toxicbeauty.co.uk

In the Eighteenth century along with the publication of beauty books, young women could purchase magazines celebrating the fashionable styles of the time, which they would then try to imitate. Interestingly spurious advertising claims were even prevalent in the nineteenth century, a period when cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies started to emerge, following greater industrialisation and increasing global trade. In 1863 ‘Madame Rachel’ opened a salon in Bond Street and declared that she could make women look beautiful forever. Most of her products were overpriced, cheaply produced concoctions. Madame Rachel was eventually imprisoned for five years. If misrepresentation of a product carried such a sentence nowadays prisons would probably be overcrowded with manufacturers and advertisers.

In our modern societies marketing and advertising is, of course, bigger budget, snappier and more sophisticated in terms of how it reaches its target audience and manipulates our purchasing patterns, but the crux of the message has hardly changed at all. We are lead to believe that we absolutely need beauty products; that our life will somehow be less rich without them. In 2005 L’Oreal spent €1.1 billion on advertising, Proctor & Gamble contributed €625 million to the sector and Unilever doled out €322 million to preserve these sorts of beliefs.

Over the years the beauty industry has evolved towards advertising beauty products as if they were an expression of ourselves, recognising that it’s not just what we look like that influences our buying habits but our fluctuating feelings, and they readily capitalise on this. Poucher's Perfumes, Cosmetics and Soaps, a classic reference work in the field of cosmetics notes that beautifying products such as perfume enable a person to be perceived as more attractive and this in turn is associated with a more positive personality, "Perfume can...be used as a vehicle to enable averagely attractive people to enjoy some of the benefits of being more attractive and feeling good." Are we to take it then that averagely attractive people are disagreeable, but a lick of warpaint will soon render them much more socially acceptable?

On a daily basis we are bombarded with advertisements for new and improved products. Around 40 per cent of cosmetic products are re-formulated every year to keep up with our increasing demand for potions and lotions that will delay the signs of ageing, but most products, regardless of their price point, contain the same or very similar ingredients. It's simply the branding that is different. In the 2002 Grayson Report, produced by professional marketing gurus Suzanne and Bob Grayson they point out that competition keeps margins tight, so the only way to increase profitability is to create a need for newer products of greater benefit. However, they admit that truly new products "with benefits that are both perceived and significant, are difficult to come by," and "while products may be different from brand to brand, they are virtually equally satisfactory.”

Take shampoo, all it does is clean your hair, but if any cosmetic companies relied on that one selling point they would have no way of distinguishing their product from those of their competitors. In order to secure your purchase, they put a spin on it, assuring protection against split ends and even "an energising boost that will lift your spirits all day long."

When a market becomes saturated, the manufacturers seek out new ones. Not content with exploiting the insecurities of women, over more recent years the beauty industry has pursued the ‘metrosexual’ male market and children. A management report from Business Insights highlights that “In the U.S. the youth market has been a major area of manufacturer activity and this trend is set to spread to European countries... The next stage of development will see manufacturers targeting more specific consumer groups such as children, tweenagers and teenagers.”  We are being reeled into consumption ever earlier because big brand manufacturers know that if they can catch us early they can keep us tied into a lifetime of consumerism.

The bid to tie our young into a lifetime of cosmetic consumerism is tragic because children are much more vulnerable to the toxic effects of chemicals used in consumer products for numerous reasons. What is more, the ingredients used in children's products are no less toxic than those used in adults beauty products. In 2007 the carcinogen 1,4-dioxane was found in dozens of childrens bath products in the US, in some cases at levels double those advised by the FDA's recommended maximum.

Beyond maintaining good personal hygiene, such as washing, brushing our teeth, perhaps using a more natural deodorant, we really don’t need the plethora of largely synthetic cosmetic products we purchase. By and large they have become a psychological dependency, dent in our funds and potential health hazard. My advice is to live a healthy lifestyle, minimise your exposure to toxic chemicals and save your pennies by either ditching or streamlining the beauty products you use. As, Dr Philippa Darbre, Senior Lecturer in Oncology at the University of Reading says,

“My advice to the general public is cut down or cut out. Cut down as far as you can if you can’t cut out. I have personally cut out. I have not used an underarm cosmetic in ten years and I wash with soap and water twice a day. People are obsessed with cleanliness. It is an indictment of our culture that people actually think that they are not going to be able to live without going to the shops for a week. I really don’t see the need for these things. We get dependent on them.”