Even centuries ago, during the days of the famous Cleopatra in ancient DEgypt, women were finding ways to create cosmetics and using them to enhance their beauty and levels of physical attractiveness, sexuality, and femininity. Thus, the consumption and use of cosmetics is not a new phenomenon, however, there is a heavier focus on cosmetic consumption in some parts of the world over others. America’s cosmetic industry reinforces American many American ideal. The commitment of many American women to create and/or enhance their facial beauty has only become exasperated and turned into an American mainstream cultural addiction. The consumption of cosmetics by women in American culture reinforces and corresponds with the American ideals of freedom, individuality, and choice.
Today the cosmetics industry in America yields over twenty billion dollars per year. Everyday, women in America are bombarded with advertisements attempting to sell individuals products that supposedly enhance their appearance, thus creating a perceived “better life” of new confidence, ability to attract a mate, increased opportunity to get hired, and so many other promises. The makeup industry has surged and profited tremendously in the last thirty years.
According to Kathy Peiss, the use of cosmetics represents a Western style individualism and autonomy. Two examples she presents are in the case of the Taliban being forced out of power in Afganhistan, in the 1980’s and 1990’s when the Chinese government instituted new economic reform, communist rule ended in Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union dissolved” (Peiss 101). Peiss uses these examples to explain that often in many countries that experience a new type of economic, social, or political reinvention, the consumption of American beauty products is not too far behind. In areas of the world that were once ruled by totalitarian control, where women were not given the opportunity to exercise much physical individuality, the introduction of a new, more liberal regime tends to open the opportunity for women to partake in a new focus on cosmetics and facial individuality and enhancement. Of course, the cosmetic industry does not define the role of women in American society. American women are not obligated or forced to partake in the consumption of cosmetics, however there does seem to be a link between the use of cosmetics for creating and enhancing creativity and individuality and the American ideals of individualism and expression.
A link does appear to exist between the consumption of cosmetics by women in the United States and the glamorized ideals of American freedom and individualism. Peiss explains that for decades, “Americans have exported images of glamorized, sexualized female beauty-images of a healthy and exposed body, made-up face, and direct and inviting expression…selling beauty became entangled with a set of ideological positions that supported the larger political and economic goals in the United States…freedom, democracy, and modernity were signified by an image of artificially enhanced female beauty, youth, and glamour” (Peiss 101). Peiss makes an interesting connection between American ideals and values and their physical representations in young, beautiful, glamorized images of women. While those images are often tagged as trivial and overlooked, there does exist an important American ideological link between the two.
The idea of beauty and facial attractiveness brings forth a state of comparison. In the American culture, where people work towards individual and personal growth, achievement, and enhancement, in the field of cosmetic enhancement and usage, many women believe that the use of cosmetics will increase their personal beauty, thereby positively affecting other areas of their life; increasing their level of belonging and inclusion in the American mainstream. The cosmetic industry in America capitalizes on the American focus and argumentatively, American obsession, with beauty and youth. Society has a tendency to rank those deemed as less attractive as lower on the social hierarchy than those viewed as more universally attractive.
The term beautiful usually encapsulates a combination of inner and outer physical beauty. The outer beauty component is generally based on a scale of health, youthfulness, symmetry, and complexion. Those companies in the cosmetic industry have spent billions of dollars figuring out people’s physical insecurities and how to market particular products as the “solution” to those insecurities. Regardless of the decade, or even the century for that matter, people will always want to feel included in the mainstream and a part of the American culture. If the American culture uses the consumption of cosmetics as a means of expressing its stance on individuality, glamour, and youthfulness, women will continue to consume cosmetics.
I think that the cosmetic industry was created in response to the changing roles of perceptions of women in America. For a long time in American culture, women were told to stay in the household. The woman was placed in charge of the maintenance and upkeep of the house and the domestication and upbringing of the children in the home. As women became allowed to enter a different sphere of the culture, and allowed to make more public appearances and actually emerge into the workforce, there was an increased focus on personal improvement and individuality.
One of the reaseons that cosmetics are so widely sought after by female consumers in America, is because there are so many choices presented. Every woman in the United States is different. Women have differing needs, desires, and goals of the look that they want to achieve for themselves and express to the outside world. Women in America have options in what brand, size, color, or product that they are interested in trying or purchasing. Cosmetics are also a wonderful tool in the melting pot culture that is America because they can be used to enhance the natural beauty of women of various skin types, tones, and facial structures. The vast majority of the United States is a nation of immigrants. People come from all ethnic backgrounds, and thus facial features and perceptions of beauty are not all the same. The wide variety of options in the American cosmetics industry takes note and takes advantage of the many differences in women’s faces in the United States, which allows the makers and producers of these products to make more profit and allows women to exercise their individuality and freedom of choice by offering many different types of options.
Even in a time of economic recession in America, the cosmetic industry is an industry that does not suffer tremendously. Women still go out and purchase cosmetics despite economic hardships that may be occurring in the household.
Works Cited
Kathy Peiss. Educating the Eye of the Beholder: American Cosmetics Abroad
Daedalus, Vol. 131, No. 4, On Beauty (Fall, 2002), pp. 101-109
