Think back to when you first started making buying decisions about cosmetic products. Do you remember what you bought and why? Did you wear makeup every day? Did your friends? How about some of the other kids at school? Do you remember how much you thought you could tell about someone by the amount and kind of makeup she wore?
What about now? When you look at a woman, do you decide how smart or well educated she is by the type of makeup she wears? Do you make judgments about a woman’s education, background, financial status and marital status based on her makeup? Well, if you don’t, you’re very unusual. Most of us start forming value judgments about women and cosmetics early in life-and many times these attitudes don’t change, no matter how old we get.
A very interesting study was done a few years back by a professor of social psychology at Fairleigh Dickinson University. The professor took “before” photographs of eight women without makeup. Then she had them made over professionally, and “after” photos were taken. Each woman was then given a resume, a copy of which was attached to both the “before” and” after” photos. The resumes were sent across the country to personnel interviewers, who were asked to provide an assessment of these women that would be helpful in counseling women reentering the job market.
Based on the responses received, the professor concluded that the assessment of many of these women’s earning power was based on appearance. In one instance, the assessment of a particular woman’s earning power was a full 20 percent higher as a result of the makeover.
Jean Ann Graham, who is considered one of the pioneers in the field of cosmetic psychology, received her doctorate in social psychology at Oxford University, England, and is the author of numerous articles and papers on the psychological aspects of cosmetics. Her findings show that people rate women who wear makeup as tidier looking, more feminine, clean, pleasant, physically attractive and mature. She also discovered that skin type and condition could be used as a basis for evaluation.
What all this points up are some facts that are not going to come as any major surprise for most of us: 1. As women, we are often evaluated by the way we look. 2. Cosmetics can change a woman’s appearance.
Now turn on any television set in any living room in America and look at the women shown on the screen, and you will probably get a larger than life sense of what is represented as the ideal in feminine looks. It’s called perfection. Then, as I have, ask a few women to tell you how they feel about the way they look.
Most start out okay, but within minutes perfectly lovely women start focusing on small imperfections-large pores, blotchy skin, uneven features. Most of us are not dopes. We realize that we are judged by how we look; and standing next to Brooke Shields, most of us come up feeling klutzy at best. We defend this kind of negative self-scrutiny by saying that we are just being realistic.
A recent study in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology reports that while women tend to distort negatively their perceptions of their bodies, men frequently see themselves as more attractive than they really are. A discussion of why many women think they are less attractive than they really are-or why men think they are more is not my purpose. Reams have been written about the sexist nature of the media and advertising. It’s fairly obvious that women are made to feel insecure by unfair comparisons with unusually good looking women who are being photographed under extraordinarily ideal conditions, and there is very little that I can add to what has already been said about that. But I do think that in any discussion of cosmetics it is important to acknowledge that there is a major discrepancy between the women we see in ads, movies and television and the way most of us feel about the way we look.
This discrepancy, by definition, creates an environment that makes it easy for cosmetic companies to take advantage of our insecurities and our awareness that cosmetics can alter the way people look at us. Cosmetics can help someone change her image, if that’s what she wants. And what woman doesn’t have days when she wants to change her image? Unfortunately, those are the kinds of days on which-on an impulse-many women go shopping for makeup and skin care products.
You know the kind of day I mean. It’s June, and everybody else is in love or leaving for vacation. It’s February. You are in love. He isn’t. It’s January, and you are at least five pounds overweight. It’s November, and your husband hasn’t left the television for three weeks. It’s August, and somebody younger, thinner and less experienced got the job you deserve. These are the times that you want change in your life and are most likely to want to believe cosmetic advertising. That’s when the cosmetic companies are at an advantage.
