Like us on Facebook here.

Beauty products and beauty advertising have a formula when it comes to convincing you that you need to buy them. It goes like this:

Pick a feature of the female body that over 90% of females don’t have + Tell them they are inadequate without that feature = Sell them the ‘solution’ – whether it works or not – by slapping whatever the solution is on a very, very attractive model in TV and print advertisements.

If you are not yet convinced that this formula is being applied to all beauty advertising, now is the time to be shown the truth. In the Western World, beauty messages are so common and predictable that it is hard to imagine a life without being incredibly aware of what the ‘perfect’ body looks like. We know we are ‘supposed to be’ slender with big eyes, small noses, plump lips, white straight teeth, flat stomachs and bronzed skin. We are led to believe that this is the ‘ideal’ way to be and it is the only form of beauty when it comes to the female form.

However, in different parts of the world the same formula applies to beauty products, but their target market have different ‘problem areas’. How do you sell fake tan to a continent of people who already have bronze/brown skin? [Clue: you don’t].

Get ready to be appalled as you watch this advertisement for Fair & Lovely skin whitening cream broadcast in the Middle East. The premise of the advertisement is that a wannabe female news reporter is turned down for her dream job because her skin is too dark (this seems like blatant racism to me, but I guess I come from a different culture), after using Fair & Lovely skin whitening cream this news anchor now has broad appeal to a TV audience and she advances in her career. This ad is from 2007….

The next time you go to a tanning bed or reach for that bronzing body makeup, think about what you are doing. There is no point to your actions apart from pleasing the ideals you see depicted in magazines, and there you are handing over money to look like pictures….doesn’t feel good, does it?