3 Chapter 2: “Eurocentric Beauty Standards as Environmental Injustice: The Way O
3 Chapter 2: “Eurocentric Beauty Standards as Environmental Injustice: The Way Our Societal Beauty Standards Increases Our Exposure to Toxic Ingredients” by Ashlyn Johns
Introduction
Environmental justice is an approach to scholarship and advocacy that has, from its inception, been malleable and continually expanding. There might be stories that come to mind immediately when we think of an example of environmental injustice, but it is critical to look beyond those stand-out stories. We need to take a critical look at the hidden, more systemic injustices as well. Links to environmental issues are broadening as we are learning connections between social and racial disparities with environmental impacts. This chapter focuses on eurocentric beauty standards, and how critical it is to become a part of the environmental justice conversation. There is some discourse around the topic within public conversations, and some scholarly works that focus on the medical and physical scientific side; but this needs to be taken up with a communication lens. This is critical for peoples’ health and wellbeing today and for the future; these ideals and the use of harmful products have become commonplace and it needs to be criticized in order to protect people that are most at risk.
Beauty standards and environmental injustice are two concepts that are not commonly associated. Hearing ‘beauty standards’, you might initially think of the social implications. Beauty standards and cultural ideas of what is considered beautiful in the United States have damaging effects on both individuals that are encouraged to succumb to them and to the surrounding environments. This chapter uses a critical lens to recognize the environmental implications along with environmental injustice that parallels the standards of what is considered “beautiful” in America. Throughout this chapter, hopefully you will gain a critical lens inspiring you to be a more conscious consumer and to challenge the taken-for-granted norms in which we live.
Beauty Standards in America
Eurocentric Beauty Standards as Environmental Injustice
“So every month I tried to burn the blackness out of my hair, and I would then run a hot comb over it, ignoring the stench of burning protein while trying to avoid further injury to my bleeding and scabbed scalp” (Oluo, 2019, p. 156).
This is a segment from Ijeoma Oluo’s (2019) book titled So You Want to Talk About Race in which she discusses the pain that she would go through in order to get the pretty, straight hair that she saw in the commercials (Oluo, 2019, p. 155). To be beautiful in America is to be white, thin, and have long, slick hair. Minhazul Islam (2019) discusses Toni Morrison’s book The Bluest Eye, in which Morrison argues that these beauty ideals are socially constructed (Islam, 2019, p. 188). The impact of beauty standards have accelerated due to the increased use of social media. Research has shown that “increasing exposure to mediated beauty enhances inter