Body Piece: The Social Exploitation of the Body

Be A Body

Perception is the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses.  It is the state of being or process of becoming aware of something through the senses. It is a way of regarding, understanding, or interpreting something through the senses. Perception is a mental impression. It is recognition, conception, cognizance. Perception is the membrane that, through osmosis, one comes to understand, interpret, interact with the world around and within them, and it is impossible to do so in a world without them. Perception is completely contingent upon there being a subject and an observer; it cannot exist in a singularity. Therefore perception is a subjective practice that is definitive of life itself -- fluid, transient, chaotic. It is through our human form that we perceive the world around us and without this vehicle for consciousness, there would be no litmus test for that which we celebrate or denigrate. 

It is through our senses that we determine that which we value and that which we reject for whatever reason, and this is what spurs on evolution -- our value system. What stays and what goes? One might argue that hierarchy is a natural result of perception, a logical reaction to outer stimuli as we interact with it. What brings us pleasure? What brings us pain? How do we prioritize such things in our world? In an ideal world where creatures have yet to reach the level of consciousness that we have today, we naturally fall in line with that which is deemed for us by activating our serotonin. We shy away from those things that raise our cortisol levels. In this less than ideal world in which we live-- fraught with unjust hierarchies rooted in absurd and erroneous assumptions, plagued by an enormous disparity in resources and quality of life, belabored by oppressive systems -- few of us can easily escape the asphyxiating weight of those things that seek to destroy us because it is built into the exploitative systems that govern our lives. We are forced to live within the perilous framework of a society that seeks our destruction, keeping us alive only enough to sustain its own vampiric siphoning of our life force.

We are the compilation of the world around us; the perfect amalgam of our learned behaviors and innate nature; the projection of many lives that have happened, that are happening, that will happen eternally-- an astrophysiological fact. We are each extraordinary specimen, to be examined through the contextual lens of our personal sagas. And while each of us is unique, with a singular story that can never be recreated, there are aspects of each of us that tether us to other individuals. We are tied to those who have similar stories and experiences; those whose identifying characteristics may be the same as ours; those who have been impacted by the world in the same ways as we have. Those similarities may be language, sexual preference, religion, education level, class status, ethnic heritage. They are the totems of Self around which we coalesce, forming the basis of our communities. What is community if not a grouping of people sharing beliefs, values, norms, and material conditions that create a common identity? In other words, what is a community without its culture. 

Body Politick

Our bodies are, of course, highly politicized; whilst we might like to think that we own and have control of our own bodies and what we do with them -- we do not. This fact has perhaps become most strikingly evident as a result of feminist analyses of the ways in which medicine has controlled the bodies of women (Martin 1989; Oakley 1993). It is also evident in contemporary debates on topics such as euthanasia, organ transplantation, and abortion (Nettleton 2013). 

While the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries provided humankind a great many technological luxuries, it also robbed the world of much more than it gave. In order for capitalism-- the system of private ownership that is based on the misinterpretation of dualism that requires the falsehood of scarcity in order to exploit the myth surplus-- to work, someone or something must always be being exploited. Someone or something must always be going without vital components of its existence. The Industrial Revolution may have created mass production, but it also catalyzed globalization, which has had a devastating environmental impact on the planet. It has resulted in the creation of what was once known as “the third world” but is now called “the global south”-- those developing nations that were ravaged by colonialism and imperialism. Technology, especially information technology, has advanced at an aggressively exponential rate with absolutely no regard to the natural order that exists on Earth, the result of which is a dying planet that has experienced some of the worst natural disasters in our shared story. Human interactions with the planet and our ecosystem are without conscious understanding of balance-- it is in fact spurred by creating and acquiring more capital, which opposes balance. 

