Beauty standards are standards that have plagued the minds of individuals for centuries. People may struggle picking what to wear to work or school each morning, asking themselves how their body or face looks in the mirror. Yet, why do people do this? Why do people care about beauty standards?
Kate Povey, a writer at the University of Washington, defines beauty standards as “[standards that] determine what is ‘beautiful,’ from body shape to facial proportions to height and weight.”
On the other hand, students had different perceptions about what a beauty standard actually is. For example, Linganore High School (LHS) senior Savanna F. said she had no real definition of the word but had some examples: “botox and big butts.”
In contrast, LHS sophomore Felicity Schwartzback thought beauty standards were “like highlights, how people do their makeup or how people dress.”
While students can give examples of beauty standards, they may have difficulty providing a good definition? It is commonly theorized that this is because beauty standards are constantly changing due to the fact they are experiential, cultural and subjective for each person.
Some major examples of how beauty standards are different around the world come from the women of Myanmar, who are known for the bronze rings they use to elongate their necks, and the Mursi, Chai and Tirma tribes of Africa, who are known for the excessively large ceramic plates they place inside their lower lips to make them appear more beautiful.
Even with all of this information, the question remains: why do people let beauty standards control their lives? Could it be because of the influencers they are seeing everywhere online?
According to a research study conducted by the Dove Self-Esteem Project in 2024, “52% [of 1,000 girls aged 10-17] say toxic beauty advice on social media causes low self-esteem, [while] 90% of [the girls in the study] say they follow at least one social media account that makes them feel less beautiful.”
With this data, it can be assumed that social media, and influencers in general, have a strong impact on beauty standards. Influencers make people, especially teenagers, feel like they must look exactly like their favorite influencer, even if it means hurting themselves physically or mentally to obtain that image.
Linganore High School sophomore, Felicity Schwartzback said: “mentally, I have changed over the years due to beauty standards. I feel like my style has changed a lot over time. Influencers did have some impact on that because none of them dressed how I used to dress.”
Influencers like the Kardashian family, Hailey Bieber or any popular celebrity have negatively impacted beauty standards for many women and girls. However, influencers are not the only reason for this impact. The main impact of beauty standards is social media itself.
The Dove Self-Esteem Project found that 66% of the 100 female participants spent 1+ hours on social media every weekday. In addition, 71% of girls agree spending less time on social media would be better for building self-esteem.
With the prevalence of social media, one might wonder, where does artificial intelligence (AI) stand in all of this talk about beauty standards?
Darren Hornbeck, a sociology teacher at LHS, said that “people in the industry think AI is setting beauty standards back because it seems to be gravitating toward a very narrow definition of what beauty is. … I believe that AI is probably having an effect, but it’s not being used enormously.”
AI models and actors are what is meanly impacting beauty standards regarding AI specifically. According to the article “The AI Models Replacing Fashion Models And Business Models,” specifically Douglas B. Lane, a data analytics and AI strategy advisor at Forbes, many modeling agencies are starting to replace human models with AI by scanning multiple different ethnicities to create the perfect AI model.
Many sociologists fear that the use of AI actors will lead to the same outcome: many actors and models losing their jobs, while severely affecting beauty standards as a consequence by making many new beauty standards become unattainable. This is because when creating AI models, the AI takes the facial features of multiple models and creates the ideal body type and facial features of all the combined models. When they do this, it creates an unattainable model and look that no one can ever hope to achieve.
“I have seen a lot more AI models on my [Instagram] feed recently; most of the time you can tell they’re AI, but that’s just because of how ‘perfect’ they look,” says Schwartzback. “They usually have very clear skin, light eyes, and perfect hair. It makes me sometimes second-guess how I look in the mirror, and it makes me constantly start comparing myself to the model.”
As a result, many people have started to let beauty standards control how they act or what they wear, so how do we stop this control?
Some of the ways people have started to not let beauty standards impact their day-to-day life are by staying off of social media, working on improving their self-image or not caring about what the beauty standards are all together.
“No one cares what you look like, to be honest. Literally no one does as long as you have good hygiene. Just brush your teeth, brush your teeth, and bathe yourself,” Savanna F. said.
Beauty standards will always be a part of the media, but they do not have to plague individuals’ thoughts. The best advice experts provide is to just be yourself and not let social media run your life.
