Since the international fanfare of Max Factor and movie makeup in the 1920s and ’30s and the early global growth of beauty giant Avon in the 1950s, the American beauty industry has become one of the pioneering leaders in the international cosmetics market. From the early 1920s, Max Factor understood the importance of selling an international image to a larger global market, and to that end, Max Factor demonstrated his genius by using his cinematic connections and close relationships with actresses while he applied their makeup for filming. He named certain products after specific international beauty icons, and asked them for their endorsements. At a time when the cinema served as the conduit between continents and cultures, Max Factor hit upon the most widely recognized faces and used them as a marketing tool for his products. By 1949, Max Factor had convinced Mexican-born Hollywood actor Ricardo Montalban to serve as one of his spokespeople as the line broke into the Spanish speaking markets.
An American Look
As the cosmetics industry continued to grow, companies such as Avon recognized not only the utility and marketability of certain stars’ looks, but also of wider cultural/ethnic/national sensibilities. The selling of astereotypical American fresh-facedness, of naiveté, hope, and freedom became attractive in the post–World War II period. While the French projected a sophisticated, haute couture look, the Italians developed a sensual, earthy Sophia Loren va-va-voom, and the Americans sold health, vitality, youth, and innocence. The wholesome, all-American, Caucasian girl next door look became highly sought after and cosmetics companies realized there was a market, not only in cosmetics, but also in beauty products, that could sustain that natural look for as long as possible. Cosmetics companies could sell this new look, via cinema, glossy magazines, and television as part of a larger cultural industry.
Global Celebrities
Global market research specialist Euromonitor has shown that millions of generation X and Y-ers, as well as more mature adults, are looking up to celebrities and fashion icons and the brands that surround them in a hope of emulating some of their cool status and exciting lifestyle, in spite of the credit crunch. Whatever
the reasons for this trend, the following of this fad by the creators of these brands is a clever way to maintain a foothold in the changeable and fickle global market. Euromonitor believes that in the midst of economic recession, cocooning customers are only keener to immerse themselves in the fairytale world of celebrity, with all the
aspirations this entails. Celebrity endorsement has certainly provided a fairytalelike success for the U.S. beauty industry, allowing it further global triumph.
Rappers, singers, models, actors, and actresses are queuing up to join forces with fragrance and fashion houses to help raise a global profile and ensure steady growth for the U.S. beauty market. Stars such as Gwen Stefani, Jennifer Lopez, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, P. Diddy, Britney Spears, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kanye West are wielding incredible influence on the global marketplace with their clothing lines, perfumes and fragrances, and lifestyle products. Certainly, there are both financial and popular gains for celebrities when they endorse certain products. A report by Euromonitor titled “The Impact of Celebrities on Consumer Lifestyles” argues that people of all ages can be targeted through icon-led marketing. However, the use of these celebrity endorsements is not only a way to convince the consumer of the legitimacy of the product; it also helps to magnify the product beyond simply a self-help, self-improvement promise. The beauty industry no longer desires to simply sell a well-made product; it promises an image, credibility, and the possibility of star power.
New Imperialism
With this in mind, cosmetics companies are marching toward continued global market success through the use of a more universal aesthetic that has been codified by mass and popular culture and the cosmetics industry. The emergence of a global beauty industry was interconnected with the growth of mass production and a more international labor market in the second half of the 19th century. The connection between economics, beauty, and hygiene became even more pronounced as government embarking on New Imperialism found new justifications for the old tradition of colonization. In certain parts of Africa, indigenous peoples were described as savage, barbaric, dirty, disgusting—and the British Empire sold soap, endorsed by Queen Victoria, to cleanse away the heathen and make the native bright, shiny, and new. Soap was one of the first products to become truly global. The influence of other national imperatives—the selling of the British Empire to its own people, the independence of the single woman in France, the embracing of Western aesthetic norms in Shanghai—made Americanization an uneven process, a heterogeneous, transnational phenomenon.
