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Beauty, Black Beauty, black beauty standards, Black Beauty Standards Research, the science of black beauty

Is being pretty enough in this society?

Being pretty can attract attention, inspire admiration, and sometimes open doors. In a society that places considerable value on appearance, beauty can influence how a woman is received before she has spoken a word. Yet attention does not always become respect, opportunity does not always become security, and attraction does not always become love. Being pretty has advantages, but it cannot guarantee the life or treatment a woman deserves.

The advantages of beauty are more than a popular saying. In their classic study, psychologists Karen Dion, Ellen Berscheid, and Elaine Walster found that people attributed desirable qualities to individuals they considered physically attractive. This tendency is commonly called the “what is beautiful is good” stereotype. It helps explain why someone may receive a favorable first impression based on appearance, even when the observer knows little about her character or abilities.

For a pretty Black woman, favorable attention may come through compliments, romantic interest, social invitations, or opportunities in fields where appearance is part of the work. Modeling, beauty campaigns, entertainment, and personal branding can offer spaces in which her appearance becomes a professional asset. These possibilities depend on the people and institutions involved, however. Being beautiful and Black does not produce the same experience in every room.

There is also joy in seeing Black beauty appreciated in its many expressions. Deep brown skin, lighter brown skin, tightly coiled hair, flowing curls, locs, broad noses, full lips, and countless combinations of features belong within the conversation about beauty. A Black woman does not have to resemble someone of another race to be beautiful. Her features deserve appreciation on their own terms.

A beautiful Black woman who becomes visible can also contribute to representation. Her presence on a book cover, in a campaign, or at the head of a business can give another woman or girl an image with which she identifies. That visibility can be meaningful, particularly where Black women have felt overlooked. Still, no individual woman should have to represent an entire race perfectly to earn acceptance.

Enjoying beauty can be a source of personal pleasure as well. A woman may love her reflection, enjoy dressing elegantly, or feel delighted when someone sincerely compliments her. There is no need to shame her for appreciating her face, hair, complexion, or style. Confidence in her appearance can coexist with intelligence, humility, faith, and concern for others.

However, beauty does not erase racial discrimination. A Black woman may be admired physically while still encountering unfair judgments about her competence or professionalism. Research by Christy Zhou Koval and Ashleigh Shelby Rosette found bias against Black women wearing natural hairstyles in recruitment settings. Such findings show that favorable treatment based on appearance can exist alongside prejudice about how Black women should look.

Colorism adds another difficulty by attaching unequal value to different skin tones. The American Psychological Association describes colorism as discrimination based on skin color, often favoring lighter skin. For Black women, this can turn beauty into an unfair ranking system in which some are praised while others are diminished. The problem lies in that discriminatory standard, not in the complexion of the woman being judged.

Being pretty can also bring the disadvantage of being reduced to appearance. A woman may want to discuss her work, ideas, or accomplishments while others repeatedly return to her face or body. Compliments themselves can be welcome and sincere; the difficulty comes when people show no interest in the person receiving them. Admiration becomes limiting when beauty is the only quality anyone allows her to possess.

Another disadvantage is unwanted attention. A woman may appreciate respectful interest while disliking intrusive comments, persistent advances, or assumptions that she owes someone access to her. Her attractiveness is not an invitation to ignore her boundaries. She should be able to enjoy being beautiful without having to welcome every person who notices.

Beauty can also create pressure to maintain a particular image. When praise centers heavily on appearance, aging, weight changes, illness, or an ordinary day without makeup may feel more threatening than they should. A woman deserves room to change and to rest. Her right to dignity does not expire when she looks different from a photograph or from someone’s expectations.

It is equally important to avoid assuming that every disagreement or rejection is caused by jealousy. Envy may occur, but people’s motives cannot reliably be read from a glance or an unpleasant interaction. What a woman can assess is behavior: whether someone respects her, treats her fairly, and acknowledges her accomplishments. She can address mistreatment without having to prove what another person secretly feels.

In romantic relationships, beauty can create a powerful beginning. A man may notice a woman across a room, admire her smile, and feel eager to know her. That attraction can be sincere and meaningful. But the relationship that follows requires honesty, compatibility, care, and a willingness to honor commitments after the excitement of the first meeting settles.

This is why some men still cheat on beautiful women. A woman’s appearance cannot control another person’s decisions or prevent him from breaking an agreement. He may find his partner exceptionally attractive and still choose dishonesty. His betrayal does not establish that she was insufficiently pretty, nor does it prove that the other woman was more valuable.

