Talk:Feminine beauty ideal

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Barbie Dolls

Do Barbie dolls really play a prominent role in most women’s lives? Are adult women really controlled by the media or fairy tales? The following will be deleted. Please restore it if it can be supported.

“With fairy tales, mass media, advertisements, fashion and beauty-centered dolls such as Barbie dolls playing a prominent role in women's lives”.

Comments

‘Bold text' Bold text Is this 'article' for real? Delete it, stat. 60.242.167.154 (talk) 12:02, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Schhuoy 05:28, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Since I’m working on the feminine beauty ideals wiki page, in which I am just adding 2 new content to it. Just by looking at the wiki page, there is the introduction about feminine beauty ideals and the facts about it. Furthermore, there is a section about Fairy tales stories, which gives good information about how beauty is, portray in stories. Along with that, there is section about the response on fairy tale stories. In this section, it explains what children learn from listening or reading about fairy tales. For example the feminine beauty ideals looks in a good and bad way. Besides that, I would like to add a section about mass media impact because it is definitely a powerful tool to teach young girls about feminine beauty ideals. Furthermore, I will be discussing the consequence about mass media.

Ttolber3 (talk) 21:52, 24 February 2020 (UTC) Ttolber3 In the last section titled "Across cultures" I plan on making a small change in the second to the last sentence of the first paragraph. Instead of "After the revolution of 1911, this practice of food binding was ended." to "After the revolution of 1911, the practice of food binding ended."

Edit suggestions

Hi Just a couple of copyedit suggestions regarding the new sections added to this article. First in the ‘Mass Media’ section, to either space or hyphen “ultra thin” since it is not normally one word. The sentence in the same section that begins with “_targeting markets…” is a little wordy and needs some reworking grammatically so that it flows better. Also in the ‘Mass Media’ section, in the last sentence take out the word “it” so that it instead says, “which could lead them” rather than “which it could lead them….” In the ‘Consequences’ section in the second sentence edit it to read, “there are always major setbacks” instead of “there is always a major setback” due to the fact that “ideas” is plural. Either than that, you've added some important sections to make this article better. Great job! Tkala808 (talk) 23:52, 22 November 2013 (UTC)tkala808

Schhuoy (talk) 07:04, 23 November 2013 (UTC) Thank you Tkala808 for your help.

This article may require more discussion on the historical foundations for women to adhere to the "feminine beauty ideal" as well as the current trends to its attainment. Scholarly articles are available (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_sdt=0,48&q=feminine+beauty+ideology&hl=en) to support this social constructionCNoemiM (talk) 03:44, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

The article has a lot of quotes in it, and those should be rewritten in your own words to avoid plagiarism. Maybe in the "Mass Media" section add a link to the photoshopping wikipedia page. While there is a bit in each section about Western ideals of beauty and it is mentioned that beauty ideals differ across cultures, maybe add a section on how race plays into ideas of beauty or how Eastern cultures see beauty. Another section could be added on wealth and how that influences beauty (wealthy people are able to buy makeup, fashionable clothes, etc.) or that could be incorporated into the existing sections. Mahone m1 (talk) 19:45, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Request

Please add For template linking to Physical attractiveness for people who are actually interested in information about what is considered aesthetically pleasing or beautiful and not about its modern social construct.

Btw consider renaming the article to something with social construct in it and possibly dropping "Feminine" from it since large portion of the article talks about children in general. Also don't get carried over with the POV while people shouldn't obsess over their looks, taking care of one's body(from hygiene to fitness) is large part of basic self respect/control and getting carried away in both direction is bad.--84.111.101.105 (talk) 04:16, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Indian beauty

Aishwarya

Aishwarya

Former Miss World and top Indian actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is often cited as the "most beautiful woman in the world", for which she has received worldwide attention. Atleast from South Asian perspective she can be considered very beautiful. Her pic should be put in article.Amateur0 (talk) 22:46, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

References

These references will appear in the article, but this list appears only on this page.

