Why We Do It

Why Challenge Perceptions of Beauty? Because We Have To!

I love makeup! However, there’s a deeper side to the beauty industry which as a marketer I understand, but as a life coach I have to challenge.

  • Makeup can be a fun way to express who you are to the world. It can also be a mask to hide behind when you don’t feel good enough as you are.
  • Makeup can be a source of experimentation, creativity and transformation. It can also be a source of confusion, anxiety and stress.
  • Makeup can be used to add frivolous sparkle to a party outfit. It can also be used to draw back eyebrows and lashes that have fallen out after cancer treatment.

Through market research, beauty companies expose our deepest fears around how we look and feel about ourselves.

Then they turn those very fears into to marketing messages and turn them back on us to sell products.

They present advertisements featuring impossibly beautiful women (heavily photo shopped, of course) that make us feel bad about ourselves, then present the ‘miracle product’ that will ‘fix’ us. Oh, we know it won’t really make us look like the model in the advertising, but we still give it a go. And when it doesn’t work, we move onto the next thing. Kerr-ching!!!

Other industries use this tactic too. But with beauty our own self perceptions shape who we think we are, how we live, how we relate to others…it forms part of our self identity at such a personal level that to simply accept that there is only one ‘ideal concept’ of beauty has to be challenged.

Why challenge perceptions of beauty? Because there are women and girls of all ages, shapes, sizes, & backgrounds out there who are suffering. Anorexia. Bullimia. Imposter syndrome. Fear of growing older because ageing is portrayed as a bad thing…Anxiety and ‘depression’ can lead to women feeling stuck and like victims…This can’t be good for us, and if we allow ourselves to remain victims, what message are we giving out to the next generation!

Women actively WANT to engage with the beauty industry, yet the messages coming out from the industry often intimidate the very women it is trying to help. It’s time to change the conversations and to open up new ways of thinking – That’s why we’re Challenging Perceptions of Beauty.