Street Soldiers: Beauty standards | What makes a woman beautiful?

Fox 5 and Hot 97 present Street Soldiers with Lisa Evers

I'm so glad you're joining us for this episode of Street Soldiers on Beauty Standards

I'm your host, Lisa Evers. You know, there's more variety in our ideas of what makes a woman beautiful

but with constant social media feeds, it can be too much and raise doubts that we're not good enough as we are

So where do you draw the line between enhancing your own beauty and being influenced to extremes

The way beauty standards are set has changed with technology. It's no longer a select few high fashion models on magazine covers, but what's right in our hand every day on our phones

Cyberspace sets the nonstop pace, says New York Post lifestyle reporter Asia Grace

We are often, you know, again, bombarded with all of these different mixed messages about the ideals of appeal, you know, from what men are saying on podcasts and what this one is wearing this week and what surgery this one got

But we really have to find a way to remain grounded. Many of those images are used to promote and sell products and procedures

Psychologist Dr. Kelly Ruggless says take ownership of what you believe by understanding how deeply you're being influenced

These beauty standards and what you think is beautiful is not just your own thoughts

There's billion-dollar industries behind why you like what you like and why you think what's beautiful is what's beautiful

For decades, Black women in all their magnificent beauty were ignored by mainstream cosmetic companies and fashion publications

But all that started to change when supermodel Beverly Johnson became the first Black woman on the cover of American Vogue in 1974

Now beauty influencer Simone Nicole says there are opportunities everywhere. I think that there absolutely has been progress. Are we really all the way there yet? No

But I definitely accredit individuals in the beauty community, especially like online and then also in traditional media that have started to reflect a much more diverse idea of what it means to be a beautiful black woman

Ivy League educated designer and entrepreneur Stephanie Elise says your sense of beauty should come from within and that girls and women should also focus on their education to build self-esteem

Just staying true to what I like. So if I feel confident in doing something, I'm going to do it. And if I don't, I'm not going to be pressured to do something. I think, you know, having that confidence and leading with that and what you find beautiful is key

Let's take this to our panel now and find out what they have to say. Joining me is Stephanie Elise. She's a creative entrepreneur and designer. Steph, great to have you with us again

Thanks so much for having me again, Lisa. Thank you so much. Also with us is Simone Nicole

She's an actor and content creator. Simone, great to have you with us. Thank you so much, Lisa

We appreciate it. Also with us is Dr. Kelly Ruggless. She's a licensed psychologist and owner of Flourish Psychology

Dr. Kelly, great to have you with us. Thanks for having me, Lisa. Thank you so much

And also joining us is Asia Grace, back again, lifestyle reporter from the New York Post

Asia, great to have you with us. It's always a pleasure, Lisa. Thank you so much

Asia, I want to start with you on this topic because it's something we've discussed frequently, and that is the pressures on women

Are they getting more intense or are things getting better because of all the diversity

Well, unfortunately, Lisa, beauty is no longer in the eye of the beholder. It is now in the palm of the scroller, okay

Social media, the influencers and the divas and the celebrities, they're dictating the do's and don'ts of what's glam, what's hot, what's not

In society, when it comes to physicality, we're in this weird gray space where some of our curvy conquerors, our celebrities like the Kim Kardashians, the Lizzo's, Ice Spice, Kelly Clarkson, they're in much straighter, smaller bodies now

But then if you turn your head to the left, you see the housewives and some of the hip hop heroes and they got the big boobs and the big butts and the big cheeks and eyelashes

So it can be very confusing, even as an adult, to really understand where we stand as a society when it comes to beauty

And for adults, if that's challenging, these mixed messages have to be even more challenging for young kids

Dr. Kelly, is there real damage that you see from women getting too caught up in how they look and constant comparisons and constant self-criticism

Absolutely. And I think it's important to know it's not just women, right? What we know about social media, all the data tells us that the more time you spend on it, the worse you feel about yourself

So yes, there are a ton of positives that you can gain from being on social media

So many of these images are edited or altered or at this point, they're not even real, right

They're artificially generated images and people are comparing themselves to these things that don't even exist

