Health and WellBeing

Women’s Desire for Personal Perfection

A couple of years ago, The New York Times ran an article in its science section with the headline – Dislike of Own Body Found Common for Women. Running in bold type under the headline was the statement, “Men Tend to See Themselves as Just About Perfect.”

This article summarized the findings of several studies, all of which concluded that women tend to be negatively unrealistic about the way they look. One of the researchers commented on the way in which women compare themselves, usually unfavorably, with the models and actresses whose faces they find in advertisements and in the movies.

From my experience as a beauty consultant, I believe this is true. Because I am so often exposed to the average woman’s attitude about her appearance, I think about this article sometimes. Therefore, many of the women I speak to are concerned about how they look.

All over America, women—old, young, single, married, divorced—look at the faces of the models in current magazines, look at themselves in the bathroom mirror, and wonder whether they can change anything about their appearance that will make them seem more perfect.

Some want to look younger and others, believe it or not, want to look older. Some want to cover spots and pimples and blemishes. Others want to hide pores and wrinkles and sags.

These women, and I am one of them, are ideal targets for the cosmetics industry, an industry that, by definition, relies not only on women’s insecurities, but also on their unrealistic concepts, of how they should look.

I have no idea why so many women, including myself, are so often afflicted with a desire for personal perfection, and it doesn’t matter whether you blame it on hormones or conditioning, or societal and sociological pressures.

The fact is that much of the marketing strategy of the cosmetics industry is based on the premise that the average woman can be convinced that she needs to “do something about the way she looks.” I’m not saying that the cosmetics and skin care industry created the type of psychology that responds to skin care ads promising perfection, but they sure do everything they can to exacerbate it and capitalize on it.

From the time, she is old enough to read. The budding feminine consumer is bombarded with messages telling her that beauty is a valuable commodity. When she stares at television advertisements and sees all the standard beautiful and traditionally garbed women portraying young mothers and junior executives with Rolex watches, she can’t help wondering whether she will ever be good-looking enough to make it in the cold, cruel competitive world and whether she should start thinking about “doing something” about the way she looks.