Dionne De Groot
Volunteer Mitra Wacana

Halo semua! First, I will introduce myself. Nama saya Dionne, saya dari Belanda. Two years ago I wanted to come to Indonesia, to do my internship here. Unfortunately that was not possible because of Covid. In July 2022 I have graduated in Belanda from Social Work (perkerjaan Social). I still wanted to discover Indonesia, the culture, the people, the food and how the Social Workers work here. Right now I am volunteering at Mitra Wacana, until the end of June.

I will tell you about the beauty standard that I was surprised to see. In my first two weeks a lot of people were staring at me. Which is fine, because I can understand that I am different here, I am the Bulé. But what I did not understand the first few times was why people pinched their nose when they saw me, sometimes people would say that I am beautiful. But I think that Indonesian people are more beautiful dan people from Belanda. When I told them that, they started laughing.

A few weeks ago I had a nice conversation with a colleague of mine. She explained to me that the beauty standard in Indonesia is to have a small nose, red lips, round eyes and a white skin. This comes from the history between Indonesia and Belanda. That was the first time I heard most of the beauty features one after the other.

In Belanda, before the 20^th century the beauty standard used to be a white skin. In the beginning of the 20^th century there was found a link between vitamin D deficiency and sunlight. It became clear that sunlight could help you get rid of certain ailment, the taboo of a tanned skin faded away.

Nowadays a tanned skin is part of the beauty standard. In Belanda a lot of people are paying money to get a tan, through a spray-tan, a tanning bed and self-tanner. Even though research is teaching us that to many UV radiation (in sunlight) can cause diseases on long term, such as skin cancer.

Our beauty standard is also influenced by America and influencers on social media. Our beauty standard is to have big boobs, a small waist and a big bum. Even skin is also a beauty standard. There are a lot of expensive face creams on the marked, to reduce wrinkles (although sometimes they don’t work). If you ask me, Indonesian people do have les wrinkles and a more even skin than people from Belanda.

It is almost kind of crazy that we are comparing ourselves to other people that live thousands of miles away. And we all do that. I think it would be much easier if we didn’t do that, and just be happy with ourselves. I know that it’s not realistic. But I believe that it’s good to be aware of it.