Aesthetic violence: what is it and how does it affect self-esteem and society?

Aesthetic violence is one of the social phenomena that most affects women.

There are many ways in which violence is applied to women, one of them being the imperative to achieve unattainable standards of beauty.

Women, and men too but to a much lesser extent, are pressured to modify their appearance in order to achieve a beauty that is arbitrary, the product of silent social consensus.

Aesthetic violence translates into excessive pressure for people, especially women, to fit the imposed canon of beauty, even if it means putting themselves at risk.even if this means putting their physical and mental health at risk. Let's look at this concept in more depth.

What is aesthetic violence?

Aesthetic violence can be understood as the social pressure to comply with a certain aesthetic prototype at all costs, even when achieving this meet a certain aesthetic prototype at all costs, even when achieving it poses some risk to the person's mental and physical health.. This violence is especially exercised towards women, who are the ones who are most pressured to undergo invasive aesthetic modifications in order to achieve beauty standards that, in most cases, are impossible.

This is a novel concept, but it has been historically applied. There has not been a time in history when aesthetic violence has not been exercised in one form or another. There have been many imaginaries of beauty in Western history, represented in the Greco-Roman venus, the medieval madonnas, the Renaissance venus, the voluptuous women of the Baroque... Different models but, in most cases, their background was the idea that feminine beauty was to be young, white and slim.

It is precisely this relatively recent concept that Esther Pineda, PhD in sociology, discusses in her book "Bellas para morir: estereotipos de género y violencia estética contra la mujer" (Beautiful to die: gender stereotypes and aesthetic violence against women). In it she describes how the canons of beauty have exercised a violence that, although silent and apparently harmless, has marked the body and mind of women throughout the history of the world. throughout the history of Western culture.

Being such a new conception, aesthetics is not as recognized as other forms of violence, nor does it have much social visibility. But despite their ignorance, the truth is that girls and women, even at an early age, are exposed to a certain ideal of beauty and are made to believe that they must achieve it in order to succeed in life. Physical appearance in the female gender has become a fundamental pillar to achieve if one wants to be successful in life.

Taking care of one's appearance is an obligation to show how feminine and valid one is. This means that women who do not conform to certain stereotypes of beauty imposed by society will be questioned and their worth will be questioned. will be questioned and their worth will be called into question.. In fact, they can even be removed from certain social scenarios for not meeting certain aesthetic expectations, being a very clear example of this how overweight women are.

The discrimination of the beauty canon

Esther Pineda argues that aesthetic violence is based on four main forms of discrimination: sexism, racism, gerontophobia and fatphobia.

The beauty canon is sexist because it is demanded almost exclusively of women and is considered an inherent and inherent condition. and is considered an inherent and defining condition of their femininity. While in women beauty increases their femininity, in the case of men it is perceived as diminishing their masculinity. For men, there is not such an intense demand for beauty and, in certain circles, a man taking care of himself is frowned upon and taken as a sign of weakness (for example, metrosexuality, depilation, use of creams...).

Beauty stereotypes are gerontophobic because there is a complete rejection of the idea of old age.. Women with almost neonatal features, absence of defects associated with old age such as wrinkles or skin blemishes, are preferred. Youth is overvalued. The female beauty canon has made women obsessed with staying young. Youth is a prerequisite for being considered beautiful.

The beauty canon is racist because, at least in the Western case, it has been constituted on the basis of whiteness.. Black, Asian, Arab, indigenous and, in short, non-Caucasian light-skinned women have been made invisible in the beauty canon. Skin, hair and other features that were not properly "white" have been the object of derision, discrimination, exclusion and violence.

And it is also is fat-phobic because the beauty canon systematically and explicitly rejects large body proportions.. Leaving aside the debate of the medical problems involved in obesity, relating it to beauty is a fact that people with large body sizes have faced stigma, discrimination and contempt from society.

Today, there are two canons of beauty there are two canons of beauty. On the one hand we have the voluptuous and eroticized pin-ups and on the other hand we have the extremely thin models. Both canons are spread by all kinds of media, such as cinema, television, advertising, magazines, social networks and pornography. Even cartoons and video games bombard boys and girls with what prototypically perfect women look like.

Due to the scope of the contents where female beauty canons are bombarded, not conforming to them is socially perceived as an enabler of violence, discrimination, rejection, contempt and indifference to women who are simply not "perfect". Moreover, aesthetic violence is exercised in such a way that women are pressured to avoid falling into ugliness, understood as being fat, having a dark skin tone and showing the signs of old age.

