The Politics of Beauty: How to Deal With Feeling Unpretty in College

"Tell yourself what you will. Everyone knows that the most valuable capital a woman can possess is a beauty other people can readily perceive."

These jarring sentences, taken from an essay written by English professor Asali Solomon, are an assertion that far too many women take to be true. The result? Our society produces a generation of women who in 2005, represented 91% of the 11.5 million patients who underwent both surgical and non-surgical cosmetic procedures, a figure produced by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

Far too many young women manage to believe that true beauty lies in a mélange of physical perfections that strikes jealousy in the hearts of other girls and desire in the hearts of men. But despite what our mothers, boyfriends, and magazines say, something within each of one us whispers that real beauty must be something more.

"I usually see the beauty in other people a lot more than I see it in myself," says Andrea Da, a quiet 18-year old rising junior from Seattle, Washington.

"A lot of times I see it in their spirit," Da continues, defining beauty in a way that manages to elude much of society. Da goes on to single out qualities that self -carriage and self-confidence as being beautiful.

Vanessa Singh, a junior from Bryn Mawr College says that beauty standards are something that a woman should decide for herself.

"That’s how I believe you should look at the standards of beauty, you need to make your own," Singh said.

Two years ago, she decided that an edgy mohawk was far more beautiful than her waterfall of ebony hair that fell to her waist. Defying the norms of her traditional Indian-Guyanese culture, Singh decided to get the mohawk, to the shock of her family.

"Culturally its only widows that cut their hair," she said, pointing out that long hair is both expected and valued in women.

"My grandparents did not like it all, I was the bad girl in the family," she said with a laugh.

Since then, Singh has grown her ebony hair out into a short cropped cut and is looking to grow it out longer still.

"That was what I wanted then, that was my ideal that I was working towards, and now I’ve outgrown it," she said. For Singh, beauty standards are ideals that constantly change.

Nahila Ahsan, a Pakistani college student who comes from a mixed brew of ethnic backgrounds, associates beauty with health more than anything.

"You can be beautiful and healthy, those things can go together, healthy is beautiful and beautiful is healthy, because when you’re healthy you feel good," Ahsan said.

Ahsan pointed out that standards of beauty for women of color can be influenced by whiteness.

"Literally if you translate beautiful in Hindi, gori means beautiful, but it also means white," Ahsan says. "It tells you that the standard of beauty all over the world has to do with white."

Niara Phillips, an Afro-Caribbean student at Georgetown University, said that the influence of white beauty standards at her predominantly Caucasian university was felt by her and other female students of color.

"I think we had a lot of issues with people feeling like they needed to conform" Phillips said.

"In my family, I inherited a butt and thighs and we got it from my grandmother," Phillips said. "Growing up, when I had issues with that, my family would always reinforce me," she continued.

Seeing the need for other female minority student to be similarly reinforced, Phillips founded Georgetown University Women of Color in 2005, to offer "a place to celebrate different kinds of beauty."

"Our t-shirts say, 'all shades, all beautiful,'" Phillips said. The organization also acts as a network for Georgetown’s minority women, who are offered advice from the group's alumni on how to succeed after college in career fields that are often dominated by white men.

Cristina Arrizon, a student at University of Washington who is originally from Mexico, said that it is important that girls' beauty be affirmed.

"Girls need to hear that they’re beautiful," Arrizon says, mentioning that her self esteem suffered as a child because she didn’t hear it enough and was teased for her complexion, which was darker than the white and light-skinned Mexican students at her Catholic school.

"I just feel that when I got into college, I learned that there’s a lot of power in education, and I learned to value education," she says. “To me, yes it’s important to look good, but it’s important to be educated."

Arrizon said that as a Latina, she uses her education to break popular stereotypes that are held of Latin women.

"I try to break with the stereotype that Mexicans in this country are wetbacks or uneducated people," she said. "I think it’s important to present an image that is outside of those two stereotypes," she continued.

Arrizon, who has a young daughter, says that she makes sure to let her know how beautiful and valued she is.

So what is the final consensus on beauty? Perhaps we should take a page out of Maya Angelou's book and seek to imitate the anonymous woman who speaks boldly of her beauty in "Phenomenal Woman," a poem that has now become an anthem for women’s empowerment.

"Now you understand just why my head’s not bowed, I don’t shout or jump about or have to talk real loud…I say it’s in the click of my heels, the bend of my hair, the palm of my hand, the need for my care. 'Cause I’m a woman, phenomenally. Phenomenal Woman, that’s me."

Maybe its inner and not outer beauty that truly is the "most valuable capital a woman [can] possess."

Ways that you can help empower women to see their own beauty:

1. Start an organization for women at your school, like Niara did, that helps to reinforce diverse concepts of beauty.
2. Get a group of like-minded individuals together and plan a forum where male and female students get together to have a candid discussion about beauty standards in popular culture.
3. Write an editorial in your school newspaper or on your blog encouraging young women to not base their self worth on popular notions of beauty.
4. Remind the women around you of how beautiful they are, not only for their outward appearance, but for the kind of people they are.

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