Research supports a broader understanding of infidelity than the idea that a partner simply lacked something. Dylan Selterman, Justin Garcia, and Irene Tsapelas identified multiple reported motivations, including anger, lack of love, low commitment, esteem, desire for variety, neglect, sexual desire, and situational factors. These are accounts of why participants said they cheated, not excuses or a formula that predicts every relationship. They show why reducing betrayal to a woman’s appearance is misleading.

Commitment also matters. Across eight studies, C. Nathan DeWall and colleagues found that avoidant attachment was associated with greater interest in romantic alternatives and infidelity, with lower commitment helping explain those associations. This does not mean everyone with an avoidant attachment pattern will cheat. It does reinforce the importance of examining a partner’s commitment rather than assuming attraction alone will protect a relationship.

After betrayal, a woman may search her reflection for an explanation. She may wonder whether different hair, a different body, or more effort would have made him faithful. That search can place responsibility on the person who was hurt. Relationship difficulties can be discussed honestly, but the person who cheats remains responsible for choosing deception instead of an honest conversation or ending the relationship.

A woman who values courtship, faith, and abstinence until marriage does not have to abandon those principles to keep a man interested. Her boundaries allow a potential partner to show whether he respects her convictions. Someone who pressures her to violate them is providing useful information about the relationship. Beauty should never become a reason she feels obligated to bargain away her peace or beliefs.

Beyond romance, being pretty is not enough to guarantee financial stability, supportive friendships, good health, or professional fulfillment. Education, practical skills, resources, relationships, and fair opportunities all matter. Developing these areas does not mean a woman must earn her basic worth through achievement. It means she deserves a life supported by more than the unpredictable approval of others.

So, is being pretty enough in this society? It can be an advantage, a pleasure, and an important part of how a woman expresses herself, but it is no guarantee of fairness or fidelity. A Black woman can celebrate her beauty while expecting people to recognize her whole humanity. She deserves respect when she is admired, honesty when she is loved, and dignity whether anyone is looking or not.

References

a brown girl's beauty, Beauty, Black Beauty, black beauty standards, Black Beauty Standards Research, Black Masculinity, masculine perfection, Masculine Perfection Series, the science of black beauty

The Architecture of Black Beauty: Aesthetics, Identity, and the Politics of Perception

Black beauty invites us to consider more than what the eye finds pleasing. It raises questions about who establishes standards, whose features receive admiration, and whose presence is granted dignity. To speak of its architecture is to examine the structures surrounding its recognition: family, culture, history, commerce, and power. The face may be the first thing we see, but the meaning assigned to that face has a history.

Aesthetics concerns the experience and interpretation of beauty, yet judgments of appearance do not emerge outside society. What feels familiar, elegant, desirable, or acceptable can be shaped by the images and values a person encounters. An individual preference may feel entirely private while carrying assumptions learned from a wider culture. Understanding that influence allows us to question a standard without denying the sincerity of anyone’s attraction.

Black beauty has no single face. It exists across a vast range of complexions, facial structures, hair textures, body types, ages, and cultural expressions. Any definition that requires one nose, one shade, or one silhouette narrows the people it claims to celebrate. A serious account of Black beauty must make room for variation rather than replace one restrictive ideal with another.

This diversity also challenges the assumption that Black features must be understood through comparison with European ones. A broad nose possesses its own proportions; tightly coiled hair has its own form and possibilities; deep brown skin has its own visual richness. These features require no translation into another racial aesthetic to become worthy of admiration. They can be encountered directly, with curiosity and appreciation.

The politics of perception begins when differences become rankings. A physical characteristic acquires social consequences when people attach assumptions about refinement, competence, desirability, or belonging to it. Beauty then becomes more than an experience of pleasure: it becomes part of how opportunity and recognition are distributed. The central question is who benefits from those judgments and who bears their costs.

Colorism reveals this process with particular clarity. The American Psychological Association identifies colorism as discrimination based on skin color, often privileging lighter skin over darker skin. Within such a hierarchy, complexion becomes an unfair measure of social value. Celebrating Black beauty therefore requires more than including several shades in an image; it requires refusing to treat any shade as evidence of greater human worth.

