Studies done on beauty standards say that there are actual standards, yet it's still a bendable standard.

Example:

Contrast Effect - Men who are shown pictures of models will usually rate their partner at a lower physical attractiveness than if men not shown pictures of models (instead, pictures of average or lesser attractive women).

Matching Phenomena - People will tend to seek out people with similar physical attractiveness. Uglies with uglies, beauties with beauties, normals with normies. However, this shows that beauty can be subjective, for if you find a not so attractive person attractive, why say they AREN'T attractive?

While there is an average on what standards of beauty are, how people will perceive those standards are truly dependent on the environment. So it's true that displays of very attractive women in media will cause men to view less attractive women as... less attractive. However, this is more of an issue with implicit mentalities and NOT an issue with misogyny (in case someone wants to interpret my debate as that). We can not blame the media for wanting to put up pictures of attractive women. Just how we can not blame men for trying to hire hot strippers as opposed to not-so-hot strippers for a bachelor party.

Our human behavior makes us want what we find physically attractive (evolutionary advantage such as youth, fertility, and biologically nurturing). It is up to the individual to find themselves away from the herd mentality.

Narayan1M is right. It's amazing when people with eating desorder realizes there's something wrong with their health and take an attitude to change the situation. I don't if I'm right, but I see a significant change in the last few years. Yes, fashion is not made to all sizes yet, but campaings like the ones posted indicates that we are finally starting to accept differents kinds of beauty.

Its depend on the way of seeing,every body had an different choice ,different defination for beauty ......jus like i have defination .......for beauty is nature of person...not outlooks.....because...if that beautiful lady or guy spoke in a bad way ,i dnt think anybody will like dat person...so nature matters for...me.....:)

I believe that people are in general concerned about beauty, but especially teenage girls, as a reflect of the society we live nowadays. Young girls are exposed to what was chosen by the media as beauty standard and believe that's true. Frustration (and sometimes diseases) comes when they realize how difficult it is to get to those patterns, without surgeries and other harsh alternatives.

Although the media and the 'beauty' industry are responsible in a certain way for the beauty standards establishment in our society, it is necessary to consider that: all cultures have some beauty values and there is a biological component besides such standards, which is connected with health aspects and reproduction capacity. There is a relation between fertility and a measure that relate women waist and hip sizes, for example, and consequently, female humans with such proportions are instinctively considered attractive by several societies.

The closer your body is shaped to the Golden Ration the more beautiful you are.

More and more people want to become beautiful and follow the beauty which the media standardize. The magazines about “health” and “beauty” promote a sort of conception which considers thin people wearing make-up and straight hair as the relevant while the opposite is seen as something negative, as the enemy of the beauty. These magazine aren’t worried about the health of these people even because they offer unhealthy diet ways for someone to be “attractive” once the purpose of the ads of this nature is to sell the image of ‘beauty” and the products necessary to appear beautiful. To get what they want, people are capable to pull them off a cosmetic surgery to look beautiful because it doesn’t matter who you are inside and it does who you really are outside. So, the victims of the media feel they need to achieve what they are supposed to getting personal accomplishments.

This is a very interesting debate, because nowadays the concept of being beautiful and consequently young as the "right thing" is very strong.

It does not affect only teenagers, but elder people too. In Brazil, for instasnce, the beauty market has been increased tremendously.

According to revista Veja, the number of plastic cirurgies increased 250% between 1994 and 2001. Please see the link below:

http://veja.abril.com.br/060302/p_084.html

So in our society it is more important your appearance than what you are. The most important thing is to be beautiful and eternaly young.

Beauty standards have changed throughout the years.

People are very influenced by the media. Somebody created a perfect image of what a person should look like, and now everybody´s trying to look the same.

I agree that teenagers are more vulnerable but I really think that people are starting to wake up. Some beauty brands, like Dove, have promoted campaigns to talk about the real beauty.

There´s also a movement called healthy is the new skinny, created to transform the way teens deal with beauty.

