We Need To Talk About Toxic Female Beauty Standards in The Art Community

[00:00:08][music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> So fellow quacks, I'm not going to beat around the bush. The art community has an issue with perpetuating toxic beauty standards, specifically towards women.

[00:00:55]And in this video, I wanted to talk about it.

[00:00:57]>> [music] >> Now, I don't want to be like an art drama channel, but there is a recent situation going on that inspired this video and I wanted to use as a jumping off point for this [music] topic because it made me realize that yeah, a lot of people in the art community really do not like seeing female characters drawn in a certain way because they want female characters in art to be drawn within a certain beauty standard. And this drama situation of sorts basically highlights that. So, in short, there was this artist who drew Doki Doki Literature Club fan art and people were hating on this person because apparently they made the characters look so masculine and were saying all these terrible things. And then also, there were people trying to fix their art. And the art fixing [music] looks bad because they just made them look more generic. They made them look more cute, seem more anime. And I was just sitting there thinking to myself, wow, they got so much audacity. So, let's dive into what exactly is going on in the art community. Why do so many people want to perpetuate these beauty [music] standards when in our community you'd think that people would be more progressive, but in actuality that's not the case. It seems like people want to reinforce things so badly, even in a seemingly [music] progressive community.

[00:02:09]>> U G L Y, you ain't got no alibi, you ugly. Uh you ugly. Uh uh next.

[00:02:15]>> So, let's just briefly outline the beauty standards that women are expected to adhere to. They're meant to look youthful. They have to have small noses, big eyes, full lips, be slim yet curvy, have perfect skin, no body hair except of course on their head, eyebrows and eyelashes, no stretch marks or any sort of blemish, and no hip dips, etc. etc. And can I just [music] go on a little quick tangent about hip dips?

[00:02:40]I don't know why men are trying to make hip dips into like this big insecurity.

[00:02:43][music] It's literally a bone thing. Like, you cannot change that. Stop trying to make hip dips into some terrible awful thing.

[00:02:50]They're trying to compare hip dips to [music] like balding or they're trying to make hip dips seem like they're this awful gross thing, when it's literally just a bone structure thing. Shut the [ __ ] up, okay? Not everyone has like perfectly round hips. Sometimes they have a little bit of a bump in it, and that's fine. It's normal. Stop trying to make people insecure about having hip dip. But, anyway, I'm going to move on now.

[00:03:13]So, in art a lot of people expect women to look pretty. Women are not allowed to be ugly even in art, even in portrayal of media where they're not real. They're still expected to look pretty and expected to adhere to beauty standards.

[00:03:26]And it really sucks, because that also means that whenever female characters are drawn in a way that's unattractive, or sometimes even just average looking, people get really mad about it. And it's so sad, because even in art women just can't exist. We have to be aesthetically pleasing at all times. I mean, there's a bigger conversation about how like people [music] have a perception of art and how art is supposed to be aesthetically pleasing, not just towards women but in general, but when I feel like with women, yeah, they have to look aesthetically pleasing in art. They're not allowed to be ugly. Whereas men, they can be ugly in art. They're allowed to be drawn in all sorts of wacky and crazy ways. Like in character designs, I've seen so many male character designs where they have so much variety. They look cartoonish and wacky and weird. But with women, they have to look like copy-paste versions of each other. They have to have the same hourglass body shape. They have to have perfect hair.

[00:04:12]They have to have the full lips and the big eyes and tiny little nose and the waist [music] that's super small. Of course, if they do have a female character in the character design cast that is ugly, she's the only one. She's the butt of the joke. She's always fat.

[00:04:25]She's always hairy. She's always looking weird. Because oh, a woman looking like that, that's terrible. That's funny.

[00:04:31]That's awful. How could a woman look ugly? The audacity of a woman being ugly. The audacity of a woman just being average. Because apparently, in this world, women not being beautiful is a terrible [music] crime, apparently. If you're not beautiful, um basically, just you're [ __ ] And that sucks. I hate [music] it so much. So, to continue onwards with this whole thing, >> [music] [music] >> What have I done? I fixed some of Because I'm an ass, I try on the women I touch hardly ever touch me.

