Why it has become so important to look good

What is it about?

In contemporary societies, physical appearance is more important to more people than ever before. This article sketches the expansion of this contemporary beauty regime. I show how the importance of appearance grew since the late 1800s because of five wider developments: expanding media and consumer cultures, social democratization, a shift to a service-based economy and the rise of new media. People came to have more developed and diverse tastes in human beauty and more opportunities to cultivate their appearance. It became more important to be beautiful, for men and women, across the course of life, in more domains of life. Drawing on the tradition of process sociology inspired by Weber and Elias, I interpret this gradual raising of cultural standards as the emergence of a beauty regime involving new standards for social control and self-control, standards for moral and aesthetic evaluation and standards for social worth and self-worth. The beauty regime is demanding and constraining for individuals but contributes to the emergence of durable social constellations that people might consider progress. The beauty regime makes appearance more central to many domains of life, and thus more consequential for identities and inequalities, self-worth and social worth.

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Photo by Antonika Chanel on Unsplash

Photo by Antonika Chanel on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Many scholars and cultural critics have suggested that beauty is very important in contemporary society, with the implicit suggestion that this was different in earlier times. In this article, I investigate how and why beauty has become more important. To my knowledge, this is the first attempt to systematically analyze and theorize this 'expanding beauty regime'. By identifying five processes that boost the importance of appearance, I can also date the beginning of this expanding beauty regime -- which is earlier than many people assume, and definitely predates social media although that was the most recent 'booster' of the regime. I can also offer tentative predictions about how it will develop, and particularly, how it will increase inequalities.

Perspectives