Glow Chat: Margarita Tellez España
Part of our work at Glow Within is to highlight various individuals with unique and impactful stories. As an organization, we value diverse experiences and believe that there is always something to learn from one another. We came up with The Glow Chats series as a way of featuring a broad range of women while bringing light to their work and advocacies.
Our first feature is Margarita Tellez España. She recently graduated with an Honours Degree in Sociology at Simon Fraser University and currently works as a program coordinator for a Refugee Settlement program. Margarita is passionate about immigrant rights as well as advocating for women and the LGBT+ community. Check out our conversation with her below:
A few years ago, Margarita came across an article in her immigration class that would prompt a critical research project exploring ideas of beauty and cultural belonging. Eventually, she wrote a thesis entitled Who is Canadian? Beauty standards and national identity among women of colour. Margarita moved to Canada from Bolivia at a young age and encountered peers from various cultural backgrounds. At the time, Margarita never felt the need to change herself and was very proud of her heritage. However, she recalled having friends who yearned for a sense of belonging, especially regarding their appearance.
How did you initially approach this topic? What inspired you to conduct research about it?
I approach this work with a personal connection, a deep empathy and love for girls like my friends and me. This topic came from watching people I love struggle with these ideas of belonging and beauty. I always kept in mind the real people that beauty standards affect, people like me and my friends.
Why do you think that beauty standards and belonging are so closely related?
Growing up in any country, there are ideals of beauty and stereotypes that you get used to. You tend to equate what you look like with fitting in. And in Canada, beauty is seen as whiteness and many people I spoke to felt alienated by this concept because they weren’t white and they grew up with people pointing out their non-white features in very negative and traumatic ways.
Being a person of colour or individual, why do you think it’s essential to bring light to body image concerns within the context of diverse cultures?
Each country and region have their different standards. Although globalization has impacted the way ideas spread around, there is no one perspective that you can look at for beauty. You have to see it through an intersectional lens because we are impacted by our own biases and values. Someone’s self-esteem or identity can be affected by beauty standards not only in Canada but also in their home country or their parents' home country. All these standards can mix together and can create a very complicated idea of oneself. I think when you are young and trying to figure out who you are, these ideas of beauty and belonging sort of mesh together and for those that don’t fit into them, it can leave you with a lot of self-doubt. That is what I saw in my research, young women that had experienced deep alienation for not fitting the Canadian standard or beauty standards, and were left with a complicated sense of self. Add to those ideas of beauty in their home country or their parents’ home country and you have young girls that feel like they don’t belong anywhere. However, as they grew older my participants were able to move past those experiences and redefine beauty and “Canadianess” for themselves and they have a much healthier sense of self today.
Based on your research, you encountered individuals with unique experiences regarding their identity. Did you determine any similar struggles? Were there contrasts?
Many of my participants, especially the South Asian and Middle Eastern ones, were very concerned about the size of their noses, body hair, weight and body shapes. It was also interesting how many of their struggles were closely tied to relationships with boys and rejection.
What have you learned from this paper and what is something you would like to highlight for the Glow Within Community?
I realized that people grow up believing certain ideas, which were heavily engraved in them. Although we talk about these topics openly, they deserve more empathy as it is hard to unlearn the standards. It is easy to say, “Oh you’re beautiful, don’t get a nose job” but it is very hard to let go of the beauty standards you grew up with. I saw in my participants that, eventually, they were able to reshape and relearn what it means to be Canadian and who they are as people but it took them time. An interesting pattern for my participants was that they were only able to reshape their ideas of beauty and Canadianness once they were out of high school. Most of them found in university a larger community where there were others that looked like them and were proud of that. I think the combination of being around more diverse people with different ideas and being out of the toxic bubble that high school can give them the freedom and space to reshape their ideas and have a healthier sense of self. So I think the most important thing is to have deep sympathy for other young girls who are going through a process of unlearning.
