Beauty Demands

Beauty standards have always been important in society, but it was not until the widespread introduction of television, magazines and more recently, the internet, that a standardised male and female beauty ideal became a widespread marketing strategy (Dion et al.,1972). Recently, there has been an increasing awareness that personalised beauty is a powerful tool for conveying a message or promoting products. This has been recognised by the advertising industry, a prominent example being Dove’s campaign “See the Beauty in Yourself” (Dove Real Beauty Sketches, 2016) that moves away from a standardised beauty ideal to a personalised campaign strategy where the value of women’s own appearance is used as a marketing tool (Grogan, 2016). It is only relatively recently that the importance of appearance has been recognised by health researchers as a possible tool for behaviour change, particularly with harmful behaviours stemming from a desire to improve appearance, e.g. the use of indoor

The Good Childhood Report 2016 highlighted declining levels of girls’ happiness with their appearance in the UK, while boys’ happiness remains stable. There is now a sizeable gender gap in happiness with appearance among young people aged 10 to 15 in the UK. International comparisons show that this gender gap is by no means inevitable and does not exist in many countries. More Than A Quarter Of A Million Girls In Britain Are Unhappy, Report Reveals Huffington Post, 31 st August 2016 Differences between girls’ and boys’ happiness with their body and appearance have been a recurring theme of our research programme on children’s well-being since we launched our first survey report in 2010. Based on responses from over 6,000 children, it showed a growing gender gap in feelings about appearance as children got older. At ages 10 to 11, a similar percentage of girls and boys were unhappy with their appearance; but by the age of 14 to 15, twice as many girls than boys were unhappy with

The Good Childhood Report 2016 highlighted declining levels of girls’ happiness with their appearance in the UK, while boys’ happiness remains stable. There is now a sizeable gender gap in happiness with appearance among young people aged 10 to 15 in the UK. International comparisons show that this gender gap is by no means inevitable and does not exist in many countries. More Than A Quarter Of A Million Girls In Britain Are Unhappy, Report Reveals Huffington Post, 31 st August 2016 Differences between girls’ and boys’ happiness with their body and appearance have been a recurring theme of our research programme on children’s well-being since we launched our first survey report in 2010. Based on responses from over 6,000 children, it showed a growing gender gap in feelings about appearance as children got older. At ages 10 to 11, a similar percentage of girls and boys were unhappy with their appearance; but by the age of 14 to 15, twice as many girls than boys were unhappy with

THE COSMETIC SURGERY (STANDARDS OF PRACTICE) BILL 2016 REGULATING COSMETIC SURGERY- THE NEXT STEPS? On Wednesday 19 th October the Labour MP Kevan Jones introduced a 10 minute rule bill – the Cosmetic Surgery (Standards of Practice) Bill (a private members bill) in the House of Commons. This Bill is aimed at improving standards of patient care and is supported by the Royal College of Surgeons,   “to make provision about the training, qualifications and certification of medical practitioners conducting cosmetic surgical procedures; to establish a code of practice for the provision of information to patients on the options and risks in relation to such procedures; to make provision about permissible treatments and the advertising of such treatments; and for connected purposes.”
 One instance given by Mr Jones was in relation to a constituent, Dawn Knight who had eyelid surgery which led to her being unable to close her eyes to sleep at night as too much skin wa