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WORKSHOPPING MEMO
When asked what I wanted the outcome of workshopping my annotated bibliography to
be, the answer was simple. I wanted to better my sources and learn how to correctly format my
annotated bibliography. Learning how to use the correct format was probably the toughest part
for me. Just when I thought I had it down pat it seemed that I had gotten something wrong again.
When it came down to the in-class workshop I knew my group could help me out. I worked in a
group with Kiera, Karli, and Carson and we helped revise each others drafts. We corrected each
others grammatical errors but we mainly focused on making sure we all knew how to correctly
format our papers seeing as that was our main concern. When I finally realized what I was doing
wrong and how to correct my mistakes it made me feel a lot better about my annotated
bibliography. This workshop was extremely beneficial for me and helped further my writing
skills for future purposes.

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Kiely Bjork
Professor Laura Knudson
UWRT 1103
9 November 2016

Annotated Bibliography: Perceptions of Beauty

Callaghan, Karen A., and Amira Sonbol. Changing Perceptions of Feminine Beauty in Islamic
Society. Ideals of Feminine Beauty: Philosophical, Social, and Cultural Dimensions,
Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1994, pp. 5365.
In this portion of Callaghans book, Ideals of Feminine Beauty:Philosophical, Social, and
Cultural Dimensions, Amira Sonbol addresses issues regarding perceptions of beauty in Islamic
countries. Her research proves that these ideals push Islamic women to strive for intelligence and
elegance all while being hidden by a hijab to symbolize their seclusion from men.
She elaborates on the Islamic ideals of beauty and how they have been divided between modern
and traditional beauty in the twentieth century. Modern ideals expect women to aim for liberation
and gender equality while looking elite and professional, whereas traditional ideals insist on
women being submissive and conforming to western-style peasant clothing. Theses ideals of
beauty in the Islamic society, whether traditional or modern, differ according to gender
relationships; therefore, these standards of beauty are different based on marriage, sex or love.
Either way, Sonbol makes the statement that both ideals promote the state patriarchys approach

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to unite marriage, sex, and love into one legally identified relationship. Sonbol concludes her
chapter by making a statement that remains true throughout all centuries for Islamic countries.
There is a consistent perception of feminine beauty in the Islamic society that is based solely on
female allure, rather than on specific body features.
When searching through the Atkins library databases I found this scholarly book, Ideals
of Feminine Beauty: Philosophical, Social, and Cultural Dimensions. There are many authors
that contributed to this book, so seeing as Callaghan was only the editor of this book, there is an
abundance of references. Each author, contributing a plethora of resources, proves this book to
be outstandingly credible. The book is set up to where each chapter is written by a different
author, making it extremely diverse and intriguing. This chapter specifically, relating to Islamic
countries, makes researching perceptions of beauty more personal and allows for a different
perspective on these perceptions in different countries.
Murnen, S.k., and R. Seabrook. Feminist Perspectives on Body Image and Physical
Appearance. Encyclopedia of Body Image and Human Appearance, 2012, pp. 438443.
doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-384925-0.00070-5.
I decided to get some perspective from the feminist community which led me to this article,
Feminist Perspectives on Body Image and Physical Appearance, written by Murnen and
Seabrook. This source provided an inside look at what women themselves think about these
perspectives and how they should be changed. They demonstrate how a feminists perspective has
the potential power to increase womens empowerment. The authors start out by stating that the
way culture treats womens bodies represents a form of discrimination against women. They also
state that these current perceptions of beauty have forced women into believing that they have to
manipulate their bodies in order to fit into these beauty ideals. This statement is so extremely