But aesthetic violence is not only inflicted on women who do not comply with the canons of beauty, but also on those who have been those who have been forced to undergo cosmetic operations and interventions.. Also with those who suffer from disorders associated with such standards, such as anorexia, the result of wanting to achieve extreme thinness and fear of getting fat promoted by the media. Aesthetic violence further sexualizes women, objectifies them and discards them as thinking beings. They are a pretty package, not a person with their intelligence, thoughts and emotions.

Beauty endangers our health

Naturally, wanting to look good is not something exclusive to women. Everyone wants to look good and, to a greater or lesser extent, men are also subject to aesthetic pressure.. In the same way that in Western societies there are beauty standards for women, there are also standards for men, the prototype of the ideal man being a muscular man, neither extremely thin nor obese.

However, the aesthetic pressure to which women have been subjected throughout Western history is much greater than that of men. Moreover, the reason why we talk about aesthetic violence against women and not so much against men is that women have been forced to put their lives at risk in order to look beautiful. What must be understood, after all, is that the concept of "looking good" is learnedThere is no natural canon of beauty but a series of social agreements to define who is beautiful and who is not, agreements that may go against human nature.

An example of this is female hair removal. Although progress has been made in this area, today there are still many people who perceive unshaven women as "sluts". If you are a woman, having hair on your body, especially underarms, is perceived as a lack of hygiene. This perception is radically different in the case of men with body hair, which is seen as normal and their hygiene is never questioned.

Is the imposition of depilation as a woman a sign of aesthetic violence? Yes, it is. It is asking women to do something that, in Biological terms, goes against their nature. Body hair is there naturally and shaving it seems to involve more health risks than benefits, including getting wounds and infections.

What does the perfect woman look like?

The female beauty canon in Western societies imposes the following image of what an attractive, beautiful, perfect woman is. She should be slim, but shapely. Her skin should be soft, smooth and white. She must be tall enough to look good in clothes, but proportionate in her volumes so as not to intimidate men and she must never, ever be taller than her male partner. Of course, she must be completely depilated.

The proportion of the nose, mouth, eyes... the shape of the hips, of the buttocks, how the hair should be... There are many imperatives that Western societies have seen fit to establish as indicators of a woman's beauty.. We could go on and on with an immense list outlining what a perfect woman is. But perfection does not exist, it is only an illusion product of conventionalisms.

We could go on describing and we would never really finish specifying what it means to be a perfect woman in our society. There are women who, apparently, get it as soon as they are born, who have had the enormous luck to inherit the golden genes that catapult them towards aesthetic perfection but that will not be perpetual. For others not so fortunate, it will take them a lifetime to approach that canon of beauty that has been shoehorned into their heads and that they feel they do not meet, and therefore are not valid.

Aesthetic violence is an attack against the diversity of bodies and the right to treat oneself well. The canons of beauty and the media's bombardment of them make us feel bad for not being like them. People are diverse in body and mind, pretending to standardize this reality is going against human nature. We must normalize bodily diversity, understand that each body is different and that, as long as we remain healthy, we must accept what nature has given us.

Aesthetic violence tries to harm us just for the mere fact of being the way we are.. We must understand that the canon of beauty is so artificial and unattainable for any mortal that no matter how much we operate, make up or depilate we will never fully live up to it, which is absurdly difficult to achieve. And if we consider that we are up to it, that aesthetic violence makes sure to pressure us to fear that we "spoil", makes us have a pathological fear of gaining weight, gaining wrinkles and gray hair. It makes us afraid to go on living.

• Related article, "Do you really know what self-esteem is?"

Be how you want to be

If we use aesthetics for pleasure, making up, waxing, operating because we and we want, it is totally legitimate. No matter how invasive the practice is to be more beautiful, if we have voluntarily decided to submit to it, it's okay.. Everyone can do what they want with their body. Be how you want to be, you are free to do so and no one should tell you otherwise.

But let it be real freedom. If we worry a lot about how we look because we feel that if we do not comply with a beauty canon we are less valid or people will like us less, our decisions about our aesthetic appearance are not the result of freedom, but of slavery to those beauty canons. If we go to the surgeon because we are repulsed by the way we look, there is a problem that the scalpel will never solve.