Check the link:

Few companies in the cosmetic industry are trying to avoid the skinny models, but as I mention really only few. Sometimes you have a positive body image, but then somebody tells you that you can't work in their company because you are too fat. There is a case in which a woman, trying to get into shape, was told she was too fat to work out! Because of situations like those I can tell what happens to your positive body image: it cracks.

http://www.lemondrop.com/2010/06/07/gym-tells-woman-shes-too-fat-to-work-out/

Some people go as far as emulating Disney characters ;)

http://uberhumor.com/wp-content/uploads/ 2012/05/3Zs282.jpg

In our society, beauty is enormously connected to youth. In spite of the fact that plastic surgeries, Botox applications and liposuction are the solution to people who suffered accidents such as burning or other kind of deformation, many times they are strategies that people use to look younger and consequently beautiful, according to society standards.

The old age is seen as a terrible thing which humanity is bound to pass through and there is no scape, unless they attempt to slow down the aging process, doing from a plastic surgery to a simple hair coloring when it becomes white.

People do not accept that one day they will have their shape modified, that this life is not forever and they need to hide the old age anyway. Because of it, everybody wants always to have a young physiognomy, or at least to have the illusion that it is possible.

Mariana Nakamura

That's a very interesting topic. I agree media plays a crucial role in the beauty standards. Although it's okay to try to be healthier and to change the things you don't like about yourself, there must be limits - people can go too far in order to fit in the media beauty standards. I think self-steem issues has always existed: I found really hard to believe that people are 100% satisfied with their looks. Comparisons with others, low self-steem, insecurity - they could be natural, but they're intensified by mass media standards and, unfortunately, not everyone can deal with that much pressure. This is a very interesting and famous video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjET0DSAUYk, have you seen it?

It's a very interesting topic and this is something that should be more discussed in our society. Although some brands are now trying to valorize all types of beauty, unfortunatelly they are still few.

World is getting fat, this is something that we can't avoid noticing. The habits now are different from 50 years ago for example. We don't have time to have a healthy meal, to work out, etc. However the beauty standards do not change. As many people don't find the perfection in their bodies, they go through the easy way - doing plastic surgeries and Stomach Reduction Surgery. These procedures are dangerous! But the society demand perfect bodies without noticing that there are no perfect bodies at all!

I don't like to be compared with supermodels, they are taller than me, thinner, it's a different body, a different person. However, specially the young girls they tend to compare theirselves without noticing that we cannot be someone else.

We cannot blame only the media, but the society as well.

This is a very important and serious issue.The beauty (or the image of it) make people (most teenagers) to find ways to get the "perfect body" ,the "perfect hair",when do not exist one.I mean that what is fashion and what is not goes according to trends,that changes all the time!I think that this people that suffer trying to reach a measure,should be informed that was a time that be "fat" that was considered good.This conceptions changes,the important is have a balance between what the person considers beautiful and what is really healthy to body.

It is preety funny to see that not only the beauty standand became a pattern in our society, but also there is a counter flow in vogue nowadays. Lady GaGa in her song "Born this way" sings: "I'm beautiful in my way/cause God makes no mistakes/I'm on the right track, baby/I was born this way". She claims that people should not try to fit in models and love and respect their own unique individuallities.

I would like to share a snippet of an article concerning this perspective of beaty and its standards concernig Lady GaGa and how it reflects the question in a broader view. If you want to read it wholy, there is also its link.

"A quick Google search reveals countless articles like “How to Look Like Lady Gaga”, “How to Get Lady Gaga’s Poker Face Look”, “How to Dress and Act Like Lady Gaga”, indicating she has become a role model, whether parents like it or not. "

There is no standard for beauty,different individual has his own idea, it just depends on his sense of value.

It's funny how people need to find a standard even if it's not necessarily a standard. Ok, be beautiful your own way, but than copy me, be beautiful like I am! Wear meat, flamboyant make up and wigs. Where does your own way fit in this case?

As of has been already discussed for some people in this debate, a few fashion and cosmetic brands are investing in merchandising which wants to show a natural beauty, presenting photos of real women instead models who represent the strict standards of appearance.

However, what is printed in the majority of fashion and healthy magazines are models with a ‘perfect’ body that approaches the artificial. Their skin has no marks, no moles or imperfections what its make them seems to be made of plastic due the lack of expressions, effect of the photoshop treatment on the pictures. This pattern is unfair not just for imposing a single form of beauty but to create a standard that is impossible to be reached since that looking is built and fake. The real women want to fit in that model of beauty which really doesn't exist.

