They’ll say beauty doesn’t matter.
Well, I’ll have you know they’re lying to you.
Why?
Because human beings are innately shallow.
Let’s talk beauty standards…
While we’re well aware that beauty standards suck, I’m sure it’s vital to know what they actually are. According to Kate Povey in the Manifold at Washington University, “Beauty standards have always been extremely prevalent throughout human history, and today they drastically affect everyday interaction, the media, and the commercial world. They determine what is “beautiful”, from body shape, to facial proportions, to height and weight.”
Beauty standards differ everywhere. There are continental beauty standards, a country’s beauty standards, regional beauty standards and even tribal beauty standards. These classifications are where I assume the “beauty is subjective” statement comes from. However, it’s safe to say that there are universal beauty standards largely pushed by the West that affect certain ethnicities or cultures. The universally acceptable beauty standards involve possessing features like small noses and fair skin as a few examples.
It’s decided folks, beauty standards are arbitrary and yet we find ourselves pursuing them. Why? Because we’re shallow. Let’s face it, being attractive makes life much easier. If anything, being beautiful means, you have a life hack to well…life.
Many studies have proved that good looking people are treated much better in life. They easily make companions; they easily acquire jobs/employment and earn more than their less attractive counterparts and this is a concept that psychologists call the “beauty premium”. Attractive people have it easier when it comes to finding a romantic interest or a marital partner. Researchers at Chapman University studied what traits people view are “desirable” or “essential” in a long-term partner. The study found that 92% of male participants reported wanting a potential partner to be good looking, compared to 84% of women.
Society’s sick obsession with beauty extends its clutches to children. Sometimes we don’t realise that we’re prejudiced and tend to pick pretty people to associate with and as sick as it may sound, we even subject children to this standard. According to Brian Resnick from Vox.com “Brain scan studies have found evidence of an immediate reaction to babies in parents and non-parents alike in the orbitofrontal cortex, a region of the brain thought to be involved in rewarding and decision-making. Cute babies are just extremely hard to ignore, and this is likely hardwired into our brains.”
The Halo Effect is probably the most identifiable construct that displays the importance of beauty, that is– how it has society in a chokehold and how people weaponise it. Ayesh Perera says “The halo effect, also referred to as the halo error, is a type of cognitive bias whereby our perception of someone is positively influenced by our opinions of that person’s other related traits. An example of the halo effect is the attractiveness stereotype, which refers to the tendency to assign positive qualities and traits to physically attractive people. People often judge attractive individuals for higher morality, better mental health, and greater intelligence. This cognitive error in judgment reflects one’s individual prejudices, ideology, and social perceptions.”
The Halo Effect basically states that beautiful people are good and unattractive people are evil. People also tend to take the side of the attractive person. I’m sure we’ve seen movies where the hero is attractive and has perfect flowing hair despite fighting during the entire movie whilst the villains are hideous and covered with boils or something like that. Basically, the halo effect states that beauty = good, ugly = bad or evil. Those cliché tropes are a perfect example of how society views beauty.
Then we have the issue of the “selfie-face”. If you’ve ever used snapchat filters or Instagram filters to take pictures and found yourself wishing you looked like the filter’s depiction of you then you’re not alone. The truth is that filters tend to mask all the “imperfections” you have and present an unrealistic but flawless face to you that makes you wish you looked just like it. I’m sorry to break it to you, but such perfection is just impossible to attain.
The African/Zimbabwean Beauty Standards …
In Zimbabwe or Africa as a whole, there’s an obsession for perfect Eurocentric facial features. Societies have been conditioned to value Eurocentric beauty standards like small noses. An African woman is expected to have a Eurocentric nose AND thick lips. Sigh. Small noses tend to be found on Somali women, Ethiopian and Eritrean women in Africa. Then for the rest of us well…there’s no winning really.
The most debilitating quality required to be beautiful as a woman is “light skin”. If you have light skin in Africa, you may very well just be a goddess of sorts. The preference for light skin is displayed in Western and African media. In the West, (America cough cough. I know, big shocker, right?) the actresses who tend to get acting roles are light skinned or even biracial/mixed whilst women with darker skin tones are side-lined. This obsession of lighter skin tones or fair skin tones is also found in Eastern countries like South-Korea, Japan and China where being tanned is considered as some sort of abomination. IT’S LIKE IF YOU’RE DARK HOW DARE YOU LIVEEE? If you aren’t pale my goodness, consider yourself doomed. Other Asian countries that share the same sentiments or colourist outlooks include India and Thailand. India would rather hire Caucasians over dark-skinned Indian actresses in Bollywood films. I’ve seen so many Thai women on beauty shows seeding massive fortunes on skin lightening products just to acquire fair skin. Not to mention that the World Health Organisation states that Asian and African women are the biggest skin lightening product consumers in the world. So if that doesn’t tell you anything, I don’t know what will.
