Beauty Through Different Cultures

In class today we began to discuss how different cultures view beauty and how that effects the choice that people make when considering a partner to either start a new marriage with or live with after a divorce has happened. I was curious to find how different cultures viewed beauty and how this could effect the marriage rates throughout different cultures so I have done some independent research and have come up with some interesting facts. The first interesting thing that I found in an article name The Construction of Beauty by a team consisting of Katherine Frith, Ping Shaw, and Hong Cheng that the factors that determine beauty vary heavily from culture to culture and can be seen through ads produced by the media. In their research they found that "beauty" in America consisted of observing the whole body as well as clothing as well, where as in places such as Singapore, Taiwan and various Eastern Asian countries the ads that were portraying beautiful women focused greatly on the woman's face and facial features. These differences were somewhat found to be attributed to gender roles and how society views females. In the United States it was found that to be feminine and beautiful a woman must be a variety of things including attractive, empathetic, nurturing and concerned with people and relationships, yet in the Eastern Asian countries beautiful women were very modest and virtuous. The different views on beauty between the two very different cultures is very interesting to me and really made me think about why this could be.

Another interesting fact that I found through this study is the emphasis on sex appeal in America compared to other countries. In the United States, ads tend to grab the viewers attention through portraying "attractive female bodies and sexual stimuli" even when the product being promoted has nothing to do with any sexual activities. In 1999 it was found that more than 35% of ads have sexual references. Of this percentage 29% had a seductively dressed model and another 27% had at least a subtle hint at some kind of sexual activity. This was very interesting considering that 35% is very high when realizing how many commercials are aired on most networks. In an average 30 minute broadcast there is an estimated 8-8.5 minutes worth of commercials that are shown, and if at least 35% of these commercials are sexual or have sexual undertones the average person watching this show is viewing nearly 3 minutes of that sort of commercial with every show that they watch. This is 10% of the time that they set aside to watch the show, not including the sexual undertones that are in the show itself. This is the driving force behind how America portrays beauty and what has become accepted as beautiful in America, and although I could not find recent studies that were done I am sure that the percentage of sexual references during commercials is growing as time goes on and it becomes more accepted.

Beauty in America has now being seen in more of a sexual way, where as over seas in some places there is still more of a virtuous tone to what is considered beautiful. This change is becoming more drastic as time progresses and the United States continues to walk the thin line between displaying a woman's body as beautiful and objectifying women to sell products.