California is synonymous with beauty.

Anyone who has visited California knows that the Golden State is easy to love for its stunning natural beauty and the sheer variety of its landscapes. From its dramatic coastline and majestic mountain ranges to its towering redwood forests and the rugged wilderness of its deserts, California has it all.

But the state’s powerful associations with beauty go beyond its sublime landscapes to its reputation as a global driver of personal beauty. In large part inspired and encouraged by Hollywood and celebrity culture, California’s apparent — and often mocked — obsession with the body beautiful also draws from its historic connections to health, fitness and reinvention.

Indeed, California’s enduring relationship with beauty, whether natural or personal, is far more complex than might initially be apparent — profoundly influencing the state’s evolution, its people and its global reputation, for better, and sometimes for worse.

Natural Beauty

The state’s natural beauty has been cherished by generations of Californians, going back thousands of years to the Indigenous peoples who were the state’s earliest stewards. This appreciation of its beauty has inspired a conservationist relationship with the land that is still evident in California’s impressive proliferation of national parks (the state is home to the highest number in the nation) and its longstanding role as a leader in national and global sustainability efforts.

“There’s no question that the recognition and appreciation of California’s beauty spurred conservation efforts to preserve it for future generations,” says William Deverell, USC Dornsife’s divisional dean for social sciences and co-director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Sustainability and conservation have always been central to California’s story, driven in part by the state’s rapid growth. How the state develops — and the pace of that development — have long been key issues.

“California always presented itself as a land of natural abundance,” says Karen Tongson, professor of gender and sexuality studies, English, and American studies and ethnicity. This abundance, she notes, raises questions about ownership.

“One of California’s ongoing challenges is balancing the desire to inhabit and own its beauty with the understanding that it should be accessible to everyone,” she says.

This tension is evident in the ongoing struggle against those who seek to privatize portions of California’s beauty. It’s playing out in arguments by oceanfront homeowners over access to public beaches they unlawfully claim to be part of their property.

“The fact is,” Tongson says, “we needed the national parks to ensure robber barons and captains of industry didn’t turn that land into their private playgrounds. We’re still engaged in that struggle today.”

Drop Dead Gorgeous

While California’s much-admired landscapes provide tremendous enjoyment, Deverell notes that their beauty is not necessarily benign. From the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific Ocean to the Mojave Desert, California’s landscapes can prove unforgiving, and, sometimes, deadly.

“Despite its beauty, California is a place where nature can be perilous,” says Deverell, professor of history, spatial sciences and environmental studies.

Consider the Donner Party, Midwest pioneers migrating to California by wagon train, some of whom resorted to cannibalism to survive the brutal winter of 1846 to 1847 in the Sierra Nevada. Or take the English actor Julian Sands, an experienced mountaineer, who died last year while hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains. And then there’s Paradise, the Northern California town devastated in 2018 by the state’s deadliest wildfire, which killed 85 people, destroyed 14,000 buildings and displaced most of the town’s 26,000 residents for years.

“California’s beauty is seductive, but it’s wise to remember that it can also be lethal,” Deverell says.

Sun-kissed Vitality

While California’s natural beauty helped shape the state’s ethos, the state’s beautiful weather — dry air, abundant sunshine and a temperate climate — played a key role in its long association with health and wellness, helping to cement California’s reputation as a driver of personal beauty.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the state’s boosters promoted California as a sanctuary of clean air and healthy living — particularly when contrasted with the heavily industrialized states of the northeast. As a result, California was regarded as the place to go to cure whatever ails you, and particularly as a refuge for those with respiratory illnesses such as tuberculosis.

This reputation attracted wellness industries, reinforcing the state’s identity as a leader in health and beauty. Of course, Hollywood, with its allure of glamour and fame, was another major force behind California’s association with personal beauty.

“The film industry peddled beauty through its stars,” says Tongson. “The creation of celebrity culture encouraged ordinary people to emulate their favorites and to feel they needed to look good, too.”

Via the promotion of its movie stars, Hollywood helped create a powerful association of California with youth and beauty.

That association was further enhanced by the state’s celebrated beach culture, including surfing, its emphasis on outdoor pursuits and fitness and what is widely regarded as California’s obsession with “the body beautiful.”

Sculpted Abs

Founded in 1934, Los Angeles’ iconic Muscle Beach was the birthplace of the nation’s physical fitness boom. The golden age of bodybuilding took off on the West Coast in the 1960s and ’70s. Fitness gurus such as Jack LaLanne, Arnold Schwarzenegger (who went on to become a movie star and eventually governor of the state) and celebrated actress and aerobics queen Jane Fonda coached the world on how to obtain the body beautiful — California style.

For decades, until the dangers of overexposure to UV rays became common knowledge, a golden “California tan” was considered a sign of good health and an essential attribute if one wanted to be considered attractive. This led to the inevitable creation and marketing of products from protective suntan lotions to  —  for those in less sunny climes — tanning beds and artificial bronzing agents.

While California’s emphasis on personal beauty continues to be fed by different kinds of industries, Tongson argues that it’s important to understand that the origins of this emphasis lie in the fact that the state was widely perceived as a place of physical healing.

