Women and Femininity in U.S. Popular Culture

Variations of the elements of female attractiveness have entered the beauty discourse through the popular media over the last decades. Audiences are exposed to a more inclusive standard of good looks represented by models, actresses, or contestants in international beauty pageants from various ethnic origins. Young women of color have seen more fashion icons, celebrities, and video artists of their own ethnic backgrounds in mainstream media, particularly in rap and hip-hop culture and, in some North American cities, in soap operas and talk-shows on Spanish-language television. Some of these figures—Lil' Kim, Foxy Brown, Queen Latifah—present images of beauty and sexuality different from the dominant culture's version of attractiveness or "vanilla" sex appeal. Others, like Tyra Banks, Salma Hayek, and Halle Berry, blend anglicized and ethnic features. These contrasting aesthetics bespeak an ongoing conflict between the preference for the silky blond hair and light skin or skin darkened only with a tan and of traditional Western culture with the "exotic" appearance of women of color. A mixed message underlies these images: on the one hand, a superficial acceptance of a broader range of beauty and sexual desirability; on the other, a limit to the degree of identifiable ethnicity that impinges upon the Anglo norm. Thus, in order to be considered beautiful, the faces and bodies of multiracial women must display only minor departures from the standard white Western European look.

This fusion of facial features has long been the subject of psychological studies of female appearance. German researchers at the Universities of Regensburg and Rostock have tested various theories of female facial attractiveness, including the "attractiveness is averageness" hypothesis; the "facial symmetry" hypothesis; and the theory of "multidimensional beauty perception," which suggests that faces combining childlike characteristics with more mature features are judged most attractive. Their results partially confirm the averageness hypothesis: computer-generated composite faces are considered most beautiful, but only if the features to be morphed are not unattractive to begin with.

The question of hair resonates in particular for women of color. Madame C. J. Walker (1867–1919), born into slavery, invented and marketed her hair-straightening method in the early twentieth century. Ironically, African-American women have seen curls, Afros, corn rows, and dreadlocks appropriated by white women while they themselves still turn to chemical treatments, hot irons, hair weaving, and extensions to recreate the impossible and unforgiving image of the "good hair" of the dominant culture.

The very concept of "good hair" represents another battle in the beauty wars. Kasey West, in an article about hair and identity titled "Nappy Hair: A Marker of Identity and Difference" (for the Web site Beauty Worlds), writes:

A return to African-based hairstyling practices by many black women in the 1960s … marked an assertion of national identity and heritage in the face of oppressive Western ideals of beauty and continuing disenfranchisement. Although the popular Afro was achieved by blowing hair out to straighten the curls, it was representative as an expression of beauty ideals centered on an African identity. In other words, hairstyling became a political statement of connection to the black community.… [B]lack hairstyles retained a cultural and political significance.

Noting the "political complexities of African-American hair and beauty culture," West quotes the sociologist Ingrid Banks, who interviewed more than fifty black girls and women between 1996 and 1998 for her book Hair Matters (2000) and who concluded that "hair shapes black women's ideas about race, gender, class, sexuality, images of beauty and power."

Other African-American women writers address the issue in fiction and nonfiction. Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye exposes these conflicts through the young heroine's poignant resentment and despair as she realizes she never will attain her dream of waking up blond and blue-eyed. bell hooks' article "Selling Hot Pussy" continues the examination of bodies and race. Black women still find themselves represented as savage, primitive sex machines and are objectified and dehumanized by this image. The "black female body gains attention only when it is synonymous with accessibility, availability, when it is sexually deviant" (in Conboy, Medina, and Stanbury, p. 117; see also Gilman). In this context, beauty and racism conflate to doubly oppress women, whatever their background.

Some American women of color, Latinas among them, trace their ethnic heritage to cultures whose ideal female body differs noticeably from the bony fashion icons of today's dominant white culture. A Mexican-American woman prized by her relatives for her rounded womanly body might be judged overweight in fitness-conscious California, for example. African-American culture embraces as beautiful a range of body sizes and shapes that would fall in the "full-figured" category in fashion advertising, despite the fact that models of color featured in the edgy, glamorous photos of high fashion publications possess the characteristic tall and ultraslim body. Kathryn Zerbe notes, "In comparison to white girls, fewer African-American girls report trying to lose weight. In cultures where plumpness is valued, eating disorders are rare" (p. 160). Additionally, curvy hips and ample bust lines, the hallmarks of a female figure, can fuel racist views of hypersexuality in people of color. In Face Value: The Politics of Beauty (1984), by Robin Tolmach Lakoff and Raquel Scherr, Scherr recalls her adolescence filled with taunts for resembling her Mexican-Indian mother rather than her white father. At first outraged, later she agreed with a friend's remark that "discrimination based on beauty is more prevalent than discrimination based on race" (p. 7).

At the other extreme is the very thin African-American model Gerren Taylor, who was twelve years old in April 2003 when the Los Angeles Times profiled her nascent modeling career: Taylor had the prepubescent and scrawny silhouette that dominates the catwalk and fashion shoots and becomes the standard to which girls and women aspire. "The debate over the sexualization of girls at younger and younger ages waxes and wanes; Gerren's mother understands that sexuality is a part of fashion and believes she can protect her child from exploitation," writes Booth Moore (p. E9).

Immigrant women of color cannot escape their adopted culture's view of body size. In order to be appealing and noticed, American women "are supposed to be thin—and if they are not, the culture assumes they are unhappy, dissatisfied, lazy, slovenly, and ugly" (Zerbe, p. 159). Zerbe cites a study of African immigrants to Great Britain. Those "who have resided in Britain for only four years will have adopted the British viewpoint with respect to size and shape. These immigrants tend to desire a smaller physique than their African peers," who "in general enjoy their fuller figures" (p. 101). Zerbe offers examples suggesting that as immigrant women acculturate in a society that places a high value on thinness, they are likely to adopt "the more stringent eating attitudes of the prevailing culture" (p. 101).