And of course, they're coming up short. Simone, tell us about your relationship with social media

I a little bit in the middle I see the pluses and I see the minuses especially on a business side Like I wouldn have my life if it wasn for social media But also as a person I understand the argument that

like it is, it can be very damaging to a person. For me, however, I'm a big proponent of this is

my for you page. Okay. I'm gonna see what I want to see. So I'm very, very strategic about only

following people that make me feel good about myself because I follow other girlies, you

know, to support. But if I find that it gets to a point where their content does not make me feel joy when

I'm logging on, I might have to mute you, sister. I love you. And that's no shade or anything like that

But I think it's more important than ever in this world of algorithms that we take extra

care to protect our self-esteem. So I love social media because I have gotten to see more women than ever that look like me, that are shaped like me, that talk like me, that are building empires and doing so much

And I need that, but I don't need the people that make me feel small

Stephanie, Elise, you've made a name for yourself on social media. Tell us about your journey with it

My relationship with social media is like a love and hate relationship. So I was coming up on social media before there was an algorithm that limited your reach

And so you could get 25,000 followers in a couple of days. And I think the level of exposure that you have on social media, especially as an influencer, is unprecedented

You were not meant to interact with this many people or read this many opinions, read this many comments

So that was hard for me at the beginning. I had moments where I had maybe something go viral and the comments were really negative

And just really learning how to let things roll off of your back

And I agree with Simone. And I think it's really important to curate what you're looking at, what you're consuming

But take everything with a grain of salt. We are living in the age of AI where there are influencers that are literal bots that aren't even real people

And just know that every single thing is edited. It's just making sure you're grounded in reality, remembering who you are, and not letting things get to you as much

And if you need to take a second, there have been times where I'm like, this is too much and I need to take a break

Stay with us. There's more to come. Dr. Kelly, what about the confusion

Because we talk about, yeah, there's thin bodies, there's thick bodies, there's all of these different types of things out there

So I think it's human nature in a certain way to compare

But what about the confusion factor? What impact does that have on women

The thing that I often talk to my clients about when it comes to beauty standards is that they are trends

and they, you know, we have found in research that they change every 15 to 20 years and they

can change drastically. So I think trends are fun and I think engaging in fashion and style and

makeup and beauty is fun and it can be fun, but only if you're able to hold onto it with a certain

level of flexibility and a certain understanding that just because you don't fit a beauty standard

doesn't mean you don't have your own beauty and your own value. What about the self-esteem ideas

Simone, because there have been, I interviewed the first black supermodel, Beverly Johnson

and she was talking about being out there and being in these very expensive designer clothes

being on the cover of Vogue, all of these firsts and the trailblazing that she did

And, but this has been a huge journey, particularly for black women, even to get hair care products, you know, the right hair care products and have different standards

Tell us what, tell us what your take is on that. I think that it's so important that you brought up the journey that black women have taken

And to piggyback off of Dr. Kelly talking about how beauty standards change so much, when I was coming up as a dark skinned young woman in the Black community, I was bullied relentlessly

Like, it was a crime to be as dark as I was growing up

and what it taught me besides giving me deep wounds that I've recovered from after years of

therapy. I honestly found that because I wasn't, no one was really checking for me

and I felt invisible. It took the pressure off. So I just started to like do what I wanted to do

I discovered my personal style. I discovered makeup. I went natural. I did everything because

in my head, no one cares about like how I look anyways, I'm doing everything for me. And I know

it might sound a little like sad, like, oh, so your self love like came out of a dark place

But the reality is a lot of development, a lot of change in this world doesn't come from happy

go lucky. It comes from struggle. So for anybody that feels like you don't fit in or you are not

the beauty center right now, take advantage of it. That was my personal journey. And I think that

for anybody that does feel like they are on the outsides of the beauty standard

I would highly recommend taking advantage of your time of being invisible

I guess you could say. Wow. That's, that incredible That incredible And thank you for sharing that with us That very deep Steph in terms of your curvy woman beautiful gorgeous woman you showed off your body

I'm sure you get a lot of comments. How do you deal with that? I think it's important to kind of silence the noise

