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That's part of the problem, but it goes deeper, too: Mainstream America not only tells whites "this is how to be beautiful." It doesn't even come up with a st

That's part of the problem, but it goes deeper, too: Mainstream America not only tells whites "this is how to be beautiful." It doesn't even come up with a standard for blacks on how to be beautiful, implying that they can't be beautiful. There are lots of ways to take this. For example, you might say, "well on the bright side, blacks didn't have to worry about needing to look beautiful, so that's freedom for them." That's a tough argument, and requires operating at a very enlightened level. On the other hand, you can look at some of the bold black women of the 90s like Beyonce, etc. who asserted their own standards of what beauty is for black women. You could still critique that by saying, "well, America only lets black women have a standard of beauty when rich people in Hollywood can monetize it." And I believe that would be largely correct. It's disgusting that anyone is monetized for their skin color, black/white/etc. And the real answer is to make people think for themselves and decide about whether to live someplace based on the facts or other criteria, not whether some investor could higher foreigners to show up in a commercial. The real answer here is to make people literate about the effects of advertising so we can't be fooled. It breaks my heart to see Chinese society getting made over in the image of some of America's crappiest tendencies.

detcader 11y ago
"Beauty" has always been entirely socially constructed. There is no such thing as beauty, even when Beyonce "creates it". It is an invention of men as part of the larger social construcion of gender -- hence "what beauty is for black women" rather than black people in generally -- that is monetized more by make-up and fashion companies than by Hollywood. It's a myth. The recent liberal development of the sentiments "everybody is beautiful", "everybody defines their own beauty" and the like is a naive attempt to mitigate a demonstrably deadly social poison by advocating that we spread it thin enough that it just becomes water. The actual solution is to identify that it is poison and abolish it.
- gwern 11y ago
  > "Beauty" has always been entirely socially constructed. There is no such thing as beauty, even when Beyonce "creates it". I think you might benefit from reading "Maxims or Myths of Beauty? A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review" http://www.jonathanstray.com/papers/Langlois.pdf http://www.jonathanstray.com/papers/Langlois.pdf , Langlois et al 2000.
  - detcader 11y ago
    The abstract seems to deliberately construct a misrepresentation and uses it as motivation for the paper: "Common maxims about beauty suggest that attractiveness is not important in life." The authors go on to imply that those maxims are meant to assert that something "is the case" when they are obviously asserting a "should be the case". Kind of silly, no? Unless there really are maxims that assert "looks are not important in life at the current moment in time, you will never be judged by your attractiveness today" -- but I've never heard any of these. The three maxims that the paper names are all either of the "should" form or not at all related to "importance" -- the first claims relativity from person to person, not importance, the second asserts a "should", and the third is totally unrelated to actual social conditions (the "life" in "attractiveness is not important in life"). So the paper seems to exist for its own strawman, but I'll have to read the whole thing...

detcader 11y ago

"Beauty" has always been entirely socially constructed. There is no such thing as beauty, even when Beyonce "creates it". It is an invention of men as part of the larger social construcion of gender -- hence "what beauty is for black women" rather than black people in generally -- that is monetized more by make-up and fashion companies than by Hollywood. It's a myth. The recent liberal development of the sentiments "everybody is beautiful", "everybody defines their own beauty" and the like is a naive attempt to mitigate a demonstrably deadly social poison by advocating that we spread it thin enough that it just becomes water. The actual solution is to identify that it is poison and abolish it.

gwern 11y ago
> "Beauty" has always been entirely socially constructed. There is no such thing as beauty, even when Beyonce "creates it". I think you might benefit from reading "Maxims or Myths of Beauty? A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review" http://www.jonathanstray.com/papers/Langlois.pdf http://www.jonathanstray.com/papers/Langlois.pdf , Langlois et al 2000.
- detcader 11y ago
  The abstract seems to deliberately construct a misrepresentation and uses it as motivation for the paper: "Common maxims about beauty suggest that attractiveness is not important in life." The authors go on to imply that those maxims are meant to assert that something "is the case" when they are obviously asserting a "should be the case". Kind of silly, no? Unless there really are maxims that assert "looks are not important in life at the current moment in time, you will never be judged by your attractiveness today" -- but I've never heard any of these. The three maxims that the paper names are all either of the "should" form or not at all related to "importance" -- the first claims relativity from person to person, not importance, the second asserts a "should", and the third is totally unrelated to actual social conditions (the "life" in "attractiveness is not important in life"). So the paper seems to exist for its own strawman, but I'll have to read the whole thing...