Anti-aging serums, weight loss gummies, skinny BBLs, faux face lifts, preventative Botox and home tanning products.
All of these products or treatments and more are constantly promoted by social media influencers and content creators. It’s easy to feel like an extensive beauty routine is the norm, despite high costs or inaccessibility.
In reality, it’s not normal to be bombarded with a constant stream of people advocating for significant changes to one’s appearance.
There is evidence that social media has a negative impact on self-esteem across several platforms. Centering one’s appearance around expensive products that are unattainable for most only serves to contribute to that harm.
The beauty industry is a beast that’s been around for millenia, capitalizing off of the insecurities of people striving to meet shifting, arbitrary beauty standards.
Whether selling lead-based foundations or encouraging unhealthy eating habits by advertising with ultra-thin models, companies in the beauty industry have historically not had their customers’ best interests at heart. There should be a balance between seeking record profits and fulfilling social responsibility.
Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the reality. In 2022, the prestige beauty industry–made up of higher-end beauty products–grew 15 percent in revenue.
The impact that social media advertising had on such a major revenue increase is undetermined. However, the speed of trend cycles on social media is likely to play a role in younger demographics’ demand for new products.
Because there’s so much content about beauty routines or appearance enhancement all over social media, beauty seems more and more to be something you buy rather than feel.
Seeing post after post of skincare routines, makeup tutorials or “get ready with me” videos can introduce social media users to hundreds of new products within minutes. Perceived pressure to buy new products to fit in or feel better about oneself just increases the likelihood of them buying new things, rather than necessarily to improving their self-image.
In this sense, beauty trends hurt us and our environment by encouraging consumerism. Defining yourself by the products you use makes you lose out on individuality and self-worth.
There’s a push for content creators to be transparent around products used or treatments done.
Accounts that show “social media vs. real life” pictures of celebrities get millions of views. Comment sections are often flooded with users asking what an item is called or where it was purchased.
This is absolutely an improvement upon photo retouching or outright denial of cosmetic procedures.
The issue, though, isn’t that people claim “natural beauty” when their appearance has taken both time and funds to curate.
The issue is the adherence to and promotion of beauty standards from which self-esteem crises are borne.
Public figures have a responsibility to share when their appearances are enhanced or altered. This can help prevent people from taking extreme measures to achieve the inhuman look they’re exposed to.
There should also be a responsibility to challenge why you believe a makeup routine, cosmetic procedure or new beauty product is necessary.
Acting like beauty treatments are self-care is disingenuous. There’s a difference between taking care of one’s body and mind and seeking to fit into a societal box of what a person should look like.
The proliferation of choice feminism, under which any woman’s individual choices are proclaimed to be inherently feminist, makes these actions more harmful.
It’s not feminist to shave your legs or get a nose job just because you’re doing it “for yourself.” In reality, that individual choice is informed by your own beliefs in beauty standards and how you fit or fail to fit them.
Choice feminism doesn’t uplift women but instead puts women on a pedestal where critique is unacceptable. Progress is not simply allowing any marginalized person to do whatever they think is best. It’s criticizing problematic behavior and encouraging critical thinking to understand the systems that impact our perceptions.
The beauty industry is one such system that continues to thrive by shaping our worldview.
Consuming ads and social media posts more thoughtfully is the first step to unpacking how you’ve engaged in beauty culture. After taking this step back for careful consideration, one can begin to see how a beauty company’s bottom line has come to influence the way you think about yourself and those around you.
Katie Hettinga can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @katie_hettinga