The standard of beauty, its translation to social media, and expectations
of appearance ---
Jagged noses. Hairy legs. Folds of skin in the wrong places.
For women, society casts a scrutinizing eye upon almost every aspect of our appearance. 69-84% of women are dissatisfied with their bodies (Runfola et al., 2013). Too big, too small, too little, too much — whether communicated by ourselves, others, or media platforms such as Facebook or news outlets, we’re constantly internalizing, either from direct or indirect feedback, what other people expect of us.
Considering the broader themes of media, self, and society, all three are tightly interconnected regarding the topic of our thoughts about our appearances. They can roughly be broken down to what we think, what others think, and what we are told; these questions exist in a dynamic setting, where all three fluidly shape each other.
Visual media is especially potent in regards to sending messages about our looks and body. From Renaissance-era artwork to Instagram posts, we’ve always been able to visualize a “right” way to look. But who really makes the rules?
Behind the scenes, of course, are cultural beauty standards. Without us even trying, we’re all aware of the ideal — some sort of (often unattainable) perfect form — and pinpointing our physical flaws often requires no extra thought. Targeted advertisements and cosmetic products feed on our insecurities.
So what is beauty, and how does media shape our perception of our own? And with a modern twist, we now have another perspective to consider: the camera’s. With phones and social media feeds at our fingertips, how does the digital world play into our satisfaction with our appearance?
The Backdrop of Beauty
A seemingly obvious but rarely discussed question regarding beauty is: why do we even care at all? Society has shown that we consider the appearance of women to be their defining and most valuable characteristic, and many of us just accept this, performing hours-long self-care routines every day. The debate of whether or not those regimens are valuable aside, it’s when we want to change our appearance in ways that we realistically can’t that problems emerge. So what drives this obsession?
We first consider the pervasiveness of the male gaze. Mazur (1986) found that men virtually always indicate physical attributes as the most attractive features for women; interestingly, women tended to value personality traits such as intelligence or sensitivity instead. When their career, relationships, and social life hinge on their looks, Mazur notes that “a sense of beauty (or lack of it) becomes an important facet of a young woman's self-concept” (p. 282). Considering how America has traditionally acted as a patriarchal society (Ruggles, 2015) and how women have had to fight for basic rights, it is hard to deny that men have held power over womens’ identities.
However, we also have to look within ourselves: our biological wiring is the foundation for determining who we are. Grammer et al. (2003), investigating the evolutionary basis of beauty, affirm that female beauty signals youth, fertility and health. They also push back against the narrative that “male-initiated capitalist activities” were behind the beauty industry’s popularity, citing evidence of women putting significant effort into their looks in the earliest historical records (p. 388). From this, we see that we’re genetically programmed to care about our appearances in order to reproduce and survive — this is important context, but from the modern perspective, with women becoming more than just their ability to have children, the extremity is outdated.
So what is society doing about it? In short: not much, but something. According to Basil et al. (2013), “mass media consistently reinforce[s] assumed linkages between [a] wom[a]n's appearance and their feelings of self-worth” (p. 50), a confirmation that we are being told to care about our beauty. They also found that some forms of beauty were pushed as more valued than others, whether by historical standards or by creatives in charge of media platforms. Those creatives are a tangible and integral force that shapes the beauty narrative, depicting “sophisticated, innovative, [and] aesthetically pleasing” feminine qualities and rejecting “traditional” images as an ideal (p. 55). Thus, we see an attempt to move away from overly sexist representations of women and a welcoming of modern aesthetic values, but a strong emphasis on a “better” type of beauty perseveres nonetheless.
The last question in this background exploration is one of the present: what is contemporary media defining as beautiful and attainable, in terms of appearances, and do we benefit from their influence? First, according to Brownell (1991), framing the search for a “better body” are two assumptions — that the body is “infinitely malleable” and that someone who attains their idea of physical perfection will rake in “vast rewards” (p. 2). In other words, we have the power to become our best looking selves, and should aspire to do so.
Considering Brownell’s focus on the culture of dieting, he quickly shuts down the first, reporting an estimate of 10-15% body fat on models and actresses and 22-26% on the average healthy woman. Put succinctly, “for many people, reaching the aesthetic ideal may be impossible” (p. 8).
Additionally, with the availability and promotion of cosmetic surgery in the media, standards are also shifting beyond what evolution has made possible. Grammer et al. suggests that those with procedures done may have greater success with finding a partner and reproducing — but with success by surgery, they warn of a trickle down to “plastic people” (p. 402). This highlights that now, ideals that surpass the limits of human beauty are becoming normalized; who’s benefiting from this all? Likely plastic surgeons and the beauty industry, but certainly not us. These trends are unsustainable and dangerous for the future.
And for Brownell’s second hypothesis, is being good-looking worth it? He points out that attractive individuals report slightly higher incomes and being more happy, but they measure lower on intelligence scores and may have difficulty maintaining close relationships; it seems better but not completely advantageous. Additionally, for women who obsess over their looks to the point of self-objectification, Chen et al. (2022) found that they are more likely to present themselves unrealistically online in order to garner approval from others. We conclude that with unrealistic expectations comes a paradoxical search for the perfect self — and with social media driving our modern self-presentation, how exactly is it shaping our perception of beauty?
A New Standard
The sprawling world of social media is complex: there are all sorts of formats and audiences to share with, so the impacts of interacting with each subset are variable and unique. In exploring each, we consider the ways in which our thoughts about our self image, specifically pertaining to appearance, are shaped.
