After spending many years tuning my ears, I’m now in the habit of ‘overhearing’ other people’s conversations. In a busy restaurant I homed in on a group of upwardly mobile twenty-somethings discussing the merits of breast augmentation. When one of the men asked why anyone would do this, his girlfriend replied in a somewhat incredulous whisper: “But … we’re doing it for you!”
Even more taken aback was she when herbeauwas adamant that a pair of “plastic knockers” was not something he wanted. This wasn’t the first time I’ve heard (or overheard) men say they would rather have real flesh to cuddle than the lipo-sucked, nipped & tucked man-made versions churned out by the surgeons.
Ask many women what they believe men want and you’ll often hear Barbie-doll variations. But Sam Keen - author ofFire in the Belly– claims that men listed the following qualities in women that turned them on: intelligence, sense of humour, physical attractiveness, independence, trustworthiness, sense of adventure, good values, self-confidence, sex appeal and kindness. When asked which quality they were likely to compromise on, physical appearance was the first to go – albeit reluctantly. So if physical perfection is not a man’s top priority, then why are so many women obsessed with image neuroses?
One of the greatest marketing success stories ever written is the cosmetic industry’s ability to bounce back from the damage done to it by feminism. Over the past few decades, this industry has gradually convinced millions of women that cosmetic perfection has nothing to do with men; it is something that all self-respecting females must do for themselves. And the once-feared scalpel has now become just a normal part of maintenance.
Even though women know that media images have been retouched to hide zits, wrinkles and cellulite, how many still use this picture-perfect imagery to compare their own ‘imperfections’ against? Today plastic surgeons no longer operate like ambulance-chasers waiting for accident victims to show up, now they have queues of hopefuls wanting to correct the most unfortunate catastrophe of all; not having been born with an airbrushed look.
Realistically TV shows likeExtreme Makeovers’are about as interesting as watching some poor sod having his appendix removed. But the appeal is that these shows don’t dwell on the blood and gore or the weeks of agony it takes to heal from a face-lift or chemical burn. Instead they play up the usual quick-fix promise that you too can be miraculously transformed … in about an hour or so.
I remember the days of cheap-and-cheerful face-creams and, call me old-fashioned, but no matter how much money we spend on miraculous anti-aging potions, no cream can alter the life experience etched into our faces. Only those who’ve coughed up for expensive anti-aging snake-oil must convince themselves that each layer makes them look years younger, but for the rest of us the results are pretty obvious. I’m always reminded of what Anita Roddick (founder of The Body Shop) said about people who buy the promise of anti-wrinkle creams; it’s just God’s way of testing who’s stupid!
And then there is little more absurd than Botox injections. Botox doesn’t reduce wrinkles, it paralyses facial muscles. Produced from the deadly bacterium that makes Botulism the most lethal form of food poisoning, the British Medical Journal cautions that the ‘treatment’ could affect the brain, nervous system and muscles. But evidently Botox dulls hearing too because now you can get this treatment at a cocktail party where your injections are served up between a glass of champagne and the canapés.
It seems like an uncanny co-incidence that just at the time when females have regained the right to express themselves, that so many are paralysing the most expressive part of their body, their faces.
No longer is this just about women though. Since marketers cottoned-onto the fact that men are equally vulnerable, macho jocks have been bombarded with image marketing. Remarkably quickly many swapped their crusty old industrial-strength soap for a more moisturising metrosexual lather.
So the obvious question is: For how long are we going to allow the all-powerful big marketing genie in the sky to genetically mutate millions of previously rational men and women into being a bull(sh*t) receptor on the one end and a non-stop cash dispenser on the other?
