There’s also a qualitative difference between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ beauty. Talents and interests can be acquired, whereas (surgery aside) one is basically stuck with the looks one is given. There is therefore more room for legitimate exhortation and aspiration in the realm of inner beauty.

I’d still rather it didn’t fall to a cosmetics company, who clearly have ulterior motives, to advocate a fuller life, but I’m not going to jump on them for doing so.

Definitions: social worth=those things rewarded by society. Moral worth=those things which objectively better society.

I think it is quite normal to try to look good but for me the problem comes when ‘looking good’ has an extremely narrow definition. I think i look hot with my hair done and a stylish skirt on and a little eyeliner and lipstick. AND there are days that i totally rock the sweats and t-shirt. But i am outside the norm for ‘attractive women’ so my definition of attractive doesn’t count. Also, being told (via society’s norms) that my very value relies on my physical attractiveness is bullshit.

So makeup in and of itself isn’t really the problem. To me it seems the problem lies in what it can symbolize and how it is used to oppress people.

That said, these women are all “pretty”.  They chose from a pool of models and actresses. They ensured that no matter who they chose based on their inner beauty embodied outer beauty as well.  All these women have conventionally attractive body types and objectively attractive facial features according to our society.  Also, since all of these women are models and actresses in Los Angeles, they all come from an upper middle class socioeconomic status.  (This is probably also their target customer demographic).  

Why didn’t they post a questionnaire on their website for real women to fill out?  Don’t they realize that women who buy cosmetics have diverse features and body types?  If their product is about letting the inner beauty of a woman shine through, should her outer beauty matter at all?  Although the concept was fresh and inclusive in a world where we are constantly being told that women are their bodies, the first step in the process caused it to be flawed and undermined from the start.  “Blind” hiring practices are a step towards a less destructive advertising industry, but the hiring pool needs to be widened to include everyone before any practice can be considered inclusive.

One problem with the Bareescentuals campaign is that they say they are trying to find the world’s most beautiful women, but they are only looking amongst models, so already they are dismissing the possibility of non-models being beautiful, let alone pretty. They should have said they were trying to find the world’s most beautiful models.

I’m tired of “inspiring” advertising. At the end is just another frivolous product and I am left uninspired and revolted.

The Levi’s commercial is just one of the latest annoying “inspirational” ads:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT16DcHcjRA

This kind of concept of “inner beauty” is as subjective and arbitrary as any set of criteria for outer beauty.

On the other hand, they are calling beauty a very specific set of ideas. I mean, having a collection of swords, blogging, having multiple masters degrees, being a mother at 40, being concerned about the environment, being fluent in multiple languages, being a black belt… what they call beauty is actually what aligns to a specific ideology as well as to a specific class.

So in a way it also says that differing point of views or people outside a specific class are either ugly or not worth of importance and might.

The point isn’t that this campaign, or any campaign, is a terrible one. It’s more just to look at how we’re being sold products–to look at the ideas they’re selling us in addition to the actual products. What ideas are they reflecting back at us? Are these ideas of how we see ourselves, and how we’d like to be seen? As a feminist of course I champion ideas of inner beauty–but then when I see that idea packaged to me to sell products, I feel like I need to examine it even more closely than I might examine a traditional campaign.

Legitimate question, genuine interest: What kind of campaign can a beauty company run that would be acceptable to the readers of SocImages? Is there one?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/30/analysts-television-market