Category: beauty

MABR Cohort Perspective: Brands and Body Image

Kim Sheehan on

Today’s post by Britnee Speice-Will

I’ve gone through many phases when it comes to my body image. I’ve struggled with being comfortable with my body, sometimes wishing it looked different. Many young women like me feel this way. Men, too. It can be hard to find confidence and self-love when most of the media portrays the “perfect” body.

Brands have the ability to help shift our perspective of ourselves. One brand that could contribute to this is Snapchat. I was on the app a few months ago, scrolling through the filters. As I was scrolling, I noticed a small “glitch” as I was swiping from filter to filter. A glitch that showed my realself, without the filter on it.

When I noticed the glitch, a common theme with the filters became apparent to me. Most Snapchat filters slimmed my face, made my nose smaller, enlarged my eyes and lips, and removed skin blemishes. Snapchat was normalizing a “perfect” look for users. For a moment, this left me feeling self-conscious and paying attention to my flaws.

According to the International OCD Foundation, there are about one in 50 people that have body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). People with BDD have repetitive and compulsive behaviors relating to their appearances, including constantly checking themselves in the mirror (NCBI). The term, “Snapchat Dysmorphia” was coined because people are losing perspective on what they actually look like after applying so many filters on social media (NCBI). The National Center for Biotechnology Information and WBUR state that many plastic surgeons have encountered patients that want to look like their filtered photos, enhanced versions of themselves that social media apps have helped them create.

Filters should be used as a fun social media tool (e.g., putting dog filters on your face, adding a flower crown), not making users feel self-conscious. Younger generations using Snapchat are still learning about themselves and are vulnerable. Snapchat should make the responsible decision to remove and ban filters that enhance one’s face in any unrealistic or “ideal” way.

Snapchat should join the body positivity movement, and empower young users to feel confident about their true selves.

Goldberg, C. (2019, January 25). In Selfie Era, Cosmetic Surgeons Confront ‘Snapchat Dysmorphia’. Retrieved November 16, 2020, from https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2019/01/25/selfie-filter-snapchat-dysmorphia
Phillips, K. (n.d.). Prevalence of BDD. Retrieved from https://bdd.iocdf.org/professionals/prevalence/
Ramphul, K., & Mejias, S. (2018, March 3). Is “Snapchat Dysmorphia” a Real Issue? Retrieved November 15, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5933578/

Michelle Pfeiffer on her brand “Henry Rose”

Kim Sheehan on

Day 4 of the Fast Company Festival of Innovation featured actress and entrepreneur Michelle Pfeiffer’s talk on how beauty products can be sustainable. Her line of fragrance is called Henry Rose, and she spent a decade creating a line of luxury fragrances with fully transparent ingredients that are safe, sustainable, non toxic, and humanely sourced. She now has seven fragrances in the line.

She started thinking about the line when her children were born, and she noticed that many products did not contain full ingredient lists. She examined the “Skin Deep” database where she found she could check ingredients of products she was using and look for alternatives. She noted that many fragrances contributed to high toxicity rates, given the total lack of transparency in reporting about fragrance ingredients—a brand can say that one of their ingredients is ‘fragrance’ and no additional information about the make up of the fragrance needs to be provided.

No major beauty company would do a partnership with her. She put the product on hold for several years, and then saw that there was more of an interest in ingredient transparency for fragrances. She met with a company called IFF, which introduced her to a group called Cradle to Cradle, which certifies products based on lifecycle assessment.

Most fragrances have over 3000 ingredients they can choose from. For Pfeiffer’s products, she could only choose from about 250 because she was only sourcing fragrances with transparent ingredient lists.Since the brand has launched, it has won an Allure Best of Beauty award along with multiple other awards.

She prefers the term ‘safe beauty’ to ‘clean beauty’ or ‘natural beauty’ as there is no real standard for ‘clean’ or ‘natural’. Safe, to her, makes a specific promise—the brand is not dangerous. It takes away a worry from people’s lives. People shouldn’t have to choose quality over safety.

She’s the founder of the brand, but she’s not the face of the brand. She wanted the brand to be credible on its own, without a ‘celebrity endorsement.’ She promotes the brand on Instagram. She tries to be authentic true to herself and her values, and realizes that any content that she posts could be construed as political content (e.g. ‘wear a mask’). The posts are really pretty:

Learn more about Henry Rose here!