Beauty in The Eyes of the Beholder

In fairytales, we can see stereotypes where ugly characters are portrayed as evil representing qualities like greed and jealousy while beautiful characters are portrayed as the heroine, representing qualities like bravery and kindness. These negative traits like greed and jealousy are what classify a character as ugly. In the Cinderella story, her stepfamily is portrayed as ugly due to their mistreatment of her. Nevertheless, their physical appearance doesn’t necessarily reflect their true nature. Making the idea of beauty being connected to morality is false, beauty and morality are entirely separate concepts but in these stories, physical appearance is used as a tool to illustrate a character’s internal struggles. Beauty is subjective and varies from person to person making the idea of beauty standard irrelevant, there are cultural and personal ideas of beauty, so what one person thinks is ugly, another will see as beautiful. 

“Black Cinderella proved that studios could bank on Black-led and diverse casts to tell stories of every variety.”(paragraph 10). This goes to show how this retelling of Cinderella disrupts traditional beauty ideals, highlighting that true beauty is diverse and rooted in individual identity while also emphasizing the importance of diversity in representation, which disrupts the typical beauty ideals often seen in mainstream media. Personally, I prefer light-skin women because that’s what I grew up around, but contrary to me and the way I was brought up my friend likes Hispanic girls because that’s what he grew up around. Vicky’s thoughts on the Cinderella remake reinforce the idea that beauty standards are dead because beauty is defined by personal and cultural ideas of beauty as we’ve seen historically there is a trend of certain groups and religions practicing dating and marrying within their own community.

In Grimm # 21, the author states that cinderellas  “beauty is acknowledged, but it’s her character that ultimately wins her the prince” which shows us that Cinderella’s true worth is not her beauty but her kindness and resilience, this indicates that beauty is subjective and intertwined with personal qualities rather than subjecting oneself to a standard of what beauty should be. Beauty in these types of stories is commonly used as a vessel to represent villainy but is used to portray a character’s internal conflicts. In Oscar Wilde’s tales, his characters are often judged based on their looks. Justin Jones notes that in “Wilde’s tales, physical beauty is frequently associated with moral corruption while ugliness is a sign of virtue” (paragraph 5). In the story “Beauty and the Beast,” a merchant steals a rose from the beast’s castle, and for his theft, the beast demands the merchant’s daughter. When the daughter, Beauty, arrives at the Beast’s castle, she quickly realizes that despite the Beast’s terrifying appearance, the Beast is kind and treats her with respect. Beauty had to leave the castle to take care of her sick father, but when she returned to the castle, she found the Beast near death from heartbreak. At that moment, Beauty realized how much she loved him and wanted to marry him. The beast then turned back into a handsome prince. The prince was cursed to have the appearance of the beast due to his obsession with his own appearance, selfishness, and lack of compassion. This shows how the beast’s ugly appearance acted as a vessel for his character growth. He went from handsome and selfish to ugly and kind and back to handsome but kind instead of selfish. This proves the idea that ugliness can represent a character’s moral struggles, suggesting that fairy tales use appearance as a literary device to represent character arcs and character growth. This also proves that beauty is subjective because Beauty fell in love with the beast despite his looks and fell in love with his character. In Betsy Hermes’s article “Beauty And The Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale,” she sees  “The Beast’s transformation as not just physical but how it reflects his journey towards redemption.” (Herne) This proves that ugliness can signify a character’s flaws, while transformation symbolizes their growth. 

Beauty standards can make people feel inadequate. Women now get BBLs, facelifts, and boob jobs so they can feel pretty because society has made it the norm that you’re only attractive if you have a big butt or a big chest. Due to this new set standard, women who are naturally pretty think they are ugly because they lack in certain physical areas when not too long ago having a big butt was frowned upon. this just goes to show that beauty standards are irrelevant because the standard can change just like that. 

In Cinderella, she is portrayed as beautiful while her stepmother and sisters are seen as ugly due to the way they treat her. Manuela Rameriez in her article “Racialized Beauty’: The Ugly Duckling in Toni Morrison’s “God Help the Child”” speaks on beauty standards and “the Societal pressures to conform to beauty ideals” and how this “Can lead to feelings of inadequacy”(Ramos). This shows how beauty standards can have an effect on one’s self-esteem and self-worth while also revealing the internal conflicts faced by those who don’t match up with society’s idea of beauty. This reflects the idea that ugliness in fairy tales can signify deeper moral and emotional struggles, emphasizing how external appearance can represent internal dilemmas. Cinderella falls into the societal beauty standards of fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes, which makes her beautiful. As told before, ugly characters are associated with qualities like jealousy. This can explain why Cinderella is treated the way she is. Her stepfamily feels ugly in comparison to her because they don’t classify with societal beauty standards, so they try to bring Cinderella down to compensate for their own inadequacies. 

The connection between appearance and character is not as straightforward as it seems. In fairy tales, beauty doesn’t always equate to goodness, and ugliness doesn’t always imply evil. While ugliness often symbolizes moral conflicts, beauty doesn’t always define a character. Being portrayed as ugly in fairy tales doesn’t necessarily mean a character is physically unattractive. Instead, the appearance of characters serves as moral lessons and tools for character growth in the stories we read. Beauty is a subjective concept shaped by cultural backgrounds and personal experiences, therefore making beauty standards irrelevant. Fairy tales like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast illustrate that it is not physical appearance that defines a person, but their character. Beauty should include both outward and inner qualities. A person’s face doesn’t define their worth, and the belief that it does significantly impacts individuals, affecting their self-esteem and sense of identity.

Works Cited

 Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm, Jack Zipes. “The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm.” eBook Academic Collection, #21, Cinderella, 2019, pp. 60-77. 

Hearne, Betsy. “Beauty And The Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale: 1950-1985.” The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 12 no. 2, 1988, p. 74-111. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/uni.0.0146. 

Jones, Justin T. “Morality’s Ugly Implications in Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales.” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, vol. 51 no. 4, 2011, p. 883-903. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/sel.2011.0039.

Mochama, Vicky. “Brandy’s Black Cinderella Made The Impossible Possible In Hollywood.” UNBOTHERED, 16 Nov. 2020, unbothered.com/brandy-black-cinderella-hollywood/. 

Ramirez, M. L. (2017). “Racialized Beauty”: The Ugly Duckling in Toni Morrison’s ‘God Help the Child.’ Complutense Journal of English Studies (Internet), 25, 173–189. https://doi.org/10.5209/CJES.55255 

Wright, C. M. (2000). The Effect of Ugliness on the Self. In Plain and Ugly Janes (pp. 41–50). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315054087-12