Beauty: the Evolution of Perception

Vennette Gonzalez Mr. Warner English 111 (032W) 19 November 2012 lulu The evolution of perception When looking in the past to see how people lived and supposeed the world, there is one commonality that stands out. A womans dishful says a lot on how the culture and the people of that society beholdd themselves and others. These past perceptions mint how latest society and culture is perceived not only by the individuals of our generation unless by our approaching generations as well.This paper will address how we as society view looker as it has changed oer a period of time, how these changes came closely, and how the media played a role in this beauty evolution. How this beauty evolution begins starts in childhood. One of the first memories that children have is the reading of puff tales. These stories set a foundation as to what we perceive as beauty. Childrens media has been found to be forefingerfully responsive to social change and not plainly in a way that mirrors so ciety (Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz 714). With this untimely exposure to what is rendered as beauty, it is established early in the developmental years of childhood of how a woman should look as well as act. Childrens fairy tales backside provide insight into the dynamic relationship among gender, index finger, and culture as well as the cultural and social signification of beauty to womens lives (Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz 712). The cultural and social significance can be seen as missys and boys be taught specific messages concerning the importance of womens bodies and womens attractiveness (Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz 724). These fairy tales were created to accommodate the cultural value and conflicts of the era, and establish the values of what our society deems as appropriate and what is acceptable for our novel children to grow into as well as establishing a baseline for beauty.As our children grow, they carry these values and ideals with them. These fairy tales salu te women as meek and powerless, who are damsels in distress in need of a knight in shining armor. With maturity some of these values and ideals change however, Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz state that The feminine beauty ideal is the socially constructed notion that physical attractiveness is one of womans most important assets, and something all women should endeavour to achieve and maintain (711). This belief is still prevalent in todays society. This does not recollect that there is a direct relationship between cultural values concerning feminine beauty and womens behavior and identities, but the feminine beauty ideal may operate indirectly as a means of social tally insofar as womens concern with physical appearance (beauty), absorbs resources (money, energy, time) that could other be spent enhancing their social status (Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz 723). The impacts of this ideal feminine beauty not only affect our children, but it also affects how they perceive themselves a nd how the future generations will perceive us. The feminine beauty ideal can be seen as a normative means of social control, where by social control is finish through the internalization of values and norms that serve to restrict womens lives (Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz 712). This ultimately means that girls who are expose to these fairy tales develop a belief that there are certain expectations that need to be upheld and if these expectations are not met then they will lack the power to succeed. Workers of above average beauty earn about 10 to 15 percent more than workers of be beginning average beauty. The size of this beauty premium is economically significant and comparable to the race and gender gaps in the U. S. labor market (Mobius and Rosenblat 222). According to Naomi Wolf much women have more power and scope and legal recognition that we have ever had before but in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically, we may actually be worse off (Wolf 16) She also goes on to state There is no legitimate historical or biological justification for the beauty myth what it is doing to women today is a result of nothing more exalted than the need of todays power structure, economy and culture to mount a counteroffensive against women (Wolf 19). Due to this, beauty is forthwith linked with power in the sense that the more beautiful you are the more powerful you are.This idea that beauty is power became more noticeable during the womans movement according to Wolf (19). She states that By the time the womens movement had made inroads into the labor market, both women and men were accustomed to having beauty evaluated as wealth (Wolf 26). This inflow of women in the work force changed how young girls related to the fairy tales they once read. They no longer had to portray the roles of the damsel in distress, but had to use their beauty to gain power and attention.This evolution from the damsel has conduct to a more independent woman who uses her beauty to get what she needs. Before women entered the work force in large numbers, there was a clearly defined class of those explicitly paid for their beauty workers in the display professions-fashion mannequins, actress, dancers, and higher paid sex workers such as escorts. Until womens emancipation, professional beauties were usually anonymous, low in status, un-respectable (Wolf 33). Now our young girls want to look like all the actresses, musicians, models etc that they see on TV, movies and in magazines.I think these changes occurred once the fairy tales were no longer in written media, where we used what was written carry out and our imagination to create our ideal of beauty. Once these fairytales became a visual (movies, TV. and magazines) our young girls wanted to copy what they saw. In 1969 Vogue offered a new look for womens magazines (Wolf 73). Vogue began to focus on the body as much as the clothes, in part because there was little they could dictate with the anarchic style s (Wolf 73). The number of fodder related articles rose 70 percent from 1968 to 1972.Articles on dieting in the popular press soared from 60 in the year 1979 to 66 in the month of January 1980 alone. By 1984, 300 diet books were on the shelves (Wolf 73-74). The clock of this influx of dieting articles is due to the popularity of a model named Lesley Lawson otherwise known as Twiggy. She hit the top of the inning of her career in 1966 where she was on the cover of Vogue magazine. She was the ideal beauty of that era where being boyishly thin was in. Whereas a decade before having womanly curves was the idea of what beauty was for example the pin-up girl Betty Grable.She was what was considered the ideal of that era. The images of both of these women show the significance of how models, actress and movie stars affect the women and youth of our society. Both of these women were portrayed in womens magazines or movies. A woman reading Glamor is holding women-oriented mass culture b etween her two hands (Wolf 76). With the mass media evolving and able to mass produce the media quicker than ever, the new ideals of what our young women view as beauty changes at an even more rapid pace. With the introduction of the internet mass media is now instant, and on demand. Glamour, beauty and the perfect body these are the values upheld within our culture as necessary to the fulfillment of desirable femininity (Wark 41). With this beauty evolution consistently changing it also reflects the changes in the values that we as a society hold. The mass media will always be an integral part of our mantrap evolution as it reflects societys values. Works Cited Baker-Sperry, Lori, and Liz Grauerholz. The Pervasiveness and Persistance of the Feminine watcher Ideal in Childrens Fairy Tales. Gender and Society 17. 5 (Oct 2003) 711-726. http//www. jstor. org/stable/3594706. Web. 19 November 2012. Fox, Greer Litton. Nice Girl Social control of women through a value construct. Sig ns Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2 (1977) 805-817. Print. Mobius, Markus M. , and Tanya S. Rosenblat. Why Beauty Matters. American Economic Review 96. 1 (2006) 222-235. http//www. jstor. org/stable/30034362. Web. 19 November 2012. Wark, Jayne. Wendy Gellers 48 hour Beauty Blitz Gender, Class and the Pleasures of popular Culture. Art Journal 56. 4 (1997) 41-47. http//www. jstor. org/stable/777719. Web. 19 November 2012. Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty legend How images of Beauty are used against Women. New York HarperCollins, 2002. PDF File.