American beauty standards are shifting as fast as its demographic makeup.
Recent years have seen women forgoing former “thin-is-in” trends in search of more curves and sun-kissed skin. While women then took up running to slim down, women now weight train and squat to thicken up.
According to the US Census Report, in 1900, about 1 in 8 Americans was a race other than white. By 2000, this was true for 1 in 4 Americans, and our beauty standards reflect this change.
In the 1900’s, actress Gladys Cooper was the picture of the American beauty ideal. With rolling blonde waves, enchanting doe eyes, a thin frame, and delicate lips, Cooper was a landmark addition to America’s beauty history books.
Come the 1950’s, America is already seeing its first major shift in contemporary beauty history. Marilyn Monroe keeps many things in line with Cooper’s example, such as fair skin, blonde hair, thick eyebrows, and big blue eyes. What’s different about Marilyn is her fuller lips and her fuller frame.
In the 1990’s, more than one woman ruled the beauty scene. The first is Cindy Crawford and the second is Selena. These two women were a departure from their predecessors in that they had darker hair, darker skin, darker eyes, bigger hair, and fuller lips while keeping the same curvy bodies.
By the present day, modern icons Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé show a marked difference from the earlier Gladys Cooper. Beauty trends have now shown a move away from features more commonly found in white women—thinner frames, delicate lips, blue eyes, and fair skin—and towards the darker, fuller, curvier features more often found in Hispanic and African American women. Although the shift is natural for a country whose demographic makeup is changing so drastically, it does not mean a shift towards natural beauty for all of its women.
As women with fairer skin tones risk melasma and skin cancer from repeated visits to tanning beds, women with deeper skin tones risk internal organ damage and skin cancer from the toxic chemicals in skin bleaching.
The modern Instagram maven—Jasmine Sanders for example, who has 1.6 million followers—is now usually popularized under the #TeamMixed tag, or broadcast on one of many popular pages for bi-racial women. They are typically neither completely identifiable as white or a POC—and are bronze skinned, blonde, curly-haired, and curvy as they come. Although the shift is a welcome one for the 2.1 percent of Americans who are #TeamMixed, and an exciting shift towards more diversity in beauty, the fact remains that beauty ideals are as hard to achieve as ever for those who don’t fit the increasingly high bar.
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