She's slim, tan, has well-manicured nails, and her hair is lightly blonded around her face to flatter an unblemished complexion.
She's short, stocky, has very wide hips, short nails set on stubby fingers, and muscular, well-developed upper arms.
Both women are beautiful.
The first, typically American, is wearing the symbols of her status with pride. Her tan says she has the time to spend laying in the sun, and perhaps the money to take her to a climate where it's warm enough to tan. Her nails and hair say she cares about the way she looks and how she is perceived in the world. Her complexion tells of a careful diet and the time and money necessary to care for her skin.
The other woman, from an agricultural area of Russia, is equally beautiful. The people of agronomical cultures have in their heritage an awareness of the mysterious connection between women and fertility. This makes the women, rather than the men, more desirable for the task of planting and harvesting the crops which spring from Mother Earth. The sturdiness perceived as beauty is directly related to the process of sustaining life. Other practicalities enter into the notion of beauty, such as her wide hips, well-suited to the all-important task of childbearing.
Because of the distribution of American motion picture and television products, and advancement of mass communications, the Western notions of beauty have permeated almost every other culture to some extent. In most large cities Western dress, makeup, and hairstyles have been adopted. But what makes a pretty woman may have its roots in an antiquity which most people don't consciously recognize.
As a continent, Africa is least affected by the influences of Western standards of beauty, because it is the least developed. Here can be found practices such as scarification (making small incisions to cause scarring) which have endured unchanged for centuries. Among the Ndebele people, whose homeland is Kwa Ndebele, a semidesert northeast of Pretoria in the Transvaal, a young matron may exhibit both traditional and modern symbols of beauty. A forehead scarified with a tiny patterned band may be shaded by a modern hat. Her neck may be ringed with the brass and copper iindzila, which, until recently, was worn by most married women.
As these women are absorbed into a more modern society, the rings are becoming a thing of the past because they restrict movement and can make everyday tasks difficult. The iindzila impose perfect posture and a regal, measured walk which, combined with their short blankets, give them a contemporary abstract beauty despite the custom's ancient beginnings. Today, excellent posture is much admired by the Ndebele, no doubt as a result of a centuries-long tradition of watching their women adorned with iindzila.
The United States is perhaps the only culture in which extreme thinness is perceived as beauty. In sharp contrast, the Bushmen of southern Africa's Kalahari desert have an admiration for plump women, particularly those with well-rounded buttocks. Custom decrees that a young girl approaching womanhood must be isolated, that the sun must not touch her, and that her feet must not touch the
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