(soft ethereal music) - [Narrator] "Roots, Race and Culture" is made possible in part by the contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(mellow hip hop music) - Hello, my friends, and welcome to "Roots, Race and Culture," where we bring you into candid conversations about shared cultural experiences.

I'm Danor Gerald.

- And I'm Lonzo Liggins.

In 1962, Malcolm X gave a speech in Los Angeles to an audience of mostly African-American women, where he said the following.

"Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair?

Who taught you to hate the color of your skin to such an extent that you bleach it to look like the white man?

Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips?

Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?"

Well, we have two wonderful guests here to discuss these pointed questions.

Welcome, ladies.

Tiffany, let's start with you.

- Well, I'm Tiffany Rasmussen, and I was born and raised here in Utah.

I'm currently a high school teacher and a yoga instructor and I also do a lot, or a bit of modeling.

- And we have Dr. Kaur - Yes.

- Dr. Kaur, would you introduce yourself, please?

- My name's Harjit.

I was born in Punjab, and I immigrated to West Valley City when I was three years old, so I'm a Utahan.

I did biomedical engineering and then went to medical school, and now I'm doing my psychiatry residency at the University of Utah.

And I identify as a Sikh Punjabi woman.

- [Lonzo] Awesome.

- So first, I'd love to start with you, Tiffany.

When someone talks about this idea of standards of beauty and equality, what do you think of when you think American standard of beauty?

- For a long time, it's been Eurocentric, and it's been other ethnicities trying to mimic the Eurocentric standards of beauty.

So typically blonde hair, light eyes, light skin, you know, slender.

So while it's changed, you know, as we've seen with the Kardashians and J-Lo, and more of the round buttocks and stuff, it still, I think, very much upholds the Eurocentric standards of beauty.

- Yeah, I find that funny because, you know, when I go to the gym or anything, I'll see people on that machine where they're like doing these hip thrusts with all this weight on their hips to try to, like, grow their buttocks, and I was like, "I didn't see that 10 years ago."

(Lonzo laughing) (laughs) What about you, Dr. Kaur?

What do you think of when you hear the American standard of beauty?

- You know, I agree definitely with what Tiffany just mentioned.

I think a lot about how the standards are created by those in power, and who is in power is a concept that we've been talking about for a long time, and it's usually white, blonde, you know, different color eyes are really promoted and stuff like that.

So that's what I think of when I think of beauty, standards of beauty, and I also think of the concept that we have to all mold ourselves to be that way to get success.

And I think that's where a lot of my struggles with the standards of beauty really stand.

- Yeah, it's interesting to think about how that impacts a person who doesn't fit in those standards.

So do you feel like Utah has the same standard?

How does that feel?

'Cause both of you guys have lived here for most of your life.

- You're both from here, mostly.

- Yes.

Yeah, I think there is definitely a standard of beauty here that upholds the Eurocentric, and intwine that with the standard religion here, which is Mormon, and yeah.

(laughs) - So it's kind of very, you know, sort of whitewashed, and how does that impact you, having grown up here or been here most of your life?

- You know, I was lucky to grow up in West Valley where there's a lot of people of color.

But you know, interestingly, we were influenced there, too.

I remember when I was in 7th grade I used to get gel, and I have pretty straight hair.

I've always had pretty straight hair.

But even me, I would take gel and make sure every strand was in very straight.

Like, I didn't want anything to stray.

And I remember thinking and feeling so much pressure every single day to, you know, have super straight hair, be thin.

And that was like a huge struggle on my self-esteem, and I felt like nobody really cared to give me a chance to be my friend.

Or even like boys, like, wouldn't like me because of the way I looked.

- That's interesting.

I never really thought about the coarseness or the texture of the hair being something to have, like, pressure.

I mean, your hair is curly.

My hair is naturally curly.

Like, to feel like you have to straighten it out all the time is tough.

- Oh, I did.

I was a skater in junior high.

And back in the late '80's- - You?

Wow.

- Yes, I was a skater.

(group laughing) But back in the late '80's, early '90's, the skaters would have this big, like, long hair that they would have that would fall in front of their face.

And they would throw it back like that.