Zimbabwe is no different with this beauty standard. The desire for light skin has colonial roots. When the British colonised Zimbabwe they also facilitated in changing Zimbabwean’s outlook on beauty. The lighter one was, the more appealing they were to Caucasians. The light-skinned black people all received indoor jobs such as secretarial jobs or house jobs whilst dark-skinned people were often deemed too distasteful to work with so they were never seen at desk jobs. The British imposed this obsession of fair skin, which seeped into our hearts and minds. If Zimbabwean posters aren’t featuring Caucasian models, the women tend to be biracial/mixed and maybe light-skinned. The aforementioned reasons are just but a few examples that show Zimbabwe’s obsession with light skin. Then there’s a massive rabbit hole about Zimbabwean women bleaching their skin so they can achieve a beauty that society forces them to seek out by mistreating them.
Then we have the issue of the butt, the bunda, the nyash. It has to be massive. It has to have an insane amount of recoil. It has to jiggle or wiggle. It has to be a perfect shape that can seat a wine glass. Fortunately, big buttocks are a feature usually attributed to black women especially Southern Africans and West Africans. Then there’s the down side, what about us mere mortals that don’t have a Faith Nketsi butt or 2010-2022 Kim Kardashian butt? Well I’ll put it simply: we suffer. If you don’t have a massive badonkadonk your attractiveness isn’t set in stone.
An African woman is required to be thick. Happy? It’s too soon. The thickness formula as I like to call it is basically being slim thick. Slim waist, wide hips, big breasts and a massive butt (especially the massive butt part). In this modern day the desired slim thick involves flat or toned stomachs and zero body fat.
Hair is another impossible beauty standard to achieve. Black women are required to have extremely perfect hair. By perfect hair I don’t mean a beautiful mane of luscious curls, I mean bone straight hair. The weaves and the wigs. Those 16-inch Brazilian hair pieces are what help complete a pretty black woman. These Brazilian or Peruvian (it’s an endless list) hair pieces are extremely expensive. So, the regular Zimbabwean woman is left to her own devices. If a black woman wears an Afro, she’s deemed too lazy to get her hair done thus unworthy of being deemed attractive. I’ve seen other black women make fun of another black woman’s mini twists and it’s like okay, but why are we doing this to each other? You can’t win. If she’s sporting dreadlocks then they call her untidy, unkempt and even disgusting. African society’s obsession with bone straight black hair is a tell-tale sign of how heavily influential Western beauty standards are in Zimbabwe. Because hair pieces are expensive, women who sport hair pieces are deemed high value as they are closer to a whiteness that serves as a tool to erase the blackness of self-hating black people.
When I was an “ugly” duckling…
I was never seen as a beautiful girl when I was growing up. Children often looked me up and down in disgust and as such, I started viewing myself in a similar lens. Primary school years were perhaps the hardest years of my young life. At twelve years old, boys were already compiling lists or ranks of the most beautiful girls. I was always at the very bottom of the list, of course it didn’t help that I was short, socially awkward, obsessed with pink, Barbie and Monster High.
I learnt to ignore those arbitrary lists but deep down they really hurt. I pretended I didn’t care but that was difficult to do when society had practically groomed everyone including myself to scrutinise people’s looks, especially girls’ looks.
One day I woke up with breasts. I was still in primary school. I was twelve and they were rather big. It was strange to have two lumps of flesh added to a body I already had a complicated relationship with. I didn’t like my breasts but I realised I was getting a lot of attention from people. I knew the attention wasn’t what I actually wanted. The attention was leery if not completely slimy and yet I played into it. I was adamant on ensuring that I gained attention whether it was good or bad. So, one could say I was a slave to the male gaze (but that’s a nuanced topic for another day).
High-school was another whirlpool of its own. It was disastrous to say the least. At the age of 13 and above, teenagers were bolder and harsher with their words. It didn’t matter to people if I had breasts or not, I just wasn’t pretty to anyone. There were boys who called me a carrot because I was and still am rather busty. That label didn’t sit right with me, I was deemed an “Oreo” (read my very first blog post tee hee hee) because of my so called white washed personality and now my body was being compared to a freaking carrot?! When would it stop?