The link presented below shows some celebrities before and after retouching, and the intent here is not to show they are imperfects but to share their 'normality', supporting the idea that even the famous people, as everybody else, suffer to satisfy the requirements of appearance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBoR7Qc4ZjY&feature;=related

Ana Paula Magalhães - 7610834

We are a product of tv, the movies, music, etc. We are like sponges absorbing ideas and many of those we've accepted subconsciously without question.

The fact of the matter is that there is beautiful people who is ugly and UGLY people that have charisma which makes such a person BEAUTIFUL!

Of course this is not a rule, there is beuatiful people who is beautiful and people who is ugly that have lots of bad traits. And there's people who have one or the other or none...l0l

It is such a simplistic culture in which we live and must strive to meet people on the individual basis and avoid preconcieved ideas on what someone is based on appearances.

I agree. We're really influenced by television and movies. When you're watching a movie, great part of the characters follow beauty standards. There are exceptions, as Shallow Hal (O amor é cego in portuguese), of course, but they're rare. In brazilian soap opera, you can see there's a pattern. We have characters that don't fit in this pattern but they usually are stereotyped characters - for example, fat people as comic characters - always. I believe it's changing now - we see more variety in television, but it's not ideal yet. I wonder if things would be differente if television or movies broke this standard - would people feel better about themselves if the main character is fat or doesn't have a flawless skin? Would it be easir to accepted themselves if they could see people similar to them in media? Maybe if media changed its pattern, society would change it, too - or, at least, be more tolerant to the differences.

Also, I agree there's no beauty standards - they're an invention. People become beautiful because of their intelligence, sensibility, charisma, kindness, etc. It's not about physical appearance only - it shouldn't be. But people are always creating models - Gaga was a good example, there are a lot of artists that try to pass a different message - that it's okay to be different. It's ironic that they turn symbols - rebel symbols that are imitated, even if the rebellion was to be different. Maybe there's this necessity to be like someone because people like to compare themselves to the others - to feel that they're not alone, that they fit in something.

I once saw a article on a diet magazine that I consider terrible. The title was something like: "Lose X kg on a week and get the man of your dreams". It's really sad to realize that some people can think that a perfect body can make your life perfect. This excessive reach for the perfection , that should be cutted, is even more encouraged by the media, the people, the magazines...the resoult of it is: people who will never be satisfied. They will always try to reach the perfection.

Let's think about the concept of perfection. According the Oxford dicionary, it is "the action or process of improving something until it is faultless". But the "faultless", or the "perfect", is relative. People have different opinions and tastes. It's impossible all the people in the world to agree in one concept of beauty. So, those people who try to reach perfection will be never be a hundred percent or aprovation. And when they realize it, start diseases as anorexia, bulimia, depression...

It's true that nobody is totally satisfied with the own image. Some people wanted to be thinner, some wanted to be fatter, some wanted be taller...it's normal to have little things you don't like, but it gets serious when those things starts to interfer on your health and welfare.

Gabi mentioned about the beauty standards in movies and tv shows...it´s interesting to notice that it happens especially when teenagers are the target audience.

The highschool students on Tv don´t look like real highschool students!

The consequence is obvious: teenagers more and more worried about their appearance and developing psychological issues and eating disorders such as bulimia or anorexia.

Some companies try to show us the other side, but they´re still a minority.

Meanwhile we can see that part of the adults are becoming obese...

Isn´t it all part of only one big problem involving media, information and a complete reversal of values?

Talking about what Gabi and Roberta said, these models of the television... they don't show that each one has your beauty, they show patterns for you to fit in. The hot girls, the funny fat, the black maid, the hot boy, etc...

And it's get worst with the teenagers, they have 24,26 years old actors/actress to do someone in his 16's for example. That's an absurd because the bodies are different. Also they always talk about the same issues, teenager pregnancy, boyfriends, drugs. They never talk abot being who you are and respecting each other, it's not interesting for the media. They'll try to sell you everything they have, if the teenager stop to think about who he/she is and that they don't need to fit in any role, they won't buy everything they see on tv.

You were talking about some companies that are trying to invert those values and we have just found a campaign by DOVE that shows different woman talking about what they think about beauty and how they fell with themselves.This campaign is called REAL BEAUTY and we think it is a good initiative, even it has also economical reasons, they are perceiving that their audience is different from the models, actress, singers etc; they are perceiving that they have to focus what they sell to the ''real woman''.

