Cultural beauty techniques

Factual Questions
1

I am a high school student from Ottawa, Ontario. Currently I am working with other students on a project about Women’s Self Image. We have to look at this topic from many different angles, one of them being cultural traditions.
I have already done some research about foot binding and indian traditions such as the bindi. I was researching neck rings when i came across an article on the topic for Straight Dope. I was hoping that maybe someone could offer further information or provide me with other ideas about different cultural traditions involving beauty or image in various and diverse cultures. They do not necessarily need to be apalling or disturbing but hopefully they’ll be interesting as well. Any help anyone could offer would be greatly appreciated. :slight_smile:

2

HI diazies, welcome to SDMB. I can’t give you any specifics on the question but I suggest you use the search function to research the message board and look in the archives to see if Cecil has written any columns that pertain to your topic.

Please be warned that some folks here get a little touchy when a posts appears to be asking for people to do your homework for you. Half the benefit of doing a research assignment is learning how to do the research yourself.

3

Sorry, bub, but when it comes to scholastic work there isn’t always a short cut, but I do have two ideas that you might be interested looking into:

  1. Check out Naomi Wolf’s “The Beauty Myth” (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385423977/o/qid=987642236/sr=2-1/107-9772080-9330151). You may not agree with pov, but it’s a starting point as far as feminist take on your issue.

  2. You may want to check out why different cultures value/fetish certain physical looks, but are not exactly extreme. For example, why Mexican, Japanese, and US-White males have their particulars ideals of beauty? Mexican men usually have a fetish for tall, light skin (not necessarily blond), with broad hips, thick legged, and large breasted women a la Nicole Smith (I notice the US media considers her fat, but in Mexico she would be an ideal fetish). Whereas, US-White men might prefer a petit, slimmer, not so thick legged woman a la Renee Zellweger (who has been lauded gaining weight and losing it back to current physical figure).

XicanoreX