- (laughs) Like a Justin Bieber thing going.

- And I had my Afro, and I was like, I can't... - [Danor] "I can't flick it, man, it won't go!"

- I can't flick my Afro.

So yeah, I remember that feeling, that weird sense of not feeling like I belonged with the rest of the skaters.

- I know how you feel, Lonzo, I know how you feel.

- Yeah, see?

And now I don't have any hair, so it's just a total loss.

(laughs) - Wow, so now, I'm kind of curious about this idea of being here and having to sort of live up to these standards.

Did you find there was some point in your life when you were just willing to just accept you for who you are?

Or did other people start accepting you for who you are around here?

- Growing up, like, I would beg my mom to straighten my hair, you know, because I wanted to have straight hair like my friends.

I mean, even on TV you didn't have a lot of ethnic role models.

And the '90's was very, for me as a teenager, was heroin chic.

So the skinnier the better, you know.

- Oh, yes.

- And so, and I would try, I remember my mom ironing my hair, and it just went whoosh instead of, you know, straightening it.

(Lonzo laughing) And it wasn't until I was an adult that I learned, and that's why I try to talk to my students now, because it took becoming an adult to really embrace having curly hair.

And, you know, I would hide from the sun, and now I'm like, "Oh please, I want to be more, you know, golden."

And it really was a lack of representation that made me feel like I had to look like everyone else in my class, and stuff like that.

- Wow.

- Absolutely.

Let's keep it local, too, 'cause I wanna ask this questions for you, Dr. Kaur.

In 2007, the Forbes magazine wrote an article calling Utah the vainest city in America due to their ranking of having the second highest number of plastic surgeons per capita.

One 2019 American Academy and facial reconstructive surgery survey found that 72% of patients doing plastic surgery wanted to look better in selfies, on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook.

- [Danor] Wow.

- The research also showed that social media has led to more body image concerns and eating disorders.

Now, how do you respond to that, since you're a medical professional?

You're a psychiatrist.

- That's a very complicated question.

So just a couple of layers that I'm thinking about.

The first is, when you say, you know, we're kind of the vainest city, I think there's a lot of cultural aspects to that too, perfectionism, that makes that a little bit more complicated.

I also do believe that, like, standards of beauty, though, impact both men and women.

It impacts women more deeply, and I feel like, you know, because of that perfectionism, there is an image, there is a beauty standard that is very Eurocentric that a lot of people feel like they have to abide by to get that praise, to get that reward, to get that success.

As far as social media goes, I think that is a very big conversation about its impact on mental health and also eating disorders.

You know, with the rise of social media, we do get this kind of like these dopamine hits of Likes, and the way our image looks for people, and the validation we get through words.

And I think there is a certain image, again, Eurocentric, that is praised.

And I think it brings a lot of pressure for a lot of people, especially young kids.

And then eating disorders on their own are interestingly very entrenched in racism.

And I would say that with eating disorders, there's a lot of, I always find it interesting how they're on such a high rise in America, and I think a big part of that is also the way we look at food, the way we look at beauty standards, the way we look at how we should be.

So again, it's a complicated question, but there's a lot of concepts of beauty standards that do come through that.

- You know, there's a history of, you know, where these beauty standards arose in America.

And, you know, it could go back to the 1920's or '30's, but really when media started to launch, when you started to see more advertisements in magazines and in television and in movies, was right around the 1950's and '60's, and two of those major, major stars at the time, it was Marilyn Monroe for the white community, pretty much the world itself, and then you had Lene Horne, who was a representation of Black women and women of color.

And these were the standards of beauty that most women were trying to adhere to, as you could see.

Of course, you know, as we moved into the 1960's and '70's, it got a little bit more, as you were talking about, the heroin chic, primary with Twiggy.

Twiggy was the representation of white women in America, and Pam Grier was Black women in America.

And of course you move to more natural with Pam Grier, where the Afro was embraced, and then with Twiggy it was just more of this, the skinnier you look, the prettier you were, and that carried, of course, into the '80's and then into the '90's.

- Well, I think it's fascinating looking at those images in black and white how similar they look, right?

- Right, right.