Nowadays, many companies do not do it, even the clothes' companies, they sell clothes for models and not for real people, the consequence is: we fell even more that we do no fit into the patterns they sell, we fell uncomfortable, insatisfied, they do not consider brazilian girls have a different body, they are concerned about the fashion standards about the world standards and consequently they are keeping away from ''real people''.

CHECK THIS LINK OUT AND EXPRESS YOUR OPINION:

CAROLINE, MARISA AND MILENA

Considering all arguments posted to this debate, it seems that everyone agree with the enourmous media and fashion influence to the stablishment of beauty standards. However, we cannot ignore the biological and antropological components of beauty, otherwise, a false impression is stablished: that without media and fashion influence human beings wouldn't consider such value as so important. I think the media and beauty industry are so succcefull in determine standards precisely because they realize how powerful such value is, and not the contrary. They didn't create such value, they maximized it. They've taken advantage of something that's always been there: the beauty value as a constitutive part of human nature.

It's sad that the society, influenced by the media judges everyone. For example the singer Adele. She doesn'f fit in the pattern of the nowadays singers. However, she's loosing weight. It's so much preassure on her to be like the others! Check out these links:

http://skinnyvscurvy.com/celebrity-quotes/adele-i-dont-rely-ts-hits.html (first she said that she doesn't care)

http://skinnyvscurvy.com/celebrity-quotes/adele-my-weight-never-issue-i’ve-never-hung-out-with-sort-horrible-people-make-issue.html#more-37876

http://poponthepop.com/2012/02/adele-lost-weight-looked-thin-at-the-2012-grammy-awards/ (she's getting thinner! Look what the society/media is doing!)

It's not only about the media, we lost confidence with all those judgments.

Guys, today we are starting a ''new round'' of debates, welcome!We have been discussing about in which ways beauty standards affect people (check the previous posts), what are the roots of this obssession by being beautiful and about what people can do to reach this very beauty.Today, we decided to show you a video by CBS News which shows the story of Isabelle Caro an anorexican model that participated in an Italian Campaign that showed anorexia in this true form.Let's discuss a little bit about this.

Before watching the video and reading the previous posts , read this report that shows us the sad end of this model :

This girl died in 2010 because of a pneumonia increased by her fragile conditions, check the complete report in this link by BBC:

Now, answer:

Do you know what anorexia is?Why people go until the limits to have the body they dream about?What do you think about this campaign?Do you know anyone that has anorexia?Do you know some other eating desorders?Do you think anorexia is related to the model death?

CAROLINE, MARISA AND MILENA.

Anorexia is an eating disorder. The person always think that is ‘fatter’ than really is, fear gaining weight and by that the person begin to eat less and lose weight.

I think this campaign is shocking, however, effective. This is a powerful way to make people reflect, because as the reporter has said “it’s hard to look at and even more hard not looking at”. And anorexia can really be related to the model death, because when you don’t feed yourself as should, you lack substances that can improve your health and immunological system.

Surely, the media is a problem by the way it influences showing a “model” of how to be or look like; however people need to realize about it and encourage others to be only themselves, caring not about trends. As you’ve discussed, beautiful is not a mathematical principle; it’s about Nature, we are different, diverse, and that’s the real beauty. Sometimes people go until the limits for fitting in trends because they are influenced, encouraged, involved, and so can’t see what really matters: a healthy life.

Discussing about anorexia I’ve remembered of the song “Ana’s Song”, it was created by the Silverchair vocalist to express his battle with anorexia. Here, there is an interview he gave to Rolling Stone magazine:

Talking about what Thais said before, we have to encourage others to like themselves the way they are.There are some campaigns on the social networks that talks about it:

Beauty comes in all sizes:http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151733015980414&set;=a. 442458800413.375927.291303920413&type;=1&theater;True beauty comes in all sizes:http://losersbracket.com/2012/03/true-beauty-comes-in-all-sizes/

Every body is beautiful:http://www.dolcevanity.com/2012/05/beauty-comes-in-all-sizes.html