Hair offers another example of how an aesthetic judgment can become an institutional barrier. Koval and Rosette’s research on recruitment found bias against Black women wearing natural hairstyles, including judgments about professionalism. The significance extends beyond personal taste because hiring decisions affect livelihoods. When a hairstyle becomes a reason to discount a qualified candidate, a beauty standard has entered the machinery of exclusion.

Yet hair is also a space of artistry, memory, and choice. Braids, locs, Afros, silk presses, wigs, cropped cuts, and other styles can express different moods, needs, and preferences. No hairstyle can reliably reveal how much a woman values her identity. Respecting Black beauty means allowing women to choose their presentation without making every choice an examination of racial loyalty.

Psychological research also suggests that discussions of body image must attend to experiences that conventional measures may overlook. In their study of African American college women, Germine H. Awad and colleagues emphasized the importance of hair and skin tone alongside concerns about body size. Their findings do not describe every Black woman, but they demonstrate why culturally attentive research matters. Asking the wrong questions can leave significant parts of a person’s experience unseen.

Black Male Beauty: Aesthetics, Identity, and the Right to Be Admired

Black male beauty encompasses a rich diversity of complexions, facial structures, hair textures, and forms of personal expression. Deep brown skin, expressive eyes, full lips, sculpted cheekbones, curls, locs, and closely cropped hair offer countless possibilities for admiration without defining a single ideal. A Black man can be strikingly handsome, graceful, and elegant without his appearance needing comparison with another racial standard. Yet appreciating that beauty also requires examining the cultural narratives through which he is seen. In Black Looks: Race and Representation, bell hooks explores how representations shape the interpretation of Black identity, providing a critical foundation for asking whether admiration allows the person being viewed complexity and individuality.

A fuller appreciation of Black male beauty leaves room for tenderness, maturity, vulnerability, and joy alongside physical attraction. It does not require every handsome man to embody dominance, muscularity, wealth, or an image of invulnerability. Jared Sexton’s Black Masculinity and the Cinema of Policing examines how film and television representations connect Black masculinity with authority and racialized control; his analysis invites scrutiny of the roles through which Black men become publicly recognizable. Applied to beauty, this perspective encourages an admiration that welcomes individuality rather than prescribing a performance. A Black man deserves to be appreciated for his appearance while also being heard, understood, and respected as a whole person.

Representation influences the possibilities through which people imagine themselves. In Black Looks: Race and Representation, bell hooks examines how Blackness is depicted and interpreted across cultural media. Her work encourages a critical relationship with images rather than passive acceptance of them. Applied to beauty, this perspective asks whether a portrayal gives a Black woman complexity, agency, and a point of view of her own.

Visibility alone cannot answer that question. A woman may occupy the center of an image while remaining confined to a narrow role: the seductive body, the endlessly strong caretaker, or the flawless symbol of success. A fuller visual culture would let her be thoughtful, playful, reserved, ambitious, uncertain, or ordinary. Representation gains depth when a person has permission to exist beyond the function assigned to her.

The distinction between being seen and being known is especially important in discussions of beauty. A face can receive admiration while its owner’s ideas remain unheard. Meaningful recognition involves attention to what she says, creates, believes, and chooses. Her appearance belongs to her humanity, but it cannot contain the whole of it.

Photography can help preserve that broader humanity. Tina M. Campt’s Image Matters examines family photography and the formation of identity and community within Black European histories. This work offers a way to consider images as records of belonging, rather than merely objects of visual evaluation. A family portrait may hold gestures, relationships, aspirations, and memories that no ranking of attractiveness could explain.

Consider the beauty held in an ordinary photograph: a grandmother dressed for church, a mother laughing at a celebration, a young woman standing proudly beside her first accomplishment. Such images invite affection through familiarity and context. The person becomes beautiful partly through the life the viewer knows around her. This does not diminish physical beauty; it expands the experience of seeing.

Commercial recognition introduces a different set of questions. A company may celebrate Black women in a campaign while offering them little influence over the creative decisions or financial rewards. A useful ethical standard would examine who directs the work, who owns it, and who is paid fairly. Appreciation becomes more substantial when the women whose presence creates value also share in that value.

The same care is necessary when discussing cultural influence. Admiring a hairstyle, feature, or form of dress should encourage interest in the people and traditions associated with it. Problems arise when a style is celebrated on some bodies while stigmatized on others. An equitable culture would extend respect to the people who wear an aesthetic, rather than detach the admired image from their lived experience.

