Unattainable Beauty
Social Media, Celebrities and Beauty
The fashion and beauty industry booming. Instagram accounts of beauty bloggers gain followers every second, Youtube tutorials are watched by millions and beauty market grows every day. The ideal is often impossible to achieve, but the beauty can be bought if people keep consuming.
“It’s become taboo to admit that the ideal created by society is a highly specific standard that hardly anybody can live up to.”
An article “‘I Feel Pretty’ and the Rise of Beauty‐ Standard Denialism” by Amanda Hess, a critic-at-large who writes about internet culture, argues that social media has a crucial value in shaping new beauty standards and perception of the beauty itself. Hess’s main focus is on the movie “I Feel Pretty” which shows how a life of an oversized woman changes in a matter of a ‘SoulCycle accident.’ The critic argues that women no longer believe that their inner beauty and self-confidence is what matters. She calls it a “beauty‐standard denialism” when beauty becomes almost unachievable because of the incredibly high expectations from society and, most importantly, admitting that is prohibited by the same society. Amanda Hess also argues that social media accelerated the spread of a unachievable beauty all the way up rather than bringing it back to the reality, thanks to the photo manipulation.
Amanda Hess was not the only one to express a concern about the influence of social media over beauty standarts. Nazia Parveen argues that “Social media and celebrity culture ‘harming young people.’” Journalist argues that with the rise of social media influence and celebrity culture also came the strive for an ‘unobtainable’ body. Younger generations grow up surrounded with perfectly edited body images and flattering photos of celebrities which gives them a false science of unattainable beauty standards: “… 58% of 11 to 16-year-olds identify it as the main influence.” Naiza Parveen shows that some young people have different mental disorders associated with the consumption of social media and pressure created by it.
Let’s look at that from another angle. The new democratised notion of beauty is feeding off a constantly unsatisfied consumers. This concept of “satisfy the unsatisfying” is the work of marketers and goes back to the market shift from production to consumption and Edward Bernays’ jumpstart of “consumerism.” Consumer culture was further developing and products were no longer seen as objects of rational need. Ernest Dichter, “father of motivational research,” introduced a concept of consumption where main movers were one’s social standing and willingness to buy a product associated with the certain profile.
Nowadays social obsession together with unrealistic beauty became worth thanks to the number of factors. The biggest one is that beauty is corrupted by commercials and beauty industry itself. Products are seen as parts of an unreal puzzle which is almost impossible to solve. Nevertheless, this imaginary puzzle can be “modified” as long as those parts are available in the market. Beauty industry is considered to be one of the most profitable markets in 2018 with the profit of US$74,251m. Beauty brands are tapping into people’s emotions and promise to inhale one’s social standing.
People are in a state of constant self evaluation based on the photoshop pics of celebrities and beauty icons, and in the age of skyrocketing popularity of social media it has become easier than ever. Yet, social media is just another way for businesses to increase their sales.
It is unquestionable that social media plays a huge role in shaping the perception of beauty but it is rather a result than a problem itself. Business expansion, consumerism and the lack of differentiation between editorial and real content is what should be a cause for concern.
