Admit it! At one point, you or someone you know has done something weird or unhealthy for beauty. Everyone has an ideal beauty they're trying to achieve, and that's true for women across the globe. To try and meet these beauty standards, we sometimes go through the extreme.
From the use of bird faeces in a facial, to inserting metal rods in their legs to be taller, women and men from all over the world are willing to do some pretty intense things to feel better about their appearance. Here in Sint Maarten, our beauty standards vary as we have so many different cultures, but we do often look to models and celebrities for our standards of beauty: usually tall, thin and elegant with “perfect” features.
From Kate Moss to Kim Kardashian and from Michelle Obama to Jennifer Lopez, beauty in this country is found in all colours and sizes; but we on Sint Maarten especially appreciate a nice round butt. Beauty varies from continents to countries to smaller areas, and that can have effect on whether you want to be thin, curvy, fair or tanned. Remember, no matter what you want to look like, never put your wellbeing in danger to achieve a society-based beauty standard.
Here are some beauty standards from around the world:
Burma/Thailand
Women of the Kayan tribe originally from Burma are well known for wearing neck rings. These brass coils are placed around the neck, appearing to lengthen it. Women of the Kayan people begin to wear neck coils from as young as age two. The length of the coil is gradually increased to as much as 20 turns. The weight of the coils will eventually place sufficient pressure on the clavicles to cause them to deform and create an impression of a longer neck. This tradition developed because it is considered beautiful to have a long neck.
Ethiopia
In the Ethiopian Karo tribe, they also follow some unusual beauty rituals, one of which involves scarification of the body. The elders cut girls’ bodies during childhood and this forms part of a ritual to celebrate puberty. The scars are considered beautiful amongst the tribe and will ultimately help the girls to find a husband. The scars also signify strength, courage and fertility and so are especially prized on young women of marriageable age. Once a girl receives the last of her scars, she is allowed to marry and have children.
New Zealand
The Maori people of New Zealand have been decorating their faces with swirling blue tattoos called “moko” for centuries. Originally a sign of wealth for their ancestors, today most Maori people have moko. No two facial moko are ever alike. The tattoos define and flatter the face, it draws attention to the eyes and lips, and a particularly skilled artist can correct flawed features and offer an illusion of beauty beneath the skin in the ink, forever. In New Zealand, Maori women believe that a tattooed lip and chin are a symbol of beauty because a woman with full blue lips is considered the most desirable.
South Korea
In South Korea, the trend is to have wide, round eyes, and many people are going under the knife to achieve them. One in 10 women (and even some children) has an eye-lift to make their eyes more Western and appealing.
Mauritania
In Mauritania where food is scarce, it is considered that big is beautiful and stretch marks are sexy. To attain Mauritanian standards of beauty, many women undergo the practice of gavage or "fattening up." While traditionally the practice of fattening includes chugging camel's milk in a nomadic camp under a sweltering sun in the Sahara Desert, for a modern-day working Mauritanian woman, appetite-inducing pills have become a trend.
Iran
In Iran, having the perfect nose is on the top of every woman’s beauty-wish. The nose-job women of Tehran are nothing to marvel at anymore; they're the standard. In November 2008, Oprah ran a story on Iranian cosmetic surgery: Women see the bandage as a status symbol. “I had a friend who had a nose job, and she kept the bandage... after two years on her nose just to show everybody that she had had nose job,” a young woman from Iran says. Iran has the highest rate of nose surgery in the world per capita. According to most estimates, Iranians get four times the number of nose jobs that Americans do.
Kenya
For the Masaai women of Kenya, it’s all about the earlobes; they pierce them and then stretch them out, using materials like slices of elephant tusk. Sometimes, they even remove the two middle teeth from their bottom jaw and shave their heads.
China
Call it a foot-fetish gone too far. Though it isn’t common anymore, foot-binding to create tiny feet were once a big beauty-standard in China. In this painful beauty treatment, women's toes are broken and pushed up against the foot's sole with bandages tightly wrapped and sewn around the foot. This limited the mobility of women and in most cases caused pain for a lifetime.
No matter what beauty standard you sometimes might feel like you need to live up to, remember, be your own kind of beautiful!
