Beauty Demands

Why don’t you choose to wear braces to enhance your teeth? You would look better after getting your braces off!  You should find a way to reduce the size of your face!  You have such a short chin! Why don’t you consider having it surgically enhanced or undertaking orthodontics? These questions/statements were drilled into my mind before I ended up wearing dental braces mainly for aesthetic purposes. Peer pressure and demanding beauty standards brought orthodontics to my attention. It was such a painful three-year period wearing braces along with eight tooth extractions and speech and eating difficulties. Afterwards, apart from my heightened self-confidence to smile and speak, my facial appearance also improved. However, I still need to wear a removable retainer for the long term. I asked my mother why my father does not need to get his teeth fixed despite his short chin. She responded that females, unlike males, are hugely judged for their looks. As Gill (2007) writes, in comp...

The current COVID 19 crisis has had a serious effect on society in the UK and elsewhere with the threat to life of a contagious disease.  It has led to individuals having their movements and habits severely curtailed by ‘Lockdown’ and orders to stay at home.  As a result, businesses have closed down, schools have shut, and many employees have been furloughed. Relative to the loss of life and livelihoods, some might argue that the impact this has had on individual appearance and the beauty industry in general is a much more “trivial” side of COVID-19.  This “Keeping up Appearances” might be seen as a necessity in professional life, but lockdown has challenged what could be seen as standard and necessary “maintenance”.  Are cosmetic procedures such as hairdressing, eyebrow plucking and Botox injections really trivial, or are they, rather, more akin to “essential services” or “moral imperatives”?  [1]   The lack of access to hairdressers, for example, has be...