we've looked into some of our ancient
history and biology
i now want to turn to the social and
modern reasons behind why attraction and
beautification remains important today
why are we so obsessed with beauty
it's important because there are lots of
effects in the ways that others perceive
us and those effects then lead to
certain people being more or less
influential in different kinds of
settings so in a workplace setting if
you are more attractive that may give
you more influence over certain kinds of
decisions that have to be made there are
sort of two prevailing theoretical ideas
about beauty one is called what is
beautiful is good meaning that it's a
positive thing to be seen as more
attractive and people respond in ways
that allow you to get what you want more
often but there's also a countervailing
dynamic which is called beauty
consistency we find particularly for
women that in settings where seriousness
and expertise and experience our value
being too attractive actually makes
people discount what you have to say and
that finding didn't hold the same for
men
for women
this presents us with an interesting
contradiction it is typically women who
are expected to display and perform the
majority of beauty practices across
almost all cultures even though being
too attractive doesn't always work in
our favor and can in fact be detrimental
so gender plays a huge role you have
pressure from your peers and from the
media but they don't come from
nowhere i think the importance according
to women's appearance is probably linked
to the fact that our bodies are really
tied to reproduction we have a closer
connection between our bodies and our
production and
make value if you want as women compared
to men
what's interesting about i guess the
kind of anthropology of body
modification in a in a kind of gendered
sense is that often it is
done in the context of fertility and
childbirth either to indicate status for
marriage so in certain parts of africa
there had been this idea that the bigger
your lip plate was the more
valuable a bride you would be
historically i think in certain
patriarchal cultures there's been a
bigger pressure on women to meet beauty
standards but that is because cultures
in which women don't have the freedom to
pursue lines of work or to make money in
the same way that men do then their
currency is marriage when your currency
is marriage your appearance matters in
essence you're putting yourself out
there in the market you're not marketing
just your mind your marketing your body
and your appearance as well as women
enter the workforce in larger numbers
and become more financially independent
and less reliant on marriage then that's
changing as sociologists when we look
back over human history is that really
for the most part beauty rules were
created by men and were expected to be
followed by them so this is one kind of
evidence of for one outcome of
patriarchy that is men have more control
and could use a set of rules about
attractiveness but also about other
elements of social life to ensure that
women had things to do that didn't allow
them to encroach on the power of those
men
it's worth pointing out that there are
standards of beauty practices for males
too such as male grooming habits but the
pressure is not as high
you only have to look at i know ellis
beef and ruffs for example it's not
modificatory but um the use of
particular kinds of clothing in even
fairly historically speaking recent
british culture to understand that men
were expected to perform or look a
certain way in certain contexts men are
going to use a physical appearance to
show higher status i mean not just
physical attractiveness it might be more
closely linked to cultures we might vary
a bit more because the modifications
that you're going to have on a male body
is not going to impact the reproduction
everything is a bit unfair and not super
fun when you look at male preferences
you would like a world where oh we just
care about like people being kind and
nobody care about physical traits the
reality is a bit more tough
while there are many forces at play that
shape our sense of beauty emerging
research shows how ideas surrounding
gender and sexuality are shifting
especially in the younger generation
it's worth reminding ourselves that what
it means to be male or female will help
people to find their sexuality and not
concrete
just as our standards of beauty are
fluid so too are our preferences
so perhaps sometime in the future
physical traits traditionally associated
to reproduction and fertility will
become less important with less
gender-based biases
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