Suggestions

From looking at this article it feels very European centered. Maybe add in ideals from other cultures other than just fairy tales. Another suggestion would to be to break down the points that make up "feminine beauty ideals". Hope this helps. Achen39 (talk) 18:50, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

IP-hopper removing sourced content and replacing it with unsourced content

El C, at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection, you said that I should ping you if the IP-hopper continued. I have just reverted the IP again. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:14, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected for a period of 2 weeks, after which the page will be automatically unprotected. El_C 23:37, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, El C. I'll eventually look into some of the sourcing on this topic and see if anything needs rewording. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:14, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Fairy tales - focus on the West

The article states that "In fairy tales, "beauty is often associated with being white, economically privileged, and virtuous." I don't think this applies to fairy tales from all over the world. I suggest to add a clarification that this section only applies to the beauty ideal of European fairy tales. Alæxis_¿question? 20:14, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Alæxis, the thing is... The Western/European standard of beauty is widespread. It is the standard that has globally affected society. If sources discuss the beauty ideal from another point of view regarding fairy tales, then we can add that. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 09:16, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, I've checked the article and it's based exclusively on the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, no attempt is made to generalise the findings. If in fact there's a connection between beauty and "being white, economically privileged, and virtuous" in other cultures' fairy tales then sources should be added to confirm that. Alæxis_¿question? 11:38, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

White as snow

The phrase "white as snow" is interpreted here to mean the Caucasian race. The phrase more closely describes light skin, which is not uncommon in populations of both Europe and Asia. Per the article on geographic distribution: "There is a correlation between the geographic distribution of UV radiation and the distribution of skin pigmentation around the world. Areas that are further away from the equator and are generally closer to the poles have lower concentration of UV radiation. As a general rule, populations that evolved north or south of 46 degrees latitude therefore tend to be lighter skinned; for example, in Western Europe, Canada, Russia, Japan, Scandinavia, and Mongolia. Exceptions do exist as in some cases Southern Europeans turned out paler skinned than Northern ones." Dimadick (talk) 07:39, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Human skin color is about two things. Vitamin D and skin cancer.

In Northern areas there is weaker sunlight and human skin needs to be lighter in order to make enough Vitamin D out of the dimmer light.

Going South towards the equator, human skin needs to be darker (due to melanin) in order to better protect against getting skin cancer, from the much stronger equatorial sun.

So much hate and suffering about something so simple.

Chesapeake77 (talk) 17:18, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Disney

The section on the Disney films seems to be misleading or partially inaccurate.:

