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Media Representations of women

The media have historically under-represented women, something Tuchman referred to as ‘symbolic annihilation’; women have also been misrepresented through stereotyping and subject to the ‘male gaze’. However, in recent years representations of women are more common and more postive.

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Last Updated on September 26, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Women have historically been underrepresented and misrepresented in stereotypical roles within mainstream media.

This post focuses on symbolic annihilation, the cult of femininity and the male gaze as examples of this, and then looks at whether things have changed in recent decades.

Under-representation and symbolic annihilation

Gaye Tuchman (1978) developed the concept of Symbolic Annihilation to refer to the under-representation of women in a narrow range of social roles, while men were represented in a full range of social and occupational roles.

Tuchman also argued that women’s achievements were often not reported or trivialised and often seen as less important than things like their looks

According to Tuchman, women were often represented in roles linked to gender stereotypes, particularly those related to housework and motherhood – a good example of this being washing powder advertisements in which mothers and small daughters are working together, while men and boys are the ones covered in mud. This post has some excellent examples of such stereotypes.

Ferguson (1980) conducted a content analysis of women’s magazines from the end of WWII to 1980 and found that representations were organised around what she called the cult of femininity, based on traditional, stereotypical female roles and values: caring for others, family, marriage, and concern for appearance.

Ferguson noted that teenage magazines aimed at girls did offer a broader range of female representations, but there was still a focus on him, home and looking good for him.

The Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation in 2006 found that there was little coverage of women’s sport, but what little coverage there was had a tendency to trivialise, sexualise and devalue women’s sporting achievements. HOWEVER, this later example may be something that has changed considerably over the last decade (see below).

Misrepresentations (myths and stereotypes)

In ‘ The Mouse that Roared ’ Henry Giroux argued that women were represented in a narrow, restricted and distorted range of roles.

Supporting evidence for Giroux lies in the historical representation of female characters in Disney Films – where the typical female character is a sexualised yet delicate princess who needs to be rescued by a stronger male character.

Examples of where Disney reinforces female stereotypes include:

• Snow White – who cleans the house of the male dwarves and is eventually rescued by a male prince because she is pretty.
• Beauty and the Beast – In which Belle endures an abusive and violent beast in order to redeem him.
• Ariel – who gives up her voice to win the prince with her body.
• Mulan – who wins the war almost single handed only to return home to be romanced.

This blog post from Society Pages is well worth a read on this topic.

Laura Mulvey ‘The Male Gaze’

Laura Mulvey studied cinema films and developed the concept of the Male Gaze to describe how the camera lens eyed up the female characters for the sexual viewing pleasure of men.

The Male Gaze occurs when the camera focuses on women’s bodies, especially breasts, bums and things, and spends too long lingering on these areas when it isn’t necessary.

The male gaze of the camera puts the audience in the perspective of the heterosexual men – woman are displayed as a sexual object for both the characters in the film and the spectator – thus the man emerges as the dominant force and the woman is passive under the active (sexual) gaze of the man.

The overall effect of this is that women become objectified as sex objects, rather than being represented as whole people.

Mulvey argued that the Male Gaze occurred in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera.

Video summarizing all of the above:

This is a very useful vodcast outlining the classic theories of the poor representation of women in the media historically: 

Changes to the representations of women?

The roles of women in society have changed considerably since these historical analyses of women’s representations: since the 1970s women now occupy a much wider range of roles and equality with men.

David Gauntlett in ‘Media Gender and Identity’ argues that there has been an increase in the diversity of representations and roles of women in the media since the 1970s, and a corresponding decrease in stereotypical representations, which broadly reflects wider social changes.

The representation of women in films

There have been several films in recent decades with ‘strong’ lead female characters who are fierce, tough and resourceful, and thus arguably subvert hegemonic concepts of masculinity. Arguably a watershed moment in this was the 1979 film ‘Alien’ in which the female lead character Ripley outlives her male colleagues and ultimately kills the Alien threat.

Since then a number of female heroines have featured as the lead characters in various action movies such Terminator 2, the Tomb Raider films, Kill Bill, and The Hunger Games.

However, rather than subverting hegemonic concepts of masculinity, it could be argued that such films still perpetuate the ‘beauty myth’ as all the above lead female characters are slim and attractive.

The Bechdel Test

The Bechdel Test is a simple test which presents a quantitative analysis of the representation of women in relation to men in film. To pass the test a film has to pass three tests…

• It has to have at least two (named) women in it
• Who talk to each other
• Above something other than a man

The website above allows you to search for films which passed the test by year, and there is clear evidence that female characters are more visible and independent year on year, but there are still many films which do not pass this simple basic test.

The representation of women in Game of Thrones

At first glance, there seem to be a number of positive female characters in Game of Thrones – the assassin and ultimate killer of the Ice King Arya Stark being the most stand-out example, with other positive female characters including Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister, Brienne of Tarth, Sansa Stark (once she gets through her abusive relationship).

However, various feminist commentators have argued that all of these positive representations are let down by the end of series eight with Brienne falling apart emotionally because of her love for Jamie Lannister, Daenerys literally going mad, Sansa apparently being strong because of her previous abusive relationship (rather than in spite of it), and with all the anonymous women cowering in the crypt during the battle with the Ice King, while all the anonymous men are outside fighting.

