Intelligent life on planet Beauty.

This little video –The Story of Stuff by activist Annie Leonard — just recently came to my attention. In it, she explains how an unsustainable system of consumption of (often) unnecessary goods in developed countries is harming our world and the people in it (often those in developing countries). This can be applied to a variety of goods and services in the beauty and fashion industry, some of which are specifically made reference to in the video (e.g. the changing fashions of high heels). Despite being crafted with a healthy dose of fear-mongering, it does raise some important points. Before you watch it and read on, please keep in mind this is not a beauty-bashing blog, by any means. Rather, it is a blog meant to stimulate critical thinking about beauty.

Annie mentions briefly that products are tested to determine how they can be made to function properly just long enough that people will be willing to go out and buy a replacement for the product when it inevitably breaks or malfunctions. In other words, products are often purposefully designed not to last, so we keep buying things. If any fashion item was purposefully designed to self-destruct in short order, my vote is for pantyhose.

Another point she raises is that when a product is low in cost, its manufacturing and shipping costs still must get paid for somehow, even if it’s not by you at the cash register. Her thesis is that the real cost of the item you got for a steal — here’s looking at you $5 H&M dress — falls on the shoulders of the people in under-developed countries working long hours for pennies, and risking their health in wretched working conditions to make whatever it is you just purchased.

I agree with her, at least to some extent, that creating new fashions each year is most certainly about corporations making money. We’d be fools not to recognize this. But to what extent is fashion and beauty merely about consumerism compared to, say, art creation, a depiction of self-identity, or innate ability to distinguish between what is beautiful and what is not? In other words, to what extent are beauty and fashion merely money making corners of the market and to what extent are they truly dimensions of human expression, creativity, and judgement?

Fashion trends and beauty ideals have changed over time, long before the 1950’s when Annie indicates consumption really started to be marketed and take off. Perhaps they really are “good” and “true” things, but consumerism capitalizes (pun intended) on them, and the knowledge that they will change with time, to sell more stuff to people.

Consumerism did not create “beauty,” nor did patriarchism, though Naomi Wolfe would argue otherwise. Instead, as Nancy Etcoff writes, beauty – its ideals and efforts to attain them – is very much biologically ingrained and not merely socially constructed. While beauty may be exploited by those on Madison Avenue, it wasn’t created by them. In other words, that beauty exists has more to do with Darwin than dollars.

And so, it would seem, we can have beauty without consumerism, without stuff. However, the most malleable ways to make ourselves more attractive is by wearing stylish clothes and shoes, a flattering lipstick colour, or a certain hair colour and style. And if we want to try to increase the amount of beauty or style we possess, the easiest way to accomplish this (perhaps the only way) is to swipe our plastic for possessions and apply them.

Swipe, possess, apply. Repeat.

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This BBC documentary follows three girls, their mothers, and their motivations, as they prepare to compete in the Mini Miss UK event. Even the title of the pageant is nauseating. Everything is wrong with this. Everything.

But the documentary is good. You can watch the Baby Beauty Queens documentary here.

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I’ve been keeping an eye on what’s been in the news and around the web about beauty over the course of the summer, even when I wasn’t yet blogging again. Given that it’s September 1st tomorrow, I thought it would make sense to finally share the articles and links with you:

Christina Hendrick’s curves get cheered, then sheared.

This is why you thought they were hotter when you were drunk.

Oh, yes they did: perk up your headlights. (Not those ones.)

Ogling an attractive woman is natural reflex for heterosexual men. Sympathy from women is not. Duh.

Robin Givhan pipes up on Essence hiring a white fashion director.

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This commercial has been airing for the past while. It is for a skin tag removal product.

Warning: This product, once it has removed your skin tag, may cause your daughter to think you’re beautiful again and allow you to participate in normal activities, such as swimming.

I wouldn’t blame anyone for wanting to remove a skin tag, but does it really warrant being in the First Aid section, as the voice over informs? Skin tag got you down and out about your looks? Think First Aid!

And did it have to attempt to manipulate the potential purchaser by instilling in her mind that, heaven forbid, her daughter might not think she is beautiful for a moment? If I had read the script for this, but not seen the video, I might have assumed this was an ad from the 1950’s.

Isn’t it comforting to know that, thanks to Dr. Scholl’s, the little girl’s own future is saved from similar beauty injustices?

Now, at last, I can sleep soundly.

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The September issues of fashion magazines are often considered the most important. They show the major fashion trends and are packed full of more advertisements than other issues. They are considered the largest and most influential.

One of the notable things about the covers of many of the highest-circulation North American magazines this year is that a) a handful of the women on the covers are women, not girls, and are over 40; and b) Halle Berry is on the cover of American Vogue. At 44, she is the oldest woman to appear on the cover in the past 10 years and she is the first black woman to appear on a September issue of Vogue since Naomi Campbell did in 1989.

A few more of the September 2010 covers:

What I like so much about featuring women like Roberts, Aniston, Berry, and Lopez on magazine covers is that — assuming you at least sort of subscribe to the idea that cover models are aspirational in some way – these are women with voices, experience, successful careers they’ve crafted over decades, children, marriages, and break-ups. They are worth aspiring to be like because they are more than only beautiful.

A struggling 25-year-old can aspire to be like a successful, beautiful 40-something. But a successful, beautiful 40-something ought not to aspire to be like a voice-less, name-less 20-year-old who is merely an object of beauty or Hollywood fad.

