Cosmetic advertising is the promotion of cosmetics and beauty products by the cosmetics industry through a variety of media. The advertising campaigns are usually aimed at women wishing to improve their appearance, commonly to increase physical attractiveness and reduce the signs of ageing.
The beauty industry relies on all kinds of persuasion techniques to sell products. Celebrities help to build brand awareness through promoting products as consumers believe the product is used by the celebrity and this can affect consumer's decision making. [1] This philosophy is often the impetus behind advertisements for makeup, skin products, and hair products. This causes consumers to spend extra money on items that might not be suitable or workable on themselves.
Beauty product advertising promises to consumers that certain products can make consumers look younger. Beauty advertising often seeks to convince consumers of the product's value or even its necessity for the consumer's well-being and self-image. [2]
The effectiveness of advertising depends on convincing consumers that the product can improve their appearance. [3] They may use different methods to persuade individuals to make purchases. Association can be a powerful tool, as well as incentives like discounts. [4] As many people are aware that their personal appearance can have a significant effect on how they are treated by others, advertising can use these concerns by encouraging the target market to buy products. [5] [6] [7]
Beauty advertising often has little to do with selling the product, but rather selling the concepts of beauty and self-esteem.[ citation needed ]
Many campaigns have come under fire through their alleged use of pseudoscience and their promotion of unrealistic goals. Moreover, many campaigns are accused of inducing eating disorders, or leading to destructive plastic surgery practices.[ citation needed ]
In addition, cosmetic advertising is often accused of excessively using photo manipulation to enhance the appearance of models, instead of using the cosmetics themselves, creating an unrealistic image of the product's benefits.[ citation needed ]
Cosmetics are a major expenditure for many women, with the cosmetics industry grossing around 7 billion dollars a year, according to a 2008 YWCA report. [8] Cosmetic retailers design advertising to alter women's attitudes toward cosmetics, encouraging them to buy more products. [8] Many advertisers shape this attitude by encouraging women to feel dissatisfied with their appearance. [8] According to sociologist, Jean Kilbourne, adolescents are particularly vulnerable because they are new and inexperienced consumers and are the prime targets of many advertisements. [9] Study after study has proven that repeated exposure to ideal beauty as portrayed by the media causes detrimental psychological effects in children and adolescents ranging from distorted body images and lowered self-esteem to eating disorders and steroid use. [10]
This thin ideal represents less than 5% of the American population leaving 95% of females with a beauty norm that is impossible to meet. [11] Not only is it impossible to meet, but the model in the advertisement has often been photo manipulated. [12] The flawlessness of advertising woman is, in fact, an illusion created by makeup artists, photographers, and photo re-touchers. [12] Each image is painstakingly worked over: teeth and eyeballs are bleached white; blemishes, wrinkles, and stray hairs are airbrushed away. [12] Media images convey normative information as to what an attractive body looks like that prompts women to evaluate their own body against this normative standard. [13]
Beauty standards are essentially societal norms or expectations that are used to define a very specific idea of what should be considered beautiful [14] and not conforming to society’s beauty standards can have detrimental effects on a person’s sense of worth. [15] Researchers have found a correlation between exposure to cosmetic advertisements and body image issues among black women. For example, cosmetic companies tend to glorify euro-centric characteristics over other physical features and this leaves people who lack these traits extremely self-conscious. Matter of fact, an experiment discovered there was a correlation between the likelihood of women undergoing cosmetic surgery based on their body dissatisfaction before and after experiencing some form of cosmetic advertisement. [16] The results supported the hypothesis that mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety, are more common among women who have undergone cosmetic surgery than their non-patient counterparts.
Cosmetics advertising can be detrimental not only to mental health, but physical health as well. When advertised incorrectly, people can be influenced to purchase products that are actually harming their skin more than benefiting. Most, but not all, cosmetics can cause harmful reactions to the skin due to the toxic chemicals they contain. [17]
Sex appeal in advertising is a common tactic employed to promote products and services. Research indicates that sexually appealing content, including imagery, is often used to shape or alter the consumer's perception of a brand, even if it is not directly related to the product or service being advertised. This approach, known as "sex sells," has become more prevalent among companies, leading to controversies surrounding the use of sexual campaigns in advertising.
