Women: Apparently everything is wrong with you

I had the television on as background noise earlier this week when a commercial for an Olay product for women came on.

I’m not entirely sure why the Olay commercial caught my attention, but that’s more of a secondary concern for me than the advertisement’s content.

The product being peddled was a facial hair removal kit. My understanding from the commercial is you apply one cream to the upper lip and then a second that somehow makes the previously existing, and apparently monstrous, hair disappear.  I’m not entirely sure how this is supposed to work, but I’m pretty certain I don’t want to find out.

The commercial was on CNN, and Olay was very clearly advertising to a national market. Based on their selection of actress, I would say they were likely advertising to women from their late 20s to mid 40s.

Are there really that many women out there who are that self-conscious about upper lip hair? I really hope not, but I’m afraid the answer is probably yes, and that’s ridiculous.

Throughout the course of my entire life, I might have met a grand total of four women who might have been able to put this product to good use. All of them were more than 75 years old, and at that point, who cares?  

Then there was the Dove commercial this summer advertising a deodorant that would make a woman’s underarms silky smooth. The commercial featured an attractive woman who was apparently too ashamed of her less than sleek underarms to even look at the camera directly.

I can pretty comfortably say I have never found a woman unattractive because her underarms were not smooth enough. Based on limited conversation with my friends, they are all of the same opinion.

My overarching thought is this: There is nothing wrong with taking care of oneself and working to look good, but advertisers and beauty product companies are currently making millions by exploiting the anxieties of women everywhere, and that bothers me.

I’m fine with business, and I understand supply and demand. But in situations like these it seems to me that these companies are not responding to a demand from consumers. They instead are inventing demand by imagining new and bizarre ways to make women insecure about their appearance.

And it’s not just the beauty companies. We as a society seem to be holding women to a more and more absurd and impossible standard by supporting products like these.
What’s next, forearm waxing? Knuckle dewrinkling lotion? I mean, come on.

I offer these suggestions: Women, if these products genuinely make you feel good, more power to you. But please don’t let your sense of self-worth be tied to how society tells you to feel about your appearance. It isn’t worth the worry, and I really don’t believe that most men are all that concerned about things like the softness of your underarms.

Men, I think we need to stop reinforcing, through our words, actions and even silence, messages that many of us don’t really believe in the first place.

­— jontodd@indiana.edu