Running head: AGE AND BEAUTY

Age and Beauty

Savannah Barron
The University of Memphis

AGE AND BEAUTY

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder is a popular saying that we learn at a fairly young
age in our society. Parents do as they can to try to teach their children that there is no such
thing as ugly and that the inside is the only thing that matters. However, parenting has had to
in recent years combat against media in teaching their children that beauty is so much more
than skin deep. Mainstream media promotes the ideal that to be a beautiful woman, one
must be thin but not too thin, be tan but not too tan, and be young but look old enough to
drink. Its a confusing message all around. This is our culture. However, in other cultures
beauty ideals differ and vary far and wide.
The way we internalize the messages from media is largely based on your cultural
region. Here to be beautiful is to be thin; however, in the Jamaican culture beautiful women
are seen to have curves. As a society we have a youth-obsessed culture. Here, to be
beautiful you have to also look young. Many women and men in order to fit this standard go
under the knife each year. If it sags, bags, or drags the appropriate measure seen by most is
to have it nipped, tucked, or sucked. In many other stretches of the globe however, aging is
seen as a sign of beauty and is respected. In Greek and Native American cultures attitudes
towards aging differ greatly. Aging is viewed with respect for their wisdom and life
experiences while in our society the elderly are all but removed.
Physical appearance as a determinant of female worth is nothing new. For women in
the western culture make-up has been around since the early 1900s. However, the difference
between then and now is that the use of make-up as a day-to-day practice has sky-rocketed.
Originally only one in five women used make-up regularly, within 20 years that number
jumped up 70% and todays statistics are flooring with 85% of American women admitting

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that cosmetics are part of their daily routine. Our social media could be witnessed at full
force during the presidential election when Hillary Clinton was criticized for not wearing
enough make-up and opting for pant suits, masculinizing herself. She was the first woman to
win the popular vote of The United States and the media cared more about the amount of
foundation on her cheeks. Incidences like this send powerful messages to women about our
worth.
Given that attaining and maintaining an attractive, youthful appearance is central to a
womans role, value, and social standing in North American cultural contexts (Haber 2004;
Hodgetts et al. 2003; Mehlman et al. 2004), one could theorize that endorsement of
mainstream North American media ideals would be related to negative attitudes toward aging
(Haboush, Warren, & Benuto 2012). In an article from 2012 published online, a study was
performed analyzing the impact mainstream media holds with their fetishized views on youth
and the internalization of this ideal in young American college women. It is critical to
explore the damage that media has on the inner psyche of women especially in terms of antiaging beliefs because whether we like it or not, we will all get old at some point.
Physical appearance truly is seen as a womans bread and butter in this society. Aging
is often associated with poor health, mental incompactly, being less friendly, and sloppiness.
Media is one of the strongest forces guiding our society. What they say plays a huge role in
our overall viewpoints ranging from political issues and encompassing to beauty standards.
An example of this would be Hollywoods methodologies of hiring actors and portraying
them in roles decades younger than their actual age. Older adults just arent represented and
when they are, theyre very old. Its as though middle age is being erased in our culture. In a

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study examining childrens animated television programs, researchers determined that young
characters frequently made statements denigrating older adults, and older adults were
portrayed as ugly, unhealthy, and wrinkled (Haboush et al, 2012, Warren et al, 2012, Benuto
et al, 2012).
The current study uses volunteer participants who were undergraduate female
students all under the age of 30. Approximately 94% of the students being involved in the
study were single at the time of research. There was a range of ethnicities used during
research with the majority identifying as white European. In order to measure their opinions
on the issue an 8-item subscale was used. They were given surveys with various quotes and
were asked to agree or disagree. One of the quotes used was Photographs of thin
women/men make me wish that I were thin. Upon reading this quote they then score it on a
5-point scale from completely agree to completely disagree.
The results of the study werent that surprising, at least not to me. African American
women reported much less internalization than the other ethnicities participating. However,
there were no ethnic differences noted in regards to attitudes towards beauty and aging. This
result supports the hypothesis that mainstream media plays a huge role in the negative
internalization of aging in regards to beauty. Although there were no prior research studies
examining this issue to compare to the consistency across the board from multiple ethnicities
suggests that there is a correlation between cultural values regardless of traditional ethnic
ideals. Due to there not being a correlation within ethnicity and viewpoints of aging, further
research should be conducted to fully analyze this hypothesis.

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Despite some of the limitations reports from the study still hold an importance for
further research. Internalization for our attitudes towards beauty as a whole and aging
appears to have a lot to do with the society we live in and less to do with our own cultural
upbringing. One could reasonably conclude that this has a large part to do with the media,
but to make such a bold statement further studies would need to be done. Prevention efforts
could be aimed at targeting our relationships between young adults and older age groups to
improve our opinions on aging and the elderly. Encouraging people at younger ages to
volunteer in nursing homes and better understanding their elder counterparts might aid in
improving negative attitudes.
The number of elder adults is going to keep increasing as we all age and the standards
of beauty praising thinness cant continue being upheld with issues of eating disorders and
plastic surgery to consider. So how is it that we as a society can gain back control for our
own internal mindsets? There have been arguments about the pink aisle and questions
regarding Barbies as toys for young girls when a Barbie has a physiologically impossible
body. Obviously we tell our daughters at a young age that theyre beautiful no matter what
size, shape, or color that they are. But children cant be forever shielded from the
pervasiveness of the media. This mindset is improving however as more and more media
outlets are using plus-size models, hiring larger actresses, and putting women of color in lead
roles in movies. Only time will tell if this issue and internalized view of attractiveness
declines, but for now we can all hope.

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References
Haboush, A., Warren, C.S., & Benuto, L. (2012). Beauty, ethnicity, and age: Does
internalization of mainstream media ideals influence attitudes towards older adults? Sex
Roles 66 (9-10), 668
676. doi 10.1007/s11199-011-0102-6.

Murrell, V.S. (2016). Gender Roles, in D.L.Winsor, V.S. Murrell, & S. Magun-Jackson
(Eds.) Lifespan development: An educational psychology perspective (3rd ed). (pp. 105113). New York: Pearson