Moresi 1
Samuel Moresi
Jon Croghan
CMST 1061- Section 005x
Friday, May 1st 2015
Media Paper
What is beauty? How can we define it and what purpose does it serve within our society? These are some of the various questions philosophers and communication experts have been pondering for centuries and for good reason from an evolutionary standpoint beauty make sense beauty is simply just another one of the many outlets used to attract / let mates known they are the right choice for breeding. Take for example the stereotype of females being attracted to the more masculine / muscular oriented male body types. Sure, one can simply label it as women just blindly following yet another shallow beauty stereotype perplexed by our modern media or you can take a more in depth approach. Maybe women favor features such as lean Abs and big Biceps over scrawny / overweight body attributes because their brains unconsciously view them as the fittest of survivors and protectors. The same goes for money theoretically speaking the more money you have, the more resources you can pull thus again in theory leading to more women perceiving you as the fittest provider. I believe evolutionary constructs like these are the fundamental building blocks of our modern day concepts of beauty and attraction while yes, beauty is subjective and each culture has their own unique outlook on what make something / someone beautiful I believe they can all in some way or fashion be traced back to this evolutionary standpoint. The same can be said about the group of photos we were asked to analyze especially the photo of Beyonce it is blatantly apparent both her skin tone, hair color and texture were cosmically altered to give her a more western look even minute features like her eye / eyebrow color were dyed and altered in an attempt to fit her new “caucasian” style. But before I begin to diverge any further I would like to express that I do not believe Beyonce changed her appearance to appear more Caucasian on purpose I do however believe it was a systematic p.r. Move by her record label company for reasons I will discuss in detail later.but it is important to note people can genuinely express themselves in any way / fashion they deem fit, for example, your local Caucasian barista deciding to put her hair in dreadlocks is not to be mistaken for her trying to change her appearance to seem more African american no she simply thinks dreadlocks are cool and maybe likes the way they make her feel. I think shaming others for wanting to experiment with different body attributes out of the normal realm of their race is wrong and counterproductive to the issue at hand, which should be the underlying reasons why some people choose to do this. As for Beyonce I can only assume was a PR move to merely boost her acceptance and popularity in the west. In order to understand where i’m coming from, you have to view this in a more historical context. You have to ask yourself questions like “what kind of reputation and stereotypes do those of African descent commonly held in the past west?” Well, you can say for a long time they were barbarically labeled as some form of subhuman like property whose only useful contribution to society was labor. But as time progressed Africans not only here in America, but all over Europe and other western colonial footholds such as those in South africa slowly started to gain their independence from these unjust stereotypes. And that leads us to where we are today I believe these past stereotypes have somehow manifested themselves into todays society while they may not be as blatantly obvious or radical they still linger on, whether it be unconsciously in the back of people minds or as a taught behavior from past generations I believe to an extent they still exist and my hypothesis is that beyonce’s record label wanted her to escape these perplexed stereotypes of her African ancestry for a more luxurious elegant and westernized look. Think about it from a marketing standpoint now beyonce’s image can relate to a wider demographic of audiences and that equates to more money. And that’s what I find most disturbing to think a beautiful woman like Beyonce would have to change her natural beauty just to be accepted by the masses this can also can lead to a dangerous chain reaction in which women and men of color thinking they are not beautiful enough just because our western outlook on beauty may not appeal to them the same can be said about westerns in other societies so in this sense our current world view on beauty is unattainable. It is up to us as a diverse and progressive society to fix this problem and the only way that’s possible is to treat our differences as just that difference and come to the realization that beauty is subjective and that each individual is beautiful in their own unique way and as we start to evolve as a society we should also evolve out of our primitive constructs of beauty and focus in on beauty at a deeper level.