Tuesday, April 15, 2014

The world is changing and so is beauty.

Gone is the last century of beauty of porcelain smooth baby's-bottom skin, or has it?  Look at today's beauty ads - same same but different: good looking lady, very feminine, with all the right curves and almost spotless.  We kept touting that beauty has change or at least, Dove has been trying really hard to convince the society at large (or reflect?) that beauty is all in the mind.  It has nothing to do with products.  You use products because you only care about how others perceive you.  But really, beauty is about confidence and if you think you've got it, you've got it.

Is that what the world has come to?  If so, then why are we still seeing 99% of beauty commercials talking about the same old thing?

Why do women want to be beautiful?  Because they want to be accepted.  They feel that beauty is a passport for them to gain access to meaningful interpersonal relationships.  To not miss out or be left out in the society, they must at the very least groom themselves because it's the 'social norm'.  So, nobody's born ugly.  Everyone's born beautiful to the beholder, the question is what does society accept and reject?  That caused women all over the world to scramble to look 'right'.

Let's talk about hair.  Does being hairy make a woman feel unattractive?  But if we follow the argument above, isn't her 'unattractiveness' a result of a miss in social expectations?  So WHO decides these expectations?  Men?  Or media?  Or beautiful women?  Or all of the above?

So if I want to tell a woman that she deserves is beautiful, what must I say in order to convince her?  With a clause that she must must must use our product?  Whatever noble message that comes from the commercial, I guess it's sort of cheating.  It's a grey area and a very fine line.

I think all women are beautiful.  At different points of their lives, they experiment with different solutions - make up, clothes, hair removal, etc.  When they drop the school uniform, they'll start to realize the need for hairless armpits and legs to be socially accepted when wearing clothes that might reveal those area.  I suppose this isn't called 'beauty', it's simply about being respectable.  Like not wearing your underwear out in public.  Or your birthday suit.  Or having BO.  Can a beauty service then sell itself by unpositioning itself in the beauty area?  Frankly, it's such a sensitive area, it's pretty much like the discussion of a Brazilian wax.  There're two extremely different school of thoughts regarding that X zone.

Strong women are not beautiful?  Wrong.  Strong women are the most beautiful.  Because they stand for something.  I've got my train of thoughts back now, thank you very much.