By encouraging too much attention to appearance, we inevitably support one of the most difficult to eradicate discrimination.
“I am not a racist / sexist / Islamophobe / homophobe, but …” – Very often a speech begins with this or similar phrase, which turns out to be exactly racist, sexist or simply discriminatory, although the author tries to convince us otherwise. Today, appearance has acquired too much value: it’s hard to imagine a community in which people are not at all busy evaluating each other’s attractiveness. By encouraging too much attention to beauty, we inevitably support one of the most difficult to eradicate discrimination. Some argue that prejudice is possible only in detriment to appearance, that is lookism, however, there is a more global problem that has been observed for many years – discrimination based on nationality and ethnic grounds.
The world we live in today is so focused on the value of beauty and endless discussions of appearance that it destroys any other assessment of individual properties. The saddest thing is that young girls come under the more significant influence of racial discrimination – they resort to extreme measures, rubbing money for cosmetics, condemning themselves to use chemicals to look more European.
According to Katherine Ellen Foley,
“Racist beauty standards do a lot of damage to non-white women. The immense global pressure to conform to a white European ideal—including light skin, straight hair, and a slim figure—means that women of color are particularly susceptible to developing psychological problems ranging from eating disorders to depression and generalized self-hatred…” (3)
Being a child I was mocked by my peers – classmates and even friends, though not directly, but marginally. Imagine, you are the owner of European appearance, but from childhood, you tended to obesity, long hair, but not as straight and shiny as it should be, acne was located on your face rapidly, again, because of the transitional age. And only in high school my body transformed to unrepeatability, people began to treat me better, they had a desire to communicate with me. Is not it discrimination of overweight people? Among my classmates, some girls had extra weight because of problems with internal organs that tormented themselves, depressed from despair, laid hands on themselves and they didn’t cause themselves serious issues. They were humiliated, insulted because they were not so thin and beautiful.It is no secret that the division of people into beautiful and ugly beats primarily on women, but in the end, people of either sex and gender can be under pressure. Sociology confirms that the culture of relationships with appearances is far from just about private life. By the degree of “grooming” and attitudes towards any race, employers often assess us, the decision to stop removing hair has practically become a separate program of women’s struggle, in particular, has grown into an indicator of feminism, and the appearance of the full model on the cover of a democratic gloss is perceived by as “promoting obesity.” The myth of the duty to take care of appearance captures not only women. In 2010, the press was surprised at the MIT survey: according to its results, “voters tend to sympathize with politicians who can be called universally attractive”. In some cultures, only a Europeanized appearance is welcome.
The New York Times in 2017 said that during the period of active public speaking,
“Emmanuel Macron spent a total of $ 31,000 over three months for the services of makeup artists…’’ (36). The fact that an attractive European face can be at least an excellent addition in the struggle for power is undeniable. The attitude to beauty, as well as the attitude to the diversity of sexual orientations or gender identities, is not due to the taste embedded in the subconscious. We live in a society for which a compliment is first and foremost praise of appearance, and we grow with the collective conviction that proximity to ideal parameters immediately makes anyone a daddy of fate. Prejudice against those who, according to a viral expression, “won the genetic lottery” or, on the contrary, was not born in an ideal body, makes it impossible for us to see something special about people.
As for my culture, specifically, Russia, unfortunately, such a thing as discrimination is normalized: the habit of “meeting clothes” is common at all levels. Moreover, today in this country there is a huge number of students from Africa, and what is the current number of people from this part of the earth? Of course, dark-skinned people. Unfortunately, people living in this country will never accept people with such ethnic background and will always look askance at them, just as they do not accept non-heterosexual people and the most frustrating thing about this is that it is hard for Africans to be in society, condemning their people and that they have to swallow it. However, it is difficult to be surprised at this, given that more distinct types of hatred in society are perceived as the norm and manifestation of “freedom of speech”. Justifying such a mentality, it is obvious, that the fact the habit and desire to see the beauty in everything originated a long time ago. If you read all sorts of Russian literature, you can draw in your head a specific image of a typical Russian woman – a slim build, a beautifully braided spit, big eyes, in general, everything is perfect. We are taught to be like that, and no one wants to argue with the fact that the term “genotype” has a place to exist in this case, because the society in the old or new time has got used to seeing around itself such a harmonious image of a woman. The cult of women is greatly exalted in our literature, on a par with the worship of love, sacrifices in the name of love, murder for the sake of a woman and so on. It is not a secret to anyone that Russian literature in Western or any other country is not entirely understood, because someone says that it is depressed, incomprehensible, complicated, and the like. One of the reasons is the exalted cult to relationships and crazy actions that other people do not quite understand. So, what is it about these women? It is the way the authors of the works describe them that there is no one else like them anywhere else. All this may not be obvious, but still one of the reasons for discrimination and racism towards girls from the neighboring countries and girls who are not like the ones depicted in the book.
Body and appearance are an easy target for insults and uninvited criticism, and in the absence of notions of respect for personal boundaries, discrimination based on appearance receives fertile soil.
Turn to one of the most famous American middle-class clothing stores Abercrombie & Fitch. Appearing at the end of the XIX century, the Abercrombie & Fitch brand made efforts to create clothing, shoes, and accessories for stylish and young brutal people who are passionate about active lifestyle and sports. However, the former director, Mike Jeffries, made a big scandal, rejecting applications for hiring black employees and removing a clothing line of more than “L.” First of all, Jeffries rejected the entire conservative line “for pensioners” and focused on the youth audience. In the nineties, the brand began to hire stunning sellers in its stores. It was external data that became the main factor in hiring; unscrupulous employees were removed from the sales area. At the same time, large sizes have disappeared from the company’s range. In this case, only the weaker sex was discriminated; forgiveness was overweight for men.