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powerful because of the relevancy it holds in society today. In the world we live in now, there is
still a prevalent disempowering focus on the female body. The authors conclude by saying that
the elimination of these harmful beauty practices could pave a way for womens freedom.
I stumbled upon this scholarly source while searching on google. As you can tell, I did
not plan on finding another scholarly source but I am glad I found this one. The authors provide
eye-opening facts and statistics. They set up their article in a way which they gave their theories
first with their research following. They then showed how you could change and resist against
these perceptions.
Phan, Michelle. Different Cultures and Their Beauty Perceptions. Michelle Phan, 2016,
michellephan.com
For this source, I turned to a blog post by Michelle Phan, a makeup and beauty guru, to see what
her opinions on perceptions of beauty were like. In this post, she examines perceptions of beauty
in different cultures. First, Phan starts out by stating that Americas perception of beauty solely
relies on the conception of perfection. She then goes into detail about some other countries and
their ideals of feminine beauty. For instance, she says researching has revealed to her that, Africa
prefers to celebrate woman fuller in body size and they actually praise these women because it is
a sign of wealth and fertility. She used other examples, such as Asia and Africa, which showed
their desire to have a more smooth, milky complexion lacking any blemishes. Phan concludes by
saying, no matter what the ideal of beauty is, there is an underlying common factor that remains
in all cultures: youthfulness and femininity. Societys pressure for women to look younger and
more feminine is prevalent in all cultures and remains one of the largest components in beauty
perceptions.

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This source that I chose to utilize is a blog post. In this post, Michelle Phan sets up her
information in such a way to make it easy to compare and contrast perceptions of beauty from all
different cultures. I chose this specific blog post because I thought it to be a very basic, up-todate summary of perceptions of beauty in different cultures. While I can agree with the majority
of the statements Phan is making in this post, I am not sure I would go as far to call this a
credible source. Phan has absolutely no plausible information backing up her writing. I do not
believe what she is saying is false, however, I do believe she relied on common knowledge
instead of actual facts when composing this post.
Poran, Maya A. Denying Diversity: Perceptions of Beauty and Social Comparison Processes
Among Latina, Black, and White Women. Sex Roles, vol. 47, no. 1, 2 July 2002, pp. 65
81. doi:10.1023/A:1020683720636
In this journal article, Denying Diversity, Maya Poran focuses on perceptions of beauty mainly
relating to African American women. Poran states that researchers typically tend to leave out
women of color when doing studies on perceptions of beauty. Although they do not directly say
this, it is most likely that researchers are specifically looking at women of European descent
when doing these studies because white is neutral, or in other words, normal. The studies
Poran uses show that white women are more susceptible to have lower self-esteem due to these
perceptions of beauty. In fact, the studies show that women of color are less likely to be affected
by perceptions of beauty because they obtain the majority of their support from their
communities rather than social media. It shows that their community, as opposed to the
communities of European women, is far more supportive of all appearances and actually
appreciate fuller body types. This results in women of color having higher self-esteem, according

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to these studies. Poran concludes her article by stating that the overall, most striking component
of the standard perception of beauty is race.
This specific source that I used was a journal article, Denying Diversity: Perceptions of
Beauty and Social Comparison Processes Among Latina, Black, and White Women. I found this
source to be extremely educational and eye-opening. After reading this article, I do believe that
Poran is credible in her writing. She utilized an abundant amount of resources and had a lengthy
reference page in which all of the references were scholarly. Poran included several tables and
graphs to expand on the information she was giving.
Thesander, Marianne. Morality, Perception of the Body and Aesthetics. The Feminine Ideal,
Reaktion Books, London, 1997, pp. 3553.
In this chapter of Marianne Thesanders book, The Feminine Ideal, she discusses how
paintings and sketches from the eighteenth century heavily influenced perceptions of beauty for
women. One of the most memorable cases of this is how the corset set such an immense standard
of beauty for women in the 1800s. Thesander first starts off by stating that, during this time era,
the female body became a matter of society and therefore had to be classified according to what
was the most convenient for society. As a result of this, it became a social norm for girls, as
young as four and five years old, to begin wearing corsets. This alone, locked women into a
position in which it became their literal duty to appear pretty. A womans beauty then became
a symbol of her value to her husband and society. Ultimately Thesander believes that the corset
was the first step in transforming womens bodies into erotic and sexual objects.
This book, The Feminine Ideal, was one of the more interesting sources I used. I
acquired this book from the Atkins library, along with a few of my other sources. Thesander
seems to be credible due to her amount of references but her writing comes across more opinion-

