Reema & Ingrid on the pressures of beauty standards for women today

Long-time friends actor Reema Sampat and makeup artist Ingrid Rivera discuss the pressure of the beauty standards in the entertainment industry. They also share their experiences raising daughters in a social media-exposed society.

Transcript

00:00

Celebrities and the media do actually have a lot to do with the trends.

00:06

And then the trends have a lot to do with the beauty standards of what we accept as beautiful. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:27

Since I do work in the beauty industry and I see how many of my clients actually come with pictures of celebrities or pictures of people

00:36

they see in the internet and Instagram, I see that this actually does affect how people feel about themselves.

00:43

Yeah. I mean, I think for me, being an Indian or South Asian woman in entertainment, what I notice

00:50

is that a lot of Indian women who get cast in things

00:56

frequently, like, who are consistently working, have a tendency to have more Caucasian features.

01:03

In Hollywood, I think that that's kind of the trend. When you're ethnic, you're either, like, super ethnic looking, and that's what they're going for.

01:10

Or your ethnic with, like, Caucasian features. We are all beautiful. We are all different.

01:17

But for some reason, we try to fit in on these standards that are created by the society.

01:23

Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I think the standard has really, like, shifted. And now it almost just feels like everyone looks the same

01:33

and tries to look the same. And with social media and all of that, it's so accessible to us now, like what everyone looks like.

01:40

And so much of that also just isn't even real. And it's Photoshopped and Facetuned and all of that. And so the standard has gone, like, literally unrealistic.

01:50

Like, it's computerized. I remember when I was pregnant, I really organized my thoughts on how I wanted

01:58

to raise this little person. How do I fight against what we are actually taught that whenever you do wear makeup

02:06

or whenever you dress up pretty is that whenever people actually give you all those compliments? And what I've been doing with my daughter,

02:13

because she's looking at this all the time. And it's normal for her to see all this makeup. Instead of being-- feeling that it is something

02:20

that I want to keep her away from it, just seeing it from another angle. So I've been trying to teach her that this is art

02:28

instead of that this is the way to be beautiful. Instead of being like, oh, you're so beautiful, oh, I love it, it'll be like, oh, you did it right.

02:36

That's how we do it. Now let's make some circles. And now let's put some more color. She thinks it's fun, the same way that she's

02:44

painting in her coloring book. Then she paints on her face with Mom's makeup. So-- Yeah, that's great.

02:51

I mean, I'm trying to encourage art in her and not just makeup. With my kids, we're all very petite.

02:57

We're small. And people will be like, oh, your daughter is so small. And so I teach her that small is also strong.

03:04

We have a bunch of cats. And one of them is-- her name is Chiquita. She's small, but she's the strongest, the fastest,

03:11

and she's the one that catches, like, the birds and all of that, right? The boy cats who are bigger can't do any of that.

03:18

And so I always kind of compare her to that. And I'm like, you're like Chiquita. And I let her know that, you know, like,

03:25

you can be small and strong. [MUSIC PLAYING]