Beauty Demands

This is the second in a series of posts about whether advertisements for  cosmetic surgery and other beauty practices should be banned.  In this post, Carolyn Mair , Reader in Psychology at the London College of Fashion, gives her views. If you would like to contribute to this discussion please email your response to Jan Kandiyali. Would you be in favour of banning all advertisements for non-invasive beauty treatments and/or cosmetic surgery? No, but I would like to see this 'industry' regulated with referrals from professionals (psychologists/GPS etc.) being required. If you are not in favour of banning all advertisements would you be in favour of banning some - for instance for certain types of procedures? Yes, for treatments that are expected to produce results that can be achieved through other interventions (such as exercise/diet). If so can you explain why for some and not all and how you would determine which should be advertised? Treatments that could enhance

Nichola Rumsey This is the first in a series of posts about whether advertisements for  cosmetic surgery and other beauty practices should be banned.  In this post, Nichola Rumsey , Professor of Appearance Research and Co-Director of the Centre of Appearance Research, University of the West of England, gives her views on this topic. If you would like to contribute to this discussion please email your response to Jan Kandiyali. Would you be in favour of banning all advertisements for non-invasive beauty treatments and/or cosmetic surgery? Rather than a ban (which is difficult to enforce) I am in favour of any advertisements being factual only. This would mean a ban on images that infer the procedures will do anything other than alter the feature in question (e.g., making the recipient more beautiful, happier, improving his/her chances of job success, etc). Many advertisements sell a dream while playing down the risks and shortcomings. If you are not in favour of banni

In anticipation of the second BeautyDemands workshop, ‘Professionals, Practitioners and Beauty Norms’, we asked participants to consider whether they would be in favour of banning advertisements for cosmetic surgery and beauty procedures. To contribute on the topic and post on this discussion please email your responses to Jan Kandiyali. Question for Consideration: Would you be in favour of banning all advertisements for non-invasive beauty treatments and/or cosmetic surgery? If you are not in favour of banning all advertisements would you be in favour of banning some - for instance for certain types of procedures? If so can you explain why for some and not all and how you would determine which should be advertised? Would you differentiate depending on where adverts were placed; for instance would you accept adverts in women's magazines where the intended audience is adult women, but not in public places where they would be seen by children? Alternatively do you think that any

Professor Heather Widdows is speaking at a conference on Gender Justice at Birmingham University on Thursday morning on 'Why Beauty Matters'. Her talk will consider why beauty matters, to philosophy, to ethics and for global justice. It will discuss the dominance of the contemporary ideal of beauty – of thinness, smoothness and youth – and explain why this is a topic to which philosophers should pay attention. It will highlight the moral nature of the beauty debate – signalled by words like ‘worth’, ‘ought’ and ‘deserve’ and in encouragements to be ‘your best self’ and ‘the real you’. It will argue that the contemporary beauty ideal is more dominant than previous ideals in that it applies to more people, it starts earlier and continues later and it is increasingly global. It will argue that as the demands of the beauty ideal increase, and ‘normal’ becomes harder to attain, beauty becomes more important for global justice theorising. Beauty concerns which speak to the global gen