Henri Lefebvre argued that capitalism increasingly commodified space, which was produced through economic inequality. On a microcosmic level, our individual environments operate as spaces for our inner lives to be projected; our inner worlds are spaces in and of themselves. This is what B. S. Turner referred to as a somatic society in his book The Body and Society, defining these political preoccupations as “how to regulate the spaces between bodies, to monitor the interfaces between bodies, societies and cultures”  (Nettleton 2013). If space is created by economic inequality and exploited through commodification, so too are we. For us to collectively be so out of touch with the world around us-- a system that prefaces and also is made complete by our existence-- we must then be as out of sync with our bodies, the very vehicles that allow for us to acquire experiential, sensory insight. Without our bodies, we could not interact with the material world that we inhabit. For this reason, those plutocrats that seek to rob us of our essence for their own selfish gain have ensured the mass loss of sensitivity that allows such violence through practices such as the rapid advancement of our social construction of time, distancing us from the fruits of our labor, and encouraging discord among us. We hardly conceive of the horrors befalling us when so much changes in the blink of an eye, when we are distracted by celebrities or atrocities that we feel powerless against, when we are barely dragging our beaten and broken down bodies against the floor of our emotional sea just to get by day to day. Having fallen under the illusion of powerlessness that has been cast by the psychotic elite, hellbent on the destruction of life on Earth, humankind has been turned into a race of slaves, poisoned by the tenets of a system founded on racism, sexism, ageism, transphobia, homophobia, and other abominations spread by colonialism and imperialism. It is from these ideological ailments that we see disease become the norm. 

“Healthcare is the maintenance or improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of illness, injury, disease, and other physical or mental impairments. Healthcare includes dentistry, psychology, nursing, medicine, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and more. Access to healthcare varies across countries, municipalities, and individuals and is largely influenced by economic and social factors ("Best Healthcare In The World 2019").” According to a 2015 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, America lags terrifically behind most other developed nations-- a far cry from our self-imposed title of being ‘the best’. “Life expectancy in the United States is lower than in most other OECD countries for several reasons,” the report states, “including poorer health-related behaviours and the highly fragmented nature of the US health system”. Other reasons for America ranking number 26 out of 34 developed nations in terms of life expectancy include but are certainly not limited to the fact that “Americans eat more, take more legal and illegal drugs and are more likely to die in traffic accidents or be murdered, researchers found” (Fox 2013). In 2019, the United States ranks 37 out of 100 nations in terms of quality health care ("Best Healthcare In The World 2019"), falling unfortunately short in regards to having “a steady financing mechanism, a properly-trained and adequately-paid workforce, well-maintained facilities, and access to reliable information to base decisions on”-- all things the World Health Organization deems necessary to the functionality of a healthcare system (“Best Healthcare In The World 2019”). According to a 2018 article published by Business Insider, “US investments in healthcare and education haven't changed much in the last three decades — and it's putting the country far behind its peers, according to a new study from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington (Bendix 2018).” Since the time that that article was published in 2018 the US has fallen from 27 down 10 spots!

America is also experiencing an unprecedented obesity epidemic, with 68.8% of American adults being considered overweight or obese ("Health at a Glance 2015: How does the United States compare?"). According to the OECD’s website as of December 2019, that rate has gone up to 71% of the population over the age of 15 ("United States - OECD Data" 2018). In a fat phobic society wherein the obesity epidemic has been so sensationalized in the news to heighten hysteria and vitriolic attitudes towards larger people, studies have shown that fat people are stigmatized as unattractive, out of control, lazy, gross, dishonest, and less than human. 30 million Americans are documented as having eating disorders. Women who are considered “fat” are derided as being unattractive based solely on their weight, perceived as having low self-esteem due to their size, and subsequently being more easily persuaded into situations of promiscuity than their smaller counterparts. The rate of people being considered overweight is framed by the white supremacist, hetero-patriarchal ideals of American physicality. What is truly excessive in a system in which social norms are created to marginalize people? It is hardly the first time America has weaponized its warped science against people, and who better than to other through bodily castigation than people of color and women? The issue is not as simple as obesity, which is only symptomatic of a deeper, more far-reaching problem. The issue is the American lifestyle itself, and the idea that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

