BUYING AND SELLING BEAUTY : IMAGES AND INTERACTION

Abstract

It is interesting to observe how the beauty trade has not only managed to survive, but is continually fluorishing. Perhaps this has to do the idelogy of consumer culture, where the Body has been recognised as an artefact of pleasure, which engineered to be desirable and attractive. This exploratory study hypothesis that them an evolution of behavioural patterns which is gender-biased, where women predominate as participants the beauty game. Eternal vigilance in the use of beauty strategies is maintained by such participants. The quest for beauty is governed by factors such as age, class, the notion of secrecy and the overall context within which the beauty strategies take place. This research exercise shows how the factors are instrumental in guiding the participants in the beauty system. The desire for superior Body images motivates many women to purchase and use beauty gadgets. Beneath the superficiality of beauty strategies lies underlying motives for these actions. More often than not, such behaviour has profound repercussions on the actor. Hence, the study discusses how the use of beauty aids goes beyond its obvious tool for enhancement, cover and concealment of the Body. The beauty industry facilitates the attainment for desired Body images through its accrued production of beauty paraphenelia .. The beauty enterprise serves a main function of pampering and supposedly meeting both the physical and emotional needs or its consumers. With the advent of science and technology in our science-worshipping society, the trade can also be termed as a pharmeceutical industry, when credibility of the industry's promises is backed up by scientific explanations. The success of this trade is highly visible, as can be seen by the popularity and widespread buying and ~ of beauty items. This study also shows the images of beauty, which are the abstract figures used to continue ideal standards in society. As such, images found in the mass media are regarded as desirable ideals, and beauty strategies are designed to attain these images. The process of buying and selling beauty entails a sociality of behaviour where an individual is constantly responding to another person. The marketing of beauty products and services has resulted in beauty becoming a commodity that is literally being offered.