Cosmetics and Beauty in a Globalizing World: The German Case

This paper begins by discussing the critiques of cosmetics companies and users made by German feminists, the counter culture, environmentalists, consumer advocates, and animal rights activists since the 1960s and the overt subversiveness of cosmetic display by German members of international punk and queer cultures since the 1970s. It traces how an increasingly consolidated and multinational cosmetics industry has responded to challenges to consumption habits and gender ideals by these movements. The industry has also participated in efforts to represent globalization positively: as achieving a world closely connected by global brands, new media, travel, and wide-spread access to responsible “personal care” through cosmetics products. In its successful efforts to create ever bigger markets and to address specific segments of consumers it has broadened the range of visual images in the advertising landscape in Germany (and elsewhere): an industry that until the 1980s in Germany relied mostly on representations of young white women now features representations of make-up use by men, photographs of people of color, older models, or depictions of body modifications such as tattooing or branding. Particular emphasis will be on the reception of selected products and campaigns by three major brands in Germany and the United States: the Body Shop, Unilever’s Dove, and Beiersdorf’s Nivea. The paper asks where and how advertisers and a broad range of commentators have employed the term “beauty” and what forms of vernacular ethnology they have developed to make claims about universal standards as well as local or personal preferences and practices.