The US healthcare system performs “very well” in providing acute care for people admitted to hospital for life-threatening, emergency conditions such as heart attack, but is clearly lacking in preventing hospital admissions for people with chronic conditions, such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or diabetes. While the US is doing a superb job at keeping people alive when in critical condition, preventative healthcare is all but nonexistent ("Health at a Glance 2015: How does the United States compare?"). In this uber-capitalist Western nation, revenues generated from keeping people addicted to insidious drugs like sugar, caffeine, preservatives, and myriad other toxic chemicals replicates the system tremendously. People live painful and toilsome lives, their health in an acidic limbo long enough to generate income for the wealthy. When it is time to die, that, too, is capitalized upon. These illnesses that ravage the nation have costly remedies that beget a slew of other maladies, and the inappropriately named healthcare system lines the pockets of the elite. It is worth noting that food and drug standards set by the federal agency, the Food & Drug Administration are perilously low compared to other developed nations. The system isn’t broken. It operates exactly how it was created to-- at the expense of the common person.

The system that the OECD cites as “fractured” is divided by public and private healthcare, prioritizing the contents of people’s bank accounts before their health. Effective healthcare is widely inaccessible but under the Affordable Care Act enacted in 2010, all American citizens were required to be insured or be taxed. In this thread of logic, the inability to have access to quality healthcare was not punishment enough for those who already are most susceptible to the most violent effects of falling ill; they must now pay for their poverty. This is a continuation of the lunacy that is fining poor people for being poor, a means to the end of keeping poor people locked in the vicious cycle of poverty. 

Those who do have health insurance often don’t fare too much better, especially when it comes to services that providers deem unnecessary. Many health insurance policies do very little to cover mental health, which underscores the serious mental health crisis that America finds itself in. According to a 2012 article by Sarah Kliff about America’s mental health-care system published by The Washington Post, The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated in 2010 that the country had 156,300 mental health counselors, with 89.3 million Americans living in federally-designated Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas; 34 million more than those living in similarly-designated primary-care shortage areas and double the amount living dental health shortage areas. 45% of people who suffer from untreated mental illness cite cost as the main barrier. Federal researchers cite that “even though the majority of adults have some form of health insurance coverage, there are significant limitations on coverage for mental health services (Kliff 2019).” Only 5.6% of national health-care spending goes to mental health, and at least 60% of that goes to prescription drugs and outpatient treatment.

Mental Illness as Physical Illness

Institutional obstruction of health is not limited to the medical industry. We are indoctrinated into bodily dissociation every day through other agents of socialization such as media. It is through the proliferation of unattainable standards of being that we come to understand that the value of our physical bodies is quantifiable, and in that categorization of humanity, generally worthless. If we fall short of the illogical standards for what is desirable, we ourselves are then void of value, useless to the collective, and much easier to abuse. 

Identity politics serve as a fertile ground for derision and confusion, distracting people with inconsequential cultural differences in order to maintain the bloated paradigm of imbalance that exists today. The body goes from being a vehicle for observational knowledge to being a weapon used against its own sovereign by vicious maniacs. “For most sociologists the body is to a greater or lesser extent socially constructed. However, there are a number of variants of this view with some arguing that the body is simply a fabrication -- an effect of its discursive context, and others maintaining that bodies display certain characteristics (e.g. mannerisms, gait, shape) which are influenced by social and cultural factors (Nettleton 2013).” We become so obsessed with the material in ways that deny and belittle our true nature as people whose depth goes far beyond that facile space of superficial interaction that it consumes us, becoming a lifelong self-obsession that depletes us, annihilating any quality of life regardless of our socioeconomic status.

