Role of Pop Culture on the Construct of Beauty in a Globalized World

The Role of Popular Culture in the Construction of Ideas of Beauty in a Globalized World
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Role of Popular Culture in the Construction of Ideas of Beauty in a Globalized World
Today, in America, mental health experts are pondering whether Zoom Dysmorphia is a mental health crisis (Ramphul, 2022). This concern comes after the social distancing aspect of the pandemic in which people remained connected through technologies like Zoom, where, unlike never before, they were confronted by their images on the screen. As it turns out, a significant number of people do not like how they look and, therefore, are seeking ways to appear better through filters and plastic surgery. Dysmorphia involves one being highly preoccupied with a perceived flaw in their appearance. In this regard, the current paper aims to outline the role of popular culture in the construction of beauty in a globalized world by focusing on the influence of filter culture as part of today's popular culture.
Popular Culture and Body Image
O'Brien and Szeman (2018, p. 9) state that popular culture is the "communicative practice of everyday life ."In this definition, communicative practices encompass all activities concerned with producing meaning. These include talking, writing, and social rituals like eating, dancing, music, fashion, sports, and most importantly, the conceptualization of beauty. These meanings are shared among many members of society where, unlike high culture, which is reserved for the elite, even people who are not economically, socially, and politically empowered can participate because of the power of mass media. Findings (Henriques & Patnaik, 2020) from an array of research converge on the agreement that popular culture is central to modern-day perceptions of body image or beauty.
In a culture saturated with retouched and idealized photos and videos of models, people are increasingly relying on media projections to develop a mental standard of beauty. The most prevalent model standard primarily through the Western media is a tall, thin, bluff, and without stretchmarks, while for men, it is about beards, being muscular, and tall. When movie makers, music video producers, and magazine makers enter a project, the first step is to conduct a beauty selection based on defined criteria of beauty. Such criteria, through popular culture, become part of the beauty standard everyone strives to achieve. Body image represents the knowledge and attitudes people have toward their bodies. It involves the mental picture of self-perception in the mirror, how one feels when one looks at this image, and how one feels other people's perception of it. The emergence of Zoom Dysmorphia as a mental health problem indicates that with increasing exposure to images of self, people are not happy with how they look, and this desire is influenced by exposure to popular culture.
Social Comparison Theory
Thus, what is happening is that people are increasingly relying on media productions for ideal standards of beauty. According to Heard (2021), many factors influence a person's body image, including attitudes of friends or f...