Body & Beauty Standards

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Intro

With images of ideal beauty bombarding us daily, it is easy to forget that standards of beauty are arbitrary and they vary greatly from one culture to another. Some cultures celebrate heavyset bodies, while others prefer very slim bodies (Grogan 2021; Hogan 2025a). Even within the same culture, ideals can vary greatly over time, which we can easily see by comparing representations of feminine beauty over time in the US: from the fleshy Gibson Girl of the late 1800’s, to the boyish flapper 1920’s, to the “bombshell” pin-ups of the 1940s, to stick-thin “heroine chic” supermodels of the 1990s, to the more recent admiration of “thick” (curvier) bodies. Or we can compare the masculine ideals represented by early Hollywood leading men (often slender and slightly built) with the heavily muscled action heroes of today.

Where do we get our ideas about bodies and beauty? The list is seemingly endless. We inherit such ideas from our parents, our peers, our schools, our healthcare providers, and increasingly from the media, among others.

In high-tech societies such as ours, there are few settings into which the media do not intrude. Even if we are beyond the reach of TVs, smart phones, and laptops, we still carry mass-mediated body ideals in our minds. Of course, media consumers don’t always accept such messages uncritically. However, research on the topic suggests that the mass media powerfully influence our perceptions of beauty, our attitudes toward others, and our own self-image. With social media always just a click away, and billions of new images being posted daily, many people compare themselves to idealized (often highly edited) photos, which can have a negative effect on how we feel about our own bodies (Rodgers and Rousseau 2022).

Click here for more on healthy media consumption and Tips for Media Self Care.

Even toys and clothing can shape our body image. For instance, heavily muscled action figures and padded superhero costumes for Halloween send powerful messages to children about the ideal (hyper) masculine body. Similarly, Barbie dolls reinforce unrealistic ideals of feminine beauty, because Barbie’s full-sized dimensions would be virtually impossible for a healthy, non-surgically altered woman to attain (Urla and Swedlund 1995). Likewise, messages about “normality” and beauty are conveyed by many fashion retailers who only carry sizes 00 to 12 even though the average American woman now wears a size 16 (Tali 2016).

With such intense daily exposure to unrealistic body ideals, it is hardly surprising that roughly half of girls and a fifth of boys aged 14-18 express dissatisfaction with their bodies (Dion et. al 2015, 2016); almost half of American adults are dieting in any given year (Mundell 2018); and some 30 million Americans suffer from eating disorders, many of which are associated with elevated mortality risks (Caceres 2020).

Gender, Sex, Sexuality & Body Image

A complex range of cultural, experiential, and biological factors shape the way we feel about our bodies. Among these, attitudes toward gender and sex are closely bound up with body image. While some cultures recognize more than two sex and gender categories (Robinson 2020), and in some societies, a person’s gender changes over the course of the life cycle (Astuti 1998), American culture often conceptualizes gender in binary terms. Specifically, there is frequently an assumption that everyone is born either unambiguously male or female, and that their anatomy and chromosomes determine their gender identity. In reality, between 1.7% and 4% of people are born with some combination of male and female sexual traits (Jones 2018), and a similar number of people identify as non-binary, genderqueer, or transgender (Zhang et al 2021). While recent years have seen increased cultural and legal recognition for individuals beyond the binary, these changes have also prompted an increase in anti-transgender laws. Such political and cultural messaging can have serious negative impacts on body image.

LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexual and gender minority) youth are especially vulnerable to both body dissatisfaction and eating disorders (White et. al 2023; Jones et. al 2016; Nagata et. al 2024). Research suggests that this is often due to a combination of factors including experiences of discrimination and harassment, heightened pressure toward conformity and concealment, and living in a pervasive culture of homophobia and transphobia (Nagata et. al 2024). Specifically, groups who are socially objectified are more likely to self-objectify, in this case, seeing their own bodies as objects that don’t measure up to cultural ideals. While LGBTQ+ youth face intense social and psychological pressures during adolescence and young adulthood, a number of factors can lower their risk of negative body image and eating disorders: “positive feelings toward their identity, […] safe school environments, social support, stable relationships, and self-compassion” (Nagata et. al 2024: 345).

Society also often imposes negative judgments on children, especially girls, who mature physically at an early age, a phenomenon known as precocious puberty. Both adults and peers alike tend to respond to such early maturation with suspicion or age-inappropriate comments and attention, which can deal a heavy blow to the self-esteem of these “early-bloomers.” While both boys and girls can experience precocious puberty, the negative consequences tend to be more acute for girls. As Diamond (2009) and Weir (2016) note, girls who develop early are assumed to be more sexually active than their peers, and must struggle with that social stigma. For early developers, body esteem is often damaged well into adulthood. Some women actively cover their bodies in order to avoid attracting unwanted sexual attention, and they have an increased likelihood of developing an eating disorder due to low body esteem.

Click here for more on Precocious Puberty

Beauty Industries

A multi-billion-dollar economy is built on our insecurities about the size, shape, and appearance of our bodies (Hogan 2025b). The leading Beauty Industries–fashion, cosmetics, weight loss, and cosmetic surgery–realize greater profits the more dissatisfied we are with our appearance. So, it is hardly surprising that these industries spend millions of dollars promoting beauty ideals that are almost impossible to achieve. Our continued failure to live up to such ideals virtually guarantees that we will continue to invest our money (and our hopes) on the latest miracle diet, “slimming” garments, or “age-defying” creams and potions.

Fashion

Whether corsets, bustles, push-up-bras, or modern “shapewear,” the fashion industry has created countless products designed to discipline and “perfect” the feminine body. Of course, clothing fashions change along with changing beauty ideals. So, while corsets and bustles emphasized the tiny waists, broad hips and large posteriors celebrated in the 19th century, today’s fashions often emphasize large breasts and flat, toned mid-sections. But how does fashion affect the way we feel about our bodies?