[00:05:22]>> [music] >> If your art looks bad to me, I'll put you to work because I am an ass.

[00:05:35]I can't be nice. I am an [ __ ] [music] >> [music] >> Art freaks just have so much audacity and in my opinion, I think they perpetuate transphobia and racism.

[00:05:54]I'm saying this because I've noticed that art fixers really like to say things that feel very transvestigator-esque.

[00:06:00]Like they'll say that they made the art better and they made the female character prettier because they got rid of like certain features that are deemed as masculine and then they [music] made them more anime-adjacent, which is just so [ __ ] up and again, yes, so much audacity to do that. Like how dare you look at some art and you just feel the urge to like I need to make this better because this art is so bad and I need [music] to make it better because I in my opinion think I'm the better artist, that I have the better opinion because how dare this artist portray this character that I like in a way that I deem as ugly when in reality the art portraying the characters is fine. It's usually fine, okay? Now, there are instances where yes, sure, maybe the female character was drawn in a way that does look a bit iffy, but I'm going to get to that later cuz there's a whole thing about that, but listen, just because a female character is drawn with certain features is not a bad thing, okay? Like women have these features in real life and the issue with transphobia is that it perpetuates >> [music] >> these toxic beauty standards. It affects everybody really, men too to an extent, but mostly women because when it comes to transphobia, people are more afraid of trans women than they are of trans men. No one seems to give a crap about trans men because no one takes them seriously, but with trans women people see them as a threat because they view them as men, which is already terrible, but because of that they have so much vitriol. So, when women look like men to them, they just get super pissed. They start losing their [ __ ] minds. And of course, [music] in the art community this is perpetuated by fixing art and getting mad when female characters don't adhere to beauty standards. So, to briefly tie into the racism aspect, [music] I noticed that Eurocentric features are the norm and female characters are expected to adhere to that. And what's really frustrating is that whenever POC female [music] characters are drawn, people will sometimes try to fix those features and erase them in favor of the Eurocentric features, which really sucks because, of course, diversity is beautiful, but no, we can't have that. Everyone has to look the same [music] because that's bad. And you know, the fake progressive people love to swoop in and say whenever these characters are drawn with their features in a way that's drawn accurately, they like to say that it's actually stereotypical or bad. Like with black people, "Oh, no, this character has really dark skin, a really big nose, really big lips. That's actually racist.

[00:08:13]You're like doing a racist caricature.

[00:08:15]Like maybe she should fix that, you know?" And the person that drew it is black or they were trying to base it off of somebody or whatever. This guy is not shocking, but some people do just have really, really huge noses and lips. Like I know this is crazy to hear, but it's true. And of course, in art, it's going to look more exaggerated because it's art. Unless you're doing hyperrealism, everything's always going to look exaggerated. And that's fine. If you're not making a caricature, then having exaggerated stylized features on characters is okay. But for some reason, people will see certain features and get mad about it and try to play it off as being progressive or just worrying about the people and trying to, you know, not reinforce racism or whatever, try try to reinforce stereotypes. When in reality, they just don't like those features, so they try to act like the hero to get those features erased. And actually, I know this is kind of off topic a little bit, but I wanted to mention it. This happens a lot with when people try to draw anime characters realistically or like they try to make them look more Japanese. You know, I find it so interesting that a lot of people in the art community love anime, but when they see anime characters drawn as Japanese, oh boy, they do not like that at all.

[00:09:15]They see that and they think it's ugly.

