Beauty of Women and Womens’ Rights

Abstract

The ideal body and beauty of a “universal” and “world” woman has defined and standardized as slim, tall, fair, blonde, blue-eyed, etc. by the global media. Through out the world women are so much concern of their beauty and the body. The capitalist society is manufacturing beauty queens; it creates competition within one’s own territory using definitions of ideal femininity/womanliness. This study mainly focused on the social impact of beauty pageants held locally and internationally and on women programmes which promote beauty of a woman. The global market has been promoting the concept of “fairness”, targeting the women who are having dark complexion, and ultimately fairness becomes an ideal type'Of the beauty of a woman. Nowadays even for the marriage and for some special professions such as airhostess, receptionist, society preferred this ideal model. Matrimonial pages in Sunday newspapers in Sri Lanka and India are the one of the good evidences which proved how the fairness becomes important when choosing a bride, especially in South Asian countries. Some of the data which have gathered through advertisements telecast on Sri Lankan television and Indian TV channels also proved that most of the cosmetics promote so called beauty of a woman. Therefore, it is not a gift of nature; it could be manufactured through these productions. Her nature of beauty is defined by the patriarchal society and its culture. Based on that this study concludes beauty pageants are one of the main sources which highlight beauty of women and lead the global market to get women as their main consumers. These pageants make women as a separate group within its homogeneity group and results of which create new issue within the same group. Beauty pageants become a public domain for auctioning the beauty of women. Therefore, this socially constructed beauty of woman becomes a dominant concept in the society and the concept of “beauty” dehumanizes women as a group further marginalizing from their rights.