- Yeah.

- You can't like, between Marilyn Monroe and Lena Horne, like, there was very little difference in the shade of their skin, and then she had straight hair, right, Lena Horne did?

I don't know if that's her natural hair.

I doubt it.

So you see that they were already starting to push that idea of like you have to look like this to be beautiful, no matter who you are, right?

- Well, and then I asked my daughters.

I was like, "Who is your representation of a standard of beauty today?

Like, just throw some names at me just right off the top."

And the first, like, without hesitation, Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian.

- [Danor] What?

- Yeah, those were the two people that they immediately thought of.

And I said, "Well, is there anyone else?"

And they said Sydney Sweeney on "Euphoria" and Beyonce and, who else, who was the other gal?

Rihanna.

- And again, I look at that image of, you know, Jenner and Kard, I can't tell the difference.

Like I... (Lonzo laughing) I would have literally thought those were the same woman.

Like, there's this homogenized sort of idea of what beauty is even today.

- What do you think about that today?

Do you think about those images?

Is that accurate?

- I do want to make a point.

As a non-Black person of color, I also realize my privilege in the system.

I think I'm grateful that I'm here a part of this conversation, but even Kylie and Kim, they profit off of appearing as Black, or whatever is quote-unquote Black features.

And I think they profited a lot off of that, and they could only do that because they were white women.

And I think that's really important thing to say, because I really believe that they did have that privilege and that status that a lot of Black women didn't have.

And then they then would profit off of these things that were traditionally features of Black women.

- So you're saying, like, if you're Black and you look this way, it's like, "Eh."

But if you're white and you look that way, it's like "Woo."

So there's like this different standard between the two?

- I would agree.

I don't know, what do you think, Tiffany?

- Yes, most definitely.

I mean, even when they were rocking corn rows, even though they called them foxer braids.

You know, for me to wear something like that, or another Black woman, would be considered ghetto or hood.

I mean, just think of the fact that, and I don't even think we have it here in Utah, but we had to get the Crown Act passed just so we could wear our natural hair to work.

- What?

- I haven't heard of this one.

What is the Crown Act?

- Yeah, the Crown Act is so you cannot be discriminated for your hair, if you have locks, if you wear braids, you know, an Afro.

So in a lot of states they've started passing the Crown Act because, again, to protect people of color to be able to have their natural hair and not be called unprofessional and things like that.

- I don't have any hair, so.

- Wow.

(group laughing) - I never studied hair-related stuff.

- So it's funny how the images of the people that we look up to kind of represent what we think is the standard, right?

- Well, I grew up here in Utah.

I grew up in Sugar House.

And when I viewed women from a young age, the standard of beauty that I had seen and that I was used to was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman, and just we have a picture of her And that's exactly what I thought was beauty from the time I was young.

And I didn't really have, you know, a context outside of it because that was what was seen as magnificent here and what was held up.

Those were the women that got a lot of stuff here.

It seemed to be that just more doors opened for them, and it seemed like there was a better life for them than it was for other women.

And it wasn't just, like, women of color, it was women who were, you know, brunette- - Blondes have more fun, right?

- Yeah, yeah, there was just, it just seemed like there was a bit of an advantage for them.

Can you speak on that?

Is there an advantage to beauty in this society?

- Oh, 100%.

- Most definitely.

- Even as someone who, I remember, I think a lot about beauty standards when I started engineering, right?

And even in those spaces, you know, where you think like, you know, science is the main thing, even there, beauty standards mattered.

It mattered how you looked, how you presented yourself.

You got opportunities that way in medical school.

- Wow.

- Even as a psychiatrist, I think barely am I fighting those beauty standards, and I'm like, no, I'm gonna show up in an office being exactly who I am, 'cause that's how patients are gonna relate to me.

But definitely people do, there is a thing called pretty privilege.

But where does that pretty privilege come from?

It comes from, again, people in power, people with these Eurocentric beauty looks, that kind of get that privilege.

So I say, pretty privilege is just in another way saying, like, Eurocentric privilege, right?

And people do get opportunities if they appear a certain way.