What is it, then? What is The Look that is rewarded in society, The Look that we are all encouraged to conform to on pain of ostracization? The Look is transient and ever-changing to suit the shifting ideals of a youth obsessed, pedophilic culture that fetishizes and sexualizes those most vulnerable while simultaneously exalting those aesthetics that are least attainable. The Look is ubiquitous. The Look is plastered on magazine covers the world over, broadcasted on social media and websites throughout the cyber realms, as seen on TV. And as with everything as seen on TV, The Look can be yours at a price. In 2015 alone, there were 279,143 breast augmentations, 222,051 liposuctions, and 217,979 nose reshaping surgeries performed in the United States of America. With more and more people keeping up with the Kardashians every year, those numbers have soared to more than 1.8 million cosmetic surgical procedures performed in 2018 according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Breast augmentation rose to 313,735 procedures; liposuction rose to 258,558 procedures; nose reshaping rose to 213,780 procedures; eyelid surgery dropped to 206,529 procedures; and tummy tucks remained steady at 130,081 procedures (EurekAlert 2019).

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The price paid isn’t just financial, nor is it as quick as plastic surgery. “In the United States, 20 million women and 10 million men suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder at some time in their life, including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder or EDNOS (EDNOS is now recognized as OSFED, other specified feeding or eating disorder, per the DSM-V) (Mental Health America).”  The Look of international fashion models may not be completely to blame, but it plays a huge role. The average height of a female model falls between 5’8” and 6’0”. Their average weights are anywhere between 90 and 120 lbs. It is well known that the industry widely uses editing software to glamorize the images of models, but the reality of the lie that is The Look is much more insidious than that. In a 2012 survey conducted by the Model Alliance, 64.1% of models responded that their agencies had asked them to lose weight. 48.7% of models admitted to doing “fasts”, cleanses, or otherwise restrict their food intake over short periods to lose weight. 31.2% have had eating disorders, and 68.3% of models confirmed that they suffered from anxiety and/or depression (“Industry Analysis”). 

While the fashion industry continually says that female models are waifs in order to project them as human hangers—which is dehumanizing in and of itself—the masses of consumers that are interested in and buy the wares produced by this industry are not seeing it as such. The old proverb “monkey see, monkey do” applies to homo sapiens as well, a fact that industry leaders are not ignorant of. It is but a sorry excuse put forth by a notably elitist industry that revels in its exclusivity, an exclusivity which only makes for an incestuous lack of innovation upon a standard that needs serious examination. The lack of diversity and outright racism and misogyny of the industry has come under fire more and more in the past few years, with platforms such as Diet Prada inseminating our newsfeeds with inflammatory information about the unethical and immoral happenings within one of the most environmentally destructive, wasteful industries in existence. Women are not hangers. Women are not objects at all. Women are living, breathing human beings, something that is purposefully forgotten in the hetero-patriarchy that commodifies the body as capital.

“Eating disorders are real, complex medical and psychiatric illnesses ("Eating Disorders: Mental Health America")”. They are not rooted in one’s eating habits, but in one’s thought patterns. Eating disorders are bio-psycho-social diseases; they are deeper than simple fads, phases or lifestyle choices. People struggling with an eating disorder often become obsessed with food, body image and/or weight. To write off an eating disorder as anything less is to, in essence, ignore a serious, life-threatening illness that can and often does lead to death. According to the DSM-V, anorexia, one of the most common eating disorders, is “persistent restriction of energy intake leading to significantly low body weight (in context of what is minimally expected for age, sex, developmental trajectory, and physical health)("DSM-5 Eating Disorders")”. It also has the highest fatality rate of any mental illness, with at least 4% of sufferers dying due to complications with the disease, and as little as one third of sufferers seeking help and rehabilitation ("Eating Disorder Statistics for Anorexia, Bulimia, Binge Eating").

There are so many eating disorders outside of the commonly known ones, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Some of them are overlooked as odd but innocuous behavior that are relatively commonplace, however that which is commonplace in a system structured around human destruction is most probably destructive. Overindulgence may well be an American past-time, especially for men. Overeating and binge eating are considered disordered eating practices. “Other food-related disorders, like avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, body image disorders, and food phobias, are becoming more and more commonly identified (Lyness 2019).” 

