Series: Studies in Social Harm
Series Editors: Christina Pantazis, University of Bristol, UK, Simon Pemberton, University of Birmingham, UK and Steve Tombs, The Open University
Social harm is an emerging field of study which contributes to contemporary social and political debate. This exciting series moves the debate towards a holistic approach that seeks to understand the production of harm within contemporary society. The topical inter-disciplinary series offers comparative and international perspectives to understand the distribution of harm and combines new theory and empirical research.
Studies in Social Harm
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Chapter 7 considers the role of beauty consumption for social bonding within the context of Botox parties. Beauty use and injecting practices are viewed as a means of conforming to the commodified gender norms and the central tenets of neoliberalism. The chapter examines how female participants used (counterfeit) beauty as a form of female bonding, while simultaneously policing and criticizing each other’s looks and behaviours in the competitive and comparative drive to look good. As such, this chapter illuminates a significantly under-researched area surrounding the environment of hyper-comparison, the impact it has upon beauty use and injecting practices, and positions harmful consumption practices as a means of hyper-conformity.
Chapter 3 presents a theorization of the changing nature of beauty, style and fashion, exploring the normalized, accepted and culturally celebrated harmful and harming beauty practices beyond the neoliberal era to contemporary times. In doing so, it emphasizes how fashion and style have long shown a connection with harmful and harming practices. This chapter includes an examination of how late modernity has accelerated and amplified the harmful and harming practices and processes related to the use and supply of beauty and fashion, highlighting the extent to which potential harms exist on a larger scale than previously recognized. As such, this chapter continues to explore the hyper-connectedness of consumers and sellers and the online and offline.
The Harms of Beauty has offered an insight into the wider life-worlds of consumers and sellers, following them not only as they engage with licit and illicit beauty markets, but also through their attempts to navigate contemporary society. The concluding chapter ties together the book’s empirical findings with the theoretical context of this study. In doing so, it will answer the fundamental questions of why these young people use and sell counterfeit and illicit beauty products and services, and how they engaged with these products, before offering some recommendations to address these problems.
Chapter 5 focuses on the consumption of counterfeit and illicit beauty products, including how consumers buy counterfeits, the importance and symbolic value of buying branded beauty and the contexts in which cosmetic enhancements are used. It considers the ways in which consuming and supplying illicit goods and services is both conformist and essential for surviving in the contemporary landscape of consumer capitalism. Offering an insight into beauty consumption and beauty identities, this chapter addresses the role of beauty as capital in contemporary society, exploring how looking good is now considered to improve both social and working lives. Through empirical evidence, it offers an extensive view of the nature of beauty consumption and counterfeit consumption to exemplify some of the harms generated by conformity to the norms and values of late-capitalist consumer culture.
Chapter 4 operationalizes the earlier theoretical discussions to contextualize the role of supply within the pressures and realities of the research participants’ lived experiences. This chapter examines the supply-side of the online and localized offline market and the ways in which backgrounds and experiences shape young people’s willingness to engage in selling practices, and their positions as consumers focused on improving their identity and appearance. This chapter nuances existing arguments by illuminating how supply is operationalized in practice and explores seller motivations in a wider context of the troubles they face in contemporary society. This discussion pays particular attention to how the powerful forces of neoliberalism have blurred the boundaries between the consumer and supplier, allowing sellers to move flexibly between the two positions in the pursuit of their consumer lifestyle.
Chapter 2 presents the ontological and epistemic underpinning of this book. Ultra-realist criminology and its transcendental materialist roots of subjectivity and zemiology are introduced to provide a framework for understanding the multi-faceted cultural and corporeal motivations for buying, selling and using counterfeit illicit beauty products and services. Raymen and Smith’s (2019) deviant leisure perspective that follows ultra-realism’s ontological roots is also outlined and its relevance to assess harms arising from the industry is made clear. By drawing on these theoretical frameworks, the pernicious interconnection between the increasingly unstable and fluid job market, a culture of hyper-competitive consumer capitalism and hyper-comparison are unpacked to better understand the research participants’ involvement in illicit markets. As such, this chapter illustrates how the harms associated with the illicit beauty industry are closely tied to broader processes of consumerism, emphasizing the need for a critical understanding of global consumer culture and political change.
Chapter 6 sets out to examine the role of hyper-comparison in online spaces and real-life, including the impact it has upon human subjectivities and young people’s willingness to engage in harmful acts. In doing so, this chapter turns the attention to the role of social media, focusing on how daily absorption in the virtual world impacts young people’s sense of objective reality. Through empirical evidence, it demonstrates how social media provides young people with heightened exposure to unrealistic images and never-ending opportunities for hyper-comparison, alongside the real-life consequences this has on risky beauty consumption patterns.
The beauty industry thrives on creating a sense of dissatisfaction with appearance, with social media adding pressure to conform to idealized images of beauty. One solution to remedy this dissatisfaction has been found in the normalization and growing use of products for bodily improvement such as facial injectables and weight loss drugs.
The Harms of Beauty investigates the toxicity of consumer culture driving individuals’ willingness to harm themselves, others and the environment in their pursuit of image and body perfection. The data presented in this book is a product of an ethnographic study that, in part, responds to the lack of work offering a lived-experience perspective of the ways in which macro-level socio-economic changes and pressures exert themselves on young people.
This ethnographic study provides insight into the wider life-worlds of consumers and sellers, following them not only as they engage with licit and illicit beauty markets, but also through their attempts to navigate contemporary society. It provides an insight into one facet of the harmful beauty industry, highlighting the nature of counterfeit consumption and supply, and the interconnection between the various spheres of consumers and sellers, supply and demand, online and offline and work and leisure. The empirical data uncovers the ways in which the pervasiveness of hyper-comparison in contemporary society is a key catalyst behind beauty use and its widespread harm, one that is further intensified in virtual spaces.
Chapter 1 highlights the considerable knowledge gap concerning the wide array of harms associated with legal, illegal and counterfeit markets within the beauty industry. It provides some background to counterfeiting and provides insight into the ongoing expansion of the beauty industry and where the idea for this project stemmed from. In doing so, it provides a description of the research methods used to collect the data underpinning this book and provides a comprehensive breakdown of the book’s structure and aims.
The Greek island of Lesvos is frequently the subject of news reports on the refugee ‘crisis’, but they only occasionally focus on the dire living conditions of asylum seekers already present on the island. Through direct experience as an activist in Lesvos refugee camps and detention centres, Iliadou gives voice to those with lived experiences of state violence.
The author considers the escalation of EU border regime and deterrence policies seen in the past decade alongside their present impacts. Asking why the social harm and suffering border crossers experience is normalised and rendered invisible, the book highlights the collective, global responsibility for safeguarding refugees’ human rights.
