Buy Your Beauty, Because Capitalism Says So

Since the beginning of the 18th century, modern capitalism has always played a big role in determining beauty standards. Women have been emotionally and mentally impacted by being constant targets of a market-driven and profit-motivated system. The system provides certain motives that shape media, and the media then shapes a cruel, shallow culture focused on constantly attempting to conform to the beauty standards. One of the things that this system has done to maximize profits is intentionally creating deficiencies and addictions in the beauty industry. Women are taught that their beauty is the most important factor in defining their value, and this is reflected as a form of empowerment that women need to be successful and significant in their life. If they don't meet the system's criteria, they must alter themselves by spending a lot of money and putting their lives at risk, both psychologically and physically. If women do not see that they are being manipulated and continue to attempt to fit into the beauty standards, the norms will only get more unattainable. This is because beauty standards are toxic marketing tools that manipulates women's self-esteem for the profit of capitalism.

Women are taught to perceive beauty in the way that society wants them to perceive it by imposing standards on them as they grow up. As girls get older, it becomes clear that their perception of beauty are influenced by their surroundings. Beauty standards are constantly communicated to them through magazines, the school system, personal relationships, and social media. Allure Magazine interviewed girls between the ages of 5 to 18 to find out how it affects them and how they define beauty. Girls between the ages of 5 and 12 defined beauty like any other kid would; they said dolphins and their mother's are beautiful; nevertheless, girls between the ages of 13 and 18 defined beauty by describing that year's beauty trends. 16-year-old Tyler reveals that she attends a predominantly white school and uses to straighten her hair every two weeks or so to fit in to the beauty standards around her. Teenage girls' perceptions of beauty and its influence on their lives change as they get older and try to conform to society's norms. They attempt to alter their natural features to fit to the beauty standards that they are exposed to. By imposing those norms on women, they create insecurity by limiting their ability to define beauty in different ways.

Women's insecurities are made by beauty market to make profit by fixing them. The beauty industry makes women insecure about their appearances by imposing unrealistic beauty standards since they are born, causing women to perceive their normal features as flaws, and then offer the best "solutions" to those problems for sale. As the feminist slogan goes, "the personal is political". Body hair on women is described unnatural, but it wasn't until razor companies started marketing to women that they began removing what was completely natural. The pervasiveness of visuals of women's bodies without body hair creates a reality indistinguishable from fact; razor adverts even show models shaving already hairless skin. It is obvious that the hairless skin is being normalized and portrayed as the natural skin for women to make women with body hair uncomfortable and insecure about it, leading them to purchase shaving products. So, even though the "problem" is totally natural such as hair growth on body, the beauty industry forces women to cling to bizarre and unattainable standards that they create only for the purpose of profit.

The beauty industy is shifting the concept of normal to hyper normal by de-stigmatizing cosmetic surgeries on women suffering from body dysmorphia who may not consider the consequences. Women are growing used to cosmetic surgery due to beauty standards, both for delaying the aging process and modifying youthful bodies to fit without considering the psychologic consequences. This is because the standards made them believe that to be a decent woman, they had to have surgery. Beauty standards in South Korea, which has the most toxic beauty standards in the world as well as the finest advertising for beauty products, include looking like a Korean celebrity with wide eyes, thin lips, and petite faces, even though their ethnic features are the opposite of these. However, because Korean celebrities undergo so many cosmetic procedures to conform to these standards, the desire to look like them has become so popular and usual that looking like them is now considered the new Korean features. Most Korean girls who do not look like that are insecure about their natural appearance and want cosmetic surgery at an early age. A South Korean survey found that more than %60 of women in their late twenties and %40 of women in their early twenties had had as cosmetic surgery procedure. However, even after the procedure almost all of them are dissatisfied with their body image and believe they need further procedures to look better and "normal". Even though their natural features are beautiful, girls attempt to look in a way to feel better without considering the consequences which is not natural but has been normalized by the media. The tendency is clearly unnatural. Since it has been standardized by society and the media, women are being driven to undergo highly toxic and risky operations to feel less insecure about their appearances by conforming to this disordered ideal.

To conform to these social norms better, the beauty industry is changing how women perceive their appearance by making them feel insecure, driving them to consume and be consumed by beauty products. Because it causes women to feel that their natural features are flaws, what women believe to be true about their bodies is nothing more than marketing designed by beauty companies to earn a profit. These standards are dangerously unattainable since the gap between realistic expectations and the ideal is widening every day. Rather than accepting the normalization of these standards, various types of beauty and features can be displayed and distributed. Still, the only long-term solution is for women to gain sufficient self-awareness to recognize when the media is pushing at their insecurities and to make conscious decisions when faced with those insecurities. The problem of women's anxieties was never caused by their physical appearance; it was only an excuse to justify what companies have been doing. Women's insecurities, anxieties, and body dysmorphia are all driven by one factor: profit.