Black beauty also deserves freedom from compulsory perfection. A woman should not have to remain youthful, immaculate, and visibly confident to be treated as worthy of care. Aging, disability, illness, fatigue, and changes in appearance belong to human life. A celebration that cannot accommodate those realities risks becoming another demand placed upon the women it intends to honor.

Nor should beauty become a condition of dignity. Women who receive little conventional praise deserve the same respect, protection, and opportunity as women whose appearance attracts widespread admiration. Celebrating Black beauty is most meaningful when it broadens recognition without creating a new hierarchy of deservingness. No woman should have to win an aesthetic judgment before her needs are taken seriously.

Self-definition provides one way to resist those limits. A Black woman can decide what elegance means in her own life, which forms of adornment delight her, and how she wishes to present herself. She may enjoy sincere compliments while retaining her own understanding of who she is. The freedom to receive admiration and the freedom to live without depending on it can exist together.

The architecture of Black beauty is therefore built through both perception and responsibility. It asks viewers to examine their assumptions, institutions to confront exclusion, and cultural creators to portray Black women with breadth and depth. It also leaves space for the simple pleasure of appreciating a face, a complexion, a hairstyle, or a graceful presence. Black beauty deserves that pleasure alongside something more enduring: the recognition of a whole person whose dignity requires no approval.

References

a brown girl's beauty, Beauty, Beauty-ism, Black Beauty, black beauty standards, Black Beauty Standards Research

Beauty-ism: The Politics of Beauty

Beauty is often presented as though it were a simple matter of personal preference, aesthetic pleasure, or individual taste. Yet throughout human history, beauty has operated as a powerful social language through which societies communicate ideas about worth, desirability, morality, femininity, masculinity, race, class, age, and belonging. What a culture calls “beautiful” is rarely neutral. Beauty standards are produced within particular historical, economic, racial, religious, and political environments. Consequently, the study of beauty must move beyond cosmetics and physical appearance toward an examination of power. Beauty-ism describes the ideological and social systems through which physical appearance becomes connected to privilege, opportunity, identity, and social status.

The politics of beauty begins with a fundamental question: Who gets to define beauty? Standards of attractiveness are not created in a vacuum. They are shaped by families, communities, religious institutions, colonial histories, entertainment industries, advertising, fashion, medicine, photography, and increasingly, social media. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital is particularly useful for understanding how aesthetic preferences become markers of social distinction. Certain appearances, styles, bodies, and forms of presentation can become associated with refinement, sophistication, wealth, or respectability, while others are marginalized or stigmatized (Bourdieu, 1984). Beauty therefore functions not merely as something people possess but as something societies learn to recognize, reward, and reproduce.

Beauty also has a psychological dimension. Human beings naturally respond to certain forms of facial symmetry, averageness, youthfulness, and sexually dimorphic characteristics, and some elements of attractiveness appear across multiple cultures. However, biological predispositions do not explain the enormous diversity of beauty standards throughout history. Cultural meanings determine which physical characteristics become highly desirable and which become undesirable. As a result, beauty is simultaneously biological, psychological, cultural, and political. The mistake is not recognizing that humans can find physical characteristics attractive; the mistake is assuming that every hierarchy of beauty is biologically predetermined.

The politics of beauty becomes particularly visible when attractiveness is converted into social advantage. Research on the “beauty premium” has demonstrated that physical attractiveness can influence judgments and outcomes in employment and other social environments. Individuals perceived as attractive may receive more favorable evaluations, while individuals perceived as unattractive can encounter disadvantages. Hamermesh and Biddle (1994), for example, found evidence of earnings differences associated with physical attractiveness. Such findings reveal an uncomfortable reality: appearance can become an economic asset even when appearance has little legitimate relationship to competence.

Beauty standards also intersect with gender. Women have historically been subjected to particularly intense expectations regarding physical presentation. Hair, skin, weight, clothing, age, facial features, and body shape can become objects of continuous evaluation. Naomi Wolf (1991) argued that modern beauty standards can function as a form of social control, particularly as women gain greater access to education, employment, and political participation. Although Wolf’s thesis has been debated and expanded by subsequent scholarship, the larger observation remains important: societies can impose demanding appearance standards upon women while simultaneously claiming that beauty is simply an expression of individual choice.