A further Feminist argument is that all of these women are portrayed as strong individuals who are strong because they adopt male characteristics, and ultimately it is male violence which wins the day rather than more diverse forms of feminine power.

The representations of women in the news

  In 2015 the Global Media Monitoring group conducted quantitative content analysis of 1960 sources covering 431 announcers and reporters.

They found that:

• The overall presence of women as sources was 28%.
• Compared to 2010 data, the number of women sources as a proportion of all sources, had decreased by 3 per cent.
• Women continued to remain largely confined to the sphere of the private, emotional and subjective, while men still dominate the sphere of the public, rational and objective.
• Women were significantly under-represented in hard news stories and in all the authoritative, professional and elite source occupational categories and are, instead, significantly over-represented as voices of the general, public (homemaker, parent, student, child) and in the occupational groups most associated with ‘women’s work’, such as health and social and childcare worker, office or service industry worker.

Looking  at the function women performed in stories, their contribution as experts (20%) and spokespeople (25%) were low,  instead, they were mostly called upon to voice popular opinion (54%) or speak from their personal experience including as eye-witnesses or speak from their own subject position.

The persistence of the Beauty Myth?

Tebbel (2000) argues that women are under more pressure than ever before to conform to the Beauty Myth. She argues that the body and faces of real women have been symbolically annihilated, replaced by computer manipulated, airbrushed, artificially images.

Killborn argues that media representations present women as ‘mannequins’ – size zero, tall and thin, and with perfect blemish-free skin.

Orbach further argues that the media continues to associate slimness with health, happiness, success and popularity

The representations of women in advertising

  Some recent evidence seems to challenge the persistence of the Beauty Myth….

There seems to have been progress in this area in recent years. In 2015, Protein World launched its ‘Beach Body Ready’ advertising campaign, and while this clearly reinforced the Beauty Myth stereotype, it prompted a significant backlash with several of the advertisements being vandalised, and many women posting images of their ordinary bodies on social media as a criticism of the overt body shaming involved with Protein World’s advert.

Since 2015, there has been an increase in the diversity of representations of women in advertising, for example:

• Dove‘s Real Beauty‘ campaign72 featured a diverse range of body shapes and ethnicities.
• Sport England has been running its successful ‘ This Girl Can ‘ campaign since 2015, which has since evolved into the ‘fit got real’ campaign:

In 2017, The Advertising Standards Authority launched new guidelines on avoiding gender stereotyping in advertising and in 2019 banned two ads from airing in the UK because they reinforced gender stereotypes.

Finally, UN women has recently launched its ‘Unstereotype Alliance‘, which challenges gender stereotypes in advertising on a global scale. Supporters of this initiative include advertising industry companies such as Unilever, P&G, WPP, Diageo, Google and Facebook.

Signposting and Related Posts

This material was produced primarily for A-level sociology students studying The Media option as their topic option, but it should also be of interest to media studies students.

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A Level Sociology of Media Bundle

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my  A Level Sociology of the Media Revision Bundle which contains the following:

• Short answer exam practice questions and exemplar answers – three examples of the 10 mark, ‘outline and explain’ questions and three of the 10 mark ‘analyse’ with item questions, all take from the specimen paper and the 2017/2018 exam papers.
• 19 mind maps in pdf and png format – covering most sub-topics within the sociology of the media.
• Three essays and essay plans, taken from the specimen paper and 2017 and 2018 exam papers.

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6 thoughts on “Media Representations of women”

Do you know where Ferguson (1980) came from. Need the reference for a dissertation. Thank you, very insightful work.

my paper 2 exam is in ten days is there any chance the other representations within media could be posted

Some links here… https://revisesociology.com/media-studies/

You should find links to the whole spec for media here: https://revisesociology.com/media-studies/

thank you so much for posting these notes!! i missed a lot of the media content so i find them very useful please could you post the rest of the media content also

This is the best website for last minute revision. Is there any chance the other representations within media could be posted?

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Media Effect on Women’s Beauty Research Paper

Introduction, literature review, methodology, theoretical framework, analysis and discussion, works cited.

The concept of women’s beauty has attracted the attention of many scholars over the past several decades. Different factors have been used to define the beauty of women at different times in history. Kim and Lee explain that in the past, fat women were considered more beautiful than slim ones (10). The beauty of a woman at that time was based on her curvature. However, that has changed significantly over the recent past. The beauty of a woman is currently determined by how slim and physically fit one is, and fatness has become a factor that defines less desirable women. The media has been used to propagate the idea that slim women are more attractive.

In beauty contests, women are offered the opportunity to demonstrate how flexible and physically fit their bodies are when they catwalk. Mills et al. believe that mass media, especially televisions and magazines, entrenched the belief that the beauty of a woman is defined by her weight (147). Social media has also promoted the same idea, which explains why young women are currently keen on ensuring that they maintain a physically fit body, free from excess fat. In this paper, the researcher seeks to investigate the effect of media on women’s beauty. The following is the primary research question for this project:

The beauty of a woman is an issue that has attracted the attention of many scholars for the past several years. The researcher considered it appropriate to review what other scholars have written about this issue. According to Fardouly et al., although the adage that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder has remained relevant even to this day, globalization is shaping the way people view things in modern society (1390).

