Eurocentric Beauty Standards Made Global

The United States’ power in relation to the world has given it the upper hand on influencing other parts of the world in defining beauty standards. An article published in Germ magazine cites that white models dominate the modeling industry from America, to India, to China. Colored women are pressured into treating their natural hair with hair straightening treatments to fit into this eurocentric mold. The Black is Beautiful campaign works to combat racism and the suppression of unique cultural features in black people. Lupita Nyong’o gave a speech about how she used to pray only for fairer skin and was taught to despise how she looked. Her speech is posted below where she discovers the ability to accept and love herself once she sees another woman of her skin tone outwardly recognized as beautiful.

This article also features an experiment done by a black couple in 1939 called the Clark Doll Experiment, children were asked to decide which doll was more beautiful when the only difference between the two dolls was one was white, one was black. In almost all instances, children named the white doll as the beautiful doll. These children came from different backgrounds but almost all of them displayed internalized colorism and racism. Our society associates white with innocence, purity and success while we associate black with criminality, danger and deviance. Beautiful has been defined so narrowly that the single factor of skin color registers something in our mind’s.