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based than factual. With that being said, there is still no doubt that her words hold truth behind
them and they are tremendously powerful. Thesander also includes an abundance of pictures to
help her readers visualize many of the issues that she is discussing. This, along with her
descriptive words, helps her to leave an imprint on her readers.
Wengie. Beauty Standards Around the World | One Face 7 Countries. Youtube.com, Youtube, 2
Jan. 2016, youtu.be/uwd_dltwim8.
While searching for sources, I came across this youtube video which really stood out to me.
Youtube star, Wengie, posted this video portraying what the perfect girl would look like in seven
different countries. In conducting this experiment, she sent a copy of her unedited photo to
different countries and asked them to photoshop her face and conform it to their cultural beauty
standards.The results were shocking. While some countries, like India and the Philippines, did
not change much, other countries completely reconstructed her face and appearance. Her video
showed how in other countries things like, fuller physique, darker hair color, golden skin
complexion, fuller lips and sharp facial features are very necessary to be considered beautiful.
Wengies video made it tremendously easy to see just how different these perceptions of beauty
are around the world.
I decided to turn to youtube for this source. When searching videos on perceptions of
beauty, Wengies was one of the most popular ones that showed up. Although her video is clearly
not a scholarly source, I do believe it is still credible. Her sources came straight from the
countries themselves so they obviously hold some truth. Wengie does an outstanding job in
portraying how these different perceptions look in her video. She also includes detailed labeling
to show just what the countries did, in fact, change about the original photo.

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Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women. New York, W.
Morrow, 1991.
Noami Wolf shares her feminist views in her book, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are
Used Against Women. Wolf demonstrates how the beauty myth has consumed social coercion
that was previously left to myths meant to make women feel powerless. For instance, Wolf
argues that in this day and age, the young and gaunt have superseded the content housewife as a
pundit of successful femininity. While she acknowledges that, Wolf believes that the myth of
beauty is solely about mens institutions and authority. She believes that beauty is about behavior
and not appearance. Therefore, qualities of women that are so-called beautiful are just female
behaviors that are appealing to society at that specific time. Wolf wraps up her book by saying
that the myth of beauty itself, spreads belief that there is an actual measurement for beauty that
exists and that women have to want to obtain it and men must want women who do.
I acquired Wolfs book, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against
Women, from the Atkins library. This, along with her comprehensive research, leads me to
believe that Wolf is extremely credible. She presents her strongly stated opinion in every chapter
but is exceedingly educational at the same time. Wolf has her book set up so that in each chapter
she shows how the myth of beauty affects life in every aspect. For example, she demonstrates
how this myth has influenced work, culture, religion, sex, hunger, and violence.
Wood, Louise. Perceptions of Female Beauty in the 20th Century. Barneygrant.tripod.com,
barneygrant.tripod.com/p-erceptions.htm.
In Woods article, Perceptions of Female Beauty in the 20th Century, she examines perceptions
of beauty in the twentieth century. Wood defines beauty in the twentieth century, when referring
to physical appearance, as almost always composed in terms of ones outward appearance and

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sexual attractiveness. She reiterates how being beautiful was a womans duty in the victorian age
as opposed to now where it is encouraged to be self-expressive. Wood declares that the main
element of this centurys perception of beauty that is different from the of the nineteenth century
is the popularity of cosmetics. It is clear that societys influence on perceptions of beauty has
encouraged girls at a very young age to utilize cosmetics. This is thought to be so heavily
influenced due to the fact that in the twentieth century it is believed that there is a direct
connection between beauty and success. Wood ends her article by saying that because of this
belief, societys obsession with outward appearance and attractiveness is set to continue for
centuries to come.
I retrieved this article from an online source. While Woods article held relevancy and
truth it was obvious that it was far from a scholarly source. Woods article was littered with typos
and incorrect grammar. With that being said, she had good intentions with her article and that
shone through when reading it. She made it easier for readers to differentiate between
perceptions of beauty of the ninetieth and twentieth centuries by comparing their standards.