Superficial Beauty And Culture

Author’s Note: I wrote this as a response to the story “Ribbons,” by Laurence Yep. In this I compare culture in  China and what they believe about beauty to what the US believes about beauty.

In China culture is very different than in the US. For example women in China are considered obsolete and meaningless. A long time ago in China it was considered beautiful for women to have very small feet. So parents in order to make sure they’re daughter can grow up to be considered beautiful and marry a rich man they made them bind their feet when they were young. This would make the feet not grow as much and when the feet did grow they would grow under the feet creating the “beautiful,” desired feet.

They’d wrap the feet in ribbons and this was how they bound their feet. For the grandma ribbons bring back terrible memories for the grandma. But for the granddaughter ribbons symbolized her love of dancing. Because of the different symbols for the ribbons it made it an important title with a significant meaning, which compares the thought of beauty between China and the US.

Not only in China is there superficial beauty but also in the US there is superficial beauty for girls and women. One example is that girls and women are mostly considered beautiful when they are thin, and have little to no fat on them. Also in the US beauty is shown by looking young and having clear, wrinkle free skin with high cheekbones and not having features or parts of your face that make you stick out such as a nose. Women in the US use surgery to make themselves look “beautiful,” this is similar to China in the way that they bound girls feet to give them the superficial “beauty.”