Everyone likes to be complimented. That's always nice. But I think a lot of times

You get many compliments too. Right. But you know what's funny? You'll focus on that one messed up comment that ruins your day

and not the 200 amazing comments. And I think just remaining grounded

and retaining your perspective is so key. A lot of the time, I feel like people are just hopping onto bandwagons

because this is what everybody is doing. It's like, what do you really like? So I think retaining that sense of individuality is so helpful

in, you know, remaining in a good mental space on social, but also saying, hey, you know, it's great that people admire me

and then, you know, I'm not going to be everybody's cup of tea, but I'm my cup of tea. Asia, the comments with the celebrities, there seems to be these waves of different styles

How do you see that now, like where we're at with that now? Well, growing up, I'm a 90s, 2000s girl through and through, okay

I had somewhere doing a Tootsie Roll, my jelly sandals. I had a skip it, a bop it, you name it

So I'm a proud millennial. And what to me was special about growing up at that time was there were a ton of very positive beauty examples in television for us

We had Brandy, we had Aaliyah, we had Destiny's Child, the list goes on

And I do think that that's missing a little bit now for younger girls where we are not seeing ourselves in a lot of these posts and on television or YouTube or TikTok

It has changed a bit. So, yes, those women that I mentioned, the J-Los included, you know, they said, hey, it's okay to have box braids and be bootylicious

I'm like, oh, boom, sign me up. I don't know that our young girls have that, and they don't even have the discernment, like Simone and Stephanie said, to maybe mute people or block people or curate their algorithms

They're digital natives. They're new to this land, yes, and they're figuring it out

So it's great that we have the J-Lo's and the Beyonce's, but we do need younger role models to stand up and say, look at me

I'm who I am. I'm loving me. I look like you, and we're okay. Dr. Kelly, in terms of staying strong or building kind of like solid self-confidence, if that's the goal

how do you do that when we're in an era where for any amount of money you can get something changed that you don't like

How do you know what's healthy and what's not in terms of wanting to change your appearance or your personal beauty

Absolutely. So one thing I can talk about with my clients is that body image lives in your brain cells and not in your fat cells, which just means that there's no amount of changing your body or losing weight that's going to improve your body image

So if you're wanting to build sort of an unshakable kind of self-esteem, you've got to focus on the inside. If you want to fix something, fix it. But you don't have to down yourself or beat yourself up or guilt yourself in the process of self-improvement

If you don't like something, I agree. You can change it, but do it for you. Don't do it because someone else said you should

And don't not do it because someone else said you shouldn't. I know there's a lot of hate for girls who get surgery

But my thing is, if something's going to make you feel good and there's no other way to change it, why not

I think we invest in everything else in our lives, our businesses, our homes, our pets, our families

Invest in yourself. Invest in your body. But, Asia, it's gotten vicious for some of the celebrities

Absolutely. And, you know, it's not just women and girls that we're talking about here

We also have to look at the men and how social media and the beauty standards pushed on them are now changing how men conduct themselves both in Hollywood or the hood

You name it. You know, they're definitely getting into the chin and jawline injections and the Botox and flying to Turkey every five minutes for the hair transplants

And I agree with everyone. You know, it is so important to accentuate your positives

Unfortunately for a lot of people, though, especially younger people, I'm just poking at them because they are the generation that to me is most vulnerable here

Simone, what about the pressure on men now? Men don't want to have the conversation like they don't want to admit that they care about their looks at all

And the problem with that is that like the worst things cultivate in darkness, the worst things cultivate in silence

But there is this immense pressure to be lean and to look perfect and chiseled with the chins, with the jaws, with all of that

And even though women hold so much pressure and feel the weight of the world with how we look, I think that it's also happening to men in a much more insidious way

And men also don't have the space to talk about it. Dr. Kelly, what about on boys

Are you seeing more boys coming to you, you know, families with boys coming to you

with some of these eating disorders or anything like that? What we're seeing with young men and boys

is a rise in muscle dysmorphia where they're really consumed with being chiseled

and being bulky and being really fit in their muscle definition. And so they can start to engage in the exact same risky and unhealthy behaviors as someone who has anorexia nervosa and they can have the exact same negative outcomes on their health and on their mental health