The battle against anorexia that Daniel went through reminds me of the singer Anahí that went through the same situation. That shows that even artists - who are considered the "ideal pattern" - are affected by "beauty standards". It's amazing that they can realize there's something wrong with their health and take an attitude to change this situation. However, about the singer Adele, I was embarassed when I realized she was losing weight. She is talented and wonderful the way she is. For me, this attitude was absurd and showed how much pression is over her. I read in a magazine (don't remember the name, maybe it was "Gloss") someone saying that, IN SPITE OF being a little fat, Adele has a beautiful voice and a beautiful face. I was completely shocked by reading that, because I thought: "Are you saying only her face nd voice are beautiful? Are you saying her face and her voice "compensates" her chubby body? Are you saying she's not beautiful as a whole? C'mon, that's ridiculous!" It was like saying her body is something negative, BUT her face and voice are positive. People start losing weight because of these kind of comments either. These comments make people feel they're not beautiful the way their are.

The exhibition of a standard of people on media influences the concept people have of beauty. I really likes the video the moderators posted " what's beautiful?". We saw people saying that don't feel beautiful and it's always related to self-confidence. It's terrible because they compare themselves to other people that are considered beautiful by society and it makes them feel bad. This situation can has drastic results like eating desorders. People pay with their own health to become what they wanna be, what they think they need to be. Another point is plastic surgeries, some people seems another person after this process. I'm not aggainst plastic surgeries nor controled diets. I think you can change to feel better. But in this case the concept of "better" needs to be defined by yourself not by the others. In my opinion the beauty is inside the eyes of who is seeing. Feel beautiful in my opinion is feeling good with your own.

The Anorexia is just one of the problems. The Brazilian Association of Plastic Surgery says that, only in 2009, 130 000 teenagers underwent plastic surgery. That is serious. Do a plastic surgery in an adult its already risky, do it in a teenager then ...

The teens are still growing. Stir in the structure of the skin, can cause all sorts of problems, such as infection, rejection of the transaction.

This data, just shows us, how serious the problem is. Indeed, we have to question ourselves: Worth it? Change their own bodies to be "fashion"? Fashion for who?

http://www.brasilescola.com/sociologia/a-influencia-midia-sobre-os-padroes-beleza.htm

A strange event got my mind onto this topic. I was in Primark, a discount clothes store here in Leeds. An interesting peculiarity about this store is that its layout makes it impossible to get to the men’s section without walking through the women’s underwear section. Having no other option, I made my way through this mysterious section of the store.

Sbuckinghams

Standards are everywhere. Although we tend not to like them most of the times, they are rather important. The problem I see in them is not exactly the way the media reports them, although it is the media itself the one to spread them around the globe, but the way we tend to act according to those standards even when we don’t agree with them. Beauty is directly related to vanity and we are living in a vain generation whose character ends up being defined by the clothes we wear and the pictures we post on social networks. Besides, on a daily basis, we follow standards in order to fit in. It’s human nature. We judge people by their looks, by their weight and hair style, even though we understand that there’s a lot more than meets the eye.

The point I’m trying to make is that this whole discussion has been based on extremes: anorexia, cosmetic surgeries, obesity. They are all result (or sides) of the issue, I’m sure. But it is well to remember that those extremes have a starting point and I do not believe such point lies in beauty magazines and fashion standards only. Let’s first analyze our behavior concerning beauty: how do we see it in ourselves, in others? How do we report it? How influenced by those standards are we? We might find out that we are as responsible as the media for standardizing beauty and leading its traits to such extreme consequences.

I agree with BiUrata, we also look for people with a certain type of hair, body, clothing and so forth, to have a relationship, for example. However, we can't allow ourselves to be slaves of these patterns we and media establish and - mainly media - spread. We also have to consider that there are lots of "types" of beauty and it's a huge problem when people submit themselves to plastic surgeries and other processes because they want to achieve THAT specific standard.

It’s really impressing the things people are able to do because of some standards. A shocking case is related to fashion standards, which imposes that the perfect top models must be thin. There are girls so worried about being skinny that they take a risk by eating inadequately. As a result of that they can even contract anorexia nervosa, which is characterized as an eating disorder. “There are over seven million girls with this eating disorder in the Unites States alone.”, according to http://www.directessays.com/viewpaper/48440.html. So, in order to prevent this sort of problem people should not take some standards seriously.

Caique1M

Well, there are always going to be someone to say that you must fit in what they consider "perfect" or "right". Beauty is inside our own minds. It is up to us to live happy with who we are despite the pressure society does. It is a struggle, but worth it in the end.

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