The good people at YouGov conducted a survey that showed women believe the beauty industry is making them feel bad about themselves. One in three women in the UK say the images of beautiful, thin people in the media make them feel overweight and unattractive.
And then they go on to say that the Dove Real Beauty advertising campaign where they use “real women” instead of skinny models is starting to change things. Sales of the brand are up and Unilever (the parent company of Dove) thinks it’s because of those ads. Even their competitor L’Oreal is getting into the act with ads staring Diane Keaton and Jane Fonda.
But this industry that the Beauty Brains call home continues to come up with new products aimed at making normal people look better than they do. We try hard to fix problems like wrinkled, dry skin, damaged hair and even age spots. Should we stop making those products and start trying to make people feel good about the way they look without any change? Do people really want wrinkly skin, frizzy hair and make-up free skin? Say it ain’t so!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Well, there’s the product and then there’s the marketing. The marketing is god awful. It’s hard to know what really works and what doesn’t, because there’s so much heavy-hitting marketing that doesn’t tell you anything honest about the product. And then beauty magazines just repeat what the marketers tell them.
And it’s also a beauty-product marketing tactic to try to make women feel ugly and inferior. That one is age old.
I can see why a new tactic would work, because lots of women are now very guarded against these old messages.
I really love your blog. Thank you for doing this. – jaz
I think you get more flies with honey. Tell me I’m beautiful but that you have a product to let me be MORE BEAUTIFUL and I’ll buy it.
Because I’m a sucker.
Amen to that, Cynical Girl!
Jaz…Thanks for the kind words.
Cynical girl…Do you need a model to let you know how good you could look or just a regular looking person?
Incidentally, we’re all suckers.