Detail of book cover.
Wits University Press
The long history of racist beauty standards alone cannot explain the ongoing global use of harmful skin lighteners.
Salon workers – who are usually women – report clients sharing details of domestic violence, health issues and heartbreak.
Karen Perez/Unsplash
While popular portrayals of hairdressers and beauticians present them as “bimbos”, salons can also provide a refuge for clients to share painful realities.
The more television people watch the more they prefer a thinner female body type.
Jean-Luc Jucker
The more people watch TV the more likely it is that they prefer a slimmer female body size.
The chemicals in nail products put nail salon workers at risk for cancer and other illnesses.
Angie Chung/Flickr
The technician who gave you that shiny manicure may be inhaling dangerous levels of toxic chemicals on the job.
In ancient China, India and the Middle East, the art of eyebrow threading was popular. It is now enjoying a resurgence.
www.shutterstock.com
Moulding eyebrows to make a statement is nothing new. A journey through history, across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the United States, shows some of the highs and lows of brow fashion.
Consumers react differently to beautiful service employees.
Ruben M Ramos/Shutterstock.com
New research shows how attractive employees can rub some customers the wrong way.
Regulation doesn’t cover procedures performed in a beauty salon in the same way it does those performed on the operating table.
From shutterstock.com
A botched beauty procedure can be more than just unsightly – it can be dangerous. Here are some things to keep in mind when seeking a skin treatment.
An advertisement for breast implants in Sydney in 2015. Advertisements often promote a ‘natural’ ideal of beauty, even when advocating surgical intervention.
Paul Millar/AAP
Many historic ideas about women’s beauty - from prizing firm breasts to emphasising the ‘natural’ - continue to resonate today.
Beauty can mean more opportunities – but can it also influence values?
Nataliass/Shutterstock.com
Beautiful people tend to lead more charmed lives. Could their attractiveness also color their views on issues like abortion, premarital sex and gay marriage?
Akhenaton Images/Shutterstock
Using physical and psychological traits, researchers are building a system which can rate a person’s attractiveness.
A plastic surgery-themed magazine is displayed in a Brazil storefront.
hollywoodsmile310
Who’s really benefiting from a health care system that provides free or low-cost plastic surgeries for the poor?
The nose isn’t going under the knife like it once did.
Lightspring/Shutterstock.com
People who’ve gotten nose jobs are also trying to revert to a more natural look.
Skin is seen as a marker of health, and thus beauty.
Noah Buscher/Unsplash
Despite skin conditions such as acne having no negative health effects, they can take a huge toll on the confidence and mental health of the person.
Detail from Emily Kam Kngwarray, Anmatyerr people.
Yam awely 1995
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
150 x 491 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Gift of the Delmore Collection, Donald and Janet Holt 1995 © Emily Kam Kngwarray.
Today, beauty counts for little in the judgement of works of art. But our felt experience of beauty connects us with an object’s maker, revealing a pure moment of humanity.
Blood has always been a symbol of life and has been thought to counteract the ageing process.
Mai Lam/The Conversation NY-BD-CC
Recent scientific studies have claimed that transfusions of blood from teenagers can help delay or reverse the ageing process. Do they stack up?
Lil’ Kim performs during the 2015 BET Awards in Los Angeles, Calif.
Kevork Djansezian/Reuters
The longing for lighter skin remains a taboo topic in African-American communities.
A 1928 cigarette card classifying an ‘Egyptian beauty’: these cards depicted women as exotic creatures, a trend that can still be seen at beauty contests today.
Author provided
Collectable cigarette cards once depicted ‘exotic’ beauties, classified by the colonial eye. And today’s beauty contests still present women as exotic representatives of their nation.
Detail from Little Big Woman: Condescension, Debra Keenahan, 2017.
Designed and made by Debra Keenahan, Photograph by Robert Brindley.
For centuries, women with dwarfism were depicted in art as comic or grotesque fairytale beings. But artists are challenging these portrayals and notions of beauty and physical difference.
Beauty is still understood as a process of ongoing work and maintenance.
Shutterstock.com
The history of dangerous cosmetics shows us the harms that women have suffered to meet expectations of what is beautiful.
A Dominican immigrant cuts the hair of a customer at her New York City salon.
Seth Wenig/AP Photo
In New York City, hair salons are one of the few cultural spaces for Dominican women to bond. But they also perpetuate legacies of racism and colonialism.