One of the most memorable episodes of “The Twilight Zone” television series begins as a woman chats with a doctor in a hospital room with her head covered with gauze. This woman has undergone a procedure to make her look normal and she is anxiously waiting to see her face without the bandages. "I never really wanted to be beautiful”, she tells the doctor. “I just wanted people not to scream when they looked at me”… “I want to belong; I want to be like everybody else”. However, the doctor warns her that because she has undergone so many procedures, it will not be possible to try again.
If the procedure proves unsuccessful, she will be sent to a special area where people of her kind have been exiled. The doctor removes the bandages from the final surgery, and he and the nurses are horrified to discover there has been “no change”. When the woman’s face is revealed to the camera, however, we see that she is beautiful by human standards, but, to our surprise, when the camera turns to reveal the faces of doctors and nurses, we see that they are hideously deformed. The message is clear: Beauty is in the “Eye of the Beholder”.Throughout history, people in every culture have sought to change the natural appearance of their bodies.
They reshape and sculpt their bodies and adorn them with paint, cosmetics, clothing, and jewelry. These customs, however, are diverse and particular to a culture at a specific time. The diversity of body costumes has led anthropologists (e. g. , Douglas 1970; Strathern 1996) to conclude that a body is both a physical and a symbolic artifact, forged by nature and by culture at a particular moment in history (Sullivan, 2000).
Social institutions, ideology, values, beliefs, and technology transform a physical body into a social body.Bodies, therefore, provide important clues to the mechanics of society (Sullivan,2000). Body customs have social significance. The body can be a site for the expression of power in a culture and for communicating group membership, social status, social identity and associated beliefs and values.
All body customs, whether temporary, like tweezing eyebrows, or more permanent, like tattoos and cosmetic surgery, are forms of self-creation that establish a connection with a reference group. The cultural and social context influences individual body choices and gives them social meaning (Sullivan 2000).In Cameroon and many other parts of Africa, obesity, especially in the buttocks, has been associated with abundance, erotic desirability, and fertility. Fat has been seen as a statement of well-being and has been frequently produced artificially through fattening processes (Roybal,2002) In a rite of passage, some Nigerian girls spend months gaining weight in what is known as “the fattening room”.
In this culture, a woman’s rotundity is a sign of good health, prosperity and charm. “Beauty is in the weight”, says a defender of the practice, “To be called a slim princess is an abuse” (Angeloni, 2001)In modern Western society "thin is in" and sometimes artificial means such as liposuction are used to lessen the appearance of hips, buttocks, and fat in general (Sullivan, 2002). In the United States, most people hold negative attitudes toward body fat. According to surveys, people attribute increased body weight to being poor or having poor health.
Obese women, more than men, are rated negatively by peers (Levy and Shiraev, 2001). Every period of history held its own standards on what was and was not considered beautiful. When powerful cultural ideologies and institutions change, body standards and customs change.This is clearly evident in the changing standards for feminine and masculine beauty over the last two centuries in the Western world. In the early nineteenth century, European travelers and explorers expressed their disbelief at the "savage" and unusually decorated bodies of the natives, while asserting their own wildly interesting fashion statement consisting of wigs, large hats, painted faces, and body deformities caused by the wearing of narrow, pointed, and tight-fitting shoes. (Roybal, 2002).
Cultural Ethnocentrism is the tendency to regard our own culture’s customs as highly “civilized” and others’ as “savage”.