[00:09:17]Like that whole realistic My Hero Academia drawing that was [music] released a few months ago or whatever, people did not like that. They're like, "Oh, they look so ugly." And I'm like, "Really now? Really? They look ugly. Why is that? Like tell me. Like genuinely tell me why do they look ugly to you?" I could go on a whole tangent about how the art community is towards like Japan, anime, and all that, but I'm not going to get into it. I just wanted to mention that briefly. But yeah, it's [music] very weird how people will call characters that are drawn a certain way ugly when those features are just portrayed as is. They're not meant to be mocking or anything like that. Very, very telling of what your mindset is. So now let's talk about female body hair and how it's portrayed in art. Generally speaking, body hair isn't seen in art very frequently. And when it is, it's usually done for like an intentional character design of some sort. Like usually on men meant to make them look older or usually they're meant to look more unkempt or [music] something like that. And when it's on a female character, it's of course always meant to be done negatively. It's always done for the sake of make her look really ugly and hideous because oh no, a woman with like some peach fuzz on her legs, nasty, disgusting, awful. But a man with a full chest of hair, oh, that's fine.

[00:10:25]That's all good and dandy. But a woman can't have that at all. That's terrible and nasty. So because of that, when people see female body hair in art, they have more of a visceral reaction since in art it's [music] more of an optional thing to include. So when they see it, they're like, "Oh, ew, that's like nasty." And they usually will label people who draw female character with the body hair as like Tumblr SJW artists. Cuz I remember back in the 2010s, Tumblr SJW art was hated on so much. Like you cannot go a day without seeing the hate for it. I remember there were like hate sites and hate blogs and all this other stuff where people would collect these arts and they would make fun of them on forums and whatnot. Like I remember as a kid during my edgy stupid phase, I would look at this art and I would also agree like, "Oh, this art's terrible and awful. This This is so gross. Why would people draw this?"

[00:11:15]And now looking back, I'm just like, "The art wasn't that bad. Like really, we're getting upset over this? Just body hair? Really?" So yeah. [music] But I will say there is a criticism that I've seen a lot when it comes to body hair portrayal on female characters. And I do kind of agree with it. It's a bit of a nuanced thing, but I wanted to mention anyway. So, I've noticed that since body hair isn't usually seen on [music] characters in general, when it is done intentionally, it's kind of a statement.

[00:11:45]You know what I mean? So, one thing I've noticed is that generally speaking with the Tumblr HTW art when I that I used to see, a lot of the characters that had the body hair were usually darker skinned. I would rarely see characters [music] that were white or lighter skinned be given body hair. And if they were, that was usually it. They weren't usually given other features or maybe sometimes they were, but usually it was the darker skinned characters. And I noticed that when people would try to like fix art in the way of like blackwashing characters or brownwashing them, they would usually give them body hair and make them hairier. And people would usually react very viscerally to it.

[00:12:21]They would say that the character looks really hideous or they would call them racist. Be like, "Why would you make this character ugly? You made them hairy and ugly and this is clearly a stereotype." And I had to sit there and think to myself, "Huh, interesting."

[00:12:32][music] >> Why? Some of these artists when they draw black characters, women specifically, they're always overweight.

[00:12:41]Like, there's nothing wrong with making a fat character, obviously.

[00:12:45]It's just that every other female character, or not even female, every other character is like thin or athletic except for the black women. I'm sorry, it's giving stereotypical. It's giving a lot of things. Like, if you see I'm going insane every time I see this pattern because it it'll be paraded.

[00:13:03]It'll be like, "Oh, inclusivity."

[00:13:05]While actively feeding into racist stereotypes.

[00:13:09]>> The reason why there's nuances because well, I mean, there are [music] women in real life who are darker skinned that might have a lot more body hair, you know? Hairy women do exist and not all women want to shave or whatever or some just don't feel like it for whatever reason. So, it's not necessarily bad to have like a POC character with body hair, but it does rub me the wrong way that a lot of these characters are usually POC and the white characters, the [music] lighter skin ones, usually don't have those features. So, I do have to wonder what people's intentions are when they give their darker skin POC characters body hair because it just I don't know.

[00:13:47]It's one of those things. That's why it's kind of nuanced. Like I'm not going to outright say that you're like a racist person for doing it, but it does make me wonder sometimes. [music] Because I have seen POC people will criticize these art fixers that will black and brown wash characters to give them body hair and other blemishes or features like stretch marks or make them fatter. [music] Like they will usually see that and they react negatively. They see it as stereotypical. [music] They see it as negative. And it does make you wonder sometimes like is this sort of thing really as bad as they say it is?