When fashions are designed to suit the tall, thin frames of supermodels, it is unlikely that the majority of women will be able to live up to the ideals they see on the catwalks and in the pages of fashion magazines. Some studies have found that women and girls who are more frequent readers of fashion magazines have poorer body image (Harrison & Cantor 1997), and those who work in the industry have a higher risk of developing an eating disorder or an eating disorder-patterned behavior (Márton Reka et al 2008).

Cosmetics

Likewise, the cosmetics industry promotes impossible standards of flawless beauty while suggesting that natural features such as “fine lines and wrinkles,” freckles, and body hair are unsightly. This fuels self-doubt and self-loathing among consumers, making us more willing spend our hard-earned cash on products to hide our countless “flaws.”

Such manufactured insecurities are highly profitable to the beauty industries. Americans spend roughly $806 billion a year on cosmetics and personal care (Laham 2020: 16). To put that into perspective, we spend just a fraction of that amount ($6.5 billion) on cancer research (National Cancer Institute 2024).

Weight Loss

Countless advertisements, makeover shows, and articles feature dramatic before-and-after pictures of people who have transformed their appearance through weight loss. The messages are loud and clear: thinner is better; anyone can change their body if they have enough willpower (and enough money to pay for the “right” weight loss programs and products); and weight loss will create a happier and healthier you. While researchers have challenged the simplistic notion that slender bodies are always healthier bodies (Campos 2004), almost half of all American adults are dieting in a given year (Mundell 2018), spending billions of dollars a year on weight loss products –$71 billion just on GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic in 2023 (Musto 2025).

Ironically, contrary to the diet industry’s promises, the majority of people who diet will gain back any weight they lost (plus additional pounds) within 1-5 years. Researchers suggest that crash diets and chronic on-again-off-again dieting cause our bodies to adjust to these self-imposed periods of “famine” by slowing down our metabolism and more efficiently storing fat. In a sense then, dieting can actually lead us to gain weight, thus making us more likely to diet again, gain more weight, and diet yet again. While this is good for the profit margins of the weight loss industry, it can take a serious toll on our health. Additionally, some 30 million Americans develop an eating disorder in their lifetime (Caceres 2020). Indeed, as Hogan (2025b: 309) has argued, “the physical, mental, and financial costs of our national obsession with dieting are so great that we must consider whether the so-called ‘obesity epidemic’ would more accurately be characterized as a ‘dieting epidemic.’”

Cosmetic Surgery

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Americans have spent over $16.5 billion each year since 2018 on cosmetic surgery. And the number of patients and procedures is rising dramatically. While some people who get cosmetic surgery report feeling more confident and empowered (Gimlin 2012), others experience serious complications ranging from infections, to chronic pain, to partial paralysis, disfigurement, or even death.

Even for those who do not get such procedures, cosmetic surgery can have pernicious social and psychological effects. That is, as increasing numbers of celebrities, models and public figures undergo cosmetic surgery, societal beauty standards shift even further away from the natural body toward more artificial, more unattainable norms.

Body & Beauty Standards in Cross-Cultural Perspective

While leaner bodies tend to be celebrated in American society today, that was not always the case (Strings 2019). Previous eras idealized fleshier bodies as markers of affluence, leisure, and health. Likewise, in many cultures around the world, larger bodies are preferred, as they are often seen as reflections of wealth, social connection, vitality, and fertility. It is important to note that we must exercise caution when considering the body ideals of other cultures, to avoid Othering or exoticizing people and practices outside our home culture (Gremillion 2005). While the examples below are not intended to represent all “non-Western” views of the body, considering a range of body ideals and body practices around the world is an important step toward understanding how conceptions of “beauty” and bodily normality are culturally based.

Big Bodies and Big Social Networks

In many societies around the world, particularly in the Pacific, the Caribbean, and Africa, larger bodies are/were traditionally preferred, as they were seen as evidence of “social enmeshment” (Becker 1995). In other words, a large body signified that you had a large social network of people who cared for you and shared their food with you. In such societies, thin bodies were a cause for concern and even an embarrassment, not for the individual, but for their family and friends whose responsibility it was to care for them.

Perhaps most notably, in Becker’s (1995) study in Fiji, women classified as “overweight” or “obese” by American standards expressed a high level of body satisfaction. Specifically, 54% of “obese” women said they wanted to maintain their present weight, and 17% said they hoped to increase their weight. Likewise, 72% of “overweight” (but not “obese”) women said they did not wish to change their weight, and 8% said they hoped to gain weight. In fact, few of the people in Becker’s study actively “worked on” the size or shape of their bodies, because body shape was not generally seen as an individual achievement, but rather as a reflection of one’s family and community bonds.

Similarly, Sobo (1994) described the celebration of larger bodies in Jamaica, where body fat was seen as a marker of health, fertility (“ripeness”), and social connectedness. And Durham (2005) observed that among the Herero in Botswana, a fat, recently bathed, neatly dressed body signaled that you were well and well cared for, while a thin or poorly groomed body raised concerns about failing health and failing social relationships.

Indeed, large bodies are such important markers of social relationships in some societies that they engage in intentional fattening practices. Salamon and Juhasz (2011) and Popenoe (2004), for instance, document “bride fattening” practices among certain groups in Tunisia and Niger, where a young woman’s fleshy body was seen as a proud reflection of her family’s care, their ability to provide for her, and her obedience to parental authority.

The Cultural Construction of Body and Beauty Ideals

While these are just a few of the many and varied body ideals around the world, they illustrate a crucial fact: body and beauty ideals are always culturally constructed. Learning to identify (and question) the cultural messages around us is an important step toward body positivity.