THE GREAT BEAUTY CON – November 14^th 2006

Women are in thrall to the fashion world’s phoney ideal of beauty. Here, one writer, using their tricks, turns herself into a cover girl and asks: Isn’t it time we stopped buying into this sham?

 

N ow, I’m not beautiful. Genetics gave me what might charitably be called a Roman nose, and life has done the rest.   I’m 38, and I’ve given birth to three children, criss-crossed the globe covering news stories, written five novels, survived divorce and the death of my mother, and generally notched up a ‘past’. Even on a good day, I’d be hard pressed to score seven out of ten on the looks front — and there have been precious few good days since I turned 30. Most of the time, I don’t care. After all, I have a gorgeous husband who loves me, a happy family and a flourishing career — so what if my face isn’t flawless? Sex appeal isn’t about visual perfection. If a man finds me attractive, it’s because of the come-hither expression in my eyes, not their shape or colour. But there are still days when I pull the skin around my jaw taut and wonder, just out of curiosity, what effect a facelift would have. At the supermarket checkout, I gaze at the rows of glossy magazines, and fantasise about what it might be like to be born beautiful. Once, in my 20s, I got as far as seeing a plastic surgeon to talk about ‘fixing’ my nose. (When I heard what it would involve, I fled the consulting room and never went back.) Every morning, I look in the mirror and subconsciously measure myself against those magazine images of perfect skin, shiny hair and huge, Bambi eyes. Each day, I leave the bathroom feeling just a little bit less feminine than I did before. My husband may tell me a thousand times that I’m beautiful, but a million media images scream at me that I’m not. Normally, I wouldn’t step outside the house without at least a little make-up and clean, styled hair. But I find myself agreeing to be photographed bare-faced in return for a glimpse of myself as I could have looked, but for a few quirks of DNA. The lure of looking like a supermodel, even if it’s faked, is too strong. The idea is for me to copy a new advertisement in which an average young woman is transformed into a glossy supermodel, with the help of some intensive hair and make-up styling, and the very latest in computer wizardry. The Evolution film, by beauty brand Dove, which has become one of the most watched videos on the YouTube website in recent weeks, aims to show women that flawless pictures of fashion models and celebrities are not real, but the result of hours of styling and photo manipulation. Using time-lapse photography, an ordinary ‘girl-next-door’, who’s not a model, is filmed as a team of make-up artists and hair stylists set to work. Once they’ve transformed her into a glamorous sex siren, her features are adjusted by computer software to achieve ‘perfection’.

Digital imaging widens her eyes, narrows her nose and face, lifts her eyebrows, plumps her lips and lengthens her neck. The camera then pans back to show her on an advertising billboard as the face of an imaginary make-up product. The final slogan reads: "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted."

The advert follows previous Dove commercials promoting the concept of ‘real women’. In 2003, the company launched its ‘real beauty’ campaign, which used six ordinary women stripped to their underwear to show the benefits of a skin-firming cream.

Seeing such real figures on posters and billboards instead of the usual stick-thin models struck a chord with women, and demand for Dove products rocketed.

he company reinforced the theme that beauty appears in all shapes and sizes by extending the criteria to include age in its follow-up campaign. Among the images it used was that of a 96-year-old great-grandmother.

Dove’s own marketing team were the next group to (almost) bare all. After being exposed to real women on posters, the public got to see the real women behind the campaign.

"Our research shows young women in particular are greatly influenced by the celebrities and models they see in the media, and can feel inadequate about their own bodies when they compare themselves with the impossible perfection they see," says a Dove spokesman of the latest advert.

"We believe that by showing women and girls how images are constructed and the reality of ‘perfect’ physical imagery, we can help boost women’s self-esteem and encourage them to enjoy their own individual beauty."

As a writer, I’m judged by the sharpness of my words, not my cheekbones. And yet the thought of being pictured in a national newspaper without foundation makes me quail.

The problem is, I know you’ll compare my photograph not to real women, but to all the other media images stored in your memory — hundreds of thousands of computer-enhanced symmetrical faces, with flawless skin, wide-set eyes and plumped lips.

You’re judging me against a standard of beauty that isn’t just difficult to reach — it literally doesn’t exist.

"When you’re surrounded by images that are so far out of your reach, it erodes the way you feel about yourself," says psychologist Dr Pam Spurr, author of Sensational Sex.

"I work with women who are riddled with insecurities, and I hear the same thing from them again and again: why can’t I look like the women in the magazines? If you have any insecurities to begin with about how you look — and who doesn’t? — these images will just compound them."

Little wonder the original Dove campaign was such a success. Women can’t identify with the plastic drones they see everywhere they look. They identify with curves and cellulite and, yes, Roman noses.

The most iconic woman of modern times, Princess Diana, was admired and adored across the world because she was beautiful, flawed and real. Women copied her, knowing that they would never look quite like her, but could at least dream of coming close.

We’re biologically programmed to respond to perfect lines and symmetrical forms, in nature and in each other. But this obsession with digital, computer-enhanced perfection isn’t natural: it’s sinister and destructive.

Celebrities in the public eye need to stand up and refuse to allow their images to be manipulated.

Consumers must vote with their feet and refuse to buy into it. Magazine editors and advertisers should take some responsibility for the unrealistic images they generate.

The Dove campaign has shown what real women want, and it’s time the arbiters of beauty listened. Otherwise, we will all pay the price, in broken hearts, shattered dreams and wasted lives.