The Beauty Agenda: Economic and Political Influences on Women’s Beauty Standards.

By Patti Mussard

Throughout history, the picture of the physically ‘perfect woman’ in society’s eyes has seen radical swings. From the British Victorian-era ideal of a ‘full figure with an hourglass shape’, to the nineties ‘heroin-chic’ look, female body image ideals have never stayed constant for long (Tejani, 2021). 

Similarly, beauty ideals between cultures are extremely varied and often conflicting. For East Asian women, pale skin has traditionally been a sign of social prestige, contrasting the demand for artificial tanning in the US and Great Britain(Kopanja, 2019).  

The diversity of these standards leads us to believe they are driven by something more than a biological, evolutionary need. In fact, there are greater forces influencing these standards than even simple aesthetic ones. 

For over a century, fashion trends and ideals of beauty have been used instrumentally to serve the agenda of those in positions of power. When it comes to money-hungry executives in the billion-dollar beauty and fashion industries, it's not hard to imagine why promoting an ever-evolving beauty ideal would be a favourable agenda. According to research from 2022, the Personal Care & Beauty economy, which includes consumer expenditure on such things as beauty and salon services, cosmetics, and toiletries, was valued at $1,089 billion and is projected to grow another 5.7% by 2027 (Global Wellness Institute, 2023). 

Social media apps, such as TikTok and Instagram, have accelerated the trend cycle in recent years. The short-form video content of these apps is the ideal way for brands to expose their products and keep demand high. Whether it’s the must-have cleanser for flawless skin or the latest in-season makeup look, every day brings a new microtrend to buy into, or a new insecurity for women to fix. There’s only one common thread that stays present through these contrary and rapidly changing trends; over-consumption. Essentially, the benefactors of the beauty economy are not so much concerned with specific beauty ideals as they are with promoting continual mass consumption and keeping their key demographic forever in need of their products and services. 

It is not however only the capitalist rich who have and continue to contrive and benefit from a dynamic, impossible-to-achieve beauty standard.

Throughout the later half of the 20th century, women saw more progress in their liberation against patriarchal oppression than they ever had before. However, with an increase in their legal rights came increased attempts to undermine their power through psychological attacks on their body image. ‘The Beauty Myth’ is a term coined by author Naomi Wolf to describe the ‘violent backlash against feminism that uses images of female beauty as a political weapon against women’s advancement’ (Wolf, 1990). One example of this is the correlation between women’s liberation and extreme thinness ideals, which became apparent in the 1990s. The media became saturated with images of extreme thinness, contributing to ‘unyielding social pressure to be thin, resulting in a constant attack on women’s sense of worth and value as they fall short of the beauty standard’(Moore, 2010). It stands that the promotion of unhealthy and unrealistic beauty standards acts as one of the last remaining tools of male supremacy. 

Another prominent demonstration of how political ideologies have shaped society's ideas of beauty are highly racialized beauty standards that arose from colonialism, when White European colonisers equated beauty with their ethnocentric standards (Esquivel-Martinez, 2021). When discussing pageantry in Jamaica in the 1950s, 300 years after Jamaica was colonised, historian Jade Lindo describes how in an event meant to ‘celebrate the diversity and tolerance of  Jamaica’,  eight out of ten of the pageant categories were meant for white or light-skinned women. Lindo takes this as a prime example of how ‘Black women were not the ideal and were not seen as feminine or beautiful’(The Museum of British Colonialism, 2023). This ideology illustrates how White colonialists used beauty standards as another way to create a sense of supremacy over other races, particularly over women of colour. 

While some of these examples I have used in this article may only be correlational, I feel they are enough to prompt us to at least contemplate the question: is beauty in the eye of the beholder - or the hands of the political economy?

Patti Mussard

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