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The impact of cosmetic advertising
Effects of the beauty industry on the way women view themselves
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When it comes to wearing make-up; everyone can agree that it is a necessity for even a brief trip to the grocery store. Tabloids, magazines, television, and social media have portrayed unrealistic images of what we are supposed to look like, resulting in a hefty price tag for anxiety and low self-esteem when this image is not met. Thus, turning men and women into cosmetic addicts with no age boundaries. This paper first discusses existing research that focuses on the products safety regulations. From this research, we then continued to investigate multi-million-dollar tags cosmetics carry and the claims they make. We conclude with our addiction theory and how strongly the public feels that make-up addiction is very real.
Cosmetics have become
After watching Ariana Grande’s makeup tutorial in October of 2012, a 15 year old me had established a new standard of beauty. I wanted what that girl had: her clear skin, pink cheeks, long lashes, and, most of all, her eye-catching fuchsia lips. I memorized the name: “Maybelline Super Stay 14 Hour Lipstick” in “Fuchsia Forever.” My mother, sister, and I then went over to the nearest Target in search of this lip color I so desperately required. The large cosmetics section at Target was like stepping inside of a light bulb. The shelves were so brightly lit, it was as if the store needed me to be able to read every brand name from just the corner of my eye. I quickly found the exact lipstick I wanted, which was the exact lipstick some pretty stranger had indirectly persuaded me to purchase. In that moment, looking down at the sleek, gleaming plastic tube, I felt that this one simple object was I needed. Something that looked good and made me feel good. It was not until later that I had thought about the consequences of this new standard of beauty.
In today’s society, it is part of our human nature to strive for perfection. By doing this, a majority of women worldwide use the power of cosmetology, hair and facial cosmetics, to enhance their natural beauty in order to feel better about themselves. However, the use of cosmetology has not always been used only to boost one’s self esteem. Laws were also enforced against the use of cosmetics.
I notice now that young ladies take hours to put on make up to wear just for a few hours. For example, my friend Gabby is always wearing make up every day to make her feel good about her appearance. Sometimes we have to pick her up before our friends and I have to head to the movies, we always have to wait outside for her so she can finish putting on her makeup which most of the time we end up being late for the movie. She wears eye liner, eye shadow, foundation, and mascara and even though she wears all this makeup she feels not good enough. In the “Ugly Truth about Beauty”, Dave Barry claims women have insecurities about the way they look and the mindset of being “not good enough” because of “psychological and societal reasons” such as Barbie, the “multibillion-dollar beauty industry” and supermodels. Although men have different perspective about this.
...of Beauty is full of condemnation for cosmetics and threats to women about the ‘dangers’ of cosmetics.
Social media is used in many ways to promote products for skin-lightening, and to promote Eurocentric beauty standards. For example, there has been many concerns over the popular social media company, Snapchat, over their “Beautifying” filters. The Guardian stated that one of Snapchat’s most used filter, flower crown filter, does not only apply a flower crown, but also lightens the skin and changes the user 's facial features. With twenty-three percent of its users ranging between thirteen and seventeen years old, they are indeed at risk of experiencing the need to change their appearance due to this kind of image altering. (University Wire, May 2016) One user tweeted: “Very disturbed by the fact that your “Beautification” filters make my skin lighter and my nose and jaw
In the 1920s, makeup played a vital role especially for women trying to recover from the fears and horrors of the war. After the recession, it lead to an increase of manufacturing new cosmetic products and brands such as Maybelline. As makeup made its debut to the world, stores were opening and slogans such as “try before you buy” just like Gordon Selfridge proclaimed women to get a sense of what products to use along with spreading the word to others if content with the amazing outcome. Face and complexion was considered by most as an important factor for representing beauty of an artificial face. Face powder was very essential because many women wanted to create a light, sandy
Although modern makeup has been used mainly by women traditionally, gradually an increasing number of men are using cosmetics to enhance their own facial features. A lot of people don’t quite accept men wearing makeup nowadays but in my opinion it’s a way to express yourself. The guys who do use it tend to think that they’re the exception rather than the rule. One in 10 men wore makeup, according to a 2013 British consumer research study, with 71% of them breaking out the concealer — but the majority of cosmetic-wearers reported that they wouldn’t dare tell anyone. Despite the views on men and makeup it should be accepted because everyone is equal. Many celebrities have created makeup. Kylie Jenner has created lipsticks, lip liners, and lip glosses called Kylie Cosmetics. The Kardashian sisters have a makeup line all together. Another person would be Tyra Banks, who recently dropped an entire makeup line. Tyra also gives the opportunity for people to sell her makeup. One of my personal favorites is the tattoo artist Kat Von D who teamed up with beauty brand Sephora to launch her rocker-themed makeup collection. Many celebrities also sponsor and market makeup. Teaming up with covergirl, Urban Decay, Loreal, Maybelline, Mac, and many other brands. Makeup trends this year include drawn in eyebrows, winged eyeliner, contouring and highlighting, mauve lip colors(emphasized
Furthermore, it is not only limited to products, but services like plastic surgery, and salons are considered part of the beauty industry as well. While the main consumers of the beauty industry are women, men play an increasing role in the beauty industry, because it is becoming less of a taboo to wear cosmetic appliances (The History of the Beauty Industry, 2014). In opposition to women being the main consumer of cosmetics, “38% of men would sacrifice at least a year of their life in exchange for a perfect body – again, a higher proportion than women”(Campbell, 2012, para. 2). In addition, the beauty industry is also one of the most resilient industries, even in the face of the 2008 recession, it fared well (The History of the Beauty Industry, 2014). The need to supply a means of aesthetic enhancement even in situations of economic decline represents the importance of the beauty industry. Furthermore, the degree of growth in the industry is expected to increase astronomically because of an increase in the importance of beauty. In fact, beauty is coming more integrated into a person’s life than ever
When corporations are advertising makeup, they purposely make the models seem perfect, effortless, and natural. Caught in the act, Maybelline clearly states in their slogan, “Maybelline she’s born with it, Maybe it’s Maybelline” that they flawless look attained by the model, can only accomplished by their product. They created an image so unattainable that the model herself cannot achieve that image of beauty. The model, used in the advertisement, has to go through countless hours of hair and makeup, to look appropriate for the photo shoot. Once the photo shoot is complete, the chosen image undergoes hours being photo shopped. The average women’s self-esteem...