Western culture has had a massive impact on the way people determine what is beautiful and what is not. Countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and South America now define beauty based on concepts promoted by western media, especially those in North America and Europe. As such, the beauty of a woman in the global society is currently defined by how slim and physically fit they are as opposed to being fat, which was a major factor in defining beautiful women in the past.

Idealized Media Image on Female Body

According to Kim and Lee, in a diversified global society, people have personal preferences when it comes to defining the beauty of a woman (10). Some people still cherish fat women others prefer those of medium weight, while others consider those who are slim to be most attractive. However, popular media does not allow people to have a choice when it comes to defining women’s beauty (Adjin-Tettey 28).

They propagate what they believe to be the true definition of beauty, and over the past half-century, slim women have largely been viewed as being more beautiful than their fat counterparts. The problem, in this case, is that media easily influence people. Men want to be seen with women that society perceives to be beautiful. If the media promotes the idea that slim women are more beautiful, then they are willing to change their personal preferences and embrace popular belief. On the other hand, women want to be accepted in society. One of the ways of gaining such acceptance is to be beautiful. Mills et al. note that they want to be admirable, and they all rely on media to know what is expected of them to be beautiful (149).

Television shows have been massively used to promote the ideal image of a beautiful person. In most movies and television series, beautiful women are presented as young slim, and physically fit people. On the other hand, fat women are always presented as ugly villains keen on destroying the future of beautiful princesses. Such notions have been embraced by the global society. In beauty contests, which are often promoted in television shows and magazines, fat women do not stand a chance.

The beauty pageants are slim women who are keen on maintaining a specific body shape that society has come to believe is admirable. As such, the traditional media has successfully entrenched a specific perception of a woman’s beauty based on body weight (Walker et al. 3). Changing this perception may not be easy.

The New Media and Women Beauty

The new media has also become a major tool that defines women’s beauty in modern society. Facebook has over 2.45 billion regular users around the world (Walker et al. 4). Some studies show that young adults are so addicted to Facebook that they spend most of their time at this site, even when they are expected to be engaging in meaningful activities. YouTube is another popular video-sharing platform that has gained massive popularity. Other platforms such as WhatsApp, Twitter, and Instagram have also gained a massive following over the recent past. These platforms have become powerful in influencing the perception of young adults in modern society.

According to Fardouly et al., social media has been promoting the same message as what the mass media started when it comes to women’s beauty (1391). It is apparent that there is a consensus about women’s beauty in terms of body weight, and these platforms are entrenching the idea. Many youths use Facebook and Instagram to share their progress in achieving or maintaining slim bodies. On these platforms, fat women are openly mocked and reminded to go to the gym. On the other hand, slims women are praised and get thousands of likes. The acceptance that people desire in social media is gained based on how an individual looks. Walker et al. note that many fat women are often shy of sharing their pictures online because they feel less attractive (5).

In this study, it was important to collect reliable data from various sources to inform the finding and conclusion. According to Kim and Lee, the credibility of a report is largely defined by the sources of information used and the method applied to analyze it (10). The concept of woman beauty has attracted the attention of women for the past several years. As such, plenty of published materials that address this issue exist.

As such, the researcher relied on these sources to inform the study. It was desirable to collect data from primary sources to understand the current trends in this issue. However, the time available for the study was too short to allow for primary data collection. The processes of sampling participants, contacting them, observing the ethical requirements such as getting the necessary permissions, collecting, and analyzing it are time-consuming. As such, data was strictly collected from secondary sources.

When data has been collected from specific sources, the next step is to analyze it in a way that addresses the specific research question. In this case, it was necessary to explain the effect that the media has on women’s beauty. The nature of the research goal meant that it was necessary to use qualitative methods to respond to the issue under investigation. Qualitative analysis often uses open-ended questions to facilitate a detailed explanation of the research question.

It is necessary to review theoretical models relevant to the issue under investigation. Social comparison theory developed by Festinger provides an understanding of how media, especially modern-day social media platforms, have influenced women’s beauty. According to Adjin-Tettey, this theory holds that people often evaluate themselves by a direct comparison of themselves with others (31). About beauty, they want to be seen as more beautiful than others. The comparison can only be possible if there are specific requirements that one must fulfill. In this case, their focus is on body weight. The beauty of a woman is defined by how slim they are (Adjin-Tettey 32).

As explained in this theory, those who believe they are slimmer and physically fitter than the rest will feel more confident and are more likely to share their images on social media than those who feel that they still need to lose some weight. As Adjin-Tettey observes, this theory explains that there are always downward and upward comparisons (32). Upward comparison is a situation where people compare themselves with those they believe are better at something they desire.

They intend to achieve what these other people have already achieved. As such, there is a downward comparison, where one compares self with those they believe are worse off than they are at achieving a specific goal. Such individuals often get a sense of satisfaction from such a comparison because they end up giving themselves some credit for what they have achieved.

Cultivation theory is another concept that can be used to explain the effect of media on women’s beauty. Developed by Larry Gross and George Gerbner, this theory focused on identifying the cultivated effects of mass media, especially the television, on its viewers (Adjin-Tettey 32).

