Collectable cigarette cards once depicted ‘exotic’ beauties, classified by the colonial eye. And today’s beauty contests still present women as exotic representatives of their nation.
For centuries, women with dwarfism were depicted in art as comic or grotesque fairytale beings. But artists are challenging these portrayals and notions of beauty and physical difference.
In New York City, hair salons are one of the few cultural spaces for Dominican women to bond. But they also perpetuate legacies of racism and colonialism.
Why is Cher, 71, celebrated when she wears a near-nude costume while Madonna, 58, receives revulsion? 19th century women’s magazines reveal how the double standards of beauty for older women came about.
Few would argue that exchanging cultural ideas could be construed negatively. But what happens when the influence and origins of that culture go unacknowledged and ignored?
A sociologist wanted to know how simply self-identifying as ‘multiracial’ – regardless of how you actually looked – would influence your attractiveness.
The proliferation of mass media has helped to create a standardisation of beauty ideals, making them harder to cope with. But there are encouraging signs that things could change.
For decades, the Miss America pageant had excluded minorities while celebrating a very narrow definition of womanhood. Then two separate protests – a women’s liberation picket and the lesser-known Miss Black America pageant – said ‘enough is enough.’
Magnolia Maymuru, the Northern Territory’s representative at the Miss World national finals, is a trailblazer. But will she escape the racialised exoticism that has long plagued Indigenous women?
Surgical makeovers might seem a modern phenomenon but they have a long and disturbing history: from 16th century skin grafts done without anaesthesia to reductions of “primitive” large breasts.
On international Pi Day it’s time to look at Pi’s position in unique formula that’s praised much for its beauty in uniting several mathematical constants.