1. Beauty as a Human Right: Act of maintaining beauty is a life-generating, rejuvenating, act of re-affirming one’s dignity. -> “Dignity is intrinsic quality of being human” (Nguyen, 370)
But here comes a question, what is the standard of beauty? Because one can say that one has a right to strive to become beautiful, but if there is a standard for beauty, even if one’s intention is to become beautiful, society might believe that one is actually trying to become more ugly.
2. Standardizing Beauty: Notion of beauty is linked to the moral/religious and other values that one beholds. Let’s assume that American women values freedom, independence and individuality while an Asian women values her identity in a family setting, humility and passivity. Then it is natural that an American woman and an Asian woman has subtle or significant difference in notion of beauty and the ways in which they try to achieve beauty.
Relevant part of the article : “And beyond this, is liberation even a goal for which all women or people strive? Are emancipation, equality and rights part of a universal language we must use? To quote Saba Mahmood, writing about the women in Egypt who are seeking to become pious Muslims, “The desire for freedom and liberation is a historically situated desire whose motivational force cannot be assumed a priori, but needs to be reconsidered in light of other desires, aspirations, and capacities that inherent in a culturally and historically located subject.” (20001:223).
In other words, would others desires be more meaningful for different groups of people?...I know from the poorest people to the most educated cosmopolitan, who has ever expressed envy of U.S. women, women they tend to perceive as bereft of community, vulnerable to sexual violence and social anomie, driven by individual success rather than morality, or strangely disrespectful of God.” (Abu-Lughod, 788)
