Hegemony In American Culture Research Paper

In the world we know today, there is always something that dominates our culture, wither it is political or cultural. This idea of having authority over others is called hegemony. Hegemony involves universal ideologies, that are perceived to benefit everyone, but in reality only benefits the ruling class. Modern cosmetics are a perfect example of what is dominant in our culture. Beauty is of great value in America. In our culture, we tend to associate beauty with being desired. Someone who is beautiful is portrayed as having everything they need in the world. These people always find love, live adventurous lives, and never really have problems. Basically, they live the lives everyone wants to live. As a result, this influences both men and
women to purchase these products that these dominate forces define as beauty. From a young age people are targeted to look a certain way. I myself remember being a child and having remorse towards my father because he gave me curly hair, and according to the media, curly hair wasn’t pretty, the more westernized you looked, the better. So as a result, I would spend hundreds of dollars every month on products to make my hair straight. While I may have felt like I was benefiting from this, the only people benefiting from this are the company owners and media. They told me what beauty was and I bought it, figuratively and literally. By feeding into their views, I became a pawn in a much bigger scheme. But this does not just stop with hair products, there is a huge industry of makeup products that are doing the same kind of brainwashing. With the latest trends being things like: tanning, maintenance of eyebrows, white teeth, and injecting collagen into the lips, you can imagine how much people spend on average trying to keep up. Not only are these products bad for us in the long run, but they are bad for the environment too. For instance, in the beginning of the semester we looked up some of the chemicals used in everyday products. One thing in specific that stood out was toothpaste. Certain types of toothpaste have something called microbeads in them. Microbeads are essentially plastic. These microbeads are either digested or flush down our drains. The problem with these beads is that if caught between our teeth, they could cause gingivitis. Whereas, if they end up down the drain they can harm wildlife.