6 minute read
Toxic beauty standards on social media
HAIR, SKIN, EYES: YOUR BEAUTY IS VALID Social media is the real virus infecting minds over quarantine ELIZABETH HUMPHREYS REPORTER | MARY KRISTASATRYAN REPORTER
Social media and COVID-19 have one thing in common: both have robbed us of reality. Naturally, they go together, with everyone spending hours and hours online during quarantine.
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“Social media often does not reflect reality but rather someone’s idea or hope of reality,” McLean’s psychologist Carol Ann Forrest said. “Many images have been altered and it is difficult to know in what way. While it is common for adolescents to become more aware of their own image and to think about how they want to project themselves to others, if social media is used as a guide, it can result in teenagers having an unrealistic goal to pursue.”
One of the most harmful aspects of social media is the toxic standards of beauty that it fosters. Looking at edited and staged photos can cause one to feel bad about themselves. To counteract this, different models have begun to show off their rare genetic disorders or natural beauty, altering how the public views what is beautiful or attractive.
“Social media allows easy access to the opinions of others and as a result, contributes to the desire of many students to be like someone else,” Forrest said. “When you try to be like another or imitate the behavior of another, it may lead to less respect for your own qualities and characteristics.
When everyone is constantly seeing a standard of Eurocentric beauty, people of color (POC) can especially feel this pressure. Born with Waardenburg syndrome on the small island of Barbados, Jalicia Nightengale is a black woman with piercing ice blue eyes. Waardenburg is an extremely rare condition that causes loss of pigmentation in skin,
hair or eyes. Nightengale explained in a January 2019 Instagram post that she had received hate on social media because of how the disease affected her eyes, with people commenting that she appeared horrifying or that she was using fake color contacts.
“News flash. It’s 2019. The world is so mixed up that we should all know by now that anything is possible, even for black people to have colored eyes: so why is it still so shocking?” Nightengale wrote. “I guess because it’s not in the mainstream beauty standards but maybe it’s time it is! Yes, I’m black. Yes, I have natural blue eyes. We exist.”
Nightengale is not the only one whose eyes have been insulted by social media. The fox-eye trend emerged this summer, where non-POC pull their eyes back in order to make them smaller. This trend was brought to the attention of the media, who exposed the disrespectfulness it shows to the Asian community.
“[During quarantine I spent increased time on] Instagram and TikTok especially,” senior Mimi Peng said. “That is where I discovered the fox-eye trend. Once trends are set, people follow. Whether it be models, TikTok stars or even my peers, I kept seeing people pulling their eyes back in pictures and doing their makeup to narrow the shape of their eyes. And people doing it were predominantly those who fit Eurocentric beauty standards.”
Peng said the trend especially struck a nerve with so many in the East Asian community.
“[Before the trend] we were mocked and made to feel that our appearances were inferior to those who had large, double-lidded eyes,” Peng said. “The reality is, I cannot control the shape of my eyes—my smaller, mono-lidded eyes are a hallmark of my Asian appearance. To have a facial feature—that has societal significance and out of my control to alter—be used by proponents of Eurocentric beauty was unsettling to say the least.”
Peng encourages others to disregard these trends and speak out against them. To do so, she created an Instagram post to reveal the harm of social media.
“I shared my experiences with my Asian beauty: the difference in facial features to my journey of perfecting my makeup look. I essentially shared my story—stories are so impactful. They are humanizing, resonating and inspiring,” Peng said.
While women can feel put down by images that they see in several different forms of media, men can be affected by this pressure as well. All people can feel uncomfortable with their body image or skin color, or go through the trauma of being deemed ugly for something as normal as having acne.
Curtis McDaniel was only 11 years old when he began to see the effects of a skin condition called vitiligo. Vitiligo causes white patches or discoloration on one’s skin. The patches usually get bigger with time.
“I was the only person in my family to have vitiligo and took it pretty hard at school. I was bullied a lot by people for my skin. They would call me burnt lips, Michael Jackson, zebra, giraffe, and people thought I was contagious,” McDaniel said in a 2017 interview with The Sun magazine. “Girls
- MIMI PENG SENIOR
would ask if I was burned and would say ‘Ew’ whenever they saw me. I was a spectacle everywhere I went. I once had kids running out of a store crying when they saw me and was called a ‘monster.’”
When McDaniel was 17, he posted a selfie and was recruited to become a model, despite how some viewed his condition.
“Before, I hated having my picture taken, so to me I never would have believed I could model,” McDaniel said. “I used to think my skin was a curse, but now I realize my skin is a gift—it’s allowing me to influence people.”
In recent years, black musical artists such as A$AP Rocky and Tyler, the Creator have included colorist ideals in their songs, containing explicit lyrics that display favoritism towards light-skinned women, in turn demonizing brown-skinned and dark-skinned females. Colorism is the discrimination between people, usually of the same race, based on the social implications and cultural meanings of different skin tones. Those of mixed ethnicity can even be called “not dark enough.”
Similarly, men and women that have the 4C hair type, which is the tightest type of curls, can be made to feel insecure. Straighter types A and B are often called “good hair.” Ndija Anderson-Yantha is an African Canadian advocate for natural hair who runs a blog and an Instagram account, both titled The Natural Hair Advocate.
“Women, worldwide, have hangups about their hair—regardless of their ethnicity—and this often affects their selfesteem,”Anderson-Yantha said. “Since hair is considered to be such an integral part of women’s beauty, if a woman doesn’t feel good about her hair, she probably doesn’t feel good about herself either.”
When the models people see on social media always have perfectly straight hair, it contributes to a stereotype in which people believe that certain ethnic hair types and styles are not desirable.
“I find myself always wearing my hair up or in styles because having my curly afro out is usually deemed as ‘unprofessional,’” senior Aretha Williams said. “I have noticed that when I have my hair up I get treated differently than if I were to wear braids or any other protective styles that POC with curly hair usually wear.”
Anderson-Yantha worked with girls who had similar experiences.
“This is why I want black girls and women to love and appreciate the uniqueness and versatility of our hair,” Anderson-Yantha said. “I would also like people from other backgrounds to learn more about natural hair and to understand that ‘black hairstyles’ are not ‘ghetto,’ ‘urban’ or ‘inappropriate,’ and to accept that natural hair is beautiful too.”
The problem with the media’s standards of beauty is that its toxicity extends to people of all genders, races, ages, conditions and abilities. It doesn’t end, and it has no boundaries. As usual, society wants to project an image which is false and unrealistic. It’s time to make a change to this by supporting those who are willing to confront this ridiculous standard by exhibiting their own natural beauty.
“Being a female especially, beauty standards can feel confining and pressuring,” Peng said. “I believe all types of beauty are truly beautiful.”