If the major disorders are being ignored, marginalized, and trivialized at this level, it is fair to fear for those suffering from lesser known disorders such as orthorexia-- an obsession with eating only foods that one deems healthy. Due to the toxic nature of our relationships with bodies in general, it is easy to disguise and disregard such mental illnesses. Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), which is characterized by obsessive, distressing thoughts concerning parts of one’s body that are perceived to be “ugly” ("Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD)"). This disorder, while mental, can cross into an eating disorder very easily. Obsessive behavior is excessive and characterizes unhealthy thought patterns that can be detrimental to one’s well-being.  

Body Dysmorphic Disorder affects 1.7% to 2.4% of the general population, meaning that 1 in 50 people in America are diagnosed as having BDD; in other words, that equates to between 5 million and 7.5 million people in America (Phillips). BDD is often paired with other mental illnesses centered in obsession such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety disorder, depression, and of course eating disorders ("Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD)"). Often enough, people suffering from BDD will be misdiagnosed for having other obsessive mental illnesses, generally due to fear of revealing one's true thoughts. 

BDD is not simply an issue of mental health or physical health; it is not solely confined to matters of weight or body type. BDD is so far-reaching that it must be analyzed from a sociological standpoint, revealing it as an issue of oppression. BDD can manifest itself in intense obsession with indicators of ones’ race, be it through skin color or complexion, facial features, or stature. It is a commonly held misconception that one's outer appearance is representative of one's character, as indicated by the analysis of what prejudices were generally held about plus-sized people. In a white supremacist, cis-gendered and heteronormative, patriarchal society (such as the one we all live in), ones outer appearance becomes an obvious point of obsession. Being conscious of one's body can be the demarcation line between life and death and any other danger that may fall in between. 

Gloria Anzaldua refers to this consciousness as la facultad: 

“La facultad is the capacity to see in surface phenomena the meaning of deeper realities, to see the deep structure below the surface. It is an instant ‘sensing,’ a quick perception arrived at without conscious reasoning. It is an acute awareness mediated by the part of the psyche that does not speak, that communicates in images and symbols which are the faces of feelings, that is, behind which feelings reside/hide. The one possessing this sensitivity is excruciatingly alive to the world.

Those who are pushed out of the tribe for being different are likely to become more sensitized (when not brutalized into insensitivity). Those who do not feel psychologically or physically safe in the world are more apt to develop this sense. Those who are pounced on most have it the strongest -- the females, the homosexuals of all races, the dark-skinned, the outcast, the persecuted, the marginalized, the foreign.

When we’re up against the wall, when we have all sorts of oppressions coming at us, we are forced to develop this faculty so that we’ll know when the next person is going to slap us or lock us away. We’ll sense the rapist when he’s five blocks down the street. Pain makes us acutely anxious to avoid more of it, so we hone that radar. It’s a kind of survival tactic that people, caught between the worlds, unknowingly cultivate. It is latent in all of us (Anzaldúa 2012).”

The Racialisation of BDD

It is a well-known sociological fact that anti-Blackness is pervasive, and that Black people of African descent have bore the weight of the entire social totem pole for the past four centuries. This injustice has been protected by literal fallacies of science and philosophy, such as the racism entrenched in the Social Darwinism theory. Championed by Herbert Spencer and a slew of other pseudo-scientists in the late 19th & early 20th centuries, Social Darwinism held that people, just as the flora and fauna that inhabit the wild, are subject to the Darwinian laws of natural selection and that those who were in a place of suffering were in such positions because they were less capable than their more privileged counterparts. This theory was championed by Rudyard Kipling in his poem, “The White Man’s Burden”. Kipling stated that it was the civic duty of white people to colonize and imperialize their savage coequals of color who were brutish, wild, and -- in the words of Hillary Clinton,-- needed to be brought to heel. This rhetoric would serve to all but wipe out cultures of color, enslave people of color, and force them to assimilate with whites. It was used to justify political conservatism, imperialism, and racism and to discourage intervention and reform. This allowed for such atrocities as the chattel slavery that was unique to the Atlantic slave trade. These barbaric thoughts have violently and adversely impacted people of color since their evil inception. Enslaved and treated as property, oppressed institutionally and castigated for their oppression, hated and vilified as criminals and fiends, the bodies of Black people of African descent -- especially Black Americans-- line the bottom of the social barrel. 