The arbitrary rankings of beauty started again. The boys would tell the entire class who the prettiest girl was from the top of the list right down to the bottom. It was no surprise that I found myself at the bottom of the list yet again. IT. WAS. SO. EXHAUSTING! The boys at my school were obsessed greatly with people’s looks. They were so obsessed with ranking us to the point where they even ranked our feet (I know it was really gross). It was like I was living in the lookism manhwa.
My body dysmorphia was born in high-school. It was all the looks, the stares, the whispers and the teasing remarks made about my body. Looking at myself in the mirror became difficult and of course social media didn’t help at all what with constantly bombarding my feed with images of girls my age with hourglass bodies, slim waists and flat tummies. The boys in my class never failed to mention that I didn’t have a butt and that became my biggest insecurity. The boys critiqued my butt or lack thereof. The boys constantly reminded me that my butt was small. They reminded me that I had no butt and therefore I was unworthy of being “pretty” and unworthy of being treated with basic respect. I was always being scrutinised and being judged. I internalised all the little comments made about me and piled them deep inside my heart and the crevices of my mind.
My self-hatred started manifesting itself in my speech and I would tell my friends just how much I hated my butt or lack thereof. Instead of receiving immense support or advice from my “friends” some of my friends laughed it off as my being silly and some started using it as a means of teasing me when they knew dang well how much it hurt. Some people told me that I was overreacting when I would ask them to stop teasing me about my butt but they didn’t care. They really didn’t care.
I spiralled into a pit of depression that featured high-school me crying in secluded spots, crying in my room, running to the bathroom when my classmates said something negative about my body. I was so miserable that I started googling the cheapest BBL surgeon that a 15-year-old could afford…HOW SAD IS THAT?! Suffice to say that I chickened out of getting a BBL because of the death rates (just kidding, it was definitely about the money). I spent lots of time on YouTube consuming the content that these perfect Youtubers put out. I didn’t know how to approach my mum about my insecurities because I felt like I was being silly as my “friends” had said. My obsession with fitting the beauty standards led me to a dark, damp pit of depression. I was delving deep into the darkest depths of YouTube-grow-your-butt-real-quick-videos. I even made weights from a metal rod and bricks so I could lift weights to grow my butt just as YouTube suggested. It was quite a sad experience. It took me half a year to realise that these “build a butt-influencers” had good butt genes and some had BBLs and pretended like they didn’t get any work done. That realisation was absolutely soul-crushing. I continued swallowing fitness influencer content not knowing that I wouldn’t be able to fix anything on the outside if everything inside was broken. I wouldn’t and I couldn’t love my body until I loved myself and that was a harsh but necessary realisation.
My looks started to creep in when I turned 17. I started attending a different high-school after completing my Ordinary Level exams. I went from being an ugly darkling to a girl with pretty privilege and no idea how to handle it. When I became pretty, people’s disgusted tones about my looks turned to tones of fascination or admiration. I was surprised how different people’s behaviour towards me had suddenly become. I wasn’t used to being treated kindly, I wasn’t used to being desired as a friend, I wasn’t used to people actively seeking out a conversation with me. It’s just that I had been called ugly and weird for so long that I was afraid to bask in the glory of all the friendliness lest people’s evil tendencies reared their ugly heads again. I knew what people were actually like so I remained guarded and wary. I would freak out when people asked me to tell them more about Harry Potter or Barbie. Since when did they care about my interests? Since when did people respect me and treat me kindly? Oh, that’s right, it’s when I got the cute face and the boobs. Was this pretty privilege? I guess it was, but it did nothing to cure my trauma. Sigh.
Becoming acceptably pretty gave me an opportunity to see how other girls were treated and how I didn’t blame anyone for aspiring to be good looking because humanity made it a point to treat attractive people with respect and unattractive with disdain.
Learning to love myself: How I’m learning to love myself and why you should do that too…
Sis, the solution is in your relationship with God. The answer to struggling with body image is embedded in your Bible. God’s definition of my beauty is a song I sing to myself every day when I look in the mirror. As I strengthen my bond with God, my own self-worth and self-love skyrockets. When in doubt affirm yourself with Psalms 134 verse 14 which says that you are wonderfully and fearfully made! Then Proverbs 3 verse 15 says, “She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her”. So, if the Creator of the universe holds you in such high regard, it’s time you start holding yourself in high regard as well. Seek Him first and holy confidence and self-value will follow after.
