The Billion Dollar Beauty Industry Trap
Think twice before spending thousands on beauty products.
You are worth it. Are they worth it?
As the price for beauty products keep increasing with their promises of better technology and advertisements with beautiful movie stars, we keep emptying our pockets to buy more and more of these products. Why is the world so obsessed with beauty that the beauty industry is one of the most flourishing industries in the world with a net worth of 511 billion dollars?
The advertisements of beauty products target the insecurities people have, and with the tag lines like ‘because you are worth it’ make them feel the need to pamper themselves with the products that offer to make you fairer, with no dark spots or pimples… These beautiful ladies in the advertisements make it look like once you use their product you will also look like them, which is not really that easy.
The ladies in advertisements are often movie stars and they spend hours and a good part of their money on their skincare. Also, in the advertisements, they will be wearing layers of makeup. And a lot of computer filters are used to make their skin look so flawless. So just because you buy a product endorsed by them doesn’t mean that you are going to get flawless skin like them. Yet we spend thousands of rupees to buy these beauty products, creams, serums and shampoos thinking we will get the same kind of skin and hair.
The beauty industry puts unusual high standards of beauty that a normal person cannot achieve. Trying to get to that skin color, that body measurement a lot of young girls and boys waste their money and time and a good amount of their mental peace. The young generation gets insecure about themselves and grows inferiority complexes and lack confidence.
We need to see more realistic faces in the advertisements to avoid this. There should not be one ideal face type or an ideal body type. Beauty should not be made the ultimate goal for anyone. We should all be encouraged to love ourselves, our faces and our bodies as we are.
And also, do these products work exactly as they are promising? Most of the time not. Sometimes the products which are advertised to have all-natural elements will also have harmful chemicals. So, we don’t have to talk about those who are chemical-based.
When it comes to personal care products, many of us are not aware of the synthetic chemicals we’re slathering on our skin. The ugly truth is that not all ingredients are clean. Some are slowly poisoning our bodies, speeding up the aging process and worst of all, causing damage to our health. Chemical ridden products, vague ingredient labels, and hidden chemicals are three of the major problems with the beauty industry. All these problems stem from one major source: lack of regulation. Lack of regulation enables companies to put unsafe chemicals in products and vaguely label chemicals as ‘fragrances’.
So next time, think before spending that awful amount of money on a beauty product. Do you really need it? Can’t you think of a better way to use that money? Because you may be worth it, but they are not.
-Staff Reporter
