Why each of us should be wary of the single aesthetic standard?
*您可以在公众号内阅读到本文的中文版本《逃开白瘦幼的陷阱，冲进八千八百亩春天》逃开白瘦幼的陷阱，跑进八千八百亩春天
*Sie können diesen Artikel auf Deutsch in diesem offiziellen Account oder in Twitter-Account @LeonaCheng0816 lesen. (bald)
01 The single aesthetic standard "pale thin young" in China and Eastern Asia
02 You can be confident and beautiful without being pale, thin, and young.
03 There is nothing wrong with being "pale thin young" then who is?
01 The single aesthetic standard "pale thin young" in China and Eastern Asia
In China, and throughout Eastern Asia, the aesthetic standards for women are relatively narrow and limited. Light complexion, slim body figure, and youthful facial traits are considered the most perfect female appearance, in short, “pale thin young” (白瘦幼 in Chinese). Glance at female actresses and popular stars in China and Eastern Asia, you will see that almost all of them fit this standard.
The prevalence of a single aesthetic standard throughout the whole society does have a negative impact on individual freedom of choice. This has been reflected in the boom of the cosmetic surgery industry in Korea and the tendency for women's features to be similar after cosmetic surgery.
With the rise of feminism in East Asia, more attention is being paid to this issue and the impact that the aesthetic standard "pale thin young" has had on women and even society.
What is "beauty"?
What makes people beautiful?
What kind of beauty is painful and what kind of beauty is joyful?
What makes some girls "ugly girls"? Perhaps it's the dark skin from the love of sunshine, perhaps it's the sinewy and muscular body from the love of running and jumping, perhaps it's the full, thick lips, or perhaps it's the buckteeth showing when laughing...
When the mainstream aesthetic discourse gradually turns to the "pale thin young" single standard, business and the single aesthetic standard collude with each other as accomplices.
Whitening, weight loss, and anti-aging have become three major issues in Chinese women's lives which are hard to avoid. However, to be pale, to be thin, to look younger... Do these changes, really make us 'beautiful'? Does this beauty really lead us to happiness?
As a girl whose appearance is contrary to the "pale, thin, young" standard, I spent a lot of time and energy in the past actively trying to get closer to this standard, but these attempts did not bring me the joy of becoming beautiful, but only self-questioning and confusion.
Together with growing up, I know more and more confident and lovely girls, and I slowly noticed and realized some existence which is a lot more attractive than the beautiful appearance. I slowly found that out of the ‘pale, thin, young’ beauties on advertising screens, magazine covers, and weight loss product packaging, there are so many different types of beauty, many amazing beautiful girls - they are brave and confident, strong and optimistic, always have a sense of certainty in their eyes... The light that shines from inner beauty is much more fascinating than the "pale thin young" beauty standard!
I interviewed three girls who are not pale, thin, or young, but they are still very beautiful, happy, confident, and love themselves a lot. The beauty they exude is full of vividness and vitality! I hope that by sharing their stories, more girls will discover their inner beauty and be more confident in being themselves, rather than painfully losing themselves in the process of following “pale, thin, young” or any other single aesthetic standard.
There are thousands of possibilities for beauty, today, let's talk about appearance.
02 Not pale thin young, but still beautiful and charming girls
Rihanna - Be a superhero instead of just a vase.
"When did you become confident?"
"When did I become confident? I think it was after I started working. You know, confidence, not that one day you suddenly become confident, but like a budding process. After graduation, I started looking for jobs and I met a lot of people. I figured out that some people, in fact, do not care so much about your appearance. They think highly of you because of your professional skills, your personality, some of your other abilities, and so on..."
When Rihanna was a child, she was teased by her classmates for her dark skin and thick lips, and bullied for being a stay-at-home child. At the age of starting to care about appearance, sometimes Rihanna felt sad, but for provocation, bullying, and ridicule about appearance, she always fight back.
Little girls who do not meet the criteria of "pale thin young" have grown up with more or less attacks on their appearance, either in the form of jokes or in the form of bullying. It is sad that some girls will see these attacks as their own fault and internalize the ridicule into harm.
