The Beauty Industry & How It Influences Our Self Esteem

The beauty industry has a major influence on our society, especially female consumers. Starting from a very young age, we are surrounded by images of beautiful women everywhere we turn, from magazines, billboards, television and online. Everywhere we turn, we are surrounded by an ideal of "beauty" and "perfection" especially now with the use of social media platforms.

With social media being such a prevalent medium at our disposal these days, marketers of the beauty industry now have the ability to impact consumers at an even younger age now. Have you recently stopped to pay attention to what the new generation is being exposed to on a regular basis now? I can honestly say that what our youth are exposed to nowadays is vastly different than what I was exposed to when I was growing up in the nineties and I still found myself comparing what I saw in the mirror to what I saw in the magazines and on television.

If you were a young girl who found yourself comparing herself to the beautiful girls in the magazines and never feeling like you were pretty enough, skinny enough, tall enough, can you only imagine growing up in today's social media craze? A simple five minute Instagram scroll nowadays can leave any teenage girl feeling inadequate when she is comparing herself to celebrities that have gone under the knife to look the way that they do. Or perhaps have had the help of Photoshop or a pound of makeup.

Today's billion-dollar beauty empire industry thrives on selling consumers the products that will make them feel better about themselves. They are selling us on our own selfish needs, wants and tendencies. With social media and society being the way that it is today, this world is the most narcissistic it has ever been which is what is driving the beauty industry forward.

In order for us to want to buy something, we have it tied to a feeling, which in this case it's our self-esteem. We want to feel good about ourselves but in reality, we don't need anything outside of ourselves to feel good. What do you think of the way the billion-dollar beauty industry manipulates our self-esteem?




Just for fun...

Take a look at these links I found.


The Perfect Body According to Men and Women:
http://time.com/65901/how-men-and-women-differ-when-drawing-up-the-perfect-body/


What Barbie Would Look Like in Real Life:
https://www.babble.com/beauty/what-would-barbie-look-like-in-real-life-a-new-study-in-comparison-by-artist-nickolay-lamm/