CUT PAINT PAY REPEAT

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The cost of being beautiful

THE QU FOR BE IS EXPE Every year, women spend billions of dollars in exchange for beautiful hair, luxurious eyelashes, and smooth, silky skin. Still, many of our culture’s most common beauty procedures were virtually nonexistent a century ago.

The truth is, many of our expectations of feminine beauty were shaped in large part by modern advertisers.

UEST EAUTY ENSIVE THE FOLLOWING ARE SEVEN INSECURITIES WOMEN HAVE BEEN FED BY MARKETERS.

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MILLION WOMEN IN THE US COLOR THEIR HAIR

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YOUR NATURAL HAIR COLOR ISN’T PRETTY ENOUGH

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“Does she or doesn’t she?” asked the Clairol’s ad that launched a million home hair dye jobs. Indeed, the aggressive Clairol marketing campaign would trigger an explosion in sales. In the process, the percentage of women dying their hair would skyrocket from 7 percent in 1950 to more than 40 percent in the ‘70s.

YOUR SKIN IS TOO LIGHT

YOUR SKIN IS TOO DARK

The medical world continues to warn of the dangers of overexposure to the sun. The quest for the perfect golden tan hasn’t faded away—many people just choose to fake the effect. Since 2000, the self-tanning product manufacturing has experienced meteoric growth that is expected to continue over the next 5 years.

Skin lightening continues to be practiced around the world.

The annual global market is expected to reach $10 billion by 2015, though many of the products still come with serious health risks.

40,000 CASES OF SKIN CANCER RELATED TO TANNING

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BILLION ANNUAL GLOBAL MARKET: SKIN LIGHTENING CHEMICALS

1:3 WHITE WOMEN USE TANNING BEDS

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YOUR THIGHS ARE TOO LARGE

Experts in eating disorders are concerned about an Internet-fueled trend in which teenage girls and young women pursue an elusive and possibly dangerous weight-loss goal: to become so slender that their thighs don’t touch even when their feet are together.

The existence (or not) of said gap is due in large part to body type, skeletal structure and connective tissue length. The thigh gap is related to genetics and body structure, achieving one through exercise is nearly impossible.

Often times a thigh gap is obtained through becoming severely underweight.

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YOUR BODY HAIR IS GROSS Today, women in media are generally depicted sans body hair or mocked for daring to bare it. But surprisingly, from the 16th to the 19th century, most European and American women kept their body hair au naturel.

What changed? According to researcher Christine Hope, the answers lie in fashion and advertising.

Today, pubic hair removal is pretty much a staple amongst young American women: 80 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 34 remove at least some of it, many of them are motivated by the desire to conform to social norms or appear more feminine.

Even now, hair-removal ads -- like Veet’s recent “Don’t risk dudeness” campaign -- target the same female-specific anxieties they did a century ago.

90% OF WOMEN REMOVE AT LEAST SOME BODY HAIR

$5 BILLION SPENT ON HAIR REMOVAL PRODUCTS + PROCESSES

MANY WOMEN AS YOUNG AS

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START REMOVING BODY HAIR

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YOUR SKIN IS FLAWED

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Cellulite affects between 80 and 90 percent of women, and “fighting� it, as well as mocking it, have become marketable American obsessions. Being a female celebrity with any cellulite on your body is practically considered criminal.

YOU WEAR TOO MUCH MAKE-UP

YOU DON’T WEAR ENOUGH MAKE-UP

Wearing makeup apparently can help. It increases people’s perceptions of a woman’s likability, her competence and (provided she does not overdo it) her trustworthiness, according to a new study, which also confirmed what is obvious: that cosmetics boost a woman’s attractiveness.

is, for women, considered standard in 21st Century America. A certain amount of makeup is “good grooming.” It’s the default. As women, we don’t have the choice to engage with the beauty industrial complex: it’s so ever-present in our lives that women who don’t wear makeup are commonly taken as defining themselves against it. To not wear makeup, for many women, is to invite misunderstanding or, worse, judgment.

When was the last time you saw a woman not wearing makeup on a billboard or on T.V.? The fact that makeup

265 BILLION ANNUAL GLOBAL MARKET FOR BEAUTY PRODUCTS

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50% OF WOMEN ARE DIETING NOW

90% OF WOMEN HAVE DIETED

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BILLION DOLLAR GLOBAL MARKET FOR DIET PRODUCTS

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YOU ARE TOO FAT

In many cultures and historical periods women have been proud to be large-being fat was a sign of fertility, of prosperity, of the ability to survive. Even in the U.S. today, where fear of fat reigns in most sectors of the culture, some racial and ethnic groups love and enjoy large women. For example, Hawaiians often consider very large women quite beautiful, and studies show that some black women experience more body satisfaction and are less concerned with dieting, fatness, and weight fluctuations than are white women. However, the weight loss, medical, and advertising industries have an enormous impact on women across racial and ethnic boundaries. These industries all insist that white and thin is beautiful and that fatness is always a dangerous problem in need of correction

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THE QU FOR BE IS OPTI Only four percent of women around the world consider themselves beautiful. Also, 80 percent of women agree that every woman has something about her that is beautiful, but do not see their own beauty.

UEST EAUTY IONAL EVERY TIME YOU DECIDE TO CHANGE YOUR BODY, HAIR, OR SKIN YOU ARE FUNDING MILLION DOLLAR INSTITUTIONS. YOUR BODY IS YOU. YOU MAKE THE RULES.

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You Don’t Have to Be Pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone.

Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.

— Diana Vreeland

NOTES

S Sleeping Beauty’s Wedding Day After the kiss and the trip to the castle comes the showering, shaving, shampooing, conditioning, detangling, trimming, moussing, blow-drying, brushing, curling, de-frizzing, extending, texturizing, waxing, exfoliating, moisturizing, tanning, medicating, plucking, concealing, smoothing, bronzing, lash lengthening, plumping, polishing, glossing, deodorizing, perfuming, reducing, cinching, controlling, padding, accessorizing, visualizing, meditating, powdering, primping, luminizing, correcting, re-curling, re-glossing, and spraying.

No wonder that hundred-year nap just doesn’t seem long enough. — Christine Heppermann

huffingtonpost.com nytimes.com jezebel.com styleist.com feminist.com

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DANA VAN ETTEN