The Beauty and Fashion Industry’s Impact on Women

Written by: Lauren Tan (24-O1)

Designed by: Julianna Del Rosario (24-E6)

The beauty and fashion industry are two distinct but intricately linked sectors. The fashion industry alone is estimated to be worth 1.7 trillion dollars, while the beauty industry is one that has been rapidly expanding, especially in recent years, generating over $625 billion in revenue globally in 2023. These hugely profitable industries encompass everything from cosmetic surgery enterprises to clothing brands. This article will explore how exactly the beauty and fashion industries impact women. 

You may wonder, why not discuss the impact that the beauty and fashion industry have on society as a whole instead of just women? The answer is, because of certain structural issues in our societies, people are unevenly impacted by the influence of the fashion and beauty industry, as people of different ages, socio-economic status, and gender experience these impacts on varying scales. I feel that further research on the effects of the beauty and fashion industry on women is one close to my heart as it pertains to my own experience as well as that of many of my loved ones, hence my choice to explore the impact of the beauty and fashion industry on women in particular.

First and foremost, the beauty and fashion industries play a vital role in perpetuating unattainable beauty standards. They capitalise off of women’s insecurities as they endlessly strive to achieve a completely unrealistic beauty standard. This drives them to create new ‘flaws’ for women to obsess over, making their products more marketable to their clients as the industry profits off of these perceived external flaws. 

To better understand this, we must first examine the paradoxical nature of the beauty standard. The perception of beauty is shaped by cultural beliefs and values, meaning that it varies widely across space as well as time. In the 90s, supermodels such as Kate Moss and Gemma Ward created a new ideal body type, with women of the era favouring ‘wraith-like’ body types. This had tremendous cascading impacts on the body image of women, especially young girls. In this period, eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia ran rampant, with Kate Moss popularising the quote “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. The beauty industry viciously fed into this as it benefited them to encourage the growth of these insecurities amongst women that were all potential customers. Without women’s insecurities, the beauty industry simply would not exist. Knowing this, they increasingly nudged the shift toward smaller-sized women being showcased on magazine covers and high fashion runways, and before the 90s were over, the new beauty standard was a size 0. This shift was observed by longtime Vogue Editor, Anna Wintour, as she noted that sample sizes for runway models were getting smaller, and in order to keep their jobs, models had to resort to extreme diets and exercise as well as weight loss drugs such as Ozempic. Drugs like Ozempic are acknowledged by professionals to potentially be harmful to an individual’s health, but the beauty industry promoting it as a way to reduce weight created yet another avenue for women to harm themselves in the name of beauty.

The fact that beauty standards are always changing compounds the pressure on women to chase the unattainable ideal appearance. It is increasingly apparent that beauty standards are in fact, trends, and tend to be cyclical. The advent of social media as technology becomes increasingly widespread and advanced has worked seamlessly in tandem with the beauty and fashion industries to promote the ceaseless pursuit of beauty. The popularity of social media has accelerated these cycles as trends become increasingly widespread and internet culture drives frenzied buying of trendy products, usually fashion or beauty items. This has given rise to ‘micro trends’, which refer to products that come into fashion and gain traction rapidly before losing their relevance equally quickly. Social media has also made it exceedingly easy for the beauty and fashion industry to create more insecurities to sell products. These include mouth tape so that you can avoid mouth breathing while you are asleep, buccal fat removal surgery for a slimmer face, and a ‘carnivore diet’, supposedly meant to provide a multitude of health benefits, to name a few. The beauty and fashion industries continue to grow with their exploitation of women with insecurities that they planted for the express purpose of selling products. The popularisation of fast fashion brands such as H&M, Zara, and Cotton-On as people struggle to keep up with the trendiest styles allows the fashion industry to profit off of these trends as they sell clothes of subpar quality for relatively cheap prices. What this achieves is it creates the  need for people to constantly be purchasing more clothes as the clothes that they buy do not last. The beauty industry also stands to reap huge rewards from the exposure that social media affords them. In 2021, it was found that women in Singapore spend close to $300 on beauty products in a single month. The swift growth of the beauty industry can be seen in the sharp rise in the e-commerce net sales of industry Titans such as Sephora in the last decade, increasing from 580 million USD in 2016 to almost 3.7 billion USD in 2024. From this, it is clear that social media is a powerful tool in aiding the beauty and fashion industries’ profit-maximising agendas.

Moreover, the issue goes deeper, with the beauty and fashion industry contributing to the systemic oppression of women. In addition to the ruthless marketing tactics employed by these industries in harming women’s emotional wellbeing, these industries also tend to exploit women in a more literal sense. In order to maintain a competitive edge, fast fashion brands use unethical means to cut costs. This often entails basing the early stages of their production processes in less economically developed countries, where workers are underpaid and experience unsafe working environments. Due to various factors, women are once again, more likely to be impacted by the detrimental effect of the beauty and fashion industry. What might surprise you is that despite comprising 69% of the beauty industry’s total workforce, women only represent a dismal 36% in the top management positions. This indicates that the lower-skilled and hence lower-paying jobs are disproportionately held by women while the vast majority of the highest earning jobs in the industry are held by men. Further unpacking this statistic, it clearly demonstrates how women are more severely impacted by the adverse effects of the beauty industry while men are more likely to profit off of it. Furthermore, the neverending pursuit of the beauty standard is another key instrument in sustaining the patriarchy which permeates our societies even in this age. The beauty standard is designed to be exclusive and creates competition between women as the premise of the beauty standard is that it can never include everyone. While the issue of the detrimental impacts of the beauty and fashion industry may seem one-dimensional, it is in fact a multifaceted one rooted in sexism, classism, and racism. 

However, approaching the issue from a different angle, engaging in beauty practices is a choice and comes from a place of empowerment instead of oppression. This argument is associated with the idea of choice feminism, which states that the choice women have been granted the agency to make makes all their decisions inherently feminist. I agree that the beauty and fashion industry is a major contributor to women’s expressions of self and individuality, and can also positively impact our relationships with self love and body image. The beauty and fashion industry, in this sense, can thus be seen as a source of liberalisation for women from societal expectations, as it equips women with the ability to minutely modify their own appearances according to their individual preferences. The emergence of social media has also helped in creating a more diverse community as people are more exposed to different ideas of beauty, instead of just the beauty standard in their own countries. For example, in many Asian societies, the beauty standard is centred around pale skin, and women go to extreme lengths to avoid sun exposure. In contrast, in the United States, many women favour tan skin and use products like tanning beds and fake tan to replicate a ‘sun-kissed’ look. Consequently, as the world becomes increasingly globalised, social media can actually positively impact women’s perceptions of their own appearance as they become aware of different ideas of beauty across the globe. Additionally, social media also has the potential to teach women to learn how to style themselves in the way that they feel the most comfortable, be it dressing for their body type or knowing what makeup suits their features. This creates a sense of autonomy for women  as they are better able to capitalise off of the beauty and fashion industries to aid in self expression.

In conclusion, the impact of the beauty and fashion industry on women is disproportionately detrimental, and the intersectionality of the issue leads to uneven effects of these industries on women across time and space. The beauty and fashion industries are largely established upon women’s insecurities and can exacerbate the detrimental impact of stringent beauty standards. Despite this, the beauty and fashion industries also have the capacity to be tools in the self expression of women.