So it's no surprise that a lot of women of color feel like they have to, women of color, people who are, say, bigger, feel like they have to look a certain way so they get those opportunities.

It's no surprise.

- Yeah, what do you think?

- So I was involved in event in the spring, and even like the hairdressers and the makeup artists, they're not prepared to work with different color, you know, skin tones and everything.

And a lot of even the darker-skinned girls were really upset and in tears because they couldn't match their skin tones.

They were very gray and looked ashy, and they had to go to their car and try to fix their makeup themselves.

And it's like, how are we in 2023 and makeup artists and hairdressers cannot work with a diverse group of people?

- That happened to me once.

I did a commercial, and that makeup artist finished, and I walked in the mirror and I looked like a zombie.

(Lonzo laughing) - [Tiffany] Right.

- I was like, are we gonna, and I literally said on set, I was like, "Are we gonna shoot it with me looking like this?"

And nobody said anything.

I'm like, "Okay."

(laughs) - Yep, and "The Walking Dead" began.

(laughs) - But as speaking up about it, as a Black woman though, if we speak up about it, then we're seen as problematic.

- [Lonzo] Right.

- And I chose to be that one, to be problematic.

Because to see my sisters so upset, I was not gonna stand for it.

- [Danor] Good for you.

- Well, you know, around the world, people have a different idea of beauty.

- Right.

- And of course in America, we have our ideas of what beauty are, but in other places they have a different idea.

So let's take a look at some of the images of people from around the world of how they view beauty.

There's the Wodaabe Tribe in Niger, where they actually dress up as women to court other women.

- [Danor] Oh, wow.

- [Lonzo] And they are viewed, it's a matriarchal society, and the men are there to be chosen, not to choose.

It's the Kayan Lahwi tribe in Myanmar where they use rings around their neck as a sign of beauty.

The more rings you have, the more beautiful you are, and at a young age, they start with rings and they start to build up those things.

And as you can see, the older they are, the more they have.

- [Danor] I thought that was only Africa that they did that.

- They do that in Myanmar as well.

This is the Maori women in New Zealand, where a sign of beauty is the tattoo that's on their chin.

The more intricate the tattoo is, the higher their place is in that society and the more beautiful they're considered.

We're talking about, you know, different types of body types like with Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian, how, you know, and J-Lo, how they're a little bit, their butts are a little bit bigger.

And I think people nowadays seem to be more accepting of body types that are a little bit bigger.

Do you think that's the case, or do you think that they're still kind of putting people in a box if their body type is not Twiggy, so to speak?

- Well, Lizzo definitely was like, trying to come out and say, "Hey, yo, look, you gotta accept me as I am."

- Do they, though?

That's the question, are people accepting?

- I can talk about Lizzo 'cause she's under fire right now for actually fat-shaming and stuff, with her dancers.

It's kind of a, it's sad to see, because I think a lot of people looked up to her, and her being able to express herself, and then to hear that she's, like, fat-shaming behind closed doors is disappointing.

- So do you guys feel like the focus shouldn't be on what's considered beautiful?

Or should it be on, like, something else?

Like how do we get ourselves to that place where we can accept each other and be excited about the differences, versus, like, trying to homogenize what we consider to be, this is good.

- Yeah, I think diversity is beautiful, right?

And I think that we are moving towards, you know, something that people are staring to understand skinny doesn't equal healthy.

But also not to glorify, you know, just a certain body type, to accept people as they are.

- There's, like, a lot of research that also shows that BMIs don't correlate to somebody's health.

You can have a skinny person that gets a heart attack.

- The BMI is racist itself, so.

- It is, it is, it has a racist history.

- Yeah.

- That's a whole other conversation.

- [Danor] Really?

- Yeah.

- Well, let's have that conversation.

BMI, body mass indexes, where does that come from?

- It doesn't take in the, you know, people's genetic makeup.

Like, one of my sons was also, like, he was considered overweight, but if you looked at him, you wold see his calves were just like, you know, muscular.

He was just a bigger kid, but he wasn't overweight.

And so it doesn't take in, like, you're going to see that Polynesians have a different body type than a lot of Caucasians.

But the BMI caters to the Caucasians, so.