The businessman himself in several interviews repeated almost the same phrase that Abercrombie & Fitch’s concept is built around sexuality. According to Mike Jeffries, only beautiful people are hired to the shops, which attract other good-looking people there. Naturally, the provocative brand policy could not but lead to problems. A former store employee, Eduardo Gonzalez, accused the company of hiring predominantly white Americans, while the rest offered to work in a warehouse or where customers did not see them. That is, according to the plaintiff, the company understood beauty too one-sidedly.
In “On seeing England for the first time” Jamaica Kincaid says,
“The monuments were useless to them now, people sat on them and ate their lunch. They were like markers on an old useless trail, like a piece of old string tied to a finger to jog the memory, like the old decoration in an old house, dirty, useless, in the way. Their skins were so pale. It made them look so fragile, so weak, so ugly. What if I had the power to banish them from their land, send boat after boatload of them on a voyage that had no destination, force them to live in a place where the sun’s presence was a constant? This would rid them of their pale complexion and make them look more like me, make them look more like the people I love and treasure and hold dear, and more like the people who occupy the near and far reaches of my imagination, my history, my geography, and reduce them and everything they have ever known to figurines as evidence the one ever has…” (371)
It describes her malevolence towards the English, in her words about the English one can hear the motive of racism, but it can be understood, because when the island of Antigua – the house of Jamaica was under the colonization of England. She describes their appearance as something terrible, their presence was disgusting to her, for England is characterized by cloudy weather and the lack of the sun, the opposite of her home. Thus, she defended her people from pressure and racism by the invaders. In the story, anyone can understand that Jamaica was angry with the colonizing country because the British had created a slave industry. In the above words, it is clear that she had a particular impression of English. They present themselves as much better and taller than black people. Such an attitude makes Jamaica present to readers the whole country of England as racist, arrogant and rude. It is evident that one of the ideas of the work is proof that dark skin can signify the type of labor of the working class, while light skin indicates the status of high society. Moreover, dark skin is also noted as more threatening and alien. For black communities in the US, the historical context of slavery meant that whiteness meant freedom and was not subject to colonization.
In “The Way I Look at Race”, Frank Sinatra tells,
I’ve seen racial and religious intolerance take all kinds of forms and many times I have seen one man’s hand raised against his brother simply because he didn’t like the color of his skin… (14)
Race is one of the most superficial of all barriers. I look forward to the day when it will not be a serious factor affecting or retarding human relations… (16)
Not only has the work of Frank Sinatra been more than 60 years old, since the first colonization of England more than half a century has passed and it is sad to realize that there is still such a problem as discrimination not only of races but also of appearance in general, beauty and appearance. In his words, he makes it clear that assessing the appearance is a global problem and expresses his hope that someday it will disappear. Perhaps, in centuries, people will stop honoring the history and will not know what colonization is, who Elizabeth 1 is and that many years later, discrimination and appreciation of beauty and appearance, in general, was an ineradicable disaster. We live in a system riddled with bias: even if we think that we have got rid of prejudices and do not express them openly, they can still slip in actions, careless phrases, and jokes, and the norms evolve almost every day.
There is an opinion that a healthy society does not need either the hitting-outs of people with homosexual orientation, nor the liberation movement of the body positive, try to be more similar to a European than to an African-American. In other words, in an ideal world there would be neither a standard nor a struggle with it – the diversity and lack of a “sample” would be understood as a common story that there is no need to discuss, and the right to look “different” would be unlimited. No one asks to calm down the interest in other people’s bodies and attention to their own. But to some extent, beauty and appearance are greatly overestimated, and, by encouraging too active attention to it, we inevitably support one of the most difficult to eliminate inequalities. Not to mention the fact that reducing a person to the proportions of his body greatly impoverishes our relationship with ourselves and with the world, and a lack of understanding of the concept of attractiveness successfully divides people, but few people help to be successful and happy.
Citation page
- Brest, Paul. “Chapter 12. Race Discrimination and Education.” Poverty and Discrimination, pp. 113–131. CCNY Libraries, doi:10.1515/9781400839193-012.
- Sontag, Susan, and Robert Atwan. The Best American Essays 1992. Ticknor & Fields, 1992, CCNY Librarieswww.matermiddlehigh.org/ourpages/auto/2013/9/19/57929882/SB 1_13- OnSeeingEngland-Kincaid.pdf.
- Banks, Taunya Lovell. Shades of difference, 2009, pp. 213-22., CCNY Libraries
- Sinatra, Frank. “The way I look at race.” White on Black, p123-39., CCNY Libraries
- Boyle, Sarah Patton. “Inside a segregationist”. White on Black, p43-50., CCNY Libraries
- Farfan, Barbara. “Controversial Quotes from Mike Jeffries, Former Abercrombie CEO.” The Balance Small Business, The Balance Small Business, www.thebalancesmb.com/quotes-from-mike-jeffries-abercrombie-and-fitch-ceo-2892142.
- Foley, Katherine Ellen, and Katherine Ellen Foley. “Racist Beauty Standards Are Leading Women of Color to Use More Toxic Products.” Quartz, Quartz, 18 Aug. 2017, qz.com/1054067/cosmetics-marketed-to-women-of-color-may-contain-more-harsh-chemicals/.
- Morenne, Benoît. “Macron Has Spent $31,000 to Keep Looking Young Since Taking Office.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 25 Aug. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/world/europe/france-president-macron-makeup-expenses.html.
