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Showing posts from December, 2017

Beauty's neglected harms

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In a just published  paper  I consider what beauty would look like if we changed the lens and looked at beauty not as a collection of individual choices, but as a public health concern. Would changing the lens transform how we regard the harms of beauty and the extent to which we think we should intervene to address such harms? Changing the lens from individual choice to public health has been decisive in a number of debates. The classic example is attitudes to smoking. Whether or not to smoke was once regarded a matter of individual freedom and choice. The dominant view was that adults who know the risks should be left to make their own decisions. In an era where stop smoking campaigns are routinely promoted by States, health professionals and NGOs, and it is even regarded as acceptable to shame pregnant women for smoking, the notion that this is an individual choice which should not be intervened with is long gone. Sometimes intervention is justified on the grounds of 'harms