Mihalis Sourgiadakis
Prof. Helm
12/3/2024
Women have always been held to an unrealistic beauty standard that others never are. This is because men are supposedly meant to do all the physical and laborious duties while women are supposed to take more of a support role. This is something that has radically changed in the United States with women having a lot more freedom in the last century, but this isn’t so apparent in other countries around the world. Beauty standards are something that have accompanied the suppression of women throughout the ages, whether they be royalty, middle class, or peasants. Men are almost never held to the standard of beauty, or any standard that deeply traps them in that concept. Even though feminist movements have gotten a lot stronger and bigger, women are still held to an unrealistic beauty standard that is apparent in today’s media culture especially in Blue Eyed Samurai by Amber Noizumi and Throne Of Blood by Akira Kurosawa, that men are not held to.
In Blue Eyed Samurai by Amber Noizumi, the main character is a female named Mizu, but she is not portrayed as a female until later. Mizu is shown killing people, winning fights against multiple men, and even being assertive enough to get information out of them. When she is thought to be a man, she is neither held to any sort of beauty standard by the audience, or even the characters themselves in the show. Her main caretaker, the sword maker even states, “Quiet! You came to me as a stupid lost boy. If you insist on leaving now, it will be as a stupid lost man.” when Mizu is most likely going to tell him that she is a female. This shows that it’s only when her femininity comes up is when she would be held to any sort of restraint or standard. The red light district women, who are only seen for their beauty, are attempting to get anybody they can in order to get money, they aren’t discriminating against looks at all. However, when the audience finally finds out the Mizu is female is when all the opinions and weight of beauty come into play. Mizu seemed like a strong warrior that was the bravest character, but as soon as her being a woman is revealed, she seems to abruptly gain all these problems, especially on her appearance. Her eyes are something that nobody in the show likes because they symbolize the infection of American men in the blood of the Japanese. When she first used her eyes it was to scare/intimidate people and nobody really cared about it appearance wise, until she was confirmed a female. When she is shown to be female, the audience starts getting more of her memories that show her being held to the beauty standards and how she will never meet them no matter what she does. This would matter less if she were a man because men are able to do all sorts of different jobs, especially during this time period while women only have a select few. The film Mulan by Disney shows a very similar story, as both characters are trying to erase their femininity and beauty to be able to do what they think is right. Both these shows are placed in the past, but the fact that beauty standards trap women in an unattainable prison is still very relevant to today’s media. In today’s media, beauty is not only seen as something that portrays purity and grace, it’s also seen as evil and manipulative. Women are meant to be as beautiful as possible but not too beautiful because then they are using it to corrupt the men around them. A more recent piece of work that falls within the last century is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald which truly portrays women as needing to be beautiful enough to survive, and yet it sometimes causes their demise if they try too hard. Gatsby states, “Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crêpe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering.” regarding Myrtle’s attempt at being as beautiful as possible, which in the end, caused her death.
Lady Asaji Washizu from Throne Of Blood by Akira Kurosawa is also subjected to a cruel fate because of her passion to survive. Washizu tried to have her husband do everything she wanted through making herself as beautiful as possible while also being as small as possible. It seemed to be working, and yet even though she tried too hard to use the system in her favor, she still failed while other male characters were able to escape death and even get an opposing army to go against her all because they were male. When things started going wrong was when Wahizu started becoming a bigger figure and was dismissing her image of being the small supporting wife. She was the one putting the weapons in peoples hands, she was killing people, and she was planning all while disregarding the importance of her beauty and frailty to keep her safe. Nobody ever questioned her husband Taketoki Washizu in any aspect, especially not beauty. Taketoki had a mental breakdown which made his image look horrible in front of everyone and yet everyone still went to war for him without question. He was never trapped by the concept of beauty, or any concept to be perfectly honest. When some women in film abandon the beauty standards that people try to trap them in, they usually suffer greatly. Washizu definitely felt the bad side effects of abandoning her beauty while somebody like Mulan from Disney managed to benefit from it. Mulan even stated, “The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all” showing that she believed she was benefiting from doing what she did and it made her a better person. Mulan was able to completely hide her beauty by doing things like chopping her hair off, hiding her breasts, and changing her voice to sound like a man. All of this was done in order for Mulan to protect her family and take her future into her own hands. She managed to succeed in the end, but on her journey she was still trapped by what a woman should be. She needed to hide everything that made her feminine, she had to bathe when no one else would, and she had to do a bunch of things in secret. When she was eventually found out she was greatly shunned upon until she proved herself worthy, which no woman would probably ever get the chance to do.
