by Jennifer McWhirter on August 4, 2010
Through the Looking Glass is a brief and enjoyable article to read. Cara Phillips is candid and reflective about her experience as a child model and with subsequent careers, but she’s not self-indulgent at all.
She writes of her career choices:
“By the time I found my way to photography at the age of 27, I had been in the beauty industry in some form since the age of 8, first as a child model, then as an in-store makeup artist. Somehow I had been led to believe that my path to happiness could be found only through my physical appearance.”
and concludes:
“There are only a few choices when it comes to overcoming your past: you can let your life become an endless cycle of repeating it, you can move so far away from it that you perhaps never really escape it or you can choose to confront and dissect it.”
by Jennifer McWhirter on August 3, 2010
This article comes off as a bit of a dooms day beauty prediction — we’re going broke on beauty and at younger and younger ages.
I would agree that using cosmetics and grooming oneself are more common at younger ages now than a couple decades ago, but I’m yet to see, with my own two eyes, a five year old who gets manicures and pedicures on a regular basis, a 19 year old who gets Botox as wrinkle prevention, or a bevy of teenage beauties flocking to a clinic for laser hair removal instead of to a drugstore for a razor.
On a recent Sunday in Brooklyn, I stumble into a spa that brands itself for the 0 to 12 set, full of tweens getting facialed and glossed, hands and feet outstretched for manis and pedis. “The girls just love it,” says Daria Einhorn, the 21-year-old spa owner, who was inspired by watching her 5-year-old niece play with toy beauty kits.
And who let’s their young daughter watch I Want A Famous Face instead of iCarly anyways? I know parents cannot shelter their children from the reach of every beauty advertisement, but this just seems careless. Or worse, deliberately malicious.
Even if we assume what the article reports is accurate, what are the negative repercussions of this? Money, true. What else? Do young girls who wear lip gloss have lower self-esteem? Perform poorly in school? The articles lacks substantial, evidence-based arguments, aside from an over-blown financial one, for why having your nails painted at the age of five is a bad thing. And I’m not saying it’s good, either.
by Jennifer McWhirter on August 3, 2010
Newsweek proposes six ways that cosmetic companies lure money out of us at the beauty counter.
by Jennifer McWhirter on August 2, 2010
Caution: beauty and fashion ahead.
Fashionably Dangerous is yet another of Newsweek’s features on beauty. This collection of pictures and videos shares how some of the beauty and fashion trends we engage in can sometimes be dangerous or unhealthy.
by Jennifer McWhirter on August 2, 2010
In Man Up, Susanna Schrobsdorff paints a picture of what the world might be like if men feverishly conformed to beauty standards set by women. The commentary, published in Newsweek, effectively calls attention to some of the absurd things women experience, and are subjected to, in the name of beauty.
She writes:
“Perhaps we’d call it a ‘Gynocracy’-a place where superficial women would set the standards for attractiveness, and men would have to conform to them. It would be a place where ugly men would have a hard time getting a date or a promotion, and the women would burn off steam over beers at a restaurant called Hunks, where all the waiters must have 30-inch waists and grapefruit-sized biceps.”
by Jennifer McWhirter on August 2, 2010
To compliment Newsweek’s photo gallery of photoshop disasters is this essay about a possible backlash against the use of photoshop.
by Jennifer McWhirter on July 29, 2010
Everything from hips to skin pigmentation – even complete decades — go missing in these, rather infamous, photoshoped images shared by Newsweek.
by Jennifer McWhirter on July 29, 2010
Ugly produces pretty in some of the images in this Newsweek feature. A photo gallery of some of the more intriguing looking beauty gadgets and procedures out there. (Click the image to view.)
by Jennifer McWhirter on July 28, 2010
This collection of pictures from Newsweek’s beauty feature serves to remind us of the important notion that what is considered beautiful can vary from one place or culture to the next. And sometimes the pursuit of a particular appearance ideal can invovle pain, discomfort, and risk.
by Jennifer McWhirter on July 27, 2010
How much money do women spend on maintaining their looks at different stages of their lives? The Beauty Breakdown is an interactive feature which crunches the numbers and offers up some dollar possibilities.
For details about how Newsweek estimated these dollar amounts, view the pdf for a complete price breakdown and read the Editor’s Note.
Personally, I didn’t find the numbers so accurate and it’s not like I just emerged from under the anti-beauty rock. Is it not a rather uncommon thing to start getting lip fillers at age 25?. And does a girl really, from the ages of 8 to 12, spend over $7,000 on beauty? Really? Surely, you would agree that some of these things are rather anomalous.
Let’s assume you do. The more interesting question is this: why would these numbers (how much women spend on beauty) be exagerated? To make a better story? Maybe or maybe not. Newsweek cites these numbers from outside sources. Perhaps, then, to make women think they ought to be spending that much on their looks? Cosmetic companies and surgical offices would certainly have a vested interest in this. Just a thought.
And one more thing.
Maybe the spending on Restylane as a wrinkle filler wouldn’t be so high in the 30-49 age group if spending on indoor tanning hadn’t been so high in the 13-29 age group. Just sayin’.
