Eurocentric Beauty Standards

I remember when I visited the Philippines with my family nearly a decade ago. There are clear cultural differences between a western country like Canada and an Eastern country like the Phillipines. One such difference is the beauty standards.

In the Phillipines, people are obsessed with light skin. There are ads everywhere for skin whitening products and all the attractive people on TV had light skin.

In Canada, no one cares about the fairness of your skin. I didn’t care either. But as I stayed in the Phillipines, that’s all I started to notice about others and myself.

My skin is not that dark but I started to compare myself with those actors on TV, and my skin was not as light as theres.

In western and eastern culture, there’s a clear delineation between what’s beautiful and what isn’t.

However, what’s common between the both of them is eurocentric beauty standards. That many inherent traits of white people are seen as beautiful. Pale skin, round eyes, high nosebridges are traits of white people that most cultures find beautiful. Yet, many traits of black people are not seen as beautiful.

Eurocentric beauty standards are a side effect of colonialism. They are a way of the conqueror to enforce their superiority over the conquered. This narrative has spread all over the globe and the media perpetrates this message to this day.

June 6, 2020


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