Even in a different time period and place on the earth, women like Cleopatra are always just diminished to nothing more than how beautiful they looked. Both Mulan and Mizu hid the fact that they were women in order to gain power while Cleopatra didn’t hide her femininity and fought with it. She knew how to speak 8 different languages, which barely anyone knew how to speak any more than one, and wrote medical prescriptions for her people. Cleopatra was one of the greatest leaders of Egypt and was one of the smartest minds the world has seen. However, all of her achievements are constantly being disregarded now as she is just diminished to her so-called beauty. The man who managed to conquer Cleopatra, Augustus, wrote things about her that basically just amounted to her beauty and that she used that, and only that, to make it to the top. Augustus even went as far as to depict Cleopatra as an evil foreign temptress with ambition for war with Rome. Even though society today has access to so much technology and a simple google search would show all of her achievements, most people still believe that she just used her beauty to gain power. Great leaders like Cleopatra and people from mainstream media like Mizu are going to be trapped by the beauty standard the world has created.
Thankfully, some media today are starting to break free from beauty standards and have started to embrace unique features that anybody can have, but it’s still not enough. In order for a show to be successful the majority of the audience that has been built up needs to find the characters attractive. It doesn’t really matter if they have a gorgeous singing voice, or if they are a perfect actor, or the most talented painter, they are always trapped by the fact that what they were born with will define them. The concept of unique characteristics is something that people are always saying needs to be pushed forward, but in some aspects the beauty standards are also getting worse. Society likes to believe that having one person who breaks the stereotypical beauty standard is enough and gets mad when more than one person who doesn’t meet that standard is casted. Having at least one diverse member in the cast is an improvement, but it needs to keep pushing forward, especially in the United States. The U.S. is a boiling pot of all different cultures where a lot of different ethnicities live. Having somebody on a screen that looks exactly like them is so important to breaking free from the beauty standard of being a skinny, white, blue eyed, blond person. By creating more representation for people all over the world, not just America, that’s how the beauty standard will be broken.
The concept of beauty that women are being held to hasn’t really changed at all. Women are still held to things like their weight, hair, height, voice, and skin while men aren’t really held to anything regarding their bodies by society. Trans people and nonbinary people are also still held to the standard of “women” even if that is not who they are either. Characters from mainstream media like Mizu and Mulan aren’t there to exactly break the beauty standard, they are mostly there to wake people up to the fact that it isn’t helping anyone. In conclusion, the beauty standard women are held to hasn’t really changed at all, the media is attempting to wake women, and men, up to the fact that holding the entire female population to these standards is just hurting everyone, not just them.
Citation:
Kurosawa, Akira. Throne of Blood. Brandon Films, 1957.
Zwick, Edward. The Last Samurai. Warner Bros., 2003.
Bancroft, Tony, and Barry Cook. Mulan. Buena Vista Pictures, 1998.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 1896-1940. The Great Gatsby. New York :C. Scribner’s sons, 1925
“Augustan Propaganda after the Battle of Actium.” Digital Exhibition of Cleopatra VII, 26 Apr. 2021, cleopatradigitized.wordpress.com/cleopatra-and-augustan-propaganda-after-the-battle-of-actium/#:~:text=In%20particular%2C%20Augustus%20stressed%20that,ambition%20for%20war%20with%20Rome.
Sprockets and Springes 