• It starts by saying that Disney has adapted the tales of the Brothers Grimm into many animated films. Actually only 3 Disney animated films are based on the Brothers Grimm version of any fairy tale: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), The Princess and the Frog (2009), and Tangled (2010). Other Disney films based on fairy tales are actually based on works by Carlo Collodi, Charles Perrault, Lewis Carroll, J. M. Barrie, Hans Christian Andersen, Antoine Galland, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, and a few works by anonymous writers.
• "Because the majority of characters are white, "the expectation [is] that all people are or should be like this." " Define "white" here, and to whom are they contrasted.
  • The Evil Queen (Disney), the antagonist from Snow White, is also white, slender, and conventionally beautiful. Though she is depicted in two forms, one youthful and beautiful, the other aged and ugly. I was not aware viewers were supposed to emulate her.
  • Pinocchio's protagonist is not actually human and several other characters in the film are anthropomorphic animals. And in this case, the only significant female character in the film is the Blue Fairy who grants Pinocchio life.
  • Fantasia features anthropomorphic animals, dinosaurs, centaurs, cupids, fauns, pegasi, Olympian gods, demons, evil spirits, and ghosts, but has very few human characters. The most important female characters in the film are Centaurides, female Centaurs, who are the main protagonists in the The Pastoral Symphony segment. (Some of them are depicted as black, but have been edited out of the film in recent released because the depiction was considered racist. As if removing characters of color is not racist in itself.)
  • Dumbo is mostly a tale about anthropomorphic animals in a circus setting, with a few minor and nameless human characters appearing in scenes. The most important female character in the film, is Mrs. Jumbo, the protagonist's mother. She is a female elephant.
  • Bambi is a tale of anthropomorphic animals. The villain of the film is a human hunter who seeks to kill them, but he/she is famously kept off-screen at all times. A few Internet memes are actually wild ideas about who the unseen hunter is.
  • in Cinderella, both the major heroes and the villains are white. And in this case unsurprisingly, as Cinderella's enemies are her own family who abuses and exploits her. Cinderella's "ugly" stepsisters from the fairy tale got turned into Anastasia and Drizella Tremaine. They are youthful, reasonably slender girls, who are depicted as plain janes and rather clumsy but not remotely unattractive. The sequels of the film have given romantic subplots and character development for Anastasia, whose striking red hair is depicted as her most beautiful attribute. Their mother Lady Tremaine is more of a middle-aged woman with grey hair, but is not particularly unattractive either. She is slender, well-dressed, sophisticated, and more graceful in her behavior than either of her daughters. A few scenes focus on her piercing eyes. Her flaw is not her looks, it is that all this grace conceals an abusive and controlling personality. A few scenes actually depict her abusing her own daughters and holding them up to impossible standards.
  • In Alice in Wonderland, the protagonist Alice is depicted as a beautiful, white girl with blonde hair, but her beauty is irrelevant to the plot. She is too young to get a love interest, and most of the characters she encounters are not human or even human-looking. The only other significant female character in the film is the Queen of Hearts, who is white bur not remotely beautiful. She is depicted as a middle-aged and obese woman with no particularly attractive features. Her major "flaw" however is not her looks, but her personality. She is depicted as pompous, tyrannical, sadistic, and bloodthirsty. She has quite a fixation on decapitating people.
  • Peter Pan actually has a few characters who are not white. It depicts a tribe of friendly Native Americans in Never Land. The most important of them is Tiger Lily, a beautiful "Indian Princess" who serves as one of the love interests of Peter Pan and a rival to Wendy Darling. Curiously, her few romantic scenes in the film serve as the first instance of interracial romance in a Disney film. (The matter that Peter gets three love interests in the film and is also getting hit on by a group of mermaids, despite being underage, is another topic entirely).
  • Lady and the Tramp is mostly a tale of romance between anthropomorphic animals, and this case a "beautiful" and well-bred lady falls for a homeless "bad boy" with a sketchy past. Humans play minor parts in the film, and the most important human character in the film is Aunt Sarah, a relatively villainous character who is convinced that Lady is a threat and abuses her.
  • In Sleeping Beauty, the heroes are white, but the villain is not. Maleficent has green skin and horns. She is not human, she is a fairy who can shapeshift into a dragon. The main problem from "Beauty"'s perspective is that Maleficent is actually youthful-looking, slender, graceful, and considered very pretty by animation fans. She actually gets more screen time than titular protagonist Aurora, more dialogue, and is far more memorable than the rather blandly beautiful Aurora. Unsurprisingly, Maleficent has appeared in more spin-off material than Aurora, has a larger fan following, and gets depicted more frequently in Disney-related fan fiction and fan art than any other character in the film. (Not counting a relatively strange slash-fiction fanbase who sees Maleficent and Aurora as a lesbian couple. What is the reason, the only two good-looking female characters in the film should pair up?)