Their findings show that television has a massive impact on the perception of people towards a given issue. Prolonged exposure to the television cultivates specific ideas on the audience. It explains why large companies are using the media to promote their products and brands. It helps to define the perception that a person has towards a given issue. The more these media platforms continue to glorify slim women over fat women the more viewers will continue to believe that beauty is defined by bodyweight.

The findings of this study show that media has a massive influence on the perception that people have towards women’s beauty. In the past, women’s beauty was closely associated with curvature. Mills et al. observe that a study of the folklore of different communities around the world shows how men valued fat women (151). The aim of every woman who wanted to be beautiful was to gain more weight. However, that changed as the media started glorifying thin women.

According to Walker et al., it is not clear how the perception changed, but some scholars argue that it was promoted by health concerns (4). As it emerged that being fat is associated with numerous medical conditions, there was a need to encourage women to gain weight.

The study shows that the beliefs that slim women are more attractive than those who are overweight was strengthened by the mass media. Television had a major role in convincing the global society that thin physically fit women appeared more attractive. They emerged as beauty pageants. They were the face of top brands in the global community. Magazines also helped to promote the same idea in their regular publications. Findings of the study show that social media platforms have been promoting the same concept over the recent past. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and WhatsApp have become platforms where people share with the world their beauty, and for women, body weight is still a major defining factor.

In modern society, beauty is no longer defined by an individual’s perception but by how society has come to believe. The strong desire many people have to be accepted, admired, and respect often make them compromise on personal values. As such, what the mass and social media have shaped as being desirable becomes acceptable to the masses. Fardouly et al. argue that women’s beauty is no longer based on an individual’s view (1388).

Society has created a situation where beauty is based on a woman’s body weight. In the past, thin women were often the subject of body shaming. They were associated with sickness and malnutrition. However, the exact opposite is true in modern society. Fat women are considered more susceptible to many diseases and some even consider them less hygienic.

The perception that society has towards women’s beauty has been influenced significantly by both mass and social media. Mills et al. note that media has become a powerful tool of entertainment, enlightenment, and a platform where people seek guidance whenever they are not certain about an issue (153). Many parents no longer have time to spend with their children and guide them on how to approach specific issues in society.

These children would turn to the media to guide their views on different things. They get to learn about women’s beauty and its significance through these media platforms. They also get to learn about factors defining a person’s beauty through social media. The information that they get from these platforms is that being slim and physically fit is sexy and epitomizes a women’s beauty. On the other hand, being fat is considered less desirable and something to be frowned upon, especially among women.

The two theories reviewed in this study show that media has a massive influence on the perception that people develop toward an issue. Women’s beauty is one of the most sensitive issues in modern society and media is playing a critical role in defining how people perceive it. Social comparison theory shows how people often compare themselves with others and the role that the media plays in defining such comparisons. Cultivation theory, on the other hand, explains how prolonged exposure to medial platforms defines a person’s perception of a given issue.

The findings of this study show that media has a massive impact on women’s beauty. For decades, there has been a deliberate attempt to portray slim and physically fit women as being sexier and more beautiful than fat women are. As such, everyone in society has come to embrace this idea. Men prefer being seen with slim women. Women, on the other hand, are doing everything they possibly can to remain thin as a way of being viewed as beautiful. As such, media has defined the overall perception of women’s beauty in the current society.

Adjin-Tettey, Theodora. “A Study Exploring the Influence of Media Consumption on Body Image and Beauty among Young Corporate Ghanaian Women in the Greater Accra Region.” Journal of Business Research , vol. 9, no, 2, 2015, pp. 28-41.

Fardouly, Jasmine, et al. “Instagram Use and Young Women’s Body Image Concerns and Self-Objectification: Testing Mediational Pathways.” New Media & Society , vol. 20, no. 4, 2018, 1380-1395.

Kim, Sunwoo, and Yuri Lee. “Why Do Women Want to Be Beautiful? A Qualitative Study Proposing a New Human Beauty Values Concept.” PLOS One, vol. 13, no. 8, pp. 1-21.

Mills, Jennifer, et al. “Beauty, Body Image, and the Media.” Perception of Beauty , vol. 4, no. 11, 2017, 146-154.

Walker, Candice, et al. “Effects of Social Media Use on Desire for Cosmetic Surgery among Young Women.” Current Psychology , vol. 2, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1-8.

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Bibliography

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• WOMEN OF IMPACT

The idea of beauty is always shifting. Today, it’s more inclusive than ever.

Whom we deem ‘beautiful’ is a reflection of our values. Now, a more expansive world has arrived where ‘we are all beautiful.’

The Sudanese model Alek Wek appeared on the November 1997 cover of the U.S. edition of Elle magazine, in a photograph by French creative director Gilles Bensimon . It was, as is so often the case in the beauty business, a global production.

Wek, with her velvety ebony skin and mere whisper of an Afro, was posed in front of a stark, white screen. Her simple, white Giorgio Armani blazer almost disappeared into the background. Wek, however, was intensely present.

