User:Aierz/Chinese ideals of female beauty

History and Cultural Ideals Of Female Beauty
The idea of beauty has changed throughout Chinese History.

In the age of god (about 3 million years 21st century BC - 21st century BC), mythical beauty was what people considered someone is beautiful. People do not judge people by their appearance but their talent and ability.

During the age of books and songs (about 11th century BC - 6th century BC), natural women (healthy and refreshing) were considered beautiful. Also, people focus only on the female's upper body, like the hand and face.

Enter the Warring States Period (770 BC - 221 BC), when a hundred schools of thought contend. Each one has its idea of beauty, but sorrowful beauty was a key among them. They all think that tragedy will happen when a women's appearance is overly beautiful. Therefore, they see outer beauty as a bad thing. As a result, people think a woman is charming when they have an excellent virtue.

Healthy beauty is the key during Qin and Han dynasties (221 BC - 220 AD). People will think women are beautiful when they are hardworking, energetic and powerful. Also, they want women to look clean and straightforward, not too feminine.

Skinny women were considered beautiful between Wei and Jin dynasties (220 AD to 589 AD). Diao Chan (In the three Kingdoms period, at the beginning of the Wei and Jin dynasties) was one of the skinny beauty representatives. She was one of The Four Beauties in Ancient Times..

Moving to the Tang dynasties (618 AD to 907 AD), people now started to think plump women were beautiful. For example, Yang Yuhuan was listed in the Four Beauties in Ancient Times due to her plump body.

Throughout Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties (960 AD to 1912 AD), morbid beauty was what people wanted. Slender, soft, weak, and mournful females are beautiful. One of the icons was Footbinding.

In the Republic of China era (1912-1949), People started to change their opinion on Chinese tradition, where sex and nudity were considered taboo. People want to feel the curvaceous form of a woman. People will think a woman with a concave and convex body is beautiful. Qipao was the best cloth to highlight women's body lines, which was very popular.

In the modern age (1949 to the current time), each area of China has their way of determining beauty; there is no stander. Moreover, with the influence of western culture, beauty has become even more diverse.

An article published in the widely circulated journal Dushu uses an earlier nativist satire to argue that women themselves voluntarily desired the beauty of small feet (footbinding) into the first decades of the twentieth century, despite the elite, male-dominated discourse of liberation and equality that assailed the practice. The reason behind that, is "While foot-binding was normal to the female lifestyle in history, foot-binding was considered as females' most natural physical behaviour, Foot-binding was as normal as eating a meal and wearing cloth; Foot-binding was a way of female pursuit for their ideal of body beauty." It will take time for people to realize Foot-binding was a harmful action since it was common sense.

After 1949, the government prohibited legal prostitution, but people still wanted to profit from it. So, they have started to use some workplaces as a guise, like karaoke clubs, saunas, nightclubs, high-end restaurants, and teahouses. Because they usually involve a private space. From the view of ordinary people, it is just a regular place, but to those who know, it is a brothel. The government has been cracking down on this kind of movement since the 80s. And many cases took place in those working areas. So, over time, people start to have a prejudice against this work. This idea has made people have a bias against women who work in those places.

The cultural idea should be known and accepted by most people, not something that only has meaning to certain people and is disgusted by others. Also, it was not stable. The political and economic background profoundly influenced the understanding of female beauty in traditional Chinese culture.

Hair
Long, straight black hair has largely been accepted by both Chinese women and men as the ideal hair in context with Chinese female beauty standards. Historically, long, straight, black hair was associated not only with beauty in the aesthetic sense, but was further related to the expectation of a virtuous woman. The ideal feminine character was simple and pure and these qualities were associated with what made long, straight, black hair beautiful.

Chinese beauty ideals related to hair and a woman's beauty were described in several ancient Chinese works of literature, such as the Shijing or the Book of Poetry. They list specific aesthetic criteria to instruct and evaluate female beauty. Among these criteria were influences of Chinese philosophy and religion such as Confucianism and Daoism. Thereby, female beauty standards were not only used to assess visual appeal but also used to predict her virtue and moral character. An ideal woman's hair was described as dark, silky, and thick, styled with fashionable hair ornaments in contrast to yellowish, dull, brittle, and unkempt hair which indicates a woman of poor moral character to be avoided by honourable men. Chinese poets during the Tang Dynasty further describe black, straight, long hair in reference to beautiful female figures, putting emphasis on the 'silky' quality as what makes it beautiful.

While naturally straight black hair and straightened black hair are often named as the ideal hair by modern Chinese women, many younger women choose to redefine the beauty standard by opting for "groomed" hairstyles by dyeing, permanently curling, or shortening their hair.

