Beauty Demands

  We are interested in ageing in material objects and in people. Norms of beauty are relevant here; beauty is persistently associated with youth and newness and this has affected our relationship with our own ageing (particularly in the West) and also with objects. These associations are important because aesthetic obsolescence of objects leads to dissatisfaction, detachment, and early disposal which has significant environmental and societal impacts. Whilst entrenched Western norms, which perpetuate unattainable youthful perfection, reinforce ‘skin deep’ attitudes to ageing resulting in poor self-esteem and an increasingly ‘invisible’ older population. In this article, we start to tease out and connect strands of thought, drawing on transdisciplinary constructs of ageing within the contexts of people and objects. Although the relationship between people’s attitudes to the appearance of their own physical ageing and their possessions has yet to be extensively explored (Scarre, 2016...

This month’s blog is a provocation. It is an invitation to, perhaps, imagine a different narrative about appearance and beauty…….not one that emphasizes consumerism or declares that everyone is beautiful or that attention to, or a focus on, appearance is trivial and beauty work is oppressive – an aspect of a patriarchal society. Of course, beauty work exists within the norms of a patriarchal society that, along with a consumerist edict, negatively impact notions of appearance and beauty, but that is only a partial telling of the story of human appearance. I am certainly not the first person to put forth this narrative – there are notable exceptions – Ribeiro,Hollows, Brand, Cahill, Craig, Gibson, Peiss. What follows, this blog, is based on research, interviews conducted with a diverse group of women and men from both the UK and the US. Coordinated Management of Meaning or CMM informed the interview process and grounded theory was used to analyse the data. The focus of the interviews w...

‘I wanna look like I’m made of plastic’. So instructed my beautiful 40-year-old friend to a make-up artist in a well-known department store recently. Another 40-something friend tells me with pride that she spends £220 every month on painful laser facials. Yet another 40-something friend details her Botox and fillers regime to me. For myself, also in my 40s, I spend way too much on overpriced skincare creams and while I’m partial to a facial, I draw the line at needles and scalpels. The media and academia abound with stories and reports about how susceptible young women are to the lure of beauty treatments and the negative effect social media are having on their self-confidence.  In my own research I have listened to a beautiful young 20-year-old woman share with me her desire for fat transfer using the more ‘holistic’ process of taking fat from the arse to use in the face (cosmetic surgery goes woke?). But by focusing almost exclusively on young women’s participation in beauty...

In a recent study, researchers Bruch and Newman (2018: 1-6) investigated the ‘desirability’ of both male and female online dating users. Bruch and Newman determined, through analysing over 200,000 messages between online dating users, that women’s sexual desirability is at its highest at age 18 whilst men’s sexual desirability peaks at age 50. After these two ages, desirability declines for both groups. Why is this the case? One explanation offered by Bruch and Newman is that desirability varies with educational level (Bruch and Newman 2018: 2). For instance, highly educated men are perceived by women to be highly desirable. However, the same is not true of women. According to the study, women are most attractive to men when they are educated to undergraduate level, but their desirability decreases as they reach postgraduate levels of study (Bruch and Newman 2018: 2). This research has sparked a considerable amount of debate, all seeking to answer why average desirability varies w...

Americans’ burgeoning consumption of cosmetic procedures and anti-aging enhancements such as Botox raises important questions about exactly how and to whom these drugs are being marketed.  Profiting on societal expectations for women’s bodies and faces to remain young and beautiful, Allergan, the pharmaceutical company that owns and manufactures Botox, aggressively markets the drug to the typical American middle-class and middle-age everywoman. This targeted advertising campaign has been extremely successful. Over 90 percent of users are women and almost 60 percent are between the ages of forty and fifty-four . However, small but notable populations of younger women are also turning to this anti-aging “wonder drug.” Botox procedures in the 19-34 demographic have more than doubled in the last decade .   In fact, more women between the ages of 22 and 40 use Botox than do women over 60.  The principal reason for this is that dermatologists, cosmetic surgeons, j...

In light of research (e.g. Williams et al., 2013) indicating that beauty concerns can be utilised to reduce unhealthy behaviours such as tanning, smoking and more recently, alcohol consumption, a central question remains about the ethics of doing so. In other words, in a society where appearance increasingly defines who you are, and unrealistic beauty standards are a distinct marker of social class (Grogan, 2016), is it responsible of researchers to further emphasize this? Beauty, and particularly youthfulness, has long been the main standard on which women (and increasingly men, albeit not to the same extent) are judged (Wolf, 1991), but perhaps never as intensively as in a time where media images are omnipresent. Walter (2010) goes as far as suggesting the 21 st century to be the era of “new sexism” - related, but not identical to, Glick & Fiske’s (1996) concept of Benevolent Sexism - where traditional aspects of patriarchy such as objectification and sexualisation of...

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 ...

Older women are shamed into believing they must fight the fear of ageing. The omnipresence of anti-ageing creams, gravity defying potions, surgical and non-surgical cosmetic interventions has resulted in an appearance-obsessed society which judges individuals by how well they measure up to the media stereotype of 'perfection'. Women in particular, and increasingly men, are targeted by advertisers and marketers to purchase products that promise youthful perfection. The global cosmetics industry continues to grow; its value in 2015 was  € 181 billion and the largest sector is anti-ageing products. The fear of ageing, sold to young consumers, generates an ageist perception of the ‘horrors’ that come with getting older. The unwelcome natural signs of ageing, including variations in skin tone (age spots), wrinkles and less collagen and therefore less elasticity in skin on the face, body and limbs must be fought or hidden at all costs. Baring flesh is a stressful issue for women and...

Network member Hannah Zeilig curated a 2 day event ‘Mirror Mirror: Representations and Reflections on age and ageing’ in October 2013. The conference asked questions about age and the arts, re-considering the category ‘age’ as well as the categories ‘fashion’ and ‘beauty’. Here's what the Guardian had to say about the event:  How to grow old in style . What do you think about what the 'Fabulous Fashionistas' were discussing? Please note: the network exists to share views on beauty norms and practices. Beauty Demands is encouraging debate between the network members and beyond. Content should not be read as endorsement by project staff of views expressed here.