She was standing at an angle but looking directly into the camera with a pleasant smile spread across her face, which wasn’t so much defined by planes and angles as by sweet, broad, distinctly African curves. Wek represented everything that a traditional cover girl was not.

More than 20 years after she was featured on that Elle cover, the definition of beauty has continued to expand, making room for women of color, obese women, women with vitiligo , bald women, women with gray hair and wrinkles. We are moving toward a culture of big-tent beauty. One in which everyone is welcome. Everyone is beautiful. Everyone’s idealized version can be seen in the pages of magazines or on the runways of Paris.

We have become more accepting because people have demanded it, protested for it, and used the bully pulpit of social media to shame beauty’s gatekeepers into opening the doors wider.

Eye of the beholder

Technology has put the power to define beauty in the hands of the people. Mobile phones allow people greater control of their image, and include apps that come with filters used for fun, appearance, and entertainment.

Wek was a new vision of beauty—that virtue forever attached to women . It has long been a measure of their social value; it is also a tool to be used and manipulated. A woman should not let her beauty go to waste; that was something people would say back when a woman’s future depended on her marrying well. Her husband’s ambition and potential should be as dazzling as her fine features.

Beauty is, of course, cultural. What one community admires may leave another group of people cold or even repulsed. What one individual finds irresistible elicits a shrug from another. Beauty is personal. But it’s also universal. There are international beauties—those people who have come to represent the standard.

For generations, beauty required a slender build but with a generous bosom and a narrow waist. The jawline was to be defined, the cheekbones high and sharp. The nose angular. The lips full but not distractingly so. The eyes, ideally blue or green, large and bright. Hair was to be long, thick, and flowing—and preferably golden. Symmetry was desired. Youthfulness, that went without saying.

This was the standard from the earliest days of women’s magazines, when beauty was codified and commercialized. The so-called great beauties and swans—women such as actress Catherine Deneuve , socialite C.Z. Guest , or Princess Grace —came closest to this ideal. The further one diverged from this version of perfection, the more exotic a woman became. Diverge too much and a woman was simply considered less attractive—or desirable or valuable. And for some women—black and brown or fat or old ones—beauty seemed impossible in the broader culture.

In the early part of the 1990s, the definition of beauty as it applied to women began to loosen thanks to the arrival of Kate Moss , with her slight figure and vaguely ragamuffin aesthetic. Standing five feet seven inches, she was short for a runway walker. The British teenager was not particularly graceful, and she lacked the noble bearing that gave many other models their regal air. Moss’s star turn in advertisements for Calvin Klein signified a major departure from the long-legged gazelles of years past.

Moss was disruptive to the beauty system, but she was still well within the industry’s comfort zone of defining beauty as a white, European conceit. So too were the youthquake models of the 1960s such as Twiggy , who had the gangly, curveless physique of a 12-year-old boy. The 1970s brought Lauren Hutton, who stirred scandal simply because she had a gap between her teeth.

Even the early black models who broke barriers were relatively safe: women such as Beverly Johnson, the first African-American model to appear on the cover of American Vogue , the Somali-born Iman, Naomi Campbell, and Tyra Banks. They had keen features and flowing hair—or wigs or weaves to give the illusion that they did. Iman had a luxuriously long neck that made legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland gasp. Campbell was—and is—all va-va-voom legs and hips, and Banks rose to fame as the girl next door in a polka dot bikini on the cover of Sports Illustrated .

Wek was a revelation. Her beauty was something entirely different.

Her tightly coiled hair was sheared close to her scalp. Her seemingly poreless skin was the color of dark chocolate. Her nose was broad; her lips were full. Her legs were impossibly long and incredibly thin. Indeed, her entire body had the stretched-out sinewiness of an African stick figure brought to life.

To eyes that had been trained to understand beauty through the lens of Western culture, Wek was jarring to everyone, and black folks were no exception. Many of them did not consider her beautiful. Even women who might have looked in the mirror and seen the same nearly coal black skin and tightly coiled hair reflected back had trouble reckoning with this Elle cover girl.

See and be seen

Fashion and beauty magazines present a paragon of aspiration, often setting beauty standards for women across cultures. The magazines also serve as giant advertisements for the industries dependent on selling these ideals to willing customers.

Wek was abruptly and urgently transformative. It was as though some great cultural mountain had been scaled by climbing straight up a steep slope, as if there were neither time nor patience for switchbacks. To see Wek celebrated was exhilarating and vertiginous. Everything about her was the opposite of what had come before.

We are in a better place than we were a generation ago, but we have not arrived at utopia. Many of the clubbiest realms of beauty still don’t include larger women, disabled ones, or senior citizens.

But to be honest, I’m not sure exactly what utopia would look like. Is it a world in which everyone gets a tiara and the sash of a beauty queen just for showing up? Or is it one in which the definition of beauty gets stretched so far that it becomes meaningless? Perhaps the way to utopia is by rewriting the definition of the word itself to better reflect how we’ve come to understand it—as something more than an aesthetic pleasure.

We know that beauty has financial value. We want to be around beautiful people because they delight the eye but also because we think they are intrinsically better humans. We’ve been told that attractive people are paid higher salaries. In truth, it’s a bit more complicated than that. It’s really a combination of beauty, intelligence, charm, and collegiality that serves as a recipe for better pay. Still, beauty is an integral part of the equation.