  • One Hundred and One Dalmatians features anthropomorphic animals in protagonist roles, with humans in either supporting or villainous roles. The only two significant female humans in the film are pet owner Anita Radcliffe and her friend-turned-enemy Cruella de Vil. Both are white, but from a beauty perspective they are not exactly winning material. Anita is depicted as an attractive young woman, but due to the animation style of the film (Disney changed its house style for a while) she is rather scrawny looking. Her "friend" Cruela actually looks much older than her, with half her hair black and the other half white. She is otherwise something of a personification of anorexia in appearance. Her "slender" body is actually skeletal in appearance, her skin is deathly pale, her green eyes seem as emerging from a skull, and often look crazed. In addition, she is depicted as a chain smoker who is constantly surrounded by "green, foul-smelling cigarette smoke". As for her motivation, she is fashion-obsessed and cares only for having beautiful clothes. Nothing else matters. Curiously, Cruella was married in the source novel, but the Disney adaptation turned her into a single woman.
  • The Sword in the Stone actually has very few female characters and only two of them have any significance. In a scene where Arthur shapeshifts into a squirrel, he is romantically pursued by a "Little Girl squirrel" and accidentally breaks her heart. His first experience with romance. The other female character (and only human) is Madam Mim, Merlin's rival in the film. She is a powerful, wicked witch, but is actually elderly-looking and far from beautiful.
  • The Jungle Book features a large cast of anthropomorphic animals, and a single human protagonist: Mowgli. He is young boy from India and is not conventionally white. He is actually depicted as having "tan skin". The only other human character from the film is a young and pretty Indian girl who serves as Mowgli's love interest in the finale. Shanti, as she was eventually named, got more screen time and character development in the sequel. She is also rather dark-skinned.
  • The Aristocats is in part a romance story about anthropomorphic animals and only the main villain is human. The most significant female human character is Madame Adelaide Bonfamille, the elderly, wealthy, and eccentric pet owner who wishes to leave her fortune to her pet cats. She does not get much screen time, but her plan sets the events of the film in motion. White, but not really beautiful.
  • Robin Hood is a tale of Medieval adventure and romance, where every single character is an anthropomorphic animal. No humans at all.
  • The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is again a tale of anthropomorphic animals, with the only human character being a young boy: Christopher Robin. White, not particularly attractive, masculine, and barely in school-age. No romance here.
  • The Rescuers is a tale featuring two anthropomorphic mice, agents of an international organization, trying to rescue a human little girl from a villainous legal guardian (who is actually a criminal). The only two female humans in the film are the victim, Penny, and her guardian/employer Madame Medusa. Both white, neither of them beauties. Penny is a relatively cute 6-year-old orphan girl who styles her hair in pigtails. Her character defining trait is that she considers herself unattractive, because she once missed a chance at getting adopted because of her looks. The would-be parents chose another orphan girl, who apparently had gorgeous hair. Medusa is a middle-aged redhead woman who wears too much make-up, tries to hide her dental problems, and makes no effort to disguise her sagging breasts.
  • The Fox and the Hound has a large cast of anthropomorphic animal characters, and only two human pet owners. Both white, but far from beautiful. Amos Slade is an aging male hunter, Widow Tweed a female farm owner. Both of them are elderly, relatively frail, and devoid of human companionship.
  • The Black Cauldron is a dark fantasy adventure. The main villain, the Horned King, is a necromancer who does not appear to be human, and leads an army of undead warriors. The only significant human characters are the protagonists, Taran and Princess Eilonwy. Both white, both attractive, and positioned as an underage romantic couple. Disney's version of Eilonwy resembles Aryan ideals, with blonde hair and blue eyes.
  • The Great Mouse Detective features a large cast of anthropomorphic animals, but only features humans in cameos.
  • Oliver & Company again features mostly anthropomorphic animals, with humans in supporting and villainous roles. The only important female human character is Jennifer "Jenny" Foxworth, a kind-hearted rich girl in New York City. She is white, and a rather cute looking redhead, but her beauty plays no part in the plot. Jenny is only 8-years-old and gets no romantic subplot.
  • The Little Mermaid. Here the main heroes are white (though several of them are mermaids and mermen), but the villain is not. Ursula has light lavender skin. She is not human either, as she has 6 tentacles. Depicted as older than the other characters, white-haired, and rather obese, she is actually considered rather attractive due to her seductive way of talking and moving. In scenes of the film she shapeshifts into a younger-looking, slender human woman in order to seduce Prince Eric. She is a very popular character with animation fans and considered sexy. Curiously, the animators based her looks on that of a famous drag queen.
