Beyond the beauty

Last week I was bombarded with literature related to beauty. Hair, skin, nails, spas, non-invasive therapies, wrinkle irons, whitening systems… it certainly boggled my mind.

For someone who has been instilled with the idea that one man’s beauty is the other man’s bimbette and that one does not need much more than soap and water, a touch of lipstick and a dab of perfume to feel beautiful, I wondered who’s buying?

Well, according to the organisers of Beautyworld, the international trade fair held last week in Dubai, Dh28.25 billion was spent in 2007 in the Middle East alone.

Also, the average consumption of cosmetics and fragrances in the region is amongst the highest in the world with the average annual purchase amounting to about Dh1,229 per head.

That is just the tip of the beauty iceberg. Factor in those spa visits, nail bar trips, the gym memberships and the salon experiences and the money spent in the pursuit of beauty could easily compare with the GDP of a small Asian nation.

Speaking of Asia, in Tokyo a make-up artist has created a superior line of cosmetics for the dear departed.

A trained beautician, Kotoko Sato is training Japanese morticians to give the deceased a final makeover.

All the reading has made me realise that beauty fads repeat themselves every century or so.

Be it well rounded fullness or "heroin chic", the world has seen it all. While women in the new millennium spend money on the wonderbra and wonderbum panty hose for curves in all the right places, their 17th century sisters gorged themselves for their celebrated Rubenesque figures. In the same century however whalebone on steel frame corsets ensured a slender waist and a sea of health problems just like our anorexic and bulimic sisters kill themselves starving or vomiting.

In their quest for "whiteness" women of the Elizabethan era beautified themselves with Ceruse (a lead-based cosmetic) that ate away at their faces while millions of young Asian women slap on bleach and other chemicals to become white instead of celebrating their sun-kissed skins.

Morticians, especially from the Pharaonic age, were experts at making the dead look alive and the Victorians stuck to soap and water and that old washcloth for the modest natural look; except for that dab of lipstick.

Nirmala Janssen
editor@alnisrmedia.com

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