But on a powerfully emotional level, being perceived as attractive means being welcomed into the cultural conversation. You are part of the audience for advertising and marketing. You are desired. You are seen and accepted. When questions arise about someone’s looks, that’s just another way of asking: How acceptable is she? How relevant is she? Does she matter?

Today suggesting that a person is not gorgeous is to risk social shunning or at least a social media lashing. What kind of monster declares another human being unattractive? To do so is to virtually dismiss that person as worthless. It’s better to lie. Of course you’re beautiful, sweetheart; of course you are.

We have come to equate beauty with humanity. If we don’t see the beauty in another person, we are blind to that person’s humanity. It’s scary how important beauty has become. It goes to the very soulfulness of a person.

Beauty has become so important today that denying that people possess it is akin to denying them oxygen.

There used to be gradations when it came to describing the feminine ideal: homely, jolie laide, attractive, pretty, and ultimately, beautiful. The homely woman managed as best she could. She adjusted to the fact that her looks were not her most distinguishing feature. She was the woman with the terrific personality. Striking women had some characteristic that made them stand out: bountiful lips, an aristocratic nose, a glorious poitrine. A lot of women could be described as attractive. They were at the center of the bell curve. Pretty was another level. Hollywood is filled with pretty people.

Ah, but beautiful! Beautiful was a description that was reserved for special cases, for genetic lottery winners. Beauty could even be a burden because it startled people. It intimidated them. Beauty was exceptional.

But improved plastic surgery, more personalized and effective nutrition, the flowering of the fitness industry, and the rise of selfie filters on smartphones, along with Botox, fillers, and the invention of Spanx, have all combined to help us look better—and get a little bit closer to looking exceptional. Therapists, bloggers, influencers, stylists, and well-meaning friends have raised their voices in a chorus of body-positivity mantras: You go, girl! You slay! Yasss, queen! They are not charged with speaking harsh truths and helping us see ourselves vividly and become better versions of ourselves. Their role is constant uplift, to tell us that we are perfect just as we are.

And the globalization of, well, everything means that somewhere out there is an audience that will appreciate you in all your magnificent … whatever.

We are all beautiful.

In New York, London, Milan, and Paris—the traditional fashion capitals of the world—the beauty codes have changed more dramatically in the past 10 years than in the preceding hundred. Historically, shifts had been by degrees. Changes in aesthetics weren’t linear, and despite fashion’s reputation for rebelliousness, change was slow. Revolutions were measured in a few inches.

Through the years, an angular shape has been celebrated and then a more curvaceous one. The average clothing size of a runway model, representative of the designers’ ideal, shrank from a six to a zero; the pale blondes of Eastern Europe ruled the runway until the sun-kissed blondes from Brazil deposed them. The couture body—lean, hipless, and practically flat-chested—can be seen in the classic portraits by Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, and Gordon Parks, as well as on the runways of designers such as John Galliano and the late Alexander McQueen. But then Miuccia Prada, who had led the way in promoting a nearly homogeneous catwalk of pale, white, thin models, suddenly embraced an hourglass shape. And then plus-size model Ashley Graham appeared on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in 2016 , and in 2019 Halima Aden became the first model to wear a hijab in that same magazine , and suddenly everyone is talking about modesty and beauty and fuller figures … and the progress is dizzying.

In the past decade, beauty has moved resolutely forward into territory that was once deemed niche. Nonbinary and transgender are part of the mainstream beauty narrative. As the rights of LGBTQ individuals have been codified in the courts, so have the aesthetics particular to them been absorbed into the beauty dialogue. Transgender models walk the runways and appear in advertising campaigns. They are hailed on the red carpet for their glamour and good taste but also for their physical characteristics. Their bodies are celebrated as aspirational.

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The catalyst for our changed understanding of beauty has been a perfect storm of technology, economics, and a generation of consumers with sharpened aesthetic literacy.

The technology is social media in general and Instagram specifically. The fundamental economic factor is the unrelenting competition for market share and the need for individual companies to grow their audience of potential customers for products ranging from designer dresses to lipstick. And the demographics lead, as they always do these days, to millennials, with an assist from baby boomers who plan to go into that good night with six-pack abs.

Hyejin Yun undergoes eyelid surgery in the Hyundai Aesthetics clinic in Seoul. The procedure makes eyes look bigger. South Korea has one of the highest rates of plastic surgery in the world; one in three women ages 19 to 29 has had cosmetic surgery.

Social media has changed the way younger consumers relate to fashion. It’s hard to believe, but back in the 1990s, the notion of photographers posting runway imagery online was scandalous. Designers lived in professional terror of having their entire collection posted online, fearing that it would lead to business-killing knockoffs. And while knockoffs and copies continue to frustrate designers, the real revolution brought on by the internet was that consumers were able to see, in nearly real time, the full breadth of the fashion industry’s aesthetic.