Focusing on the nature of comparing ourselves to others, it’s especially easy to do so with platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. Within these two, however, there’s a notable difference — Engeln et al. (2020) found that women browsing Instagram compared their appearances more than on Facebook. Additionally, only Instagram correlated with a decrease in body satisfaction; this is supported by another study that found women with high photo activity on Instagram made more appearance-related comparisons, leading to more concern about their bodies (Piccoli et al., 2022). We see that there’s strong evidence Instagram use can damage our confidence in our looks, and greater interaction only reinforces the insecurity.
Going deeper, the type of people we compare to also make a significant difference in how we judge ourselves. Researchers found that on Facebook, people compared their appearances most to distant peers, less to family members, and with average frequency to close friends and celebrities; distant peers, followed by celebrities, caused the most body image concerns (Fardouly & Vartanian, 2015). They attribute this to a lack of personal contact with those groups, leading to difficulty gauging how realistic their appearances are. For friends and peers we talk to regularly, we get a clear picture of who they are and what they look like; celebrities and acquaintances are instead shrouded in mystery, with most of what we know about them coming from social media itself.
That mystery also typically gets repackaged into negativity, further harming us. Vendemia and DeAndrea (2018) found that for women evaluating other womens’ selfies, ones that were edited and posted by peers as opposed to models were viewed the most unfavorably, with thoughts that those women were bragging or less intelligent and honest. Interestingly, they also discovered that women who were aware of enhancements by photo editing actually resisted idealization of thin and sexualized standards. So there’s a compelling argument to be aware of the artificial nature of social media: we pull back from obviously unrealistic presentations, but for the gray area left up to interpretation, we’re the ones with the power to focus on the positive and real.
This ties back to the reason we post selfies in the first place — selfies that receive positive feedback raise womens’ self-esteem and body satisfaction, according to Wang et al. (2020). Putting this all together, posting selfies can help us feel more beautiful as long as we provide support when others do the same, and the harm of the digital medium can be reduced with more realistic presentations and relevant audiences.
The one catch of reinforcing self-esteem with social validation of our bodies is that it redirects us down the slippery slope of self-objectification. Considering a similar means of increasing confidence in physical appearance, the body positive movement, the benefits of pushing against societal ideals are undeniable: Cohen et al. (2019) found that women viewing body positive Instagram posts reported an improvement in mood and body satisfaction. However, they also saw an increase in self-objectification, which leads to both a greater desire for approval, as discussed previously, and potential consequences of body shame, eating disorders and depression.
This all acts as a double-edged sword: with the ubiquity of sharing and receiving pictures of ourselves on social media platforms, social feedback then often revolves around our appearances as well, since there’s not much else to go off of. As a result, we need to be careful with how these good-willed comments redefine our self image, and how much we prioritize it. It’s always a good idea to take a step back from this microcosm of ultimately artificial identities.
An alluded-to influence on social media not explicitly discussed so far is that of cultural beauty standards, going back to the background context of the drive for beauty. This missing piece helps to explain how experiences with social media and body satisfaction can be variable. For example, college women who were active Pinterest users didn’t report body dissatisfaction, and in fact reported a moderately positive effect on their image (Powell et al., 2018). They did find some correlation with an idealization of thinness, but for both of these points, the authors note that the women may have already internalized cultural images of female beauty, leading to reduced influence by social media. So societal depictions of beauty already have a hand in shaping our interpretations in all sorts of mediums; it’s important to be aware of the multiple forces shaping the landscape of beauty. And when one changes, so will the other.
Another one of those defining forces are personal beliefs, specifically regarding feminism. Feltman and Szymanski (2018) found that there was a positive correlation between less feminist attitudes and self-objectification on Instagram — recalling the rabbit-hole of self-objectification to the point of falsity and obsession, we can infer another part of the problem here. On the other hand, women with more feminist attitudes didn’t exhibit those patterns; the authors suggest that feminism offers the ability to “challenge [womens’] internalized messages about beauty” (pp. 321–322). With a mindset that goes against traditional values, feminism refutes the idea that our appearance significantly dictates our worth, and restructuring this thinking from within can help women let go of those societal pressures, even in the digital realm.
Dimensions of the Self
Overall, the artificial nature of photo-based social media, a carefully curated world of its own, brings about fixation on appearances to the point of unhealthy and unrealistic obsession. We’re each affected to a different degree, depending on the ways we engage with it, our personal mindset, and internalized beliefs from society at large.
Increased levels of self-objectification are an unfortunate byproduct of this new culture. With such unrestricted access to unrealistic and idealized snapshots of others we envy, expectations from the digital realm can easily leak into reality, where they have no place in a grounded and satisfied life. Chase dreams, not illusions — when more and more of our world moves into cyberspace, emphasize the defining elements of your morals, character, and person, not the subjectiveness of your beauty, as who you are.
And who said women had to be beautiful to be happy? It’s understandable to want to meet basic societal standards and look our best, but we should be choosing what our best is, not others. The media presents the idea that we should all have a permanent aspiration to improve our appearances, but by choosing to invest your time in what rewards you — not men, not society, not your social media feed — most, you can take the reins of your life. Beauty is a perhaps overvalued avenue of confidence and way to feel accepted, but it is by no means the only avenue, nor one that everyone has the need or ability to use. Societal expectations are a framework, not a uniform: discover yourself and what makes you happy and healthy.
Lastly, the mix of beauty culture and social media throws off how we interpret our appearance. Social media and the internet as a whole can be thought of as a separate realm that acts as an extension of reality: we can use it to explore, think, support, and share in new ways, but we have to be aware of the limitations of that intangible and abstract world, such as how it compels us to “judge by the cover” and present ourselves in unreal ways. We’re people, not profile pictures, and in the end, social media lacks the third dimension of humanity: our physical flesh, voice, presence, and undeniable existence.
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