Beauty Phenomena: 3 Interesting Observations

1. Shampoo.

Ten years ago, buying drug-store shampoo meant choosing from 12 different scents of Suave or your favorite color bottle (remember the fish-shaped L'Oreal Kids bottle?).  Now when you pick out shampoo, it's no longer about the scent, but more about its function (i.e. volume enhancing, damage repair, colored-hair, etc.).  This is something I noticed that has become a new phenomenon in the last 10 years.  Drug-store brands are trying to appear "salon-professional" and luxurious to appeal to the desire of the average consumer to indulge, without breaking bank. 

2. Magazine Cover Girls. 
Prior to the 1990s, nearly every girl pictured on the cover of a magazine was a model.  Beginning in the 1990s, Vogue started the new trend of featuring celebrities on their covers.  Other magazines begin to jump on this band-wagon, and today nearly every fashion magazine has a celebrity on the cover.  I can imagine that this has probably hurt the modeling industry's ability to create well-known faces.  It has also helped to create America's fascination with celebrities, especially in the last 20 years, to the point where entire magazines, "tabloids", are devoted to such an obsession.

3. Real vs Fake Beauty.
Make-up, cosmetic surgery, tanning beds, and hair dye - all artificial means of attaining beauty.  I question whether or not this unnatural, contrived beauty is equally valued to real, natural beauty.  In the 1980s the Clairol hair-dye advertisements were known by their lines, "Does she or doesn't she?" and "Only her hair dresser knows for sure".  It seems like it was negative stigma for people to know that your beauty was unnatural.  Today, slogans such as L'Oreal's, "Because I'm worth it", publicly validate artificial beauty.  In male-female relations, it seems like you can get what you want by faking it, however you'll never know if it was you or the fakery that made the difference.  What do y'all think about this one?

Have a lovely day, and let me know if you have any thoughts!

God Bless.

XOXO, Dylan