They're behind us, right? So we're now in a phase of like, well, we were, I don't know if we're still

in a body positivity phase, but we were in a phase where we were actively trying to include

different body shapes, different skin colors, different hair textures, but men are not there

yet, right? They're kind of 20, 30 years ago where the women were, where we were all sort of

lumped in and we all agreed that there was one standard of beauty and we all tried to work

towards that. Men are really, they only have one standard and that is to be fit and muscular. And

it is honestly even more unnatural than what it is for women. You're not born with washboard abs

Nobody's born with that. That takes a lot of work and that can push people into extreme rigidity and

and compulsive exercise. So it is truly a big problem for young boys and even adult men that

are coming up right now on social media. Stephanie, I want to start with you. In terms of

what you would advise, especially, you know, like teenage girls, in terms of how to deal with their

body, if it may not be the way that they want it, but they can't do a whole lot about it because of

finances or their age or whatever, what would you say to them

I would say, first of all, focus on what's in your control, right

So I've always had curves. I never wanted to be a size two

You know what I mean? I really appreciate that about myself. Focus on the things about yourself that make you unique and that empower you

And then if there are things that you don't like and you can change them in a healthy way, work on that

And I don't think there is a problem with working towards a goal, setting a goal for yourself

But again, make sure that you're grounded in reality and you're grounded in health

Simone, what advice do you have for girls? I first want to affirm the fact that it is tough growing up in the society that we're in

And I think that it's always going to be better to admit that, like, this is rough

I love these things about myself. I also don't like these things about myself. And that's OK

I actually really, really love the idea of body neutrality, which is not like trying to be like, oh, my gosh, I might be a size 16

I love myself. Nothing's wrong with me. I think it's OK to admit that, like, I'm a size 16

Society wants me to hate myself, but I'm trying my best to remedy that and to love myself outside of that

Or even if you're teeny, teeny, tiny and everyone's always telling you to gain weight, I think it's OK to address the fact like this is tough and I might not like certain things about myself

and that's okay. This is a body that just carries me. Do what you want that is going to make yourself

feel good, but you have to make sure that it is coming from an authentic place and from a place

of self-love first. And this is just an additive. Asia, give us a little vitamin pack here for

dealing with all the celebrity, you know, the celebrity waves of style and envy that a lot of

people have when they look at those images. Well, what's missing from a lot of the messaging is that

this is all fake. I mean, most of it. And it's not a bad thing. You know, everyone's going to

touch up their bodies in the pictures as they see fit. But again, we looking at the celebrities and

not really thinking about the hours in the gym they spend or the dietitians and the chefs they

have on their staff or the surgeries that they can afford. This conversation kind of puts me in the

mind of that song by TLC Unpretty, because it really spoke to how we are at that time, it was

like 99. And so we weren't in the era of social media just yet, but we were still very much so

influenced by what we saw in the magazines and the TV screens and whatnot. And it became

it became overwhelming then. And that was over 25 years ago. So now fast forward the tape

we do have to, for ourselves and for the younger generations and for the kids that are not even

born yet, take everything with a grain of salt. Dr. Kelly, final words for some of the parents

in terms of, you know, really strengthening and reinforcing in their kids that they're

okay as they are. When it comes to parents, there's a couple of things. Number one is

you want to think in terms of what you want your children to do more of rather than what you want

them to stop doing. So if you think that your child is eating too much sugar, too much this

too much that, then instead of saying you can't have these things, start serving meals with more

fruits and vegetables. And when it comes to parents and social media, it's the same idea

Rather than harping on not being on social media or getting off, make sure your children's lives

are full of activities that encourage them to get to know themselves, that are outdoors, that are in

nature. Do things where there is no cell phone service. Bring your kids into the life that you

want them to have. Don't just focus on taking things away and what they can and cannot have

Thanks for joining us for this episode of Street Soldiers on Beauty Standards. You can watch it again on our Fox 5 NY YouTube page and the Fox Local app. Remember, use your

mind it's your best weapon. I'm Lisa Evers. Let's push for peace, love, and justice for all