4 posts tagged “beauty”
…a continuation of Is She Hot?: The Quintessential Question
This video has changed my life. I knew that models on the cover of magazines had a large crew take care of their face, hair and eyes but it never occurred to me that all the images in a magazine underwent Adobe Photoshop. The model did appear more dull and pale than the face in the advertisement. Notice how color, depth and glow were added to her skin with makeup. Then it was enhanced with Adobe Photoshop. It’s true! I’ve been watching YouTube video after YouTube video marveling at all the amazing things that Adobe Photoshop can do.
This is a video about a girl from diet.com who is in very good shape but is still undergoes Adobe Photoshop. The video is campaigning against retouching photographs. It addresses the issue of an unrealistic standard of beauty that is set by magazines and advertisements but also shows the miracles of Adobe Photoshop. The photographer in the video has taken pictures of many beautiful women but always feels the need to touch them up on the program. It surprised me the most is that celebrities have personal touch up artists and their photographs are not publicly released without the touch ups. I’m really in awe of Adobe Photoshop. It does tanning for you. There are tutorials available online so that you can learn how to get the right tan on the program.
This is an instructional video on how to make you look more tan using Adobe Photoshop. In this video they took a picture of Rose McGowan who is naturally pale and gorgeous and they give her a bit of a tan using different layers, brushes and backgrounds.
No wonder women are so unhappy with the way that they naturally look. The images that surround us aren’t what people actually look like but instead highly manipulated images created by artists. The standard of beauty represented in these pictures is unobtainable and like he said in the video even if you were a professional athlete you could only get close to having the ideal body. Just hit a few buttons on the program and you can adjust your skin tone to any color you want. Is this the future of tanning?
I’ve been doing a little reading on sun tanning in America to try to understand what American’s views on beauty were before sun tanning became popular. Perhaps, if I understand how the shift in ideals I can start to understand how it began and developed. I compare the history of American ideals of beauty to my experience in China. These are the findings of my project:
Before the 1920s suntans were considered to be a mark of the working class. Upper class women wanted to differentiate themselves by being pale. A lily white complexion was a sign of beauty. A tan would permanently ruin a woman’s beautiful complexion by making her skin coarse and unrefined [1]. Class differences also reinforced racial differences.
I can certainly relate to this view. Upper class Chinese people are typically have a fair complexion because they work in the office during the day. They also tend to be from the North. Lower class Chinese people are typically darker because they do manual labor where they have more exposure to the sun.
White races were meant for white collared jobs as black races could only obtain jobs under the white collars. An American surgeon Charles E. Woodruff explains the link between color and biology. “Men have evolved to the zone where they lived…blacks at the tropical, brown and olive-skinned races further into the less fiercely lighted zones and the blonder, whiter races at the cloudy north” [1]. From these assumptions Woodruff reinforces job niches. Blacks live in the tropical zones where they are exposed to more sunlight and can therefore work under the sun longer than whites since they are biologically more fit for it.
In China a North- South gap exists. This is similar to the North-South gap in America where the South sees the North as rich and snobby and the North see the South as poor and uneducated. Southern Chinese people are darker because they lie closer to the equator where the natural resources are richer for crops to grow. In China, a tan would bring Northern Chinese people closer to becoming Southern Chinese. This is undesirable. Southerners are seen as more biologically fit as farmers working under the sun longer than Northerners. Tanning would not go over well in the North.
Here is a list directly taken from Wikipedia to help emphasize differences between Northerners and Southerners:
The stereotypical Northerner is:
* Is taller and bigger
* Has lighter skin (some have purely white skin)
* Has small, slit-like, and/or slanty eyes with single eyelids (i.e. an epicanthal fold)
* Has a longer rugged face (possibly with considerably more facial hair than southerners)
* Speaks a northern Mandarin dialect
* Eats wheat-based food rather than rice-based food
* Is loud, loyal, boisterous, warm-hearted, open, and prone to drunkenness and "thunderbolt" displays of emotion, such as anger
The stereotypical Southerner:
* Is shorter and smaller
* Has darker skin
* Has large, almond-shaped eyes with double eyelids
* Has a smooth, round face
* Speaks a southern dialect such as Wu, Hakka, Yue (Cantonese), or Min
* Eats rice-based food rather than wheat-based food
* Is clever, calculating, wealthy, hardworking, and prone to "mincemeat" displays of emotion, such as brooding melancholy
(Note that these are very rough stereotypes, and are greatly complicated both by further stereotypes by province [or even county] and by real life.)
In America, a suntan would bring whites closer to becoming blacks and ruin the neat hierarchy of jobs and money. [1]However, sun tanning has become a trend endorsed by celebrities.
Tanning became popular in the 1920s and most people will credit Coco Chanel with this trend. They say that she started to use bronze mannequins as sun tanning was becoming fashionable. From there the trend took off…
Works Cited [1] Segrave,
Kerry 2005 Suntanning
in 20th Century America: McFarland & Company.
Once upon a time, when I was eight years old I looked into my vanity mirror and saw the damage that sun exposure did to my skin. I was very tan. Milk chocolate tan. I felt so unattractive! I was so ashamed of how dark my skin was but I couldn't help it! At the time I was living in Manila, Philippines where everyone has a pool in their backyard. I went swimming often and my family liked to go to the beach on the weekends. I would never be able to escape the sun! Despite my efforts to apply sunscreen every hour I would always return to my room darker than I was when I left. I would never be pretty.
My ideal of beauty were the women on the SK II commercials. They all looked just like Snow White with fair skin and their beauty radiated through the television screen. I wanted fair skin so badly that I begged my parents for whitening products to make me prettier but they told me that I did not need whitening products because I was already pretty.
The Emperor clung to the spot and would not turn away
From the soil along the Mawei slope, under which was buried
That memory, that anguish. Where was her jade-white face?
(A Song of Unending Sorrow by Bai Juyi)
The poem ends in sorrow because the Emperor is unable to find this woman. Her legendary beauty is timeless. Women in the east continue to take great measures to keep their skin fair. In the summer they carry parasols and some women even wear long pants, long sleeved shirts and evening gloves to ensure an even skin tone.
My ideal of beauty has not changed since I was eight but I have come to terms with my skin tone but I still believe that fair skin is more beautiful. I envy my friends and relatives who are able to keep an light complexion and I continue to religiously apply sunscreen. I limit my exposure to the sun during the summer and I do own two UV umbrellas. I even own a bit of whitening lotion.
Americans don't seem to share these ideals with me. In fact, most don't take any measures to have fair skin. They prefer to tan. I know this because when I moved to the United States for high school I was shocked to see American tanning culture. No more SK II and no UV parasols! American supermarkets carry tanning products. Celebrities and models are tan.
Americans find many different ways to tan all year round: self tanning lotion, spray tanning booths, tanning beds and sunbathing. Why is tan considered to be beautiful? How do people make the choice to tan even with knowledge about skin cancer from tanning? I would like to better understand tanning culture.
