Unmet expectations are the root of pain. Even psychological torment.
The problem is that in the fashion industry, advertisers peddle unattainable beauty standards. To achieve it is to somehow “live your best life” which is a deceitful and paradoxical claim: A female consumer cannot reach the impossible, and implicit in that claim is they cannot live a so-called best life.
Air-Brushed Icons Have Become False Gods
What is aesthetic utopia anyway?
As if paraded in a circus, bulimic models are exhibited on Photoshopped magazines. In reality, they’re fake, manufactured images that influence teens and adult women to seek a costly but non-existent destination. A painful journey that requires spending $80 billion annually worth of beauty and personal care products in the U.S. but whose mental and physical outcomes are as unfortunate as the malnourished mannequins they emulate.
According to National Report on Self Esteem, 98% of girls feel an immense pressure to look a certain way, and 92% of teen girls want to change something about their looks. Moreover, 90% have eating disorders according to the National Association for Self Esteem while one in four fall into a clinical diagnosis such as cutting, depression and other disorders.
Insecurities as Powerful Selling Points
“It’s ironic that the beauty industry employs ugly tactics to magnify insecurities instead of truly caring for customers,” says Kate Duff, brand coordinator at Fiera Cosmetics, a growing global cosmetics brand focused on quality and authenticity. “Unfortunately, the industry’s selling strategy is to coerce the emotionally vulnerable into buying beauty as prepackaged products. They reinforce messages of inadequacy to meet sales quotas.”
Your tits are small. No man will love such a flat butt. Those aren’t designer handbags. You’ll never find a husband.
These demonic voices swirl in one’s head until an unfortunate consumer rings the cash register and/or reaches a psychological breaking point by starving or cutting herself.
Disrupting the Old-Fashioned Way
“At Fiera, we passionately reject this type of toxic revenue model,” says Kate Duff. “Instead, our interest is to enhance our customers’ experience by offering high-quality, gimmick-free products that help improve not just their natural outward beauty, but also their long-term skin health. In contrast to traditional marketing, we hire models our customers can actually identify with and who portray the real-life challenges of maturing beauty.”
There are nearly 60 million senior citizens in America and that number will grow. 10,000 people turn 65 every day.
Buying beauty in a bottle leads to the pain of unmet expectations; less cash; and the seeking of approval from others in a quest that must always arrive at life’s inevitabilities, anyway: wrinkles, gray hair and aging body. To achieve psychological balance, one must somehow learn acceptance, grace and dignity. Why not learn it sooner?
Aging is part of life. There’s a right way to grow older and that’s to be mature and developed.
Overcoming Deception With Wisdom
There’s a Chinese proverb that mockingly refers to an object “as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns.” The lesson is that some people seek the unobtainable.
Too many girls are withdrawn, depressed and hostile at themselves by trying to please superficial observers. It’s self-defeating.
Proverbs 8 teaches that wisdom and prudence dwell together. In Eastern philosophy, Buddha said “It is better to travel well than to arrive.” He added, “Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.” Meaning, do not seek peace from the outside world.
In business, a company earns profits by somehow adding value to consumers by meeting a basic need (i.e., food and shelter), fulfilling a desire (producing a great movie), or eliminating pain (removing a tumor). Strangely, the fashion industry makes money by inflicting pain on customers: by displaying the fountain of youth and by selling hope that beauty is easily purchased.
You’d think more consumers would reject manipulators. Whisper to them that fool’s gold doesn’t exist before they embark on a perilous journey.