fancy high-top sneakers. Baggy sweat clothes or oversized shorts or jeans worn with a baseball cap and sneakers were also part of this style. Hip-Hop popularizes loose, curly hair and dancewear for girls: loose sweatshirts cut out at the neck and hem, leotards or tights, and leg warmers. Having a body that looks good in such clothes becomes increasingly essential for the fashionable girl; ballet and aerobic dance workouts helps. If teens really want to shock parents and teachers, they adopt the punk look, imported from England: a Mohawk haircut (shaved down the sides with a high shelf of hair down the middle) or spiked hair sometimes dyed green or orange, a whole row of earrings climbing up the rim of the ear (or more conservatively for boys, a single ear stud), and a black leather jacket. Some girls try the “gothic” look: all black clothes, very pale face with dramatic eye makeup and black lipstick. A decade ago, although at first it was rather sexy for younger or more conservative teen girls to wear them, Lycra leggings gradually became part of most girls’ wardrobes because they were cheap, comfortable, and easy for most body types to wear with a tunic top. These trends show that beauty myth is appearance based on unique cultural patterns and styles. Following Sharpley-Whiting: “Although managers are increasingly embracing a more complex consideration of beauty that values diversity, the standard continues to be the blond, tall, well- endowed beauty with tan lines”.
Many girls have commented on the combination of boyishness and sex appeal in the style. Certainly it does flaunt the combination of youth and sex in a way never before seen in girls and women. The style is less boyish than childlike; the dropped-waist blouses and Mary Jane shoes with their round toes and straps over the arch that were stylish in the Twenties had been worn by children in earlier decades. Was the young flapper displaying her sexuality and at the same time keeping real sexual activity at bay by looking like a child? This same question would be raised about the model Twiggy in the Sixties and again in the Nineties about model Kate Moss. A woman’s superb physical strength and attractiveness, as well as determination, offers an alternative to the image of idle teens smoking and dancing the Charleston in speakeasies. Sport has always been connected with youthfulness and beauty, but the connection becomes even more important as an antidote to the media’s attention to flaming youth.
Sharpley-Whiting demonstrates that fashion fads for girls include very curly permed hair, pony tails worn on the side rather than the back of the head, Swatch watches, jelly bracelets, bangle bracelets, braided friendship bracelets, and anything in neon colors. Young tennis starts create a fad for jewelry on the tennis court, especially a narrow diamond bracelet that came to be called a tennis bracelet. Well-to-do teen girls want the real thing but there are also plenty of rhinestone or cubic zirconia versions available for girls with less money. Michael Jackson’s white socks and single glove are imitated, and younger teen girls go wild over Madonna’s uncoiffed hairstyle, her crocheted gloves, her miniskirts and bare midriff, her many necklaces and pendants, her bustier, and her eye makeup, most of which they have to experiment with away from the eyes of parents. Sharpley-Whiting underlines that hip hop is: ’”culture that overemphasizes physical appearance. Simultaneously women who embrace beauty products and their images still “second guess” themselves”. A pair of sunglasses is absolutely essential for cool style, especially if they are Ray-Bans and, a guy has a two-day’s growth of beard, they make him look like Don Johnson of the television hit Miami Vice.
Prescribed behavior does not reflect beauty, because only clothes can reveal new freedom and sexuality. Favored fabrics for the popular short, loose dresses are floating and sheer, occasionally with heavy beading on evening dresses, which are sometimes completely backless and softly draped. Tight cloche (or bell-shaped) hats, ropes of long beads, and lowheeled pumps with a shaped Cuban heel completed the look. Many women and girls diet to achieve the boyish, flat-chested, slim-hipped body required by the clothes. “As the product-hawking, image-projecting hip hop video pumps cash into the mainstream and hip hop’s multibillion-dollar fashion and beauty industries”. Winter coats also loose their waists, their length and bulky fabrics creating a kind of “tubular” took. On the other hand, the one-piece bathing suit, a very revealing garment, appears for the first time.
Historical examples suggest that appearance has always been the main determinant of beauty thus it is not a historically constructed category. For instance, during 1930s an even more dramatic change took place in hairstyles. Instead of long hair, worn down for day or piled high in the evening, girls began to “bob” their hair, cutting it short and straight across the back and sometimes plastering it into curls very close to the head or with a single curl in the middle of the forehead. Bobbed hair became a symbol of rebellion for many girls of the day, who deliberately shocked their parents by going to the beauty parlor to get the new style. Some girls even cut their hair in the more exaggerated Eton style, very much like a boy’s with a shaved neckline in back and hair falling over the face in front. Women and girls also wore more cosmetics than ever before. In earlier decades, a “painted” woman was automatically an immoral one. During the Twenties, mascaraed lashes, face powder, rouge, and red lipstick appeared on most women and girls who wanted to appear fashionable. They often plucked their eyebrows into a high arch, like the film stars of the decade, and used lipstick to shape their lips into a “beestung” look tiny and pouting. Such artifice, like bobbed hair, caused many arguments between teens and their parents, and how girls appeared at high school became a source of contention. For their part, parents worried about the expense of the new emphasis on fashion, and some schools tried to enforce dress codes.
To some extent Wolf is right because during 1990s, behavior was a remarkable feature of beauty myth influenced by music and fashion trends. The roots of rap and hip-hop go deep–into the rhythm of black English, into soul music, rhythm-and-blues sounds. The style had been around in the urban ghettos in the midSeventies, when black teen boys took their turntables out on the street to enjoy “scratching”–turning the record by hand to make a scratchy, rhythmic sound to which they could move and recite lyrics. Those lyrics, using clever and surprising rhyming patterns which snapped connecting ideas into focus, usually described the violent, angry life of the inner city. Teens try to adapt their behavior to new trends copying behavior patterns and cool language popularized by rap and hip-hop musicians. In order to look good and fashionable, every girl has to “keep her seams straight”. The makeup styles of the glamorous film stars also appear among teens, gradually increasing in use until most girl of eighteen invest a good portion of their earnings in cosmetics. Creams, lotions, and nail polish become part of a girl’s beauty routine when more affordable beauty products appear on the market. Physical health, with its implication of accompanying moral health, becomes an ideal for many, and the image of the teenager glowing with robust, wholesome strength appeal to many who reject the flapper lifestyle. As much as any other area of teen life, fashions reflect the split between the early and late 1990s.
In sum, at the beginning of the 21st century, beauty myth is appearance based on fashion and cultural trends. The beauty standard for the well-bred teen girl is set by music culture and fashionable magazines. Some of the images that accompanied the music are more sexually suggestive than anything previously seen on television aimed at young audiences.
Bibliography
Sharpley-Whiting, T. Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women. NYU Press, 2007.
Wolf, N. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. Vintage; New Ed edition, 2007.