It was Paul Mooney who said that Black American culture is the most copied in the world today, and it is undeniable. The cultures of the oppressed are always the ones most emulated, having been exoticized, and due to the cultural imperialism of American culture, it is the urban Black lifestyle that is most fetishized the world over. This is epitomized by the current standard for The Look-- the Kardashian-Jenners. The Look was once [Victorian] and then [‘90s], heralded by runway queens like Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista. Now it is the appropriation of Black features by non-Black, specifically white women. The Look is collagen plumped lips, artificially-enhanced butts and hips, restrictively trained waists, and fake tans. The Look is also waifish yet athletic, tall and willowy, with perky breasts and tiny wrists. The Look is everywhere you look -- who of us can escape America’s First Family? The same people who naturally embody the look are perceived as less than human because of it, namely because of their being Black as opposed to simply having a proximity to Blackness.

“Since 2000, the number of people undergoing butt lifts rose 252 percent. Just between 2014 and 2015, the number of butt lifts increased 36 percent. The desire for a little extra padding back there also increased; plastic surgeons performed 36 percent more butt implant procedures in 2015 compared with 2014” (Firger). The Kardashian correlation is undeniable, considering that women of color have been denigrated and dehumanized for the sizes of their derrieres for ages. Sara Baartman is a prime example of this, having been put on display like an animal in a zoo during her life, and then dismembered and observed for observation in her death. “A 2006 study using a ‘stereotype content model’ found the most despised out-groups to be South Americans, Latinos, Mexicans, farm workers, and Africans. Undocumented migrants were the most despised of all, ranking so low as to imply that they were not perceived as fully human and ‘thus opening a door to the harshest, most exploitative, and cruelest treatment that human beings are capable of inflicting on one another’(Provine & Doty 2011).”

People have weaponized the propensity of Black women to have larger posteriors against them as indicators of being lower class, promiscuous, and poorly educated, while white women like Kylie Jenner are applauded for being “thicc”. Women of color and Black women were strategically poorly educated, having been relegated to the slave caste and made exempt from basic human rights. It is the lascivious promiscuity of white men forcing their illicit sexual desire upon more marginalized parties that gave rise to the idea that Black women are more promiscuous, a narrative that was repeated time and again by white women who, in an effort to not bite the hand that fed them, wanted to blame anyone but their husbands for their infidelity. It is by evolutionary biology that Black women may tend to have bigger butts, but it is by sheer racism that Black women have come to be associated with undesirable personality traits and social characteristics. This double standard is definitive of contemporary racism. “Both law and popular culture define racism in terms of intentional action by individuals. Contemporary racism, however, manifests itself most often not as overtly race-based hostility but as unease with the erosion of traditional racial hierarchies and as indifference to groups adversely affected by harsh policies of criminalization, confinement, and denial of basic services. At an institutional level, contemporary racism can occur within structures that make room for differentiated enforcement and also by practices and policies that exclude or target particular groups through force of habit or by rules of thumb (Provine & Doty 2011).” While Provine and Doty wrote in regards to racist immigration policy, this analysis is true of the implementation of racism in all industries. 

The lust for all things characterized as “exotic” is a form of obsession, creating caricatures of living human beings. It is the praising of some features of a persons’ heritage, while oppressing and degrading other aspects of that same cultural identity. It is inhumane, immoral and insane yet seen as normal. We can examine categories of pornography as the most clear picture of the obscene commodification and exploitation of non-colored or Black, non-cis bodies and non-hetero or vanilla sexual identities. By targeting the multitudes of taboos crafted by this puritanical society, this industry capitalizes on the persecution and trivializing of non-conforming identities. Clips featuring Black people are categorized as “ebony”. The male-centered ones focus on “BBC’s”, proliferating the popular fallacy that all Black men have enormous genitalia. They often concoct situations in which a lonely and dissatisfied white woman engages in interracial sex with a well-endowed Black man, sometimes cuckolding their white romantic partners whose phallis is comparatively and embarrassingly tiny. The female-centered clips always focus on their Blackness, often othering them as “ghetto”. 

