Carol:
What’s the Value of a (Pretty) Face?
Every woman in the United Sates participates in a daily beauty pageant, whether she likes it or not. Engulfed by a popular culture saturated with images of idealized, air-brushed and unattainable female physical beauty, women and girls cannot escape feeling judged on the basis of the appearance. YWCA. "The Consequence of American's Beauty Obsession on Women and Girls."
When my daughter was about 13, she received a subscription to a teen magazine as a gift. Thumbing through the magazine, I was appalled. The “tween” models in the fashion ads were pencil thin, made-up, junior versions of the high fashion models in Vogue and Cosmopolitan. Not a real girl in the lot, certainly not anyone who looked like Megan and most of her friends. What bothered me the most was the advertisements, which were already bombarding 12-14 year-old girls with the messages that (1) beauty is the key to popularity, and (2) you can buy your way to beauty.
The beauty industry is big business and not just in America. The British department store Debenhams released a study on February 9, 2011 showing that the most expensive item in a woman’s purse was not her cell phone or her I-Pod, but her make-up kit, the equivalent of $407, professional women between 35-44 having the most expensive make-up bags. Debenhams concludes that women should consider adding make-up to their insurance inventory along with the digital doo-dads in their purses (source: Debenhams homepage).
Many studies look at female body image, about eroding self-esteem and increasingly narrow standards of beauty, but what is interesting about the YWCA 2008 report Beauty at Any Cost is that it considers the economic impact. Women in the US spend $7 billion dollars a year on cosmetics. The study notes that the average money spent in 5 years on cosmetics is equivalent to a year’s tuition at a public university.
What about their daughters? According to a Feb 14, 2011 article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the number of girls between the ages of 8-12 who use eye make-up has doubled in the last 2 years, and 43% of 6-9 year-old girls already use lipstick or lip gloss. Wal-Mart is getting ready to market its own line of “tween” beauty products, but that’s okay because they are “eco-friendly.” The target age group? The 9- to 12-year olds.
If beauty products aren’t enough to transform women into happy, successful beauty queens, there is always the next level of artifice. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons’ 2009 “Quick Facts Sheet” shows that the number of cosmetic procedures has increased 69% since 2000. Surgical procedures have declined by 20%, but “minimally-invasive procedures” have increased by 99% with Bo-tox the #1 treatment. Typically Bo-Tex injections are about $500 a shot, and need regular repeats. Other popular non-surgical procedures include facial fillers, dental veneers, laser hair removal and electrolysis. According to the 2009 Quick Sheet, 91% of all cosmetic procedures are performed on women.
There is another economic reality to the beauty fixation which affects both women and men. “Lookism” shows up as work-place discrimination. According to the YWCA report , workers with “below average” physical looks tend to earn about 9% less more money than those judged as “above average.” I doubt, however, that any woman will tell you she has $400 worth of make-up in her purse so that she can get a salary increase.
My daughter at 13 decided to give away her magazine subscription after she took a close look at the ads. How much make-up she carries in her purse is her story to tell. Me? I quit wearing make-up because of allergies, But, I have a drawer in the bathroom with about $50 worth of cosmetics I bought out of total vanity and used only once.
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| Woman at her Toilette |
Sources:
American Society of Plastic Surgeons. http://www.plasticsurgery.org/Documents/Media/statistics/2009-US-cosmeticreconstructiveplasticsurgeryminimally-invasive-statistics.pdf
American Society of Plastic Surgeons. http://www.plasticsurgery.org/Documents/Media/statistics/2009-US-cosmeticreconstructiveplasticsurgeryminimally-invasive-statistics.pdf
Debenhams homepage. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/02/prweb5043704.htm
“Girls are Wearing Cosmetics at a Younger Age.” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/lifestyles/family/s_722835.html
YWCA Beauty at any Cost.
http://www.ywca.org/atf/cf/%7B3B450FA5-108B-4D2E-B3D0-C31487243E6A%7D/Beauty%20at%20Any%20Cost.pdf
Megan:
“Girls are Wearing Cosmetics at a Younger Age.” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/lifestyles/family/s_722835.html
YWCA Beauty at any Cost.
http://www.ywca.org/atf/cf/%7B3B450FA5-108B-4D2E-B3D0-C31487243E6A%7D/Beauty%20at%20Any%20Cost.pdf
Megan:
The Value of the Face
This is one of those days where I need to produce an essay in 15 minutes or else I won’t have time to take a shower before we leave the house to do important things (like see a movie). And this is also one of those days where washing my hair, which is the most troublesome and lengthly part of the shower, is non-negotiable. It simply has to be done today or my hair will bond together in a single, waist-length, lock of dred. And then I’d have to shave my head.