I took a much-needed detox from social media. I uninstalled my Instagram and Tik-tok for a long time to do some healing. Let’s face it guys, social media is super toxic, albeit even harmful. There’re all these Instagram models or starlets with voluptuous bodies and toned muscles. Once you start scrolling you can never stop. The algorithm continues to bombard you with images of flawless women that leave you second guessing yourself. You find yourself asking why you don’t have Lori Harvey’s body and Zendaya’s facial features. I realised that social media was practically poisoning me. Social media is look obsessed and if you aren’t careful it will drag you into that look obsessed cesspit as well and create problems or insecurities for you that you don’t even know existed (Like shut up tik-tok my arm isn’t ugly or repulsive for that matter because it’s just an arm!! STOP PUMPING OUT WEIRD INSECURITIES PEOPLE!). I realised social media was making my self-diagnosed body dysmorphia even worse. One day I finally gained the courage to uninstall my social media apps for a period of six months and boy was it liberating.
When I returned to social media after a much-needed hiatus, I decided to stop following women who didn’t look a thing like me. When looking for outfit inspiration, I often sought out women who didn’t look a thing like me, heck they weren’t even the same race as me so it was no wonder why I found out that emulating them wasn’t doing me any good. If anything, I found myself comparing my body to theirs and asking myself why I didn’t look like them. I often found myself comparing my body to Caucasian women and South- African women. I asked myself why my hips weren’t as wide as theirs or my butt as big as these seemingly perfect women. Following women with a similar body type as me on social media did wonders for my self-esteem.
I picked up a sport to combat my disdain for my body. I’ve always had an affinity for the martial arts so when I heard that my university offered karate, I signed up without a second thought. Karate makes me happy. It makes me feel good and it’s slowly assisting me in building discipline and confidence. If you’re looking to healing yourself, I suggest picking up a sport or a hobby that will challenge you to exercise confidence and cultivate skills you didn’t even know you possessed! It will do wonders for your confidence!
Finding my personal style was and is probably my saving grace. When I dived head first into Pinterest boards I fell in love with building a fashion sense that was uniquely mine. I studied my body proportions and started dressing accordingly. I found the perfect bras. I CANNOT STRESS HOW IMPORTANT A PROPER FITTING BRA SIZE IS!! Finding my personal style was all trial and error but I can safely say it has made me more secure within myself. I used You-tube and Pinterest to find my aesthetics and I have never looked back.
I learnt to embrace my African features. I have a flat and wide African nose and brown skin. There’s nothing I can do to change any of those features unless I go under the knife and honestly I don’t want to. My features tell an incredible tale of those who lived before me. I am living proof of my predecessors’ existence and their love story so why would I want to erase all that history?
I learnt to stop caring about what others thought. I know learning to stop caring about what people think or say is difficult but I can assure you that once you stop caring, you will soar. It took me a long time to stop caring but once I did, I felt much better. It’s easier said than done that’s for sure, but understanding that people’s thoughts or perceptions about you don’t affect your life in any way is so empowering. If people’s thoughts and opinions don’t alter the course of my life in any way then why the heck should I care? The harsh truth is that beauty standards will always win and you may fit into some of them or you won’t fit in some of them or you won’t fit in any of them at all but you’ve got to keep moving forward. It’s also important to note that beauty standards are constantly fluctuating. Remember that the alternative to a wrinkle is like death sis.
You’ll get to a point of self- improvement and self-acceptance one day and I hope my story helps you to get there and when you finally do get there, you’ll spread your wings and I’ll be rooting for you!
– The “Weird” Brown Girl
SOURCES:
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/8/11872688/ugly-babies-discrimination
A very well written piece of work!
a real eye opener ❤️ thanks love
So many important points, more people need to realise the effects of the European beauty standard towards the African Woman
The way you articulate yourself is pure gold
So raw and honest. Thank you for sharing
Glad you’re at a place where you’re happy.
Love this! Nostalgic high school and primary moments💯
A piece with much wisdom and even more conviction. We can’t change the world and how they perceive things but we can make a difference in our individual capacity. Thank you for this brilliantly written and well researched piece. Truly inspiring.
Wow. Astonishing read. I’m expecting a baby girl soon and I can’t imagine her going through all this. My immediate thought was I’ll tell her how pretty she is every day. If she won’t get it out there, she’ll at least get it from me. Glad you’ve stepped out too and are beginning to soar! Keep going, glowing and growing 🙂