This minimization to racially-charged characteristics and archetypes is not exclusive to Black people. This happens to every ethnic group except the racial standard of normalcy: white people. “Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, surveying public- opinion research, shows that stereotypes of “American” are White, Christian, and northern European. The tendency to think in exclusive terms is particularly evident among those with a strong sense of national identity (2009, p. 185). Such works suggest that race continues to have a complicated, but significant, connection to the identity of nations and the communities they purport to represent (Provine & Doty, 2011).”  It happens to all othered bodies-- fat, transgendered, nubile, athletic, etc. It happens to othered identities-- queer, foreign, Islamic, etc. This treatment and fetishizing of marginalized people in pornography is just the most obvious portrayal of the fact that any and all non-conforming people are seen as alien creatures and objects at best. They exist for some sexually explicit, stereotypical need, but are to be done away with the moment viewers are reminded of their humanity. Such ideation endangers people or color, specifically women and children. It encourages exploitation and certainly plays a huge role in human trafficking. While this abominable situation perpetuates, there are people of color around the world are physically altering themselves through extreme means in order to look more Eurocentric.

According to an article by Drake Baer as seen on Tech Insiders website, the plastic surgery capital of the world is Seoul, Korea. The most common procedure in Seoul is blepharoplasty, which is also called double eyelid surgery. In the year of 2014, 1.43 million people had this surgery, which was created by a white plastic surgeon stationed in South Korea during the Korean War. “The absence of the puerperal fold produces a passive expression which seems to epitomize the stoic and unemotional manner of the oriental,” Dr. Ralph Millard, creator of the blepharoplasty procedure wrote in the 1964 edition of the American Journal of Opthamology. Millard claimed to have been approached by “a slant-eyed Korean interpreter, speaking excellent English” who requested “to be made into a ‘round-eye’.” As is the case today, being able to speak English is a marker of true human intellect, and shows that a person is worthy of value as a human being. This is lucky for the Korean interpreter, as they were then able to become even more worthy of human validation when Millard performed this surgery. Thank goodness this person was intelligent enough to recognize the need for them to look even more human, or in other words, European.  

The argument exists that this surgery has nothing to do with wanting to look whiter. Many Korean plastic surgeons cite that the idea is “absurd”, and that, while it may be a nod to Caucasian features, it in no way seeks to replicate them. Meanwhile, ethnographer Eugenia Kaw took a study in 1993 of women who had gotten the surgery in the San Francisco Bay Area, who claimed to have undergone surgery in order to escape racial prejudices correlating to stereotypical genetic features with negative personality and behavioral traits, such as the ones believed by Dr. Millard. According to Baer, Millard’s patients were mainly Korean women employed as sex workers seeking to increase their appeal to American GI soldiers stationed in the area during the early 1950s, as well as Korean women who married American soldiers and moved to the US seeking to better assimilate. Of course, this is just another example of the male gaze and oppressive attitudes towards women creating caustic these relationships with their physical appearances. It also reveals the racist undertones of the obsession with plastic surgery, particularly “double eye-lid surgery”, regardless of the perceived normalcy of the surgeries in South Korea. 