Eyes
Slim eyes were depicted positively in Chinese visual media, such as paintings and sculptures, until the transition of favouring Western aesthetics of female beauty due to colonization and cross-cultural merging. Western aesthetics of female beauty include wide-open eyes and double eyelids which became highly valued in Chinese female beauty standards.

A study from the Aesthetic Surgery Journal accessed both Chinese and non-Chinese observers to determine whether double-eyelid blepharoplasty enhanced Chinese ideals of female beauty. This study was conducted through the observers ranking nineteen edited photographs of women of Chinese descent. The editing process used computer software to alter the placement of low, medium, and high upper eyelid creases on each photograph. The results were that both Chinese and non-Chinese observers found the medium upper eyelid crease the most attractive, while the absent upper eyelid crease the least attractive.

Beauty products such as double-eyelid tape (eyelid glue) have been typically used to create the effect of a double-eyelid on a monolid. The most common demographic to use these products are people of East Asian descent. A study from the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health researched the effects of long term use of double-eyelid tape. Results from twenty-nine adult women with single-eyelids concluded that double-eyelid tape poses no threat to anterior ocular health, but users and care practitioners should be aware of potential implications in long term use.

Skin Tone
Skin tone in Chinese ideals of female beauty has historically favoured lighter skin. This preference dates back early as the Han Dynasty, which controlled China from 206 B.C. – 220 A.D. During this time, a woman's skin tone was known to directly indicate social class. The majority of lower class women worked outside in the fields, which lead to more sun exposure. The average skin tone was darker due to increased melanin in the skin. Upper class women stayed indoors, and used items such as parcels for protection from the sun, which resulted in a lighter skin tone. Lighter skin tone in Chinese women became a symbol of beauty, social prestige, and escape from physical labour. Modern ideals of Chinese female beauty still remain the same, perhaps even more so, due to the rapid urbanization in China. In his article,White Skin, Large Breasts: Chinese Beauty Product Advertising as Cultural Discourse, Perry Johansson argues that manual labour jobs and working outside in China are looked down upon, and are often refused by middle class workers in fear of "losing their newly acquired status" as a lighter skin populace.

The Asia-Pacific region has become the world's largest market for skin-whitening products. Various products include cleansers, creams, serums, injections and pills which claim to reduce melanin in the skin. Skin-whitening products advertise fairer-skin as the desired look to achieve. Typically, the "before" image is a woman of a darker skin tone, and the "after" image is a much lighter skin tone. Many argue that the history of colonialism and racism has played a role in determining light skin as the beauty standard. Using skin whitening products can come with high risk side effects in long term use. An active ingredient in some skin-whitening products is mercury (element), which has been known to cause serious psychiatric, neurological, and kidney problems. As such, certain skin-whitening products are allowed and others are banned in different countries due to possible harmful ingredients.

Body Type
According to Confucian and Daoist aesthetic criteria during the Han dynasty, "young, small, slim but fleshy" bodies were seen as most beautiful, indicating that the aesthetic expectation was for a woman to neither be too much or too little in her physical appearance. In the Tang Dynasty, women who were plump and round were considered beautiful because of the cultural association with health and opulence. In later periods following the Tang dynasty the plump body was replaced by a slim and slender body as the ideal. A study from 2016 asking female college-aged students from Shanghai about contemporary and traditional beauty standards revealed that 65.4% of participants consider a slim body as the contemporary ideal body type in China. In contrast, 74.6% of the research participants consider a 'fat' body type as ideal in terms of traditional beauty standards with reference to the Tang dynasty.

The modern ideal body type that is most commonly seen in Chinese culture is a woman who is tall and thin. Long legs, small waist, and dainty hands are considered beautiful and desired by many Chinese women. There have been recent viral trends in the social media app such as TikTok, of which involves challenges to measure one's beauty. For example, The Chinese Language Institute released an article about TikTok beauty challenges in China. Challenges such as the "collarbone challenge", the "A4 waist challenge" and the "iPhone 6 challenge" garnered criticism online for its promotion of unhealthy and unattainable body sizes for women.

Diet culture
Beginning with the industrialization and more recently due to globalization many Chinese women who were confronted with both traditional beauty expectations and foreign anglo-saxon beauty ideals choose to go on diets and nutritional restrictive programs in order to accomplish what they think to be the ideal body. When China implemented the "open-door policy" in 1978 and subsequently experienced rapid industrial growth during the 1980s and first spark of eating disorders among the Chinese female population was observed. Disordered eating practices and negative body image emerged consistently during the 1990s with 0.43% of the population being affected and increased exponentially with 17% being affected in 2009.