Ladies, I have some good news and I have some bad news. The first piece of good news is that I will never again begin a column with the word ladies because typing that opener makes me cringe at the thought of one too many all-female email threads organizing Sunday brunches, Girls-watching marathons and bachelorette parties. The second piece of good news is that American Apparel and Cameron Diaz say you can stop waxing all your pubic hair off. The bad news: you need to start deodorizing under your boobs. I can already hear your objections: But the area under my boobs doesnt stink! or What kind of marketing genius not only came up with the term swoob, but actually thought half the worlds population might be dumb enough to buy into it? or simply, This is a dumb product aimed at inventing an insecurity and then claiming to cure it. You would be correct on all three points. In fact, inventing problems with womens bodies and then offering a cure – if you pay up – is the primary purpose of the multi-billion dollar beautyindustry. More than 20 years ago, Naomi Wolf wrote The Beauty Mythchallenging that exact phenomenon. Since then, the industry has only gotten bigger, and the range of made-up problems women need to cure only wider. Women spend $426bn every year on beauty products, paying $151bn more in fees and mark-ups than men for the same products – and thats not including the $10bn Americans spend on plastic surgery.
Posted on: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 13:53:47 +0000