[00:14:18]Is it that bad? Is it good? Bad? You know, like is it problematic to draw these people with [music] these features or is it maybe progressive or whatever?

[00:14:27]Like it's definitely something that, you know, is worth thinking about. To end off this video, I wanted to talk about fatphobia.

[00:14:34]I've noticed that a lot of people who say they love fat women do not like fat women. They like curvy women. And in art, this is very prevalent. You know how many times I've gone on Twitter and I've seen someone who say they drew a fat female character, but the female character isn't even fat. She just has a big boobs and a big ass. Really? And people will love to hype up that little tummy bulge thing so much. They look say "Oh, I love chubby women. I love fat women. I love that little bulge thing that women have, little stomach bulge thing."

[00:14:59]>> [music] >> But then as soon as they see an actual like fat woman or actually like realistically drawn chubby woman, they don't care. [music] They find it disgusting and weird because they don't actually like fat women. They like fat when it's distributed in a way that's, of course, naturally [music] attractive.

[00:15:13]And of course, that way is going to be in mostly hourglass or pear-shaped [music] body types.

[00:15:20]Body types that are more curvy and emphasize more of the boobs or the ass.

[00:15:25]So, of course, they're not going to find more apple body shapes or more rectangular body shapes to be attractive. They're not going to find that hot because, of course, they only like fat women when they have extra curves going on. And here's the thing, people are allowed to have preferences, so don't come at me in the comments and be like, "Oh, well, people can like this or that." Like, fine, whatever, but don't lie about it. Don't act like as if you like fat women. You like curvy women. Just say you like curvy women. No one's holding a gun to your head and saying that you have to [music] like fat women, all right? If you say you like curvy women, no one's going to hate you for it. No one's going to be like, "Oh, you're so bigoted." They're just going to be like, "Okay, fair." All right?

[00:15:57]Like, it's so annoying. And I notice that with female character designs, whenever they're fat, usually what happens is that the character is never really fat because the standard for female characters in character design is to be skinny. So, when you put like a more average-sized female character next to these super skinny, itty-bitty female characters, of course, she's going to look a lot fatter. But [music] in reality, she's not fat. She's just average, maybe mid-sized. And then we make her slightly fatter, but like, you know, in a way that's just typical, curvy, or whatever.

[00:16:26]Oh my goodness, some of the people who design these characters love to act like as if they just made like the best fat representation ever. It's not. Can't tell you how many times I've seen people try to pat themselves on the back for representation that's not there. You did not do fat representation. You just made a female character, gave her bigger thighs, and thought you were so brave for that. You're not, okay? You're not.

[00:16:47]And here's the thing that's so annoying is that what people do actually draw a fat female characters in a way that is realistic and they show off things like stretch marks or the folds or maybe even [music] the cellulite, oh boy, the fetish accusations come out because how dare you find fatness actually attractive in a way that's not adjacent to fetish.

[00:17:09]Like, I already made a video where I talked about how people are towards certain groups and how they love to accuse people of having fetishes for portraying them in a way that's actually desirable. And the same thing happens with fat female characters. Whenever they're actually drawn in a way that's desirable, people get mad about it. They only like fat female characters when they're already like portrayed to be desirable. Yeah, it's very frustrating that [music] people would seem to be so fat phobic towards female characters in art. Just reinforces them. And it proves once again that women can't get a break from literally anything. Like as I've gotten older, I just realized that yeah, being a woman [ __ ] sucks. And it sucks that even art we are forced to still be perfect and aesthetically pleasing to everybody. Because if we deviate even slightly, then suddenly a huge issue. Art should embrace diversity, not reject it. I'm tired of people trying to treat women who look different from the norm as ugly and hideous. Women should be allowed to be ugly. Women should be allowed to be average. Women are allowed to just be as they are, and that should not be a problem.

[00:18:22]>> [music]