  • The Rescuers Down Under feature the same two agents trying to rescue a young human boy from a male abductor. Otherwise the film has few human characters.
  • Beauty and the Beast. Here the female protagonist Belle and her villainous suitor Gaston are the most significant white characters. The male protagonist Beast has been transformed into a form partly resembling a werewolf due to a magical curse. He no longer looks white or actually human. Several of the key supporting characters have been transformed into sentient objects due to the same curse. One of the oldest jokes about this film is that the romance plot resembles bestiality, the sexual relations between a human and a non-human animal.
  • Aladdin. Here all the main human characters, heroes and villains, are Arabs. The main villain Jafar is only slightly darker skinned than Aladdin himself. In this case Jafar himself is depicted as a rather attractive character: tall, slender, with a stylish beard, and impressive clothing. The only flaw in his appearance is given in a minor scene, where his impressive headpiece is implied to be a disguise for his baldness. The character who less resembles any of the others is the Sultan of Agrabah. He seems to be afflicted with dwarfism. Almost every character towers over him, including his own daughter. He also seems much older than the others. For the supposed father of a teenage girl, he has a long white beard in Santa Claus-style. Everyone else has black hair.
  • The Lion King. A self-described tale of kings and successions, in other words conflict over who sits on a throne. All characters are anthropomorphic animals, there are no humans. The only controversies in this film are elements of the depiction of villainous king Scar. He has a coal-black lion mane, while his blood relatives have light-colored manes. Which have argued reflects the "black is evil" stereotype. While a ruthless killer, Scar is also slightly effeminate and some viewed him as conforming to an old stereotype where all villains are gay. (Elements of this trope can be found in works by Dashiell Hammett and Frank Herbert, among others, but is seen as offensive by real-life gays.) A few complained that Scar shows no interest in mating with females after gaining the throne and seems completely celibate, which they took as further evidence of homosexuality. Disney "rectified" this by introducing Scar's widow and kids as major characters in a sequel.
  • Pocahontas. A tale of military conflict between English colonists and Native American locals in 17th century Virginia. "Indian Princess" Pocahontas finds time for interracial romance with colonist John Smith, despite the fact that she is already engaged to another man. First depiction of infidelity in a Disney animated film. The film actually has no white female characters. The only major female characters in the film are Pocahontas and her best friend/sidekick Nakoma. Both are depicted as beautiful Native American women with tan skin. In Pocahontas case, a bit too beautiful. Disney animators based her appearance on features from various professional models, including some who did not look remotely Native American. Some of Pocahontas' features ended up deriving from East Asian and Southeast Asian women.
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame . Another tale of interracial romance, set in 15th century Paris. Villainous Claude Frollo, benevolent but disfigured Quasimodo, and sun-god analogue Captain Phoebus are all burning from lust and desire for gypsy entertainer Esmeralda. All three men are white, Esmeralda is a brown-skinned European woman. She looks very different than most other characters. The supporting cast includes a male gypsy entertainer called Clopin, whose skin seems to be lighter than Esmeralda's.
  • Hercules. A tale of Titans, gods, demigods, and mortal humans set in ancient Greece. The humans are white, but each Olympian god seems to have a different color. The main villain Hades, a god of the Underworld, has blue-gray skin, and yellow eyes. In place of hair, Hades has a constantly burning blue flame. The love interest Megara, a mortal woman, is fair skinned and beautiful, but somewhat unusual in her design. She has an unnaturally tiny waist, wide hips which she uses to seduce others, rather tiny feet, and purple eyes.
  • Mulan. A tale of war between the Han dynasty and the Xiongnu (Huns), actually depicting high casualties for both sides. Protagonist Fa Mulan, a female soldier pretending to be male, is light-skinned, as are most of the Chinese depicted in the film. The Huns are a bit more unusual in appearance. Their leader and main villain Shan-Yu has pale gray skin and yellow eyes. Curiously, Mulan is often depicted as a stunningly beautiful woman, but both her allies and her enemies do not seem to notice it and do not even comment on it. Her love interest Li Shang is actually her immediate superior in the military hierarchy and started appearing attracted to her when she bested him in a martial arts sparing match. When he was the one who taught her martial arts in the first place.
  • Tarzan. White British aristocrat gets orphaned as an infant and adopted by sentient gorillas. Falls in love with Jane Porter, the first human woman he sees in his adult life. The romance plot is cute here, but Tarzan goes from having no idea what other human beings look like to falling in love with the first other human he meets. He really has no reference point and nothing to compare her with. Dimadick (talk) 13:31, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Social Media Impact

