Beauty canons

Beauty canons

Many of these self-esteem problems stem from and/or are reflected in the body. The body is the temple we inhabit. The normative stereotypes that we mentioned earlier can greatly condition the perception, positive or negative, that we have of it.

These stereotypes about what a body should be like are based on canons or models of beauty. The canons or models of beauty are the set of characteristics that a given society or culture conventionally considers as beautiful or attractive, whether in people or objects. Each culture develops its own canons and, moreover, these can be modified over time.

Sometimes, human rights violations are disguised as a canon of beauty or a traditional or cultural practice of beauty. For example, in some African countries such as Kenya or South Africa, married women wear neck rings as necklaces that contribute to the elongation of their necks, which is seen as extremely beautiful in these cultures, but can have harmful consequences for the health of these women. Similarly, in many European countries there is a lot of media and advertising pressure on women to remove their body hair through depilation and the message has spread that having hair is dirty or unhygienic, which is false.

In the face of this, we must remain critical, question why a certain aesthetic is considered beautiful and reflect on what we want for our bodies.

Furthermore, our society is extremely ableist and undervalues, oppresses and discriminates against people with disabilities, whose bodies (and sexualities) are equally valid. Our society is also tremendously fat-phobic.

What is fatphobia? It is the «rejection and violence suffered by people because they are fat. This form of discrimination is based on a series of prejudices that target the habits, customs and lifestyles of fat people, as it is socially considered that people get fat due to a lack of will and ignorance about self-care and the proper management of their body so that it is slim» (Tramando Derechos, 2021). However, this belief is totally erroneous as it has been shown that a fat body is not necessarily synonymous with an unhealthy body and a thin body is not synonymous with a healthy body.