Women in Advertising

The ideal of beauty held by Western society projects an image of a flawless white woman. Promoters of cosmetic surgeries like rhinoplasty attempt to create “faces that are universally felt to be beautiful,” in accordance with a Western aesthetic ideal (Ideal 1). In a society that “sees women’s bodies as a series of problems in need of correction,” women who do not fit the beauty ideal become targets of “cosmetic surgeries marketed to remedy our alleged deficiencies” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 208). The trait of a large nose, “sometimes named explicitly as a Jewish nose” (Kaye/Kantrowitz 121), conflicts with this ideal, as the appearance of the nose is seen as both a flaw and a marker of non-whiteness. “To say someone looks Jewsish is to say something both absurd (Jews look a million different ways) and commonsense communicative” (Kaye/Kantrowitz 121). This stereotype has become a marker, a way to spot difference and act accordingly (both my brother and I are often informed by acquaintances that we bear Jewish noses; they feel that they must remind us that we “look Jewish,” lest we forget that they can tell we are not “like them”).

            As the media perpetuates and expands images of the dominant culture, one can easily “internalize ideal beauty standards” and continue down a never-ending path, striving for an idealized image “that is largely unattainable” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 208). While she can never be white, she may have a nose job performed so that she, “a Jewish woman, does not look like a Jew” (Kaye-Kantrowitz 121). In this act she not only erases her own marker of race, but also and perpetuates the dominant culture, both by conforming to the beauty ideal and by literally spreading the visibility of the beautiful Western woman’s face.

Word Count: 293

Works Cited

Kaye/Kantrowitz, Melanie. "Jews in the U.S.: The Rising Cost of Whiteness." Women's

Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. By Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2004. 119-30. Print.

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. "Women's Bodies, Women's Health." Women's

Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2004. 207-23. Print.

"The Ideal Nose." Revision Rhinoplasty:. Web. 01 Mar. 2012.

<http://www.revisionrhinoplasty.com/ideal.html>.