In the past, runway productions were insider affairs. They weren’t meant for public consumption, and the people sitting in the audience all spoke the same fashion patois. They understood that runway ideas weren’t meant to be taken literally; they were oblivious to issues of cultural appropriation, racial stereotypes, and all varieties of isms—or they were willing to overlook them. Fashion’s power brokers were carrying on the traditions of the power brokers who’d come before, happily using black and brown people as props in photo shoots that starred white models who had parachuted in for the job.

But an increasingly diverse class of moneyed consumers, a more expansive retail network, and a new media landscape have forced the fashion industry into greater accountability on how it depicts beauty. Clothing and cosmetic brands now take care to reflect the growing numbers of luxury consumers in countries such as India and China by using more Asian models.

Marked by beauty

We’ve been chasing beauty for millennia, primping and painting our way to a more desirable ideal. Cultures in every era have held different standards of feminine beauty and myriad means of achieving it, from the toxic lead cosmetics of the past to today’s Botox injections. But the standards often serve the same aims: to attract and retain a mate; to signal social status, wealth, health, or fertility; and of course, to simply feel beautiful.

Social media has amplified the voices of minority communities—from Harlem to South Central Los Angeles—so that their calls for representation can’t be so easily ignored. And the growth of digital publications and blogs means that every market has become more fluent in the language of aesthetics. A whole new category of power brokers has emerged: influencers. They are young and independent and obsessed with the glamour of fashion. And fashion influencers don’t accept excuses, condescension, or patronizing pleas to be patient, because really, change is forthcoming.

The modern beauty standard in the West has always been rooted in thinness. And when the obesity rates were lower, thin models were only slight exaggerations in the eyes of the general population. But as obesity rates rose, the distance between the reality and the fantasy grew. People were impatient with a fantasy that no longer seemed even remotely accessible.

Fat bloggers warned critics to stop telling them to lose weight and stop suggesting ways for them to camouflage their body. They were perfectly content with their body, thank you very much. They just wanted better clothes. They wanted fashion that came in their size—not with the skirts made longer or the sheath dresses reworked with sleeves.

They weren’t really demanding to be labeled beautiful. They were demanding access to style because they believed they deserved it. In this way, beauty and self-worth were inextricably bound.

Giving full-figured women greater access made economic sense. By adhering to traditional beauty standards, the fashion industry had been leaving money on the table. Designers such as Christian Siriano made a public point of catering to larger customers and, in doing so, were hailed as smart and as capitalist heroes. Now it’s fairly common for even the most rarefied fashion brands to include large models in their runway shows.

But this new way of thinking isn’t just about selling more dresses. If it were only about economics, designers would have long ago expanded their size offerings, because there have always been larger women able and willing to embrace fashion. Big simply wasn’t considered beautiful. Indeed, even Oprah Winfrey went on a diet before she posed for the cover of Vogue in 1998. As recently as 2012, the designer Karl Lagerfeld, who died last year and who himself was 92 pounds overweight at one point, was called to task for saying that pop star Adele was “a little too fat.”

Attitudes are shifting. But the fashion world remains uneasy with large women—no matter how famous or rich. No matter how pretty their face. Elevating them to iconic status is a complicated, psychological hurdle for the arbiters of beauty. They need sleek élan in their symbols of beauty. They need long lines and sharp edges. They need women who can fit into sample sizes.

But instead of operating in a vacuum, they now are operating in a new media environment. Average folks have taken note of whether designers have a diverse cast of models, and if they do not, critics can voice their ire on social media and an angry army of like-minded souls can rise up and demand change. Digital media has made it easier for stories about emaciated and anorexic models to reach the general public, and the public now has a way to shame and pressure the fashion industry to stop hiring these deathly thin women. The Fashion Spot website became a diversity watchdog, regularly issuing reports on the demographic breakdown on the runways. How many models of color? How many plus-size women? How many of them were transgender? How many older models?

One might think that as female designers themselves aged, they would begin to highlight older women in their work. But women in fashion are part of the same cult of youth that they created. They Botox and diet. They swear by raw food and SoulCycle. How often do you see a chubby designer? A gray-haired one? Designers still use the phrase “old lady” to describe clothes that are unattractive. A “matronly” dress is one that is unflattering or out-of-date. The language makes the bias plain. But today women don’t take it as a matter of course. They revolt. Making “old” synonymous with unattractive is simply not going to stand.

The spread of luxury brands into China, Latin America, and Africa has forced designers to consider how best to market to those consumers while avoiding cultural minefields. They have had to navigate skin lightening in parts of Africa, the Lolita-cute culture of Japan, the obsession with double-eyelid surgery in East Asian countries, and prejudices of colorism, well, virtually everywhere. Idealized beauty needs a new definition. Who will sort it out? And what will the definition be?

In the West, the legacy media are now sharing influence with digital media, social media, and a new generation of writers and editors who came of age in a far more multicultural world—a world that has a more fluid view of gender. The millennial generation, those born between 1981 and 1996, is not inclined to assimilate into the dominant culture but to stand proudly apart from it. The new definition of beauty is being written by a selfie generation: people who are the cover stars of their own narrative.

The new beauty isn’t defined by hairstyles or body shape, by age or skin color. Beauty is becoming less a matter of aesthetics and more about self-awareness, personal swagger, and individuality. It’s about chiseled arms and false eyelashes and a lineless forehead. But it’s also defined by rounded bellies, shimmering silver hair, and mundane imperfections. Beauty is a millennial strutting around town in leggings, a crop top, and her belly protruding over her waistband. It is a young man swishing down a runway in over-the-knee boots and thigh-grazing shorts.

