Cannes, glam, and botox: The beauty industry’s big ‘feminist’ bet |
It was the dismal October of 1987, the year of the stock-market meltdown in the US, when a French fashion designer, Christian Lacroix, launched a “luxe” collection at a society gala on Wall Street. It was not an accident. The fashion industry had already dubbed this genius the “messiah”. So, while the ardour for fashion was plunging along with the stocks, he rescued the fashion and beauty industry in that best of years, the worst of years.
Fast-track to the recent Cannes red carpet extravaganza, held against an even bigger global economic and political breakdown. As the world saw images of the starving and severely wounded from Asia and Africa, India’s mainstream as well as social media and the beauty industry saw nothing wrong in joining the gala event in France, streaming images of models and Hollywood/Bollywood beauties of yesteryear.
Feminism had long warned women against the beauty industry sneaking its agenda into their worldview. In the 20th century, when global beauty contests began to seem passé, the industry mined feminist phraseology to push products for the “liberated woman”. The advertising world used all........