Beauty Demands

An upcoming documentary from the UK pop star, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, acknowledges that "colourism sits right beside racism" . In this great revisited post, Ronald E Hall discusses colourism in the UK To be dark in the UK today regardless of race is to be unfairly stigmatized in failure to meet the ideal of fair skin. To be fair and/or light-skinned, on the other hand, is to be celebrated as attractive and smart in line with the fair skin ideal. This is true for UK men, UK women, UK whites, UK blacks and other UK people of color.  Black and Asian citizens of the UK in particular not only experience this penchant for fair skin from outside their racial group but within it as well. While the bias against darkness is most apparent in skin bleaching by women around the world, it is increasingly apparent to UK dermatologists who see patients requesting skin bleaching products. Gina is a dark-skinned woman in her mid-twenties and a resident of the UK, born of Jamaican de...

  When you think of models, you probably think of long legs, designer clothing, and flawless figures. When I think of models, I think of eating disorders, self-doubt, and an everlasting feeling of dread and isolation.   (Photo by Rob Crawford) I started modelling almost ten years ago in my home country of Australia. I never wanted to be a model, I didn’t care about fashion or parties or “being cool”, but I wasn’t opposed to trying something new. I loved modelling in Australia for the most part, I did a lot of exciting jobs and I started to feel more confident and happy with who I was growing to be. Then, around the age of 22 I decided I’d move to England, I have family here and I thought I could try modelling in the European market.    I was unprepared. I visited most of the top agencies in London, and all but one rejected me. The one agency that didn’t had one condition - I had to lose weight. In Australia, I was encouraged to look lean and “fresh faced”, but th...

With hairdressers in the UK currently closed for lockdown again, we republish Anna Cermakova's 2017 post on the important role of hair.  How often do you think about your hair? Every morning looking at yourself in the mirror and thinking is this going to be a ‘good/bad hair’ day? How often do you change the colour of your hair? How often do you substantially change the length or style of your hair? When is the time right for such a change? I have personally been quite unadventurous with my hair for most of my life and never really worried until it started to grow grey… I have always had long or longish hair and never even considered having a really short ‘boy’ haircut; not that I don’t like short hair but it never even occurred to me to try and have a short haircut — so established is the custom for many women to have their hair long. One of John Tenniel’s illustrations of Alice in Wonderland (1865), which is part of the ‘visual’ of the GLARE project I am working on, triggered a ...

The enforced move to online work and social interactions over the last year have increased appearance pressures for many, so it seems a good time to revisit Heather Widdows' 2018 post on New Year's resolutions and self-improvement.  Shutterstock. Heather Widdows , University of Birmingham After the feasting of Christmas, January is a time of detox and self-denial. It’s when people start new diets, begin new exercise regimes and make new year’s resolutions. We promise ourselves that we will do better – that we will better ourselves. But all too often – at least in the West – this means improving our bodies. While losing weight or gaining fitness can be a good thing, these types of resolutions – “I will lose five kilograms”, “I will join a gym”, “I will stop eating sweets” – mark a significant change from previous generations. Traditionally, new year’s resolutions were about improving one’s character – the inner self, not the outer self . For example, an extract of an...

Why don’t you choose to wear braces to enhance your teeth? You would look better after getting your braces off!  You should find a way to reduce the size of your face!  You have such a short chin! Why don’t you consider having it surgically enhanced or undertaking orthodontics? These questions/statements were drilled into my mind before I ended up wearing dental braces mainly for aesthetic purposes. Peer pressure and demanding beauty standards brought orthodontics to my attention. It was such a painful three-year period wearing braces along with eight tooth extractions and speech and eating difficulties. Afterwards, apart from my heightened self-confidence to smile and speak, my facial appearance also improved. However, I still need to wear a removable retainer for the long term. I asked my mother why my father does not need to get his teeth fixed despite his short chin. She responded that females, unlike males, are hugely judged for their looks. As Gill (2007) writes, in comp...

As it is currently Black History Month, it seems a good opportunity to revisit this brilliant post from Shirley Tate from 2018.  In 2017, I was approached by a fashion editor on a UK broadsheet for comments on why Alexandra Burke was consistently voted against by the great British public watching Strictly Come Dancing . I did not watch Strictly at the time and told her that I could not help her. Being persistent, the journalist shared with me a Guardian newspaper report on research that showed that Alexandra was voted against every week even though the judges gave her great points and comments on her skills as a dancer. Responding to the journalist again in the light of this research, I said that Alexandra was too dark-skinned to win Strictly because ballroom dancing is still seen as a white dance form by the public. This meant that only bodies racialized as white or that were ‘mixed-race’, light skinned and normatively feminine (which accounts for Alesha Dixon’s triumph) could ev...

  We are interested in ageing in material objects and in people. Norms of beauty are relevant here; beauty is persistently associated with youth and newness and this has affected our relationship with our own ageing (particularly in the West) and also with objects. These associations are important because aesthetic obsolescence of objects leads to dissatisfaction, detachment, and early disposal which has significant environmental and societal impacts. Whilst entrenched Western norms, which perpetuate unattainable youthful perfection, reinforce ‘skin deep’ attitudes to ageing resulting in poor self-esteem and an increasingly ‘invisible’ older population. In this article, we start to tease out and connect strands of thought, drawing on transdisciplinary constructs of ageing within the contexts of people and objects. Although the relationship between people’s attitudes to the appearance of their own physical ageing and their possessions has yet to be extensively explored (Scarre, 2016...