Standards are established to shape a better society, and when people's behavior exceeds certain standards and norms, they are criticized and punished. The purpose of punishment is to make the wrongdoers feel ashamed and correct their behavior. But appearance is not the same as behavior. Wrong behavior is a destructive practice that people subjectively choose, while appearance is an objective, fixed condition that we cannot choose. People are held responsible for their wrong behavior, which is beneficial for the development of individuals and society and serves as a discipline for people's behavior. A sense of guilt can help people maintain morality. However, the feeling of shame about one's body or appearance is an unfounded crime. Objectively established conditions such as physical appearance should not be judged.
After Rihanna started working, she found out that a person is made up of many dimensions; character, ability, looks, etc. are integral and multi-dimensional to the complete us. In her work, Rihanna, who has the excellent ability, has gained recognition and affirmation.
Rihanna at work as a strong, capable, impressive boss
The role of appearance in daily life is often exaggerated, and with it, the influence and anxiety associated with the evaluation of appearance are also exaggerated. Recognizing that beyond the expectation of "being a pretty girl", it is more fundamental to "be a whole and independent person" that helps girls find themselves and break free from the shackles of appearance.
Lili - Draw strength from feminism.
"How do you find your confidence?"
"I think it's the power of self-consistency and 'feminism'. I started to become self-consistent around the age of 28, and it was also around this time that I read some feminist books ......and the development of the Internet, I think, which gave us more opportunities to speak out, no matter what the echoes are, everyone has the opportunity to be seen, which is the growth of women's groups and women's power, and these forces supporting each other will make women become bolder and more outgoing."
Communicating with Lili made me realize more clearly the need to write this article, and I believe that this article can help more girls. I began to reconcile myself with my body and appearance when I was about 20. Before that, from the time I was 8 or 9 when my self-awareness gradually awakened until I was 20, I kept changing myself in a direction that made me feel pain. Lili started to become confident and satisfied with herself when she was 28, before that, she also had a lot of self-questioning and struggles. We hope that more girls can realize at a younger age than we did that their bodies belong to them, that they have the right to define beauty by themselves, and that they can be beautiful and confident without being pale thin young. We hope that girls will be able to spend more time, energy, and love on issues that are more worthy of attention, rather than wasting them on unnecessary self-questioning and self-change.
One of the feminist works mentioned by Lili Hills of Paradise.
Lili believes that overcoming appearance anxiety is actually a process of turning from "looking outward" to "looking inward". The reason we care about other people's evaluation of us is that our inner strength is not strong enough, we don't have a firm self, we don't have enough calm and steady inner strength, and we want to discover our worth by getting external recognition, and the object, based on which, people can give us the quickest and most direct feedback is our appearance. But how important, meaningful, and representative is our appearance for us?
Lili fully accepted herself, even as ‘a plus size girl’.
Lili is dancing happily and freely.
Lili is actually very close to the standard of "pale thin young", but because she is tall and a bit overweight, she still receives some unfriendly voices about her appearance. This is also the reason why we should be wary of single aesthetic standards: any hint of difference will be questioned and suppressed, and the splendor of diversity will gradually disappear. Lili's friends told her, "You must be an amazing beauty if you are thin," but what if we are not thin enough? When we choose to ask ourselves and others to be "pale thin young", it is actually a desire for the security of subordination to society, but subordination is to some extent the erasure of the self. If we can have a little more inner strength, and a little more insistence on being ourselves, then there will be a better atmosphere for self-expression, and everyone can enjoy more freedom.
Max - Keep questioning and doubting, and you will find absurdity.
"Do you care what people think about you?"
"No, why should I care?"
"Because those perceptions and comments can hurt you."
"And how do those perceptions and comments hurt me?"
"Because those perceptions and judgments will make you feel sad."
"And is that sadness caused by those comments? Or do you choose to feel sad because of them?"
