Beauty and the beast of capitalism: 2300 Saudi princesses spend $ 1 billion on beauty products

By teaching us to hate our bodies as we grow up, Cosmetic Capitalism, of which the fashion and cosmetic industry is an indispensable part, creates competition among women and men alike to achieve physical beauty and to struggle to maintain this beauty

Hollywood is a place where they will pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.

Marilyn Monroe

The era of global capitalism in which we live is rapidly moving towards the vortex of contradictions, paradoxes and inconsistencies. However we must try to resolve, explain or eliminate some or all of them in the light of some eternal truths or universal values. Otherwise, we risk total annihilation of human values.

Increasingly global capitalism emphasizes appearances over essence. Realities are camouflaged and ugliness is made to look beautiful. Appearances are always an illusion, not direct reflections of value. Capitalism is a system in which huge masses of labour, the unemployed, sit side by side huge masses of capital, in a world of unmet human needs. This is not only absurd, but unjust and irrational, one of the most significant internal contradictions of capitalism. Because capitalists care nothing about human needs, they are unable to recognize or see this grave contradiction. So called profitability, the accumulation of mountains of wealth, is the bottom line. From this perspective, material resources are not considered to be wasted if they are destroyed, hoarded or misused, even if human beings desperately need these resources. Thus capitalism legitimizes itself ideologically if people think it is a system that meets human needs. It is an ugly contradiction between "delivering the goods" and the wasteful, irrational reality of how it actually functions.

For instance, consider the following contradictions and their loathsome ugliness:

By teaching us (especially non whites in Africa and Asia, but almost equally in the West) to hate our bodies as we grow up, Cosmetic Capitalism, of which the fashion and cosmetic industry is an indispensable part, creates competition among women and men alike to achieve physical beauty and to struggle to maintain this beauty. Corporate cosmetic giants rake in billions of dollars on the insecurities of, especially, people of colour. In the name of beautification, these firms, through aggressive advertising and marketing via mainstream media (their partner in crime), sell pipe dreams to psychologically broken men and women who are their targets. Perhaps the demand for more and more ‘press freedom’ is also an agenda of global capitalism.

It is not shocking to hear that currently the international cosmetic industry is estimated to be valued at $ 700 billion. As reported by Mr. Farooq Hassan, an analyst and former executive director of Marketing Association of Pakistan (MAP), in Saudi Arabia, the 2300 princesses of the royal family spend $ 1 billion on beauty products. Mr. Hassan is of the view (and we may partially agree) that the psychological reasoning underlying this is a result of political marginalization and that spending huge amounts on beauty products makes them feel enfranchised. He further elaborates that these purveyors of beauty are salivating at the prospect of new consumers in China, India, Africa and Eastern Europe (The News, March 05, 2102).

Now juxtapose this with the following news items;

i) Somali famine kills 258,000, half of them young children. This is a three column heading in a local daily. According to details, almost 260,000 people, half of them young children, died of hunger during the last famine in Somalia. This toll is much higher than was feared at the time of 2010-2012 food crisis in the troubled Horn of Africa country. It also exceeds the 220,000 who starved to death in the 1992 famine. According to the joint report by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the US funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network, half of those who died were children under five (The News, May 03, 2013).

I wonder what these so-called UN auxiliary bureaucratic bodies (UNESCO, FAO, UNHCR et al) and mistress of Uncle Sam type institutions, such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank do except hire ‘professionals’ who boastfully post lengthy resumes on LinkedIn showing their foreign degrees as their most valuable asset and prepare piles of useless reports ?

ii) Another headline in a local English daily reports that 50m illiterate individuals get peanuts from budget. Pakistan has over fifty million illiterate individuals. Yet according to a recent UNESCO estimate the budget offers only two paisa (Rs.0 02) per illiterate person. The report presents an analysis of public sector allocations and expenditure from the federal government adult literacy budget from 2005-06 to 2009-10. In Punjab, the trend is similar in the federal area according to a report in Dawn May, 20, 2012.

iii) An editorial in Dawn claims that the illegal kidney trade in Pakistan has reached such dimensions that eliminating it is a difficult task. For at least a decade, Pakistan’s main cities of Lahore and Rawalpindi have become destinations for medical "tourism", attracting people hoping to obtain a kidney transplant faster and more cheaply than elsewhere (Dawn, May 27, 2102).

Of course the main reason for such a thriving trade is poverty. No legislation, including the Organs and Tissue Act 2010, can do anything to stop the sale and purchase of kidneys as long as poverty is on the rise, despite all the constitutional amendments made by the “peoples' friendly” government in place 2008-2013. Reportedly most purchasers of kidneys are from the rich Gulf and Middle Eastern countries.

So what can we conclude from these facts? The obvious answer is that the capitalist concept of beauty, defined in terms of physical appearance alone, is very shallow. It reduces beauty in humans as well as material objects to superficial, attractive and shiny appearances. People are   influenced by the images they see in the media. It is in the interest of cosmetic capitalism to target men and women of all creeds and races. They do this by creating a false need and desire to overvalue appearances. This propels a desire for physical and material improvement and enhancement, creating a huge market for their products.

Most cosmetic industries are based in the West. They promote a European ideal of beauty and blind us to other ugly realities. In short in a capitalist culture, beauty ideals have become, quite literally, inhuman. Inner beauty is ignored in this prevailing capitalist concept of beauty. Self loathing creates vulnerability and is profitable. Aristotle defines beauty in these words; "a concept of beauty occurs when all parts work together in harmony so that no one part draws unjust attention to itself." 

From this definition one can safely assume that beauty does not exist in what is merely pleasing to our eyes. If beauty occurs when all parts work together then beauty exists in much more than appearances. If beauty occurs when all parts work together then it means that concept of beauty is not just confined to mere physical appearances or to images represented in art and literature. It also includes the beauty of human values. In the words of Aristotle it means order, symmetry, proportion, and harmony.

The idea of beauty is also very well explained in Walt Disney's "Beauty and the Beast". In this tale a handsome prince is transformed into a hideous beast as punishment for his selfish act of refusing refuge to an elderly beggar woman. To become human again the beast must earn the love of a beautiful young woman (it is her inner beauty that makes her attractive). He imprisons her in his castle, lest he remain a beast forever. 
As we get uglier inside, i.e. more powerful the beast gets inside, the more we try to become attractive. Instead of killing the beast we end up making it more powerful. Dusty skeletons running around free could certainly wreak havoc, but applying tons of makeup is not going to send them away. The pressure to look and feel good contradicts the way people treat each other. Capitalism not only teaches us to hate our bodies but also our souls. This includes hating our language and other indigenous values, traditions, and culture associated with our mother tongue. It makes us totally hollow and superficial. In order to become someone else, according to the prescripts of the capitalism we risk loathing ourselves.