The aesthetic standard considered as the "ideal" and the violence of gender and race from the expectation of female beauty

Abstract

The present study aims to critically analyze the culturally and historically elected standard of beauty as the ideal for female bodies and its impact on women's health. The main research problem is: to what extent does the medicalization of aesthetics constitute a silent gender violence? It is based on the hypothesis that, from the moment that women promoted ruptures in the patriarchal power structure of society, populating the labor market and still being responsible for the “invisible” work, affection for the home, the strategy employed to maintain from the status quo was the imposition of the “beauty myth”, consisting of the obligation to correspond to the aesthetic standard considered ideal. Black women, in this scope, experience this violence more intensely, given the intersection of races that enhances the beauty myth. The method employed is hypothetical-deductive and the research technique is bibliographical.