How online beauty culture has harmed women.

The development of smartphones gave birth to the online beauty culture. With platforms like

YouTube and Instagram anyone can become what is now commonly referred to as an

influencer. They can post content, promoting different standards of beauty, whereas before

you had the editors of the different magazines determining what constitutes beauty and what

the “ideal woman” was. This changed the way society viewed beauty and the standards put

on women’s appearances. The online beauty culture strives to empower women and has been

a platform that fights to change previous unhealthy ideals set by traditional mediums like

magazines. Despite causing beneficial changes to beauty culture by changing the source of

information, the current online beauty culture, influenced by social media platforms is still

harmful to women.

The online beauty culture is mainly present in social applications such as Instagram and

YouTube however their influence and reach expands to many other platforms. This allows

the immediate and constant spread of content. Women are continuously exposed to the many

ideals of beauty presented by beauty vloggers, fashion companies, and even one’s own peers.

This exposure results in women constantly comparing themselves to the “ideal woman”, this

comparison leads to negative mood and body dissatisfaction (Greenfield, 2018). Before the

online beauty culture women were exposed to a few specific beauty standards if they chose to

buy a magazine or perhaps an advertisement on the street. Magazines came out with a new

issue monthly thus the frequency and amount they were exposed to the pressure to be

beautiful was limited. The online beauty culture is found in many of our social applications,

women are exposed to advertisement and ideals of beauty more than ever before. Even when

using these applications for other purposes there is always a certain level of exposure. The

content is also endless and continues and does not only come from fashion companies and
models but by influencers and fellow peers, this constant flooding of information and content

creates a pressure that magazines could never achieve.

Platforms such as Instagram have allowed for more women to define themselves as beautiful.

Women can find micro communities within these online platforms with beauty vloggers who

they can relate closely to. Due to the rise in social media platforms there is far more diversity

in body shape, race, age, and other factors than there ever was in the beauty industry (Hage,

2018). Celebrities and influencers are using these online platforms to break the previous

beauty standards. Because of social media the world is witnessing other options of the “ideal

woman” leading to more women defining themselves as beautiful as they can find micro

communities with influencers who resemble them more. With the online beauty culture there

is no filtering, anyone can put up content (Hage, 2018). Before, with magazines the content

released was limited and carefully chosen by editors, giving them the power to promote the

company’s own ideals of beauty, which allowed them to pressure women into buying

products that were said to allow them to reach that standard. Now anyone can put content for

the public to see and people have more power in deciding as to what beauty should look like.

Nonetheless, even with all the new inclusivity the pressure to be beautiful remains, the

standard by which women are being judged against is beauty. A study found that the most

valued trait in women was physical attractiveness (Parker et al. 2017). Despite the acceptance

found through the various micro communities women still strive to reach beauty and the

online beauty culture allows for constant pressure to be put on women.

The online beauty culture is not limited to social media platforms. The commonality of apps

such as Adobe photoshop allows anyone to portray an altered desired flawless image of

themselves online. As a result of the aforementioned notion that a woman’s most notable trait

is her physical appearance, more women buy products and services in an attempt to fulfil the

standard of beauty, created by the altered pictures that flood all online platforms. In the

online beauty culture, any individual can change their photos and remove their flaws thus

viewers compare themselves to peers and in order to achieve the beauty presented before

them they look for methods and products to attain it. The compulsion to buy such services

and products is enhanced if the product is perceived as useful (Chiodo, 2015). The online

culture does just that, with the ability to see people testing out products and reviewing them

on platforms like YouTube, women familiarise themselves with all the latest products and

feel more compelled to purchase them (Arendt et al., 2016). Services such as facelifts, plastic

surgery and other cosmetic procedures are increasingly more common. The number of thigh

lifts alone rose by 5% from 2017 to 2018 (American Society of Plastic Surgery, 2018). All of

this investment into beauty is costly and time consuming.

However, photoshop existed before the birth of the online beauty culture. In other mediums

such as magazines and advertisements pictures of models were heavily altered and often to

unreachable standards. To assume that the online beauty culture is the only reason behind the

large demand of plastic surgery and beauty enhancement services is a claim that is often

disputed. It can be argued that the reason why the online beauty culture can harm women so

much is largely due to the importance we as a society attribute to beauty and that the online

content is based on what the perceived needs of the public are (Greenfield, 2018)
While it is true that photoshop was a tool used long before the online beauty culture started it,

now it has also become far more accessible. There are thousands of applications that can

allow anybody to alter and edit anything they wish, many of which are specifically designed

to remove flaws in someone’s physical appearance. Before with magazines and

advertisements the women photoshopped were professional models, their job was to look

beautiful and viewers did not feel a close connection to them. Now, the ones using photoshop

are fellow peers and influencers who have whole communities of women who admire them

and closely relate to them. The impact of constantly seeing flawless pictures of peers and

influencers is far greater than ever before. Women feel more body dissatisfaction when

comparing themselves to their beautiful peers on social media then to professional models,

this is caused by the fact that they feel closer and relate more to their peers (Hogue, J.V et al.,

2018)

The online beauty culture is harming women by highlighting beauty as the factor that women

are judged against. While the online beauty culture allows more freedom in deciding on what

constitutes beauty there is a strong belief that beauty is what defines a woman. Furthermore,

platforms such as Instagram allow women to compare themselves to peers which has a more

damaging effect on their self-esteem than comparing themselves to professional models. A

large amount of the data collected surrounding this topic is based on limited observations or

interviews. The conclusions are derived using inductive reasoning thus making them

incomplete and vulnerable to being in. The online beauty culture strives for positive change

despite its limitations, to better understand the problem it is important to investigate if the

beauty culture is only a reflection of our societal norms or if it is controlled by the companies

and accounts with the most following.

Reflection

Trying to expand further on my argument while keeping the essay within the four-page limit

proved to be challenging. It was also difficult to deal with the many variables in the argument

and effectively explain my arguments.

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