The Beauty Industry vs. What Is Beautiful

[The Ed.]

Barely a day goes by at Salon Geek HQ when I don't come across an article (as I spend hours trawling and researching!) that lays some of the blame at the (beautifully manicured) feet of the beauty industry for making women feel insecure. With a huff and a puff...I'm blowing this theory down.

As an industry, we can sometimes find ourselves lumped together with the media, TV, film and fashion industries and propagated as tyrants in the modern world with one objective: to make real people feel bad about themselves. It’s not fair, nor is it true, but often the beauty industry can come under fire for offering up unreasonable and unrealistic standards of beauty.

Here at Salon Geek HQ we can get quite passionate about this debate. The simple fact is that we provide a service to support men and women in their quest for whatever they believe is beautiful. We don’t tell them what to do. We do not define what is beautiful. We may advise them when requested but we see our role as one of mediation and possibility. We are here to work with women and men, not against them. We work to make women and men feel beautiful in their own skin…according to their own preferences, not ours. Our aim as beauty therapists is to make the most of everyone’s natural beauty according to their own wishes.

We do not deny that we work largely with an exterior beauty but why is there a belief amongst our critics that exterior and interior beauties are dependent on each other and that we are responsible for both? Just because someone maybe knock-out beautiful doesn’t mean that they must be ugly on the inside. Just because some people go to beauty salons to be waxed, buffed and blow-dried does not mean they are superficial.

Those that criticize our industry seem to think that we believe only in the importance of exterior beauty. In fact, the opposite is true: it is because of what we do that we are in the perfect position to understand that inner-beauty is the only real truth. We do exactly what we say on the tin: we work with men and women to make them achieve a level of external beauty that they want as individuals. In doing so we enhance confidence, strength and self-belief.

If only we had the power to influence internal beauty in the way that the critics suggest! We wish we could make all men and women beautiful on the inside too. In fact, most of them already are. Those that aren’t…well, we can hardly take the blame for that, right?

*steps down from soapbox*

Until then...geek on!

The Ed.

 

[mrslargelashes]

What a fab post, I feel like I am constantly fighting this 'superficial' belief, to the extent that one fellow mum said to me she couldn't possibly have time to do 'all that', as she was far too busy being a good mum. Insinuating that I must be a bad mum because I put on my make up and get my nails done?!!

I believe inner beauty and outer beauty goes hand in hand. If you feel good, you look good, and vice versa.

We are called beauty 'therapists' for a reason, as we allow people to escape for a small amount of time, while listening without judging, while relaxing them, and making them look amazing into the bargain. I would say we are more of a positive than a negative in society. Fab post xx

 

[CoreBeauty]

I totally agree with what both of you have said. Sometimes it takes getting your nails done, or your hair done to make you feel good on the outside which therefore makes you feel better on the inside. As mrsilashes said we are not only here to provide a service without talking and listening to our clients. I have so many clients that come to me and confide in me and talk there problems through. A couple of weeks ago I did a leaflet drop delivering over 300 leaflets door to door, in the middle of a storm with a chest infection :cry: crazy I know... but I was sitting in my salon the following week when I got a call from a man saying he got one of my leaflets, I was so delighted (its my first yr in biz) well i was not expecting the things he said to me .... it was disgusting enough for me to report him... He told me in the end to go die and that i should be ashamed for making EVERY girl in our big town look like prostitutes.. i was so upset and shaken up.

 

[xxAmyxx]

I love being in the beauty industry, because i can make people feel good about themselves not by making people feel bad, this is just ridiculous