While reading this article, I found that it was lacking social media's impact on the feminine beauty ideal and women's body image. I plan on adding more to this paragraph under the "Mass Media" header in the future; this is simply a place to start. Thunderchicken9 (talk) 22:33, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

I am planning on adding more to this section I began about Instagram impacting the feminine beauty ideal. As of now, I'm adding additional information to the study I pointed out and an additional case study I found that supports some ideas of the previously mentioned study. Thunderchicken9 (talk) 00:37, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

I just uploaded the edited and improved section concerning social media and the feminine beauty ideal. This section includes two research studies and one case study on a specific Instagram account. The first study mentioned focuses on the correlation of general Instagram use in young women and their body image. It also touches on "fitspiration" and its effects on women's body image in relation to the beauty ideal. The next study mentioned in tandem to this one has a main focus in "fitspiration" Instagram pages and their effects on women. Finally, the case study on the @effyourbeautystandards Instagram page chose to focus on the page's attempt at an intersectional approach to representing all kinds of women who don't necessarily "fit" into the Western beauty ideal. The study shows that while the page is attempting to represent every kind of feminine beauty they can, women will still typically struggle with social media-body image issues no matter what. All sources can be found in my Sandbox that I used, in addition to some sources I consulted, but didn't necessarily use in the article. --Thunderchicken9 (talk) 02:43, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Black Women and Popular Culture

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 August 2022 and 1 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): StrawberryLemonade02 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by StrawberryLemonade02 (talk) 19:15, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Japanese

Henley and Porath (Asian Studies Review, 2021) is cited to say that Japanese in the anime and manga subcultures are changing their hair color out of "parody and mimicry", but this is what it actually says:

"While some of Elfving-Hwang’s older Korean informants recalled being influenced by American film stars in the 1970s and 80s, “none [. . .] considered Hollywood beauty important or relevant for their current aspirational standard of beauty” (Elfving-Hwang, 2021, p. 249). Although the kaleidoscopic Japanese youth subcultures described by Miller incorporate features ultimately derived from Western sources into their various “looks”, they do so very partially and selectively, and often more by way of parody than of mimicry. Their devotees’ hair is blue, purple, red and pink as well as blond and brown, their contact lenses more often variegated brown, pink, silver and gold, with cartoon-like enlargement of the iris, than blue, green or hazel. Their direct sources of inspiration are mainly Japanese: “manga and anime characters and Japanese pop stars” (Miller, 2021, p. 232)."

To include this as part of an article on female beauty ideals seems like original research, because

1. It says it is within a subculture on Japan (anime, manga, cosplaying) rather than a part of Japan's national beauty ideal.

2. It does not say that this is a female beauty ideal, i.e. restricted to females only.

The article's focus is about female beauty ideal, not about fashion trends in subcultures. Actually, within Japan, there is much cultural animosity toward women who color their hair or alter their eye color. In Tokyo, up until the year 2022[1], it was against the rules in all public schools for students to dye their hair any color other than black.[2] The Japanese government still forbids people to wear colored contact lenses in drivers license photos, even in Tokyo,[3], and outside of Tokyo students are still forbidden in public schools to dye their hair or wear colored contact lenses.

So to include the Horath and Penley's observations about the anime and manga subculture here is not at all accurate. This is not a female beauty ideal in Japan. Like the lead says, a female beauty ideal is something that is ingrained in women from a young age. In Japan, hair or eye color alterations are not only not ingrained, most women who want to experiment with this kind of fashion are systematically forbidden from indulging that desire across large parts of Japan. In Japan, lightening hair color or changing eye color with contact lenses is viewed by women as a form of rebellion against Japanese female beauty ideals[4], and it's only a small subset of the population that does this.