Rihanna, Lili, and I all went through a process of being mocked, questioning ourselves, and finding ourselves, so the core of what we talked about in the interview was more about the process of discovering and accepting ourselves, while Max is a girl who has always been more confident compared to us. The interview with Max gradually turned into Max's anti-questioning of me, and we discovered the absurdity of self-questioning through Max's questions.
In the midst of countless similar inquiries, a very simple but easily ignored logic emerges - other people's comments can only affect and hurt us if we care about them. But is it necessary to please others? Of course not. Internal conflict and self-anxiety because of external appearances is a ridiculous thing in itself. The knife that hurts us is always handed to others by ourselves without a second thought. We need a little more questioning, a little more probing of the logic behind others' opinions, and a little more firmness of self.
Max immersed and focused on herself.
Leona -
Dramatic contrasts in aesthetic standards awoke meDark skin, thick lips, big butt. As a child, I was often teased for these three features and had countless nicknames related to them: black guy, nigger, chocolate aunt, sausage mouth, big ass .....
(record clip from the interview) Rihanna and I were laughed at thick lips when we were kids and we got totally the same nickname. When we are unburdened, even feel fun for this tacit understanding, in unison to say "sausage mouth" that moment is the joy of freedom, “pale thin young” is no longer our chains.
Then there was a time when I was studying abroad and diving a lot in Southeast Asia, and during that time those same three physical features were praised like crazy. There were friends, classmates, and even strangers walking by who would praise my dark-tanned skin tone, tell me I was lucky to have great-looking thick and full lips and ask me how I got my butt so well shaped.
Once when I was walking with my friends in the evening breeze in Bali, two Australian girls suddenly caught up with me and said, "You are so gorgeous!" and repeatedly asked me, "What do you do in China? Are you a supermodel?" I was surprised, laughed and not knowing how to explain that I grew up in China with the label of an ugly child.
I haven't changed at all; my three outward features haven't changed at all; but the evaluation of my appearance has made a 180-degree turn. This experience made me realize that following a certain aesthetic standard to shape yourself is a very ridiculous, bottomless trap. Different cultures have different aesthetic standards. If you want to become the kind of beauty that society recognizes, do you have to keep changing yourself? Cutting your feet to fit your shoes, that's what it's all about.
People think I became confident because I was praised for my beauty in a new environment, but it is not true. I completely let go of my obsession with "being recognized as beautiful" after I realized that aesthetic standards are actually a hilarious thing. If everyone in a new environment thinks I'm ugly, I'm sure I won't feel as anxious and sad as I did as a child, and I won't try to look good in everyone's eyes. Because I've learned that the so-called ugliness is only because I don't fit a certain standard. As long as my body makes me feel that I am in a healthy and energetic state, and as long as I feel content and secure when I see myself in the mirror, then I am beautiful in my own context, and that beauty is completely free from others' judgment.
03 "pale thin young" itself is not wrong, who is wrong?
When we oppose "pale thin young", the object of our opposition is not the aesthetic standard of "pale thin young" itself, but the popularization and solidification of the single aesthetic standard that popularizes the single aesthetic standard as the beauty requirement for all women.
Beauty should be pluralistic, and we should have the right to choose freely as we want.
If we accept the spread and consolidation of this single standard trend today, we will risk more single standards erasing pluralistic freedom in the future.
If "boys should be strong at all times" becomes the single standard for male roles, then boys will lose the right to feel sad and show softness; if "men should earn money, women should take care of family" becomes the single standard for family models, then fathers who love children more than their careers and mothers who have families and children and still love to work to create some value will feel very struggling and painful; If "young people should succeed in career and start a family as soon as possible" becomes the only expectation of young people, then young people who need to confirm their future in wandering and feeling around are likely to blindly throw themselves into a busy and meaningless life……
We oppose the "pale thin young" because we oppose the erasure of multiple possibilities by a single value standard behind it, we defend the right to choose, and we defend the freedom of the collective in a broader sense.
Flawless skin is beautiful; sun-kissed freckles are beautiful; being tender and soft is beautiful; being strong, and powerful even as an ox is beautiful... Let us be happy with who we originally are, accept and explore more possibilities of beauty.