Beauty Demands

Bullying has been in the news, not least because it was Anti Bullying Week in the UK last week, so it's a good time to revisit this great post from Kirsty Lee from 2018 (and check out  https://everydaylookism.bham.ac.uk/ )  Do you feel dissatisfied with one or more parts of your body or appearance? If so, you are not alone. In fact, body dissatisfaction is so widespread that it has been given the label of normative discontent . Although girls and women are most affected by body image issues, boys and men are increasingly dissatisfied with their body . Negative feelings about our bodies are therefore common, which is a problem in itself and raises important questions about why this is so prevalent across society. However, for some people, normative discontent turns into abnormal preoccupation. By abnormal, I mean negative beliefs, thoughts, and behaviour that affect the ability to function on a daily basis, significantly reduce quality of life, and increase the risk of early m...

We were very sad to hear the news of the death of James Partridge on the 16th August 2020 ( https://faceequalityinternational.org/news/james-announcement/ ). James was an amazing man, a true trail-blazer in his campaigning for appearance diversity and face equality, who helped change public perceptions of and attitudes towards facial disfigurement. His death is a sad loss to all, although of course most of all his family. His post below (first published in 2018) shows how he made his arguments with reason, charm and humour, but also with passion. For further tributes to James, see:  https://jamespartridge.muchloved.com/ I remember being absolutely staggered at the time. It was the mid-1980s, 15+ years since I’d acquired my imperfect and unique looks. Nightmare on Elm Street had broken box office records and spawned a new genre of horror movies. I was minding my own business walking down a street in London when a wag on a scaffolding rig shouted: “Hi, Freddy, you nasty piece of...

Colourism, skin shade prejudice involving the preferential treatment of people with light skin within and between ethnic groups , affects the life chances of people of colour around the world and fuels the multi-billion dollar global skin lightening industry. Evelyn Glenn (2008, 289) argues that in India there is an “almost universal” preference for light skin and “ in terms of sheer numbers, India and Indian diasporic communities around the world constitute the largest market for skin lighteners.” Focusing on the USA, Margaret Hunter (2007) argues that people with light skin earn more, stay in school longer, live in better areas, and marry people of a higher status than those with darker skin from the same ethnicity or racialised group. Photo by Adam Jones, Ph.D./Global Photo Archive/Flickr According to the World Health Organization (n.d.), 77 percent of women in Nigeria, 35 percent of women in South Africa and 59 percent in Togo are reported regularly to use skin lightening p...

The latest figures from the Good Childhood Report suggest that 34% of girls and 20% of boys are unhappy with their appearance; the report also suggests that bullying is likely a key contributing factor. In the scientific literature, it is well documented that appearance concerns are higher amongst teenagers who have been teased about some body or facial feature, and those who are repeatedly teased in a nasty way, i.e., verbally bullied, are at higher risk of body dissatisfaction, eating disorders and body dysmorphic disorder. New evidence suggests that it is not only appearance bullying that is damaging to appearance satisfaction, but that any type of victimisation by peers can be detrimental. Bullying typically includes behaviours such as hitting, kicking, name calling, social exclusion and/or the spreading of nasty rumours or lies (either in person or online), which are repeated over time. Receiving this type of abuse from peers can have profound effects on the psychological ...