The last thing I have to say is that this isn't restricted to females. There are also males in the manga/cosplay/anime subcultures who color their or wear colored lenses. It's very popular in the big cities. And there are also the 'Yankii' roughneck subculture, where men frequently dye their hair blond or orange. Changing your color is not a thing that is restricted to females in Japan. - 2603:8080:2C00:1E00:1949:9406:169E:B5F4 (talk) 20:25, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

So? Internal culture war type disputes over the "Feminine beauty ideal" are very traditional in the West and elsewhere, if perhaps not in Japan. That not everyone likes it is no argument, nor that it is not restricted to women. Ideals change, often amid controversy, and the article should reflect this. You seem to be taking a very hardline traditionalist stance. Johnbod (talk) 22:11, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

@Johnbod: Thanks for your reply. If you have a source that actually says the Japanese beauty ideal has changed, that would be great. This article is Feminine beauty ideal, that is, the beauty ideal that is imposed on women by the society that they live in. A subculture of people who dye their hair "often in parody" of anime characters is not the beauty ideal, but sub-culture, and the history of discrimination against women with artificial hair, eye and skin colors in Japan clearly shows that it is anything but an ideal.

I deplore the rigid standards of beauty that are imposed in Japan and elsewhere, but the fact that loud hair colors or contact lenses are not the beauty ideal in Japan doesn't seem to be in dispute by any of the sources. - 2603:8080:2C00:1E00:1949:9406:169E:B5F4 (talk) 22:22, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

And do you have any sources that say the Japanese beauty ideal today remains exclusively and rigidly the traditional one? It seems pretty unlikely frankly. Johnbod (talk) 01:41, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Sorry it took me a day to respond to you, Johnbod. You have a good point about the unlikeliness of the former beauty ideal persisting for so long. You would think it would, yet, if you've lived in Japan you know that it remains remarkably monolithic and unchanging in some ways, and even where it does change, this is often ephemeral. Clearly a lot of those old beauty aspects of the beauty ideal, like black teeth, are permanently gone. But, there are sources that talk about how some aspects of the ideal, like black hair and light skin, remain deeply entrenched.

This is because it relates back to the discrimination I have been talking about, against women who change their colors. Here is another source that describes the cultural backlash against women who did this:

The book is Maiko Masquerade from University of California Press[5]

"Kogals stood out for their boeached hair, heavy makeup emphasizing large, round eyes, tanned skin, and rolled-up school uniform skirts, provoking waves of media attention.43 Christine Yano reads their style against the minutiae of school regulations stipulating correctness in attire and behavior, and the long held ideals of Japanese beauty that valued "black hair, pale skin and almond-shaped eyes"

"...Sharon Kinsella contends that much of the moral panic surrounding the kogal focused on her connection to compensated dating and materialism, disparaging the teens as unfit future mothers who would cause the downfall of Japan, fueling racialized diatribes against them and their tanned skin as non-Japanese"

Although Japan is a G-5 country and ideologically aligned with the West, Japan retains a lot of insular attitudes. The point I try to make here is only that the colored hair and colored lenses aren't the beauty ideal for women in Japan, not that there has been no evolution of the beauty ideal, especially through foreign influence, which cannot be disputed. Sorry for not speaking more clearly to that.

All the best, 2603:8080:2C00:1E00:696B:240E:91AA:3C7E (talk) 23:55, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Ideals among men

This section cites Maycock, but the first couple of sentences could not have been gleamed from the paper itself. It amounts to original research. It helps to have a full text link to the article which can be found here:

https://www.academia.edu/33131068/Looking_t%C4%81j%C4%81_Fresh_Skin_Whitening_and_Emerging_Masculinities_in_Nepal

But that's beside the point really because I don't think this section belongs in this article. This article is about feminine beauty ideals. Maycock's paper covers how skin bleaching is performed among men in Nepal to achieve a masculine beauty ideal created by Bollywood. Because there is no equivalent article ("masculine beauty ideal") I believe this content would ideally be moved to skin bleaching, and shortened here. 2603:8080:2C00:1E00:6156:EF98:E0EC:1096 (talk) 11:26, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

"actually", there is an article on Masculine beauty ideal Masculine_beauty_ideal 68.62.17.187 (talk) 21:57, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Manscaping

This is not reflect a global ideal, nor does it acknowledge the removal of pubic hair required by religious groups. 2600:1700:F90:6950:4515:7857:25CF:97A9 (talk) 12:47, 7 December 2024 (UTC)