The economic dimension of beauty is enormous. The beauty industry does not merely respond to existing desires; it also participates in producing and intensifying them. Advertising frequently communicates that a person’s current appearance is inadequate and that improvement requires purchasing a product, procedure, service, or lifestyle. Cosmetics, skincare, haircare, fashion, aesthetic medicine, fitness, and cosmetic surgery can become interconnected markets organized around the perpetual pursuit of improvement. The commercial logic is particularly powerful because physical appearance is never completely “finished.” There is always another wrinkle to prevent, another feature to enhance, another trend to adopt, or another imperfection to correct.

This commercial system can create what might be called the perpetual beauty project. The individual becomes both consumer and product, continually investing resources into the presentation of the self. Contemporary social media intensifies this phenomenon because individuals are no longer merely looking at advertisements; they are constantly comparing their own appearances with carefully selected images of other people. Filters, retouching, lighting, cosmetic procedures, and algorithmic amplification can make extraordinary appearances appear ordinary. The psychological consequence may be dissatisfaction with one’s unedited body or face because the digitally enhanced image becomes the standard against which reality is measured (Perloff, 2014).

Race fundamentally transforms the politics of beauty. Western beauty standards have historically privileged particular European features, including lighter skin, narrower noses, and certain hair textures. The legacy of European colonialism and racial hierarchy contributed to the elevation of whiteness as a standard of civilization and desirability in many societies. Fanon (1952/2008) examined the psychological consequences of colonial racial hierarchies, demonstrating how systems of domination can penetrate the individual’s understanding of the self. Beauty cannot therefore be separated from the history of racial classification.

Colorism represents one of the clearest examples of beauty becoming a racial hierarchy. Colorism involves differential treatment based on skin tone, particularly within racial or ethnic groups, and can operate alongside racism without being identical to it. Lighter skin has historically received social advantages in numerous societies, while darker skin has been stigmatized. Hunter (2005) demonstrated how skin color can influence perceptions of attractiveness, status, and social opportunity. The politics of beauty therefore includes not only the relationship between racial groups but also hierarchies that can emerge within communities.

Black women’s experiences demonstrate particularly complex intersections between race, gender, and beauty. Black women have frequently been evaluated according to standards developed without their features in mind. Hair texture, skin tone, facial structure, body shape, and cultural presentation have all been subjected to competing expectations. Some Black women have experienced pressure to approximate Eurocentric ideals, while others have embraced natural hair, darker skin, fuller features, and African-centered aesthetics as forms of cultural affirmation. The politics of Black beauty is consequently not simply about appearance; it is also about dignity, representation, autonomy, and resistance.

Hair provides an especially powerful example. For many Black women, hair has historically carried social, professional, cultural, and political significance. Afros, braids, locs, natural curls, straightened styles, wigs, and extensions can communicate different forms of identity and self-presentation. Banks (2000) demonstrated how Black women’s hair is connected to questions of race, gender, beauty, and identity. Hair discrimination also reveals the extent to which seemingly personal aesthetic judgments can become institutional practices. When particular textures or hairstyles are considered more “professional,” beauty standards become mechanisms through which racialized norms enter workplaces and schools.

Beauty politics also affects men, although the cultural mechanisms may differ. Men can experience pressure concerning height, muscularity, hair, facial structure, youthfulness, wealth, and physical strength. Contemporary media increasingly promotes highly curated masculine bodies, contributing to concerns about muscularity and physical appearance among men. The expansion of male grooming, cosmetic procedures, fashion, and fitness industries demonstrates that beauty culture is not exclusively feminine. Nevertheless, gendered expectations continue to shape the consequences of appearance differently for men and women.

Class further complicates beauty. Certain beauty practices require substantial financial resources, including cosmetic procedures, luxury skincare, professional styling, orthodontics, designer clothing, personal training, and specialized cosmetic treatments. What appears to be “effortless beauty” may therefore conceal significant economic investment. Sociologist Beverley Skeggs (1997) demonstrated how femininity, respectability, and class become interconnected through judgments about appearance and conduct. Beauty can thus operate as a form of cultural capital: individuals possessing the financial resources to cultivate socially valued appearances may receive additional recognition for appearing naturally polished.

Age represents another major dimension of beauty politics. Modern societies frequently associate beauty with youth, particularly in women’s representation. Aging can therefore become framed not as a natural stage of life but as a problem requiring correction. Anti-aging industries capitalize on anxieties surrounding wrinkles, gray hair, changing body composition, and other visible signs of aging. This creates an ideological contradiction: individuals are expected to age naturally while simultaneously being encouraged to conceal evidence that they are aging. The result is a culture in which natural human development can be interpreted as personal failure.