Beauty is political correctness, cultural enlightenment, and social justice.

In New York, there’s a fashion collective called Vaquera that mounts runway shows in dilapidated settings with harsh lighting and no glamour. The cast could have piled off the F train after a sleepless night. Their hair is mussed. Their skin looks like it has a thin sheen of overnight grime. They stomp down the runway. The walk could be interpreted as angry, bumbling, or just a little bit hungover.

Masculine-looking models wear princess dresses that hang from the shoulders with all the allure of a shower curtain. Feminine-looking models aggressively speed-walk with a hunched posture and a grim expression. Instead of elongating legs and creating an hourglass silhouette, the clothes make legs look stumpy and the torso thick. Vaquera is among the many companies that call on street casting, which is basically pulling oddball characters from the street and putting them on the runway—essentially declaring them beautiful.

In Paris, the designer John Galliano, like countless other designers, has been blurring gender. He has done so in a way that’s exaggerated and aggressive, which is to say that instead of aiming to craft a dress or a skirt that caters to the lines of a masculine physique, he has simply draped that physique with a dress. The result is not a garment that ostensibly aims to make individuals look their best. It’s a statement about our stubborn assumptions about gender, clothing, and physical beauty.

Not so long ago, the clothing line Universal Standard published an advertising campaign featuring a woman who wears a U.S. size 24. She posed in her skivvies and a pair of white socks. The lighting was flat, her hair slightly frizzed, and her thighs dimpled with cellulite. There was nothing magical or inaccessible about the image. It was exaggerated realism—the opposite of the Victoria’s Secret angel.

Every accepted idea about beauty is being subverted. This is the new normal, and it is shocking. Some might argue that it’s even rather ugly.

As much as people say that they want inclusiveness and regular-looking people—so-called real people—many consumers remain dismayed that this, this is what passes for beauty. They look at a 200-pound woman and, after giving a cursory nod to her confidence, fret about her health—even though they’ve never seen her medical records. That’s a more polite conversation than one that argues against declaring her beautiful. But the mere fact that this Universal Standard model is in the spotlight in her underwear—just as the Victoria’s Secret angels have been and the Maidenform woman was a generation before that—is an act of political protest. It’s not about wanting to be a pinup but about wanting the right for one’s body to exist without negative judgment. As a society, we haven’t acknowledged her right to simply be. But at least the beauty world is giving her a platform on which to make her case.

This isn’t just a demand being made by full-figured women. Older women are insisting on their place in the culture. Black women are demanding that they be allowed to stand in the spotlight with their natural hair.

There’s no neutral ground. The body, the face, the hair have all become political. Beauty is about respect and value and the right to exist without having to alter who you fundamentally are. For a black woman, having her natural hair perceived as beautiful means that her kinky curls are not an indication of her being unprofessional. For a plus-size woman, having her belly rolls included in the conversation about beauty means that she will not be castigated by strangers for consuming dessert in public; she will not have to prove to her employer that she isn’t lazy or without willpower or otherwise lacking in self-control.

When an older woman’s wrinkles are seen as beautiful, it means that she is actually being seen. She isn’t being overlooked as a full human being: sexual, funny, smart, and, more than likely, deeply engaged in the world around her.

To see the beauty in a woman’s rippling muscles is to embrace her strength but also to shun the notion that female beauty is equated with fragility and weakness. Pure physical power is stunning.

“Own who you are,” read a T-shirt on the spring 2020 runway of Balmain in Paris. The brand’s creative director, Olivier Rousteing, is known for his focus on inclusiveness in beauty. He, along with Kim Kardashian, has helped popularize the notion of “slim thick,” the 21st-century description of an hourglass figure with adjustments made for athleticism. “Slim thick” describes a woman with a prominent derriere, breasts, and thighs, but with a slim, toned midsection. It’s a body type that has sold countless waist trainers and has been applied to women such as singer and fashion entrepreneur Rihanna who do not have the lean physique of a marathoner.

Slim thick may be just another body type over which women obsess. But it also gives women license to coin a term to describe their own body, turn it into a hashtag, and start counting the likes. Own who you are.

When I look at photographs of groups of women on vacation, or a mother with her child, I see friendship and loyalty, joy and love. I see people who seem exuberant and confident. Perhaps if I had the opportunity to speak with them, I’d find them intelligent and witty or incredibly charismatic. If I got to know them and like them, I’m sure I’d also describe them as beautiful.

If I were to look at a portrait of my mother, I would see one of the most beautiful people in the world—not because of her cheekbones or her neat figure, but because I know her heart.

As a culture, we give lip service to the notion that what matters is inner beauty when in fact it’s the outer version that carries the real social currency. The new outlook on beauty dares us to declare someone we haven’t met beautiful. It forces us to presume the best about people. It asks us to connect with people in a way that is almost childlike in its openness and ease.

Modern beauty doesn’t ask us to come to the table without judgment. It simply asks us to come presuming that everyone in attendance has a right to be there.

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