"There is a secret under-life poisoning our freedom; infused with notions of beauty, it is a dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions, terror of aging, and dread of lost control." In this quote from Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, the very core of the issue is brought to light by emphasizing the degree to which women feel they need to compete amongst themselves.If you Google "beauty" and go to images, it is no surprise that all of the images contain women in full professional makeup. The vision of beauty has not deviated from the stereotypical sense. Too many women view ugliness as a disease and try to cure it all costs, which equates to the billions spent on health and beauty products every year. A woman, no matter how confident she may
After studying the cosmetic market we can identify a series of needs in this market:
“Medieval noblewomen swallowed arsenic and dabbed on bats' blood to improve their complexions; 18th-century Americans prized the warm urine of young boys to erase their freckles; Victorian ladies removed their ribs to give themselves a wasp waist.” 5 Even from medieval times, the extent to which women have gone to achieve ‘ideal beauty’ is extreme. In the 21st century, Americans spend more money on beauty related product than they do on their education, creating a 160 billion dollar a year global industry, all in the name of ‘perfection.’ 5 Intensification of body image ideals has increased through media and manipulation in the advertising industry, due to the portrayal of women, leading to the creation of a 20 billion dollar cosmetic surgery industry. Driven and fueled by sexual instinct and desire to achieve perfection, images of women in advertising will not cease to hold a huge amount of power over the everyday woman who spends her life chasing an ideal, which does not exist, often leading to psychological and physical effects which can last a lifetime.
Images of beauty are exposed and represented in everyday lives, such as in sports, magazines issues, movies, book novels and it trickles down to local soap operas and sitcoms. Both men and women must meet the “Hollywood” standards of beauty and good looks if they want to be successful. The media’s purpose to portray the standards of beauty is to sell their products oftentimes using young and beautiful models with good looks to entice the consumer and reinforce these images as beauty, for everyone to emulate. Furthermore, there are campaigns the media utilizes to grasp the attention of the consumer through the method of oversexualization, a tactic usually directed to the adult consumer. However, the youth population has become affected now more than in past decades, as technology has made it more accessible with mobile pads and mobile phone devices. Television also has an influence and young and old alike making them believe that long, thin silky limbs, large breast, small nose, and perfect white straight teeth and supple lips are important characteristics of success. Men have, in some way or another have also been expected to hold a masculine physique that may be unchanged in the last 50 to 60 years, but must still represent an expression of mystery and chiseled jaw and a certain amount of muscles and physical appearance usually represented by younger
Beauty product can be defined as cosmetics; materials and devices made and sold for the purpose of enhancing the physical attractiveness of users or in other words, as any product, especially a cream or lotion, intended to improve a person's appearance . We live in society where people nowadays are very obsessed with beauty and spending so much money on beauty products. Since we were children, the society taught us that beauty is happiness, wellness and everything. This creates a mindset that only attractive physical appearance is beauty, even though ‘beauty’ is a very subjective word where it can apply to many things. It is a rare sight these days to
Nevertheless, those factors have slowly sled to extinction over the past years, creating bigger emphasis on physical appearance. In addition, similar to most competitions such as singing or drawing, beauty contestants could serve as a role model for the audience, as Demi stated that she got the opportunity to be a role model for women and men and young girls from all around the world (Moraski, 2017). Despite the fact where they serve as a role model is true, the audience correlates the admiration directly to physical appearance, even though facial features are permanent. Still, pressured by the perfect image of beauty, most girls will reflectively scan through the list of her traits that differ from her model of beauty’s and regard them as aberration even though that distinctive feature might not be distressing. The anxiety will subsequently lead to obsession with makeups, and some may even go for plastic surgery. In 2016 alone, cosmetic procedures achieved a three percent growth over 2015, with a number of 17.1 million in United States. Among the top five were breast augmentation, liposuction, and nose reshaping (American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 2017). These statistics shows how insecure people are, distorted by the concept of beauty that has been drilled onto them by those role