Does the standard of beauty undermine the standing of women in our culture?
Like with the Hiphop article, the author here is making a very powerful statement about something that is seeded into the foundations of our culture, something most people think is just natural and normal. It’s very interesting to me, and I definitely want to discuss it, however it can be a little bit difficult to write about something like this. So I want to focus on the effect, not so much the cause (Though if you are really interested in this idea of social control, we can discuss how to do it in your second paper).
A couple things to think about. First, what are you going to use to represent the standard of beauty? Fashion magazines, Instagram Influencers, Barbie dolls? In other words, how is society’s definition of beauty uploaded into people?
Next, what does it mean to undermine the standing of women? This is not talking about making people feel bad; it’s talking about taking power away from people. The argument can certainly be made that, on a big enough scale and repeated enough times, making someone feel bad could take away their power – but that is an argument you would have to make. That’s one of the logical connections you need to build in this essay.