- Wow, so that is like, the BMI is actually, like, again, upholding the traditional standards of beauty.

- Because the research was only done in a place with certain homogenous population when it was first created.

So it was not created for everybody, but they utilize it for everybody.

Also the person who created the BMI had his own racist history in eugenics.

Also, I actually talk about this a little bit more in my podcast, "Bundle of Hers."

We did a whole episode on the racist history of BMI.

But yeah, I think that that's another thing we have to remember, where is this research being done even when it comes to how skinny you are?

- Well, you know, that brings up something that kind of goes back to, back in the days when film was what we used.

Now everything is shot with digital ones and zeroes, right?

But they used to be on film.

And when Kodak and these original companies started creating film stock and photography, they were just using certain models, right?

These white women.

So they were trying to get the emulsion and the makeup, the chemistry of this film to make that person look good, right?

And so it was all about white people.

So when you would have a person of color on the screen, or you would film them, the lighting just didn't look as good.

It didn't feel right.

And they didn't actually change this film stock to make it work for people of color until a furniture company said, "Hey, listen, we're taking these pictures and it doesn't look good."

'Cause the furniture was, you know, kind of brown.

It was more like a person of color's skin tone.

So then they went in and changed the film stock to make the furniture look good, and that's when they finally were able to start to shoot film and light so that people of color looked more natural.

- That's wild.

- Yeah.

- That's interesting.

- That's wild that it was through the furniture being sold that.

(laughs) - [Lonzo] Exactly.

- That they had to do that.

- That was the important thing there was the marketing issue.

(laughs) - That was the important thing.

- So what do we do going, I mean, how do we change as a society, do you think, to make it so that our standards of beauty can kind of not be taken as seriously, I guess?

- I think we often think of impactful, big change as a public thing, which I think things like this, it's very important, but it's even in the daily interactions.

It's in the way I say to my sister, "You look beautiful with your curly hair."

It's in, like, conversations with my niece, that, "Oh, I love your cheeks, they're so cute."

And they're like chubby cheeks, you know?

So it's like the small little things I think that are really radical.

Like, we don't need to make these big gestures.

I think like media, shows, podcasts, things like this is very, very important work, but it's also just the small little things.

- I do want to finish off with your earrings.

(laughs) - I'm so happy you noticed.

- Oh yeah, tell us about them.

- The reason I'm happy you noticed is because I'm Punjabi, and these earrings are Punjabi, and I think when I came here today, I was like, "Standards of beauty, I need to always represent who I am, where I come from, because they make me really proud."

So yeah, they're from my hometown.

- [Danor] Pull your hair back so we can see these things.

These are beautiful.

- They're called Jhumka.

- Jhumka, is it a tree?

Tell me about it, tell us the- - So, yeah, actually, a lot of the type of details are mimicked from, like, nature.

So trees, leaves.

So the top part is like a leaf petal.

- [Danor] Yeah.

- Because we do a lot of farming where I'm from, so there's a lot of, like, natural influences.

- [Danor] I love it, they're beautiful.

- Where can people hear more about the "Bundle of Hers" podcast?

- Yeah, so we're with the University of Utah Scope Radio, which is like the University of Utah healthcare space.

And you can also find us at "Bundle of Hers."

We're five women who are residents, medical students.

It changes through the years.

We started with four women who were all medical students.

And we just talk about being women of color in medicine and uplifting underrepresented stories, similar to what you all are doing.

- Awesome.

- That's great.

And if people want to know more about your modeling career, do you want people to follow you, or where can people go?

- Yeah, so I'm gonna refer my yoga account @thatyogichick on Instagram, so.

- [Lonzo] Okay, all right.

- [Danor] How do you spell it?

- That, yogi, and then Y-O-G-I, chick, C-H-I-C-K. - Perfect.

- Awesome.

- Well, that's it for this week, y'all.

Until then, you can catch other episodes and bonus content from our episodes on pbsutah.org/roots.

It's been a pleasure, everyone.

"Roots, Race and Culture," y'all, we are out.

(mellow hip hop music) - [Narrator] "Roots, Race and Culture" is made possible in part by the contributes to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

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