Today, beauty counts for little in the judgement of works of art. But our felt experience of beauty connects us with an object’s maker, revealing a pure moment of humanity.
Articles on Beauty
Displaying 61 - 80 of 93 articles
Recent scientific studies have claimed that transfusions of blood from teenagers can help delay or reverse the ageing process. Do they stack up?
The longing for lighter skin remains a taboo topic in African-American communities.
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.
The history of dangerous cosmetics shows us the harms that women have suffered to meet expectations of what is beautiful.
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.
The pressures of perfection.
YouTube is awash with videos on beauty and fashion, and young girls are avidly watching, creating powerful social media figures in the process.
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?
For those with facial conditions and injuries, makeup can be the difference between living and having a life.
By getting young women hooked before they’ve even formed wrinkles, Botox peddlers have realized they can enlist them in a lifetime of treatment.
A sociologist wanted to know how simply self-identifying as ‘multiracial’ – regardless of how you actually looked – would influence your attractiveness.
Women’s privates have moved to the front and centre of popular entertainment. And they’re not always pretty.
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.’
Your makeup can make all the difference on your path to success.
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.
Top contributors
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Assistant Professor, Sociology, MacEwan University
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Associate Professor in Literary Studies, Monash University
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Lecturer, University of Leicester
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Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Digital Marketing, Royal Holloway, University of London
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Professor of Social Psychology, Anglia Ruskin University
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Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Swansea University
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Associate Professor of Anthropology, College of the Holy Cross
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Lecturer in Psychology, Swansea University
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Scientia Professor of Evolution, UNSW
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Assistant Professor of Psychology, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
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ARC Future Fellow, La Trobe University
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Professor of History, Swansea University
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Associate Professor of Political Science, Iowa State University
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Doctoral Candidate, Monash University
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Lecturer in Psychology, Swansea University