What is Beauty?

Raise your hand if these thoughts have crossed your mind during your routine Instagram scroll….

“Why does she look so good in every single selfie?”
“Where are her pores!? I mean she literally doesn’t have any!”
“OMG her skin is so dewy and perfect and I’m sitting here with breakouts and eye bags, gah!”

Unfortunately these thoughts are normal and here’s why...

The beauty industry (among others) have been responsible for intentionally causing women & men to feel bad about themselves, in order to sell products that supposedly will make you feel better again. It's basic human psychology, it's manipulation, and it’s not okay.

The beauty industry is guilty of employing the theory of social comparison to manufacture a sense of insecurity.

It’s no secret that many beauty brands intentionally use “physically attractive” models in their advertising. This method is based on the “theory of social comparison” where consumers compare their own level of physical attractiveness with that of the models used in ads and social media. These conscious or unconscious comparisons create a sense of “I’m not good enough as I am”, and seriously impact self-esteem, self-confidence and mental health.

Why would an industry employ such tactics?
In one study, 355 women between the ages of 18 - 50 were asked about their perceptions of cosmetics from a functional and emotional perspective. The results showed:

“Consumer satisfaction is greatest when cosmetics brands help to strengthen positive emotions through the perception of ‘caring for oneself’ and removing feelings of worry and guilt about not taking care of one’s appearance.” 
~Vanessa Apaolaza (PhD, professor of Marketing, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain)

On the surface this sounds good, but in order for a brand to provide this positive emotional experience, it must first cause consumers to have negative feelings about themselves, such as concern and dissatisfaction with their appearance (their beauty).

“One way of achieving this is by subtly telling customers that they’re ugly – something that many cosmetics adverts achieve implicitly and very effectively by showing images of unusually beautiful women,” the study points out.

But it’s time to wake up to this style of marketing and know that many of the “beautiful” women in these marketing campaigns don’t even look like that in reality. It’s all photoshop. Newsflash, they do in fact have pores on their nose, peach fuzz on their face and breakouts from time to time!

Nobody is perfect.

So it’s time to celebrate our perfectly imperfect selves and start to question and redefine the concept of beauty.

To us, beauty is subjective so we asked our #tailortribe to share their definition of beauty in this video.

We've launched the #whatisbeauty video series to start a conversation. To change the narrative. To change lives. To save lives. We need to redefine beauty and celebrate self-love.

Watch the video above, and remember - you are beautiful, every damn day.