A Critic of Beauty Standards: Radical Feminism in Lowthorpe’s Misbehaviour (2020)

Abstract

This article examines the debate about beauty standards as a form of social control over women's bodies legitimized through media and popular culture, particularly beauty pageants. This issue is relevant because beauty standards are still produced and normalized as a measure of women's worth in the public sphere. This research uses radical feminist theory to analyse how the patriarchal system operates through the representation of women's bodies in the film Misbehaviour (2020). This theory is used to understand that the practice of objectification and surveillance of women's bodies is not simply an individual choice, but rather part of an oppressive social structure. The method used is a qualitative approach with an analysis of the film's text through a sociological study of literature, examining dialogue, narrative, characters, and cinematic visualization. The results show that the film Misbehaviour presents women's bodies as visual commodities that are publicly valued, while simultaneously demonstrating practices of surveillance and restrictions on women's movement. The film also presents women's resistance that is collective, ambiguous, and full of negotiation, both within and outside the patriarchal system. These findings imply that beauty standards are not merely an aesthetic issue, but rather an instrument of power that functions to normalize gender inequality in society.