Beauty Demands

The British Association of Cosmetic Nurses held their annual conference at ICC Birmingham Saturday 17 th September with nearly 300 delegates and up to 50 exhibitors what a resounding success it was, and it was inspiring to see so many nurses who all have the same ethos. I’m not just saying this because I sit on the board, feedback from those who attended was very positive.  The day had a wonderful atmosphere with many new members. Previously the profile of a BACN member was a registered nurse with between 10-30 years nursing experience and 5-10 years’ experience in aesthetics, but we now have nurses who have just started working in aesthetics or who are thinking of joining. We encourage our members to become non-medical prescribers and to date 89% of our members are. Toxins are prescription only medicines and  although dermal fillers are classified as medical devices often local anaesthetic is used for pain relief and this is also a prescription only medicine. ...

Professor Heather Widdows will be one of the two speakers opening a public debate next Monday (September 12). The other speaker is nurse specialist Sharron Brown who will explore how the NHS responds to people’s aesthetic needs. Both speakers are members of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics working party which is currently considering cosmetic procedures ( http://nuffieldbioethics.org/project/cosmetic-procedures/ ). The debate is public and open to all. No prior knowledge is needed, just an interest in issues of the body beautiful and transforming the body for aesthetic reasons. The debate is part of the 'Dragon Hall' series run jointly by UEA and the Writer's Centre Norwich. Speakers will open the debate with very short talks and then the discussion from and with the audience begins. The aim is to be open and create "more light than heat". For more details see https://www.uea.ac.uk/events/-/dragon-hall-debates .

T ap, red heart, and a like.  Clear skin, smile (or a pout).  Hair down, tied to the side. Tilt head. White teeth. Whiter teeth.  Straighter teeth. Smooth the wrinkle. Tap, like, love.                                                                                                         Feminism and phenomenology have long engaged with questions concerning the body, as responsibility for the other, the body as the site of an exchange, in the form of birth and b...

Johnny Weissmuller was famous, both as an Olympic swimmer and as Tarzan.  He won five Olympic gold medals in swimming between 1924 and 1928, and played Tarzan in twelve films between 1932 and 1948. Johnny Weissmuller's body is, inevitably, well documented in film and photograph.  It is the highly muscled body that is typical both of the elite swimmer of that period and of many actors.  Yet it is a very different body to that of his modern counterparts, be these the swimmer Michael Phelps or Alexander Skarsgård, the most recent actor to play Tarzan. Both these bodies are like Weissmuller's in being highly muscled.  However, the definition of the muscle is much more precise, in what body builders refer to as clean bulking.  In the case of Skarsgård the definition is almost ludicrously clean (or is this just CGI?). It might be argued, in the cases of Phelps, that this development of the body is simply a product of sports science.  It is a more efficien...

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...

Press coverage of the emergence of Theresa May as the only Tory leadership candidate left standing and her elevation to PM was distinguished for me by the focus on her shoes. The Sun headline was ‘Heel, Boys’, and decisions about who is in and out of the cabinet was dubbed the ‘Hot Shoe Reshuffle’. Perhaps more dramatic than the headline was the full page image of the shoes and their implied link to sexiness via the dominatrix imagery of leopard-skin print, kitten-heels stamping on the heads of male politicians. While this is the most dramatic example you don’t have to go far to find other mentions of her shoes. The Telegraph ran ‘ Theresa May’s greatest footwear hits ’ and ‘kitten-heals’ have been frequently mentioned outside ‘women’s programmes’ on Radio 4 over the last few days. While at least some of this coverage is celebratory and fun – and I confess to also being a shoe-devotee (the ‘Beauty Demands shoes’ are mine) – I can’t help again reflecting on the difference bet...

In this post, Fiona MacCallum wonders whether the Disney Princess brand is having a detrimental effect on young girls. You don’t have to be the parent of a young girl to be aware of the Disney Princess brand. The abundant merchandise (toys, clothing, lunch boxes, towels, party decorations – the list seems endless) is visible in any shopping centre, or children’s department.  In comparison to Barbie and other more overtly sexual media models, whose potentially damaging effects have been much discussed, the princesses can be seen by parents as “safe”. But with their exaggeratedly feminine body shapes and facial appearance, and with the gender stereotyped behaviours of the older examples (e.g. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella) who are uniformly portrayed as needing rescuing, can interacting with Disney Princesses really be so benign? New research from Professor Sarah Coyne and colleagues at Brigham Young University suggests not.  In a study of nearly 200 chil...