Reuters put out a great article saturated with magazine stats, which you might enjoy. Here’s a little snippet:

Indeed, the age of a cover subject seems to show that older often can be better. On InStyle’scovers, 40-year-old Gwen Stefani outsold 25-year-olds Scarlett Johansson and Leona Lewis (648,000, 579,000 and 610,000, respectively) — and all three were outsold by Jennifer Lopez, who was 40 when she was on the cover in September and sold a whopping 853,000 copies (though September, as mentioned, usually is the biggest month).

I also enjoyed seeing Freida Pinto on the cover of September’s T Magazine:

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“You got the beauty, but I got the brains…and the beauty.”

– Kendra to her sister Kerri, Hairography Episode, Glee

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Cycle Chic is considered the culture of cycling — utility cycling – in everyday, fashionable clothes. The idea is that you don’t have to be dressed like you’re racing in the Tour de France in order to ride your bike around town, and, moreover, that you can actually look super-stylish doing so. The goal is to get more people to cycle by marketing it as accessible and desirable.

Bicycling is quite common in some European cities, including Paris, Bristol, Copenhagen, and Berlin. And perhaps it is safe to say that some North American cities, such as New York and Toronto, are experiencing an increased interest in cycling.

The heavyweight in the blogosphere regarding stylish cycling is Copenhagen Cycle Chic, and their more recent sister site Copenhagenize. The former has the beauty, the latter the brains. Copenhagen Cycle Chic has been called “The Sartorialist on Two Wheels” by The Guardian and “Top 100 Blogs World Wide” by Time magazine. It is like a streetstyle blog, but everyone is on a bicycle and it is the brainchild of Mikael Colville-Andersen (coiner of the term “cycle chic”). He uses the blogs to promote cycling in urban areas and the idea that you can wear everyday clothes while cycling. He often travels for speaking engagements to promote cycling. One really can’t talk about Cycle Chic without paying homage to him.

The Sartorialist, itself, has a well-developed affection for bicycles. And there are many, many other Cycle Chic blogs cropping up all over the place. Fashion advertisements in magazines have been featuring bicycles lately, too.

Cycle Chic is a movement, really — it’s stylish, but it’s more than just a fashion trend. It’s about looking good, feeling good, and promoting livable cities and a more human way to travel. It is about getting where you need to go in a stylish, healthy, efficient, and environmentally-friendly way. It is about incorporating physical activity into your day in a streamlined, time-efficient way.

More on Cycle Chic in upcoming posts. In the meantime, some related press:

Bikes: The New Fashion Accessory, Toronto Star
Cycle In Style: What to Wear on Your Bicycle, Vogue.com, UK
Primp My Ride, Globe and Mail
Cycle Chic: Soft core cycling or cycling re-imagined, Take the Lane
Cycle Chic, The Australian
All Dressed Up and Ready To Roll, Boston Globe
Danish Women on Bikes, Vancouver Sun
New Cyclist Styles Pedal Their Way Into Paris, The Wall Street Journal

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Half-heartedly, if that, the model pleads: “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.” I guess the idea is that, by using their hair products, not only do we not have to hate the model in the commercial anymore (did we hate her?), but we, too, can be beautiful (we weren’t before?) and enjoy the sweet victory of others hating us (we want to be hated?).

With all this “beauty hate” filling the steamy shower air, I suppose one needn’t wonder why so many beauty pagent contestants give sentiment to world peace as often as they do.

I thought this video was a fun way to begin to illustrate the different relationships we, as social beings, have with beauty.

The following thought occured to me after watching this ad. In so many ways the marketing of beauty products, and one’s cultivation of beauty, is about conformity to some ideal (whatever that may be at a certain time, in a certain place, or in the mind of the individual); however, some ads also seem to promote, market, or capitalize on a desire to be so beautiful, so far from average, that one doesn’t “fit in” at all. In fact, the person is actually disliked for being beautiful and, moreover, enjoys this. Such dislike, I assume, results from knowing that beauty is a resource which can enable certain advantages, or a resource which garners more resources (e.g., mates, marks, money).

It would seem that beauty is one of the few qualities people put so much time, effort, money, and thought into for such a socially negative result.

Hate takes hard work. And good shampoo.

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Woman Within (formerly Lane Bryant) is a leading plus-size U.S. clothing company; however, the size of the models, and sometimes even the size of the clothes themselves, seem oddly matched with a mission to sell plus-size clothing. (Originally seen on Sociological Images.)

If there is a plus-size woman within these clothes, I certainly can’t spot her.

“Plus-size” models in “plus-size” swimwear:

Let’s zoom in for a close up:

 Yup, she’s totally plus-size and so is that bathing suit. Totally.

But some of the images also feature very oversized clothes (for the models wearing them):

And so two dressing themes emerge: 1) slim models in clothes which are so small it seems they cannot be considered plus-size at all and 2) slim models lost in clothes which are much too large for them:

Very infrequently, a curvier model was featured. A much improved aesthetic, in my opinion:

From their website:

“Who’s the Woman Within®? Any woman you want her to be…beautiful, confident, important and comfortable…impeccably dressed without spending a fortune. The 110 year old brand that recently became Woman Within has the expertise to make all this happen for women who wear sizes 12W & up. What began in 1901 as a humble dress shop called Lane Bryant® has grown into the world’s leader in plus size apparel, sensitive to your comfort, style and budget.

Our mission has always been to satisfy the fashion needs of the full-figure woman…from casual sportswear to dressy separates…lingerie to outerwear…even shoes and plus-calf boots. And we are famous for providing a fit that’s as comfortable as it is becoming.”

For comparison, here is another plus-size clothing company, Torrid, and a sample of their website’s imagery:

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