It’s nothing new that standards and definitions of beauty have been a subject of controversy, intense feeling, rebellion and sometimes agony. For better or worse, physical beauty has and continues to control identity and self-esteem, consumerism, advertising, media and plastic surgeons’ offices. It has established its presence in the psyches of even the youngest girls, carrying on to influence the motivations and behaviors at school, work, and in the social games played to win acceptance and belonging. Pleasure is often mistaken for happiness, and in the search for pleasure, the demand for physical beauty appears to be indispensable.

The selection of photographers at the Annenberg Space for Photography Beauty Culture exhibit showcases an assortment of perspectives, from alluring editorial shoots with iconic celebrities and supermodels to journalistic commentary on human behavior. For example, fashion photographer Tyen graces the gallery with landscapes of color on doll-like faces, creating art on the human form for the sake of aesthetic gratification and design. His work is an indulgence in delicate femininity, painting porcelain skin with a fantasy of hues and forms. Conversely, Lauren Greenfield documents real-world, intimate situations that reveal meaning about how children grow up in Los Angeles and how they view their bodies.

Beauty Culture displays the glamorous, ugly, painful, lush and sad aspects of the beauty industry. Contrasting voices are heard, from vapid to moving. The exhibit is a commentary on the pressures of being beautiful and how this ideal is acted upon by different people’s varying perceptions and priorities. Beauty Culture asks the question, Is beauty the way a woman looks every day, or is the world a runway? Does one identify with the product of three hours of styling, or with subtle variations from one’s natural appearance? This question is reminiscent of a petite, brunette Spanish model’s words about a woman’s appearance after she comes out of her trailer on the set of a shoot: "When they come out of their trailer after five hours of prep, they look ba-da-boom. But after five hours, I look ba-da-boom too.After five hours, I’m Swedish and tall."

The exhibit addresses the various masks that women appropriate as a means of presentation to the judgment of the world. When the body is changing and is eventually headed to the grave, what sense of reliable identification can be placed on it? It seems that no amount of surgical procedures or fame and fortune can satisfy the need for reliable, authentic contentment, and the exhibit exposes the difficulty in chasing the moving target of physical perfection. A strong theme is the inevitability of aging, a process that some embrace with grace and others fight with what one could say is desperate, even pathetic reluctance.

Beauty Culture also mentions the psychological reality that some people are more exposed to extreme beauty through images in different forms of media than they are to the standards that constitute the majority of the population. Not only that, but already near-perfect models are digitally altered to satisfy ideals of physical attractiveness that are not actually found in nature. While businesses that sell the promise of enhanced beauty benefit from women’s insecurities, the collective health of misguided women dangles in the face of tyrannical vanity that easily betrays.

Racial diversity in the modeling world is touched upon, and the scarcity of photographs of people of color supports interviews that tell of reduced opportunities for ethnic models.

One of the most disturbing features of the exhibit is the presentation of children prepared for beauty pageants. The creepy, exploitative display of a toddler with full makeup and hair, moving with the body language of a sexually mature woman, points to a bizarre distortion of normal life stages.

In contrast, testimonials of cancer survivors add a meaningful and all-too real dimension to the importance and validity of wanting to feel physically attractive and complete as a woman.

Beauty Culture triumphs in covering a full continuum of attitudes toward beauty, prompting a personal conclusion that, like many things, a happy medium is best. Yes, there is a dark and destructive face to the culture of beauty. Women have paid the price of society’s expectations with eating disorders, a perceived need for cosmetic surgery and psychological distress. But does that warrant a rebellion to claim that obesity is beautiful instead, or that thin women with attractive features are any less real or likable than women with average shapes and sizes? Are spite or disapproval toward women who closely fit the beauty paradigms of magazines and television the answer to healing society’s apparent lack of appreciation for women with different body types? Rather than triggering a debate to decide what is beautiful in a way that excludes or condemns any one type, the conversation should aim at recognizing the natural beauty in all different kinds of bodies honored through healthy lifestyles.

It is human to become starry-eyed in the face of glitz and attention. The fashion and beauty industries are seductive, and beauty does seem to make life easier and more enjoyable. The world appears to respond more favorably to pretty people. Everyone wants a sense of power and control, and most of all to be loved. But it is when physical appearance is mistaken for self that the impossibility of chasing a moving target becomes apparent, taking away the power so desperately being sought in the first place. Beauty Culture shows this pursuit and the drastic lengths to which people go to end up losing themselves in an effort to find themselves.

Reach Desiree here.