Mom has the same time pressures on her today, not because she needs to take a shower, but because she is the one who has to be somewhere in an hour and a half. She isn’t anxious about it even though she has not finished her essay, she’s not dressed and is in the kitchen making toast. She has also been awake a lot longer than I have and has obviously put some thought into today’s topic because she asked me whether I remember the time I exercised good judgment about a teenage magazine. I didn’t remember that particular incident but it must have been a defining moment in my life. Criticizing advertisements is the reason I yell at the TV for having diet commercials at 10:00 in the morning (“They’re trying to make the stay at home moms feel fat and useless!”), and that is why I can’t watch day-time TV – the yelling upsets Milo.
But her question about the teenage magazine and the makeup advertising also brings to mind something that happened only yesterday. I went to the mall to buy more of that liquid make up that goes on your face after the moisturizer but before everything else. There’s a word for it, but I can’t remember it right now. I always take the old bottle with me because if I don’t, I cannot remember the brand I prefer. Anyway, I have been using this particular shade and type of this particular brand for the past 5 or 6 six years, but I knew that yesterday would be different. Despite the fact that I have applied sunscreen to my face every day for the past 10 years, I was going to ask the helper lady to find me something with a “little more coverage.”
And the helper lady said she could help me, that they had the very thing, and that it would indeed provide me with… and then she forgot the word and I had to say it again. Coverage. For my face. I need to cover my face.
I handed her the old bottle so she could see what shade I used. The shade was 0, by the way. The very palest shade they had and she said, “Oh no no no. Your face is too pink. You have a very pink face.” So, she picked out another color, while I called her names in my head. “I used to live in England,” I said, by way of explaining why I would have required such pale makeup and also because I wanted to feel like I once had a more interesting life, when buying makeup was not the main event of the day.
Then she told me that if I could wait a week to purchase the new makeup, it would come with a gift bag worth $60 of additional makeup and I said, “Sure! Sign me up!” and I know when I go to collect it next Monday, it really will be the highlight of the day. Unless I go to a movie afterwards.
Mom has the same time pressures on her today, not because she needs to take a shower, but because she is the one who has to be somewhere in an hour and a half. She isn’t anxious about it even though she has not finished her essay, she’s not dressed and is in the kitchen making toast. She has also been awake a lot longer than I have and has obviously put some thought into today’s topic because she asked me whether I remember the time I exercised good judgment about a teenage magazine. I didn’t remember that particular incident but it must have been a defining moment in my life. Criticizing advertisements is the reason I yell at the TV for having diet commercials at 10:00 in the morning (“They’re trying to make the stay at home moms feel fat and useless!”), and that is why I can’t watch day-time TV – the yelling upsets Milo.
But her question about the teenage magazine and the makeup advertising also brings to mind something that happened only yesterday. I went to the mall to buy more of that liquid make up that goes on your face after the moisturizer but before everything else. There’s a word for it, but I can’t remember it right now. I always take the old bottle with me because if I don’t, I cannot remember the brand I prefer. Anyway, I have been using this particular shade and type of this particular brand for the past 5 or 6 six years, but I knew that yesterday would be different. Despite the fact that I have applied sunscreen to my face every day for the past 10 years, I was going to ask the helper lady to find me something with a “little more coverage.”
And the helper lady said she could help me, that they had the very thing, and that it would indeed provide me with… and then she forgot the word and I had to say it again. Coverage. For my face. I need to cover my face.
I handed her the old bottle so she could see what shade I used. The shade was 0, by the way. The very palest shade they had and she said, “Oh no no no. Your face is too pink. You have a very pink face.” So, she picked out another color, while I called her names in my head. “I used to live in England,” I said, by way of explaining why I would have required such pale makeup and also because I wanted to feel like I once had a more interesting life, when buying makeup was not the main event of the day.
Then she told me that if I could wait a week to purchase the new makeup, it would come with a gift bag worth $60 of additional makeup and I said, “Sure! Sign me up!” and I know when I go to collect it next Monday, it really will be the highlight of the day. Unless I go to a movie afterwards.
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