The Ugly Truth About Beauty Standards

Society is constantly dictating women’s lives — from our life choices, to our appearances. With social media perpetuating toxic beauty ideals at unprecedented rates, will the pressure to be “perfect” ever subside?

With time comes new trends — unfortunately, not just surrounding clothing and shoes, but ones that dictate beauty standards as well. Over the years, the “ideal” image of women pertaining to beauty and body types has continuously changed. Going back as far as 500-300 B.C. in Ancient Greece, the strived-for look was a curvy body and fair skin, which seemingly continued throughout pre-1900 times. Arguably one of the most iconic symbols of Western beauty standard evolution is the corset, which progressively changed throughout its reigns from the 16th century to the early 20th century to complement societal norms. Corsets are meant to cinch the waistline, giving a more exaggerated hourglass shape — but beauty hurts. Due to how tightly they squeezed the body, some doctors believed that they were detrimental to women’s health, allegedly contributing to rib deformities, respiratory diseases, and damage to internal organs.

With the rise of flappers in the 1920s, the thin, slender body type became the newly marketed look for women. Fashion magazines served as reinforcers for this thin ideal, putting intense pressure on women to stay thin. While actresses such as Marilyn Monroe brought curves back in the ‘50s, the rise of supermodels in the ‘80s seemed to decrease the bust-to-waist ratio yet again. Unsurprisingly, the highest rates of eating disorders occurred in the ‘20s and ‘80s, when marketing was most focused on thin women. To state the obvious, advertising and marketing has a significant impact on self-perception, which can take a terrible toll on mental and physical health. The sad reality that pre-21st century mass media lacked the promotion of body inclusivity is what led to an uproar in this era, with the rise of social media platforms being the catalyst.

Prior to personal social media accounts, the average person did not have much of a voice. Sure, individuals of higher status could speak out on their views in interviews for magazines or newspapers, but a typical 19-year-old college student didn’t have the means to express themselves in a way that would reach a large audience. With social media becoming increasingly popular and the launch of Instagram in 2010, the average person essentially became an advertiser of their own life. Rather than mass media curating the “perfect” woman on magazine covers, women of all shapes, sizes, and races were able to post photos and voice their opinions to the public. 

With the body positivity movement beginning to thrive throughout the mid-2010s, Women's Health Magazine decided to completely abolish the use of the phrases “Bikini Body” and “Drop 2 Sizes” from their covers after negative feedback poured in from readers. With this new movement spreading like wildfire, more and more marketers began picking up on this cultural shift, with inclusivity and nonconformance to society’s beauty ideals becoming a popular brand purpose. Aerie (shameless plug to a more in-depth Marketingish article), a sub-brand owned by American Eagle, proved themselves in this category with their efforts to promote natural, realistic beauty. In 2014, Aerie launched their #AerieREAL campaign, which featured a diverse, new group of models and unedited photos—and this move has undoubtedly paid off. Fast forward to 2018: sales were up 29% from the previous year and still increasing by 20% in 2019, with goals of becoming a $3 billion brand. Needless to say, women responded very well to this campaign; this is a clear-cut example of how effectively body positivity can boost business in women’s retail while contributing to the greater good in the process.

The modeling industry has also shattered body standards with the help of breakthrough plus-size models, such as Ashley Graham. She’s landed gigs such as the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue, which would’ve seemed impossible to achieve a decade ago. “For so long, curvy women have been a token in the fashion industry. Maybe we saw one curvy model in one editorial in an entire year, or we were limited to a magazine's shape issue. That's no longer our reality,” said Graham in an interview with Vogue. She’s been a strong force in promoting body positivity via her career and social platforms, not only opening doors for other plus-size women in fashion, but for many women who have struggled with not fitting the thin-ideal reinforced by society.

So we’ve seen some positives come from social media platforms and new-wave advertising (finally!!) beginning to acknowledge that all women are not a size 0. But even with brand purposes shifting, humans have an innate drive to compare themselves to others, as proposed by the Social Comparison Theory in psychology. This helps explain that while social media has allowed women to showcase the beauty in diversity, it has also led to 60% of social media users reporting that it’s had a negative impact on their self-esteem. And with Instagram’s youngest age group being 13 to 17 years old, it’s important that we realize how broad of an audience we’re reaching when we post public photos and messages to social platforms.

This is going to sound like a broken record, but it’s difficult not to mention the influence that Kim Kardashian and her sisters have had on the social media world, specifically on women’s body ideals of the past decade. With Keeping Up with the Kardashians airing in the late 2000s and continuing throughout the entirety of the 2010s, society has seen a shift in Western beauty ideals from a skinny, blue-eyed blonde to a more curvy, dark-featured look. While some say this has helped shine light on the diversity of women, others believe that the beauty ideal has just shifted from one specific look to another — making it not any less polarizing to women who don’t fit into this category. 

Although the Kardashians and Jenners may not have asked for it, they’ve become role models to many women and young girls. To say the least, this has become highly problematic, as many believe that the sisters have undergone body reconstructive surgeries (although it has never been admitted to), with headlines such as, “Which Kardashian-Jenner Sister Has Had the Most Plastic Surgery?” regularly floating around the internet. With millennials being under such high pressure to meet these unrealistic beauty standards brought about by celebrities, the number of documented Brazlian Butt Lifts performed hit a record high of 24,099 in 2019, even when it’s been found that the BBL has the highest mortality rate of all cosmetic surgeries.

So what more can brands and marketers do at this point? Since social media platforms are rapidly taking over marketing, it’s time that marketers make a much larger push for body positivity. Since marketing with brand influencers has become one of the most effective ways to increase sales, let’s start there. But we’re not talking just any celebrity influencers-- 70% of millennials prefer peer-endorsements to celebrity recommendations, meaning they trust the opinion of, for example, a fashion blogger with 90K followers over Gigi Hadid. This is most likely due to people feeling as though these influencers are more relatable and approachable, as well as more knowledgeable about products they post (since most have a niche, such as food or fashion). Glossier, a mega-successful beauty brand, has been known to focus its promotional advertising on micro-influencers, broadly known as someone who has between 1,000 and 100,000 followers and focuses on a specific niche industry. Having less followers allows these influencers to be more authentic and responsive, as well as cuts advertising costs for the company — a win-win situation for consumers and Glossier. Marketers, take notes!!

As previously touched on, celebrity endorsements are slowly becoming a thing of the past due to mistrust by consumers-- who remembers when “detox teas” were flooding Instagram by Cardi B, Kylie Jenner, and an alarming number of other celebrities? The promoted teas actually had no scientific evidence that they promoted digestive health or healthy weight loss — instead, most of them included a laxative as the main ingredient. Luckily, we probably won’t be seeing many tea ads anytime soon, as the FTC ordered Teami, one of the most popular weight loss teas, to pay $15.2 million for deceptive advertising in 2020 (which ended up being settled for only $1 million-- but hopefully this was still enough to scare the rest of the industry). 

The sad reality of this all is that beauty standards are and will most definitely continue to be reinforced in Western culture. With that being said, it’s crucial that we understand the technological age that we’re living in and approach situations with our newfound knowledge. Millennials and Gen Zs have grown up with social media platforms and the constant scrutiny that comes with them — let’s try to turn the negatives of social media into positives by relinquishing the idea of body positivity being less of a trend and more of an engrained societal ideal. If you take one thing away from this article, it’s to try your best to not adhere to society’s standards — spend less time on social media, more time living in the moment, and most importantly, love yourself!