Cosmetic Fascism

Whoever wrote that beauty was only skin deep had not been treated to the nightmare of cosmetic adverts. Male and female. It's not so much the constant selling of these things - an evil you have to take for granted, I suppose - but the manner in which they are sold. Turn on a television at any time of the day and you'll be inundated with horrendously fake people attempting to make themselves so hetronormatively attractive that there is usually some disasterous side effects of their mad experiments.

Down on the street, this translates into an orange woman covered in so much fake tan she looks like an escaped umpa lumpa. To further complicate the pursuit of perfection,  her actual face is hidden under a viel of concealer, eyeshadow, lip gloss, fake lashes and plucked eyebrows. So much so, it has begun to look uncannily like Tutankhamun's death mask. The end result giving you the somewhat terrifying impression of a Pompeii victim come back to life.

"Hey baby. Can I buy you a drink?"

Men aren't any better. Most male adverts revolve around the premise that overly muscled men with faces chistled out of raw sex appeal drag knives down their faces to get rid of excess hair. While wearing a vest. Once they've finished shaving, a woman walks in and rubs their breasty pectoral muscles while nuzzling into their neck like an emotionally conflicted horse. The man turns to the camera, grins, and then probably goes off to down pints and wrestle aligators whilst on fire. So much so, that the Old Spice adverts have cashed in on purely being a satrical paradoy of most men's shower gel commercials, with women flocking to them like psychotic animals from a Hitchcock film.

In fact, there are very few male centric adverts that don't see one super attractive bloke spraying himself with bodyspray, or standing under a foaming shower, or styling his hair while women stampede towards him ala 28 Days Later. I'm at a loss as to where this mythical cavern full of lustful nymphs is. The best I can manange is to strike up casual conversation with a lone female on the bus without her being physically sick all over me. I'd really like to see a break from hetro ads. How about a Lynx advert where he's swamped by oiled strongmen? Yeah. How do you like them apples?

Around this point, you're probably thinking where the fascism comes in. I lied. There is no fascism. Take it seriously, it's a big word. But there is a certain encouragement to actually be a pro-active bellend during your transformation into the superhuman. Take the L'Oreal adverts. 'Because you're worth it." Worth what? Worth using L'Oreal products? Is that how we measure people's value, in hair products? Is that a treat? You know, like, put your feet up, you've earned it. Use L'Oreal, because you deserve L'Oreal. L'Oreal is too good for normal people, but you, you're worth it.

Then you get Cat Deeley flashing you a smile that makes her look like a proto-Landshark, telling you that if you want 'real colour'* in your hair, 'Be demanding'. Be demanding, be demanding. See that hair? Don't take any abuse from it. Demand the best. Be a dickhead. To your own hair.

There are more adverts, I'm certain of it, that create the impression that being a narcassitic pig is a good thing. The previously mentioned Lynx adverts induce a special kind of nausea, where mute women literally drop from the sky, crushing cars and tearing up paving slabs in an effort to be closer to some guy who is wearing this particularly alluring scent. A before and after Max Factor ad, shot in the style of a documentary, shows a normal woman transforming into a being with a face so pure, hair and eyes so perfect by todays standards that she actually looks like a twenty-fourth century time-travelling sex robot.

This is apparently a good thing.

The problem is, it's very hard to actually be normal, provided we can agree on what 'normal' or natural might entail. There is even a style to non-conformity or resistance, whereby a modicum of effort is paradoxically required to look effortlessly natural, or to make a point about rejecting societal constraints. Even tougher is the challenge to pull it off without looking like Edward Scissorhands after a heavy Stag weekend. And there doesn't seem to be a clear way out of it. Subconsciously conditioned as we are, even the most open minded lefty will secretly struggle to not judge someone who's ventured outside with the appearance of a grotesquely twisted and unkempt woodsman.

So if you want a vision of the future, imagine thousands of little bottles, squeezey tubes, shavers and styling gear, stamping on a human face - forever.


*An interesting paradox when advertising hair-dye