The politics of beauty also involves disability and bodily difference. Societies often establish narrow expectations concerning what an acceptable body should look like and how it should function. Bodies that depart from dominant standards can become subject to staring, pity, exclusion, or invisibility. Garland-Thomson (1997) argued that cultural representations of bodily difference influence how disabled bodies are perceived and understood. Expanding beauty discourse therefore requires challenging the assumption that physical variation diminishes human value.

The entertainment and fashion industries have played a particularly influential role in determining which faces and bodies become culturally visible. Representation matters because repeated exposure can influence perceptions of normality and desirability. When certain racial groups, body types, ages, or facial characteristics are disproportionately represented as beautiful, audiences may internalize those associations. Conversely, when particular populations are rarely represented as romantic leads, fashion models, beauty icons, or objects of desire, their exclusion communicates a powerful cultural message. Representation cannot eliminate prejudice by itself, but it can broaden the symbolic boundaries of who is permitted to embody beauty.

Celebrity culture intensifies the politics of appearance because celebrities become both individuals and commodities. Their faces, bodies, clothing, hairstyles, cosmetic procedures, relationships, and lifestyles can generate enormous commercial value. The public is encouraged to consume not only products associated with celebrities but also their appearance as an aspirational ideal. This creates a feedback loop in which beauty produces visibility, visibility produces economic opportunity, and economic opportunity enables further investment in beauty. The resulting image can then be presented to the public as though it were simply natural attractiveness.

Beauty can also become connected to moral judgment. People are often tempted to interpret attractive individuals as more trustworthy, intelligent, competent, or virtuous. Dion et al. (1972) famously described the tendency to attribute more positive characteristics to attractive individuals as the “what-is-beautiful-is-good” stereotype. This phenomenon demonstrates how quickly aesthetic judgments can become judgments about character. A person’s face can influence assumptions about who that person is, even when appearance provides no reliable evidence concerning personality or moral character.

At its deepest level, Beauty-ism asks what happens when human beings confuse beauty with value. Physical attractiveness can be pleasurable and meaningful, but it cannot serve as a complete measurement of human worth. Intelligence, compassion, courage, integrity, creativity, wisdom, faith, resilience, and moral character cannot be reduced to facial symmetry or body proportions. When beauty becomes the primary currency of social worth, people can begin to treat themselves as objects requiring constant improvement rather than as whole human beings possessing intrinsic dignity.

The solution is not to reject beauty. Beauty can be celebrated, studied, cultivated, photographed, painted, designed, and enjoyed. The challenge is to separate the appreciation of beauty from the hierarchy of human worth. A society can appreciate physical attractiveness without transforming attractiveness into a prerequisite for dignity, employment, love, respect, or belonging. Such a distinction is essential because the problem is not beauty itself; the problem emerges when beauty becomes a system of power that determines whose humanity is most readily recognized.

Ultimately, Beauty-ism: The Politics of Beauty is an examination of the social structures behind the mirror. It asks who created the standards by which people judge themselves, who profits from those standards, who is excluded by them, and how individuals can reclaim authority over their own identities. Beauty is not merely something seen with the eyes; it is something interpreted through history, culture, economics, psychology, race, gender, and power. To understand beauty is therefore to understand something fundamental about society itself. The liberation of beauty begins when human beings learn to appreciate appearance without allowing appearance to determine human worth.

References

Banks, I. (2000). Hair matters: Beauty, power, and Black women’s consciousness. New York University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Harvard University Press.

Dion, K., Berscheid, E., & Walster, E. (1972). What is beautiful is good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24(3), 285–290. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0033731

Fanon, F. (2008). Black skin, white masks (R. Philcox, Trans.). Grove Press. (Original work published 1952)

Garland-Thomson, R. (1997). Extraordinary bodies: Figuring physical disability in American culture and literature. Columbia University Press.

Hamermesh, D. S., & Biddle, J. E. (1994). Beauty and the labor market. American Economic Review, 84(5), 1174–1194.

Hunter, M. L. (2005). Race, gender, and the politics of skin tone. Routledge.

Perloff, R. M. (2014). Social media effects on young women’s body image concerns: Theoretical perspectives and an agenda for research. Sex Roles, 71, 363–377. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-014-0384-6

Skeggs, B. (1997). Formations of class and gender: Becoming respectable. SAGE Publications.

Wolf, N. (1991). The beauty myth: How images of beauty are used against women. William Morrow.