7.Genderization

7 Ways the Beauty Industry Convinced Women That They Weren'tGood Enoughby Amanda ScherkerIn America, the perennial quest for beauty is an expensive one.Every year, women spend billions of dollars in exchange for beautiful hair, luxurious eyelashes, and smooth,silky skin. Still, many of our culture's most common beauty procedures were virtually nonexistent a centuryago. The truth is, many of our expectations of feminine beauty were shaped in large part by modernadvertisers. We've tracked the history behind some of the most common "flaws" that besiege the modernwoman and the surprising stories behind their "cures."Here are seven insecurities women have been fed by marketers:1. "Your natural hair color isn't pretty enough.""Does she or doesn't she?" asked the Clairol's ad that launched a million home hair dye jobs. Indeed,the aggressive Clairol marketing campaign would trigger an explosion in sales. In the process, thepercentage of women dying their hair would skyrocket from 7 percent in 1950 to more than 40 percent inthe '70s.The ads showed everyday women reaping the benefits of more lustrous hair, a luxury that had long beenexclusive to glamorous supermodels with professional dye jobs. The ads proclaimed, "If I have only one life,let me live it as a blonde." Indeed, Clairol peddled the perfect yellow shade of the dye as a way totransform your life:335 She Culture CRT: Genderization