The Pretty Price Check: Your Friday round-up of how much we paid for beauty this week.
- It’s been 20 years since Naomi Wolf published The Beauty Myth. And from where she’s sitting now, it’s mostly good news. I’m not so sure — but then again, I’m 16 years younger and she’s talking about how women feel about their bodies at midlife. More fully-formed thoughts on this to come next week after I’ve mulled. In the meantime, there is this:
- 30 percent of women are “change agents” who define beauty for themselves, according to the 2004 Dove survey that Naomi Wolf quotes here. Rock on 30 percent! But didn’t we all sort of hope that number would be higher by now?
- The kind of teenagers who get interviewed for New York Times Thursday Styles are now spending upwards of $750 on their prom dresses. I know I should be more horrified by this (it’s one night! Someone will probably puke on you!) but I feel like there’s always that one girl in the $1000 dress that everyone is all “it’s not even that special!” My senior prom dress cost $350 in 1999. In case you were wondering. And I sure did think that was an ungodly sum of money — and that it was the prettiest dress in the world! — at the time.
- Teenagers also received 12,000 Botox injections in 2009 — nearly twice what was reported in the previous year. This concerns me way more than prom dresses. (Even though, I know, I know, I said the Botox epidemic was mainly fake earlier this week. I was talking about adults!) And apparently it concerns New Jersey too, where a pending bill may make Botox illegal for anyone under the age of 18. (Via CBS Philly)
- The Norwegian National Register of Adverse Effects from Cosmetic Products received 96 reports of adverse effects from beauty products in the past two years. (Via EurekaAlert.)
PS. Not gonna lie, this trippy laser hair removal commercial does sort of capture my feelings about leg waxing.
[Photo: Beauty Myth, original cover, uploaded to Flickr by cdrummbks]
I borrowed a dress from my mom for prom . . . thankfully, she was a very stylish woman.
A dress bought 12 years ago for $350 would cost $628 in today’s money at 5% compound interest not so very different from $750, frankly. Too much then, too much now but better if the dress gets shared.
I honestly don’t think an expensive prom dress is that much of an issue. I got mine for 150 down from 850, but quite a few of my fellow graduates spent around 1000 CAD on theirs. Their parents all have good jobs and they were all lovely well grounded girls who are all doing something productive with their lives. They were all aware of how fortunate they were. My graduating class decided to add 45 dollars to each prom ticket to support the construction, by some of the students, of a school in Africa that summer. I don’t think it is an outrageous sum if you have the means and you’re not going into debt for it. Any amount of money spent on something is going to probably seem ridiculous to someone else.