Sexual objectification is the act of treating a person solely as an object of sexual desire. Objectification more broadly means treating a person as a commodity or an object without regard to their personality or dignity. Objectification is most commonly examined at the level of a society, but can also refer to the behavior of individuals and is a type of dehumanization.
Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), also known in some contexts as dysmorphophobia, is a mental disorder defined by an overwhelming preoccupation with a perceived flaw in one's physical appearance. In BDD's delusional variant, the flaw is imagined. When an actual visible difference exists, its importance is disproportionately magnified in the mind of the individual. Whether the physical issue is real or imagined, ruminations concerning this perceived defect become pervasive and intrusive, consuming substantial mental bandwidth for extended periods each day. This excessive preoccupation not only induces severe emotional distress but also disrupts daily functioning and activities. The DSM-5 places BDD within the obsessive–compulsive spectrum, distinguishing it from disorders such as anorexia nervosa.
Body image is a person's thoughts, feelings and perception of the aesthetics or sexual attractiveness of their own body. The concept of body image is used in several disciplines, including neuroscience, psychology, medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, philosophy, cultural and feminist studies; the media also often uses the term. Across these disciplines, there is no single consensus definition, but broadly speaking, body image consists of the ways people view themselves; their memories, experiences, assumptions, and comparisons about their appearances; and their overall attitudes towards their respective heights, shapes, and weights—all of which are shaped by prevalent social and cultural ideals.
Jean Kilbourne is an American public speaker, writer, filmmaker and activist, who is known for her work on the image of women in advertising and her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising. She is also credited with introducing the idea of educating about media literacy as a way to prevent problems she viewed as originating from mass media advertising campaigns. She also lectures about the topic, and her documentaries based on these lectures are viewed around the world.
The history of cosmetics spans at least 7,000 years and is present in almost every society on earth. Cosmetic body art is argued to have been the earliest form of a ritual in human culture. The evidence for this comes in the form of utilised red mineral pigments including crayons associated with the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa. Cosmetics are mentioned in the Old Testament—2 Kings 9:30 where Jezebel painted her eyelids—approximately 840 BC—and the book of Esther describes various beauty treatments as well.
The effects of advertising on body image have been studied by researchers, ranging from psychologists to marketing professionals. While many factors, such as "parenting, education, [and] intimate relationships" also affect body image, "the media and body image are closely related." This is because thousands of advertisements contain messages about physical attractiveness and beauty, examples of which include commercials for clothes, cosmetics, weight reduction, and physical fitness. Researchers have conducted studies in an attempt to see if such advertisements have effects on teenage body image, and what those effects might be.
Gender in advertising refers to the images and concepts in advertising that depict and reinforce stereotypical gender roles. Advertisements containing subliminal or direct messages about physical attractiveness and beauty have been of particular interest regarding their impact on men, women, and youth. Gendered advertisements have and continue to shape what is expected of a distinct gender, regarding physique and attitude.
The thin ideal is the concept of the ideally slim female body. The common perception of this ideal is a woman who possesses a slender, feminine physique with a small waist and little body fat. The size that the thin ideal woman should be is decreasing while the rate of female obesity is simultaneously increasing, making this iconic body difficult for women to maintain. This creates a gap between the actual appearance of an average woman’s body and its expected appearance which, depending on the extent to which a woman internalizes the necessity of living up to this ideal for her well-being and peace of mind, may have serious psychological effects.
Body shape refers to the many physical attributes of the human body that make up its appearance, including size and countenance. Body shape has come to imply not only sexual/reproductive ability, but wellness and fitness. In the West, slenderness is associated with happiness, success, youth, and social acceptability. Being overweight is associated with laziness. The media promote a weight-conscious standard for women more often than for men. Deviance from these norms result in social consequences. The media perpetuate this ideal in various ways, particularly glorifying and focusing on thin actors and actresses, models, and other public figures while avoiding the use or image of overweight individuals. This thin ideal represents less than 15% of the American population.