Cosmetic changes aren’t always as drastic as surgery, but that does not negate their treacherous nature. Colorism is defined as prejudices held and discrimination against people of a darker skin tone, specifically among people of the same ethnic or racial group (Amani 2015). Unlike the controversy around double eyelid surgery, this issue does not live solely within racism. It exists also is an issue of elitism and classism. While colorism within Blackness is now largely centered on racism, the case is not necessarily true for other cultures that were not affected on the same human level as those directly subjugated by the Triangle Trade. In South Asian communities, having darker (kaalo) skin is seen as being less beautiful than having lighter (forsha) skin. Many South Asian communities are religiously and/or culturally Hindu, and the caste system of Hinduism dictates that the lighter a person is, the higher caste or class they are, therefore relegating the darkest of people in these societal systems are of the lowest castes—Untouchables. Outside of Hinduism, it is a historic fact that people of the laboring class worked outdoors in the fields a great majority of the time. Because of this, these people tended to be much darker than their counterparts in the elite class, who had few reasons to venture outside. Because of this, the tradition of colorism in Asian cultures predates colonialism and imperialism, and therefore is not solely based in racist ideologies that are rooted in whiteness. Many Asians stated that they would not want to trade in their Asian features (though this is not true of South Korea). Those Asians affected by colorism simply want to present themselves as the best possible incarnation of an Asian: a fair skinned Asian. 

This does not eradicate colorism based on racism. Within communities of Black people of African descent, colorism places darker skinned people way below those of fairer complexions. The stereotypes tied to people of darker complexions is similar between Black people and South Asian—they are lazy, stupid, brutish, and crass. Black women who fall into the category of being “red” are considered to be sexier and more desirable, worthy of being spoiled and treated as princesses. Black women who are so fair they are considered “high yellow” or may even pass for another (more desirable) race are more stuck-up and prissy, full of themselves and high off of their privilege. It is easier for these women to be considered pretty and delicate, due to the Eurocentric nature of their features. This particular form of colorism is derivative of the plantation hierarchy, which placed fairer skinned (and therefore more aesthetically pleasing) slaves in the house, and the darker (and therefore uglier) slaves out in the fields.

For people all over the world, one’s complexion is indicative of their socioeconomic standing. For white people, being tan shows that one is able to afford the luxury of sunbathing and taking leisurely holidays. For people of color, the darker one becomes, the more of a low class lout one must be. One way to combat the ugliness of dark skin is skin bleaching creams, which are insanely popular in Asian countries, predominantly among women. So while young white girls are lounging on beach chairs or tanning beds in order to receive a healthy glow, young women of color are often being  told from a young age to stay out of the sun, lest they become too dark, and therefore unworthy of a quality man for marriage. Fairer skinned people receive a great deal more privilege than those of color. This is true of both forms of colorism, be it having a distinct history in racism or not. Black people bleach their skin, Indian people bleach their skin, East Asian women bleach their skin—skin bleaching is a multi-billion dollar global industry, with Asia being its key market (Hoskins 2014). 

Due to colonialism by Western European countries in previous centuries, the currently held standard of beauty or rightness on a global scale is that of whiteness. This is due largely in part to the fact that the United States of America is seen as the most powerful country in the world, and has been setting worldwide standards since World War I. The standard of beauty and normalcy in America is white, upper middle class, and seemingly well-educated—the new bourgeoisie being masqueraded as the every man. Therefore, everybody that wants to exist in this new and improved holy land must strive to look the part.

The current process of socialization in the Western, specifically American paradigm operates as an act of brainwashing. It is the obliterating of innate sensitivities in order to cause schisms amongst the masses in order to prevent them from coalescing around their shared oppression and casting off their manacles through revolution. The unattainable ideals of “perfection” that bombard us each day are not only mired in artifice but nebulous at best. These ideals vary from place to place, shifting from culture to culture. There is no way to please everyone as personal preferences and predilections scale us all differently on each individual’s barometer of value. It is an impossible undertaking to attempt to fulfill everyone’s needs and desires, as the myth of scarcity has made us ravenous and insatiable. but it is very possible to please ourselves. The body is sacred-- it is the only thing in this world that belongs to us. Bearing arms of affirmation and validation against the dominating paradigm’s desire to impart spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical illness is worthwhile; it is a declaration of independence, a reclamation of personal power, a consolidation of autonomy. Any genuine effort for revolution starts within that seeding and fostering of self-love and disillusion from the plutocratic vision. We must start within should we seek to shift without.

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