Laura Serna, associate professor of history at USC Dornsife, and of cinema and media studies at USC School of Cinematic Arts, agrees. “The intersection of these two historical paths — celebrity culture and the perception of California as an environment conducive to health and physical well-being — occurs primarily in Southern California. However, they can also be seen in Northern California, which historically has a longstanding focus on spiritual well-being and the cultivation of the self as opposed to beauty, per se,” Serna says.

More Than Skin Deep

For the dreamers of the “Golden Dream,” an essential part of the California myth is the freedom and creative spirit it offers.

“Coming to California is also about plunging into inner transformation — it’s about spiritual, not just physical, change,” says Tongson. “People flock here to meditate, head to the desert for sound baths, and seek experiences that transport them beyond the plane of the obvious.”

In the 1960s, particularly in Northern California, there were major efforts to use the freedom the landscape afforded to search within. Intellectuals like Timothy Leary pushed the boundaries of thought and research on consciousness.

“This was a period, particularly in the northern part of the state, when there was a focus on beautifying the soul on a very deep spiritual level,” Tongson says.

These differences between north and south, and the emphasis on Hollywood-driven celebrity culture in the latter, resulted in differing perceptions of the two regions.

“People probably think about Southern California as artificial and superficial, while Northern California is seen as home to more serious people,” Serna says.

“The idea of beauty manifests itself in a very different way in Southern California, where people are perceived as being into flashy clothes and cars, face and body treatments and plastic surgery,” she says.

Forever Young?

The association between California, youth and beauty persists in the global imagination, Deverell notes, despite an inherent paradox.

“The California dream has always attracted people who are no longer young, drawn by the climate or the affordability that allows them a lifestyle they might not have in colder places,” he says.

“There will always be a tension between California’s association with youth and beauty and the reality that many who come here or already live here are no longer young,” says Deverell, adding, “They may still be beautiful.”

Indeed, Californians — and particularly Southern Californians — have a reputation for pursuing beauty well into middle and old age.

Driven by Hollywood’s influence, the state was once seen as a global epicenter of cosmetic surgery. Today, that baton has passed to South Korea, Argentina and Brazil.

“Nonetheless, many still follow the example of Hollywood stars by sinking considerable funds into costly efforts to defy the inevitable combination of passing years and gravity,” says Tongson.

Reinventing the Beauty Script

However, Tongson argues that plastic surgery’s appeal to Southern Californians is not confined merely to the desire for eternal youth but is related to the idea of remaking or reinventing oneself.

“In California, you could be somebody different, not bound to the preexisting structures that defined personhood and status in other parts of the United States or the world,” she says.

Then there is the universal perception that beautiful places are happier places, and beautiful people are happier people.

“We all know, if we stop to think about it, that’s not true,” says Joe Árvai, Dana and David Dornsife Chair, Wrigley Institute director and professor of psychology, biological sciences and environmental studies.

“Of course, beautiful people and beautiful places are just as likely to be unhappy as happy, but the perception that beauty equates with happiness served as a powerful attractor for California: The idea that you can go west, realize your dreams and attain contentment.”

Refuting Stereotypes

California, in particular L.A. and Southern California, has long been accused of superficiality, in part, Deverell argues, because of its association with beauty both natural and personal — an attribute that, in the latter case, is often assumed to be only skin deep.

“There is no doubt that there is that perception of California as a place of superficiality and that arises from various fads and desires about human beauty or fending off old age,” he says. “The state has plenty of those movements and plenty of people who believe in them and who steer their lives toward those so-called ‘solutions.’”

“But the perception of superficiality is never as true as it’s made out to be, because the truth is far more complicated than that,” Deverell says. “I think stereotypes often arise because they cut through the complexity of paying closer attention. In the end, they don’t hold up to scrutiny of the sheer complexity of human life out here.”

Tongson agrees.

“Whenever there’s an accusation of superficiality, I think it’s not the place itself that is perpetuating that stereotype it’s the very superficial approach that’s applied to it, particularly in the case of L.A., or this notion of Hollywood and what it represents,” she says.

True Beauty

Tongson says that for her, the Golden State’s true beauty has always been the internal beauty of what people have created here, on the world’s western edge.

In her extensive writing on California, she focuses on those parts of the state that aren’t considered beautiful: its suburbs and its sprawl. Tongson explores the hidden beauty in strip malls, food trucks and other examples of small-scale immigrant entrepreneurship.

“While many people consider these places unattractive, ugly even, I find them extremely beautiful because they demonstrate to us the true beauty of California: its diversity of people, class and place,” she says.

Deverell traces the origins of that diversity back to the Gold Rush — a global phenomenon that drew an influx of immigrants, all hoping to strike it rich.

“The Gold Rush was a global magnet. And California remains a global magnet today,” he says.

The legacy of that diversity has hugely benefitted the state, he argues.

“The power of different perspectives based on diverse cultures, different languages, the sheer exhilaration of human difference — it’s all part of the secret sauce of California,” Deverell says.

“In the end, it’s what makes California, California.”