Beauty Demands

With millions of adolescents across the world currently in lockdown and more reliant on social media for interactions than ever, we revisit this post from Victoria Goodyear in 2018 on how social media plays into young people's self-perceptions, and the importance of adults understanding this. Social media is often referred to as a ‘toxic’ or ‘dangerous’ environment for young people, particularly in the case of body image . Celebrity and/or advertising cultures, and increased exposure to vast amounts of unregulated content are commonly identified as ‘risky’ online practices (see Fardouly and Vartanian, 2016). Yet, the extent to which social media impacts on young people’s perceptions of their bodies is relatively unknown. There is little understanding of the types of content young people engage with, and how and why their knowledge and behaviours are influenced.  To better understand how to support young people’s body image-related knowledge and behaviours, we need to learn...

In a world transformed by coronavirus, some people might think talking about body image is inappropriate. When our lives are stripped back and we are focused on survival, to think about measuring up in the beauty stakes is not OK for some, even morally wrong. The virus has transformed all of our lives, but some people’s lives more than others. Many will be sick or grieving or in fear of their lives or their loved ones’ lives.   In the current circumstances, every day we find ourselves safe and well, we should feel exceptionally grateful. This change might continue for some, and as we come out of this crisis ,they might continue to value every day, and care far less about things they used to think mattered. We fully recognise this and are not speaking about body image because we think it is the most important issue for everyone right now. But for some, it is an issue which is a continuing concern and one which is intensified in lockdown. Many, especially young people...

The changing norms of body hair removal are dramatic and illustrative. I have written previously about the rise in body hair removal as the ‘ canary in the mine’ . We now remove nearly all body and facial hair.  A survey of 7580 US residents aged between 18 and 65 found that “74% reported grooming their pubic hair, 66% of men and 84% of women” (Osterberg, Gaither, Awad, Truesdale, Allen, Sutclifee & Breyer, 2016, p.162) . A generation ago this didn’t happen; few women removed pubic hair and there was a time in 60s and 70s when underarm hair could be considered sexy. (Although there are arguments about how extensive the acceptance of body hair really was. Some think it was limited to the fairly small, fairly affluent, hippy culture.) The change from then to now is dramatic. As Rebecca Herzig argues “within a single generation, female pubic hair had been rendered superfluous” (2015, p.137).  It’s not just body hair we are obsessively removing, facial hair has also b...

By Marsha Wichers , cosmetic doctor and designer. Medical technology will bring us more ways to perfect our appearance. Over the past decades, the use of Botox has increased enormously.  What started as a drug against muscle spasms and strabismus is now a widespread way of preventing and treating wrinkles in the face, and is becoming part of the beauty ritual of more and more women in the Western world. In my medical cosmetic practice in the Netherlands I see (mostly) women who come to me for advice. They want to look good for their age, or want to get rid of a tired look. But almost all of them say very explicitly ‘please make sure I will stay looking like me’, or 'I don't want to look overtreated and unnatural'. But what exactly are they referring to? We all have a feeling and an idea what this is about. But to precisely describe what makes a look unnatural, is quite difficult. That is why I decided to research and visualize this phenomenon during my master stu...

Recent reports in the UK have raised worrying questions about the regulation of the beauty industry, whether it be the treatment of under-18s or the inadequate levels of care when removing moles and lesions.  In 2016, Eline Bunnik wrote about how in the Netherlands these questions were already being taken seriously,  with the development of national ethical guidelines for beauticians. (This work was published as an article in Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics in 2018  https://muse.jhu.edu/article/712016 ) Eline Bunnik (Erasmus MC, University Medical Centre Rotterdam) reflects on her work (with Frans Meulenberg & Inez de Beaufort) on a range of ethical issues related to beauty salons and beauticians in the Netherlands. Worldwide, beauticians are progressively employing equipment and compounds that pervade more deeply into the skin, such as IPL/laser or chemical peelings. Present-day skin treatments aimed at hair removal, skin rejuvenation or therapeutic options...

You may have read the recent Observer article about how " the 'tweaked' look is becoming the new normal " - Heather Widdows was writing about this back in 2017 with a post that has only become more relevant with time. A booming beauty industry is changing the way we see our bodies. ( Shutterstock) Heather Widdows , University of Birmingham This article was originally published on  The Conversation . Read the  original article . From the daily application of high-tech lotions and potions to non-surgical procedures such as botox, fillers and peels, the beauty industry is booming like never before.With more products and treatments available there is also a growing pressure around how people feel they “should” or “shouldn’t” look. So whether it’s fake eyelashes, tattooed eyebrows, manicured nails, body waxing or lip fillers, the chances are we all know someone who has these – and often we view these types of treatments as “normal”. The s...

Our Beauty Demands blog is 5 years old this year! We have had many brilliant posts over those years, so we're going to revisit some of these, starting with the ever-important topic of social media. Below is Emilie Lawrence's discussion on body positivity, which introduces a paper she presented at our workshop back in 2016:  In this post, Emilie Lawrence (UCL) discusses her work on body positivity discourse as it plays out on social media. The paper I am presenting at the forthcoming Beauty Demands workshop explores social media sites as platforms for creating networked communities (Papacharissi, 2010, 2011 & 2012) notions of the performative body (Butler, 1988) and embodied subjectivity (Braidotti, 2013.) I will explore body positive feminism ( an emerging form of online and offline activism stemming from Love Your Body (LYB) discourse, ‘positive, affirmative, seemingly feminist-inflected media messages, targeted exclusively at girls and women, that exhort us ...