Killing Us Softly is an American documentary series by Jean Kilbourne, produced and distributed by the Media Education Foundation. First released in 1979 and since revised and updated three times, most recently in 2010, it focuses on images of women in advertising; in particular on gender stereotypes, the effects of advertising on women's self-image, and the objectification of women's bodies.
Lifestyle changes have been increasing slowly since the introduction of media. Lifestyle changes include how people eat, dress, and communicate. Media – films, television shows, magazines, and more recently, the Internet are the main sources of lifestyle influence around the world. Douglas Kellner writes, "Radio, television, film, and the other products of media culture provide materials out of which we forge our very identities; our sense of selfhood; our notion of what it means to be male or female; our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality; and of "us" and "them.""
The exploitation of women in mass media is the use or portrayal of women in mass media such as television, film, music, and advertising as objects or sexual beings, in order to increase the appeal of media or a product to the detriment of the women being portrayed, and women in society. This process includes the presentation of women as sexual objects and the setting of feminine beauty ideals that women are expected to reflect. Sexual exploitation of women in the media dates back to 19th century Paris, in which ballerinas were exposed to harassment and objectification. The most often criticized aspect of the use of women in mass media is sexual objectification, but dismemberment can be a part of the objectification as well. The exploitation of women in mass media has been criticized by feminists and other advocates of women's rights, and is a topic of discussion in feminist studies and other fields of scholarship.
Whitewashing in beauty is a phenomenon in the intersection of the fashion industry, digital photography, mass media, marketing and advertising. It describes a situation in which the skin tone of non-white people – when depicted in magazine covers, advertisements, commercials, music videos, etc. – is digitally retouched or physically modified to appear whiter. Whitewashing can also present itself in the alteration of hair texture to resemble Eurocentric beauty ideals of straight hairPassage(s) to be sourced. Whitewashing can be seen in the form of skin whitening, either digitally or with harmful skin bleaching products, or by chemically relaxing textured hair to make it conform to Eurocentric beauty standardsPassage(s) to be sourced. Additionally, plastic surgery can be used to alter features to make them appear more European, such as double eyelid surgery.
The feminine beauty ideal is a specific set of beauty standards regarding traits that are ingrained in women throughout their lives and from a young age to increase their perceived physical attractiveness. It is experienced by many women in the world, though the traits change over time and vary in country and culture.
Gender plays a role in mass media and is represented within media platforms. These platforms are not limited to film, radio, television, advertisement, social media, and video games. Initiatives and resources exist to promote gender equality and reinforce women's empowerment in the media industry and representations. For example, UNESCO, in cooperation with the International Federation of Journalists, elaborated the Gender-sensitive Indicators for Media contributing to gender equality and women's empowerment in all forms of media.
The cosmetic industry describes the industry that manufactures and distributes cosmetic products. These include colour cosmetics, like foundation and mascara, skincare such as moisturisers and cleansers, haircare such as shampoos, conditioners and hair colours, and toiletries such as bubble bath and soap. The manufacturing industry is dominated by a small number of multinational corporations that originated in the early 20th century, but the distribution and sale of cosmetics is spread among a wide range of different businesses. Cosmetics must be safe when customers use them in accordance with the label's instructions or in the conventional or expected manner. One measure a producer may take to guarantee the safety of a cosmetic product is product testing. FDA occasionally does testing as part of its research program or when looking into potential safety issues with a product. Both the cosmetics business and consumers can benefit from the FDA's resources on product testing.
Korean beauty standards have become a well-known feature of Korean culture. In 2015, a global survey by the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons placed South Korea in the top ten of countries who had the highest rate of cosmetic surgeries.
K-Beauty is an umbrella term for skincare products that are derived from South Korea. The fad gained popularity worldwide, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Western world, and focuses on health, hydration, and an emphasis on brightening effects.
Body positivity is a social movement that promotes a positive view of all bodies, regardless of size, shape, skin tone, gender, and physical abilities. Proponents focus on the appreciation of the functionality and health of the human body, instead of its physiological appearance.
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