The rise of the modern girl, as demonstrated by the academic research group that wrote “The Modern Girl around the World: A Research Agenda and Preliminary Findings” (2005), became a mark of defining femininity, racializing beauty, engendering politics, and exploring sexuality. The creation of the modern girl and her cosmopolitan look, whether culturally defined as garçonne, xiaojie, neue Frauen, or flapper, was not unidirectional, singularly defined, or homogeneous in makeup. As the article describes, the fashioning of the modern girl, can be envisioned “as a gendered and radicalized formation that is web-like, comprised of multi-directional citations: mutual, though non-equivalent, influences and circuits of exchange connecting disparate parts of the world.” Perhaps the first identity to be commodified into a global package, the modern girl could be Chinese, German, French, Senegalese, African American—but she was recognizable because of the amalgamation of multiple colonial, national, racial, and gendered traits. Those characteristics were sold via newsprint and glossy magazines. Toothpaste and tooth-whitening formulas; lightening products for the skin; girdles and undergarments to produce a lithe, svelte form; and deodorants and perfumes to mask body odor—the same products were produced by the same multinationals, but marketed to the modern girls of each nation and colonial experience.
Unilever was one of the first multinationals to ask its board to examine the possibilities of a global market for the beauty industry in 1950. World War II had opened up new horizons for businesses, mass culture, and the exchange of goods and information. Those companies that had established themselves as a global commodity were most able to take their corporations in different directions, accessing diverse markets and offering new products. Although certain concessions had to be made to be competitive in the global market—changing skin tones, hair colors, cultural preferences—those that invested in tweaking their products for individual markets experienced dramatic success. By 1970, Helene Curtis products were sold in over 100 different countries.
Asian Markets
The United States did not look only toward Europe as a viable market place; it also examined the possibilities in Asia, particularly in Japan, as the American government had a heavy hand in reconstructing postwar Japanese society. The Barbie doll, with its blue eyes and blonde hair, was one of the first American successes in the Japanese market. Although earlier prototypes made in Japan had what some call more Asian eyes, ultimately, it was the classic all-American Caucasian Barbie that won the hearts of Japanese females and introduced them to a new definition of beauty based on American standards. In the 1980s, when Michael Jackson had reached the pinnacle of his career as the king of pop, Japanese fans took adoration to the extreme when they made Jackson’s distinctly African American look into their new It look. Tanning solutions, permanents, and Afro wigs became popular in Japan as the youth sought to emulate their idol. Most recently, No Doubt band member Gwen Stefani, inspired by her travels in Japan and by the carefully and whimsically constructed fashions of Japan’s Harajuku girls, made the look popular in the United States and consequently returned the fad back to Japan and the rest of the world with her clothing line, Harajuku Lovers.
Foreign Companies
Even foreign companies are banking on American conceptions and models of beauty and freshness. Coty, a company founded in Paris by Francois Coty in 1904, has achieved huge global success through acquisitions and licensing partnerships. Coty worked with Sex and the City New York icon Sarah Jessica Parker to create a line of feminine, fashion-forward fragrances; with Latino actress/singer Jennifer Lopez, because her international appeal has created an incredibly loyal fan base that provides an almost guaranteed market for her perfumes; and with hip hop diva Kimora Lee Simmons, whose perfumes are described as embodying a type of hip hop, urban sophistication marked by the glam and bling of the B-girl all grown up. Coty is currently working with five-time Grammy Award–winning country singer, Faith Hill, who is portrayed as an all-American beauty, debuting her perfume, an olfactory sensation that will represent in a bottle her ability to juggle her different roles as a woman—singer and entertainer, mother, wife, American. While certainly these celebrity endorsements help to sell products, these famous women are also used as models for understanding and personifying the myriad possibilities of American multicultural beauty. Not only are American companies such as CoverGirl and Maybelline making the diversity of American beauty a commodity that can be applied with the brush of a wand or a swipe of lipstick; European, Asian, and multinational companies are also banking on the wide range of American archetypes in cultural beauty, from hip hop to country, from New York to Miami to California, to sell their products. The American beauty industry has not only economically infiltrated the international cosmetics market: the very nature of Americanness and the American aesthetic has permeated the international lines.
Internet
The American beauty industry is experiencing one of the most interesting phases, with the ongoing and growing demand for celebrity endorsements, technological and medical advances, the cultural imperative of having multimedia sources of information, and the overwhelming desire to look more beautiful, appear younger, and get longer-lasting results more quickly. The Internet has provided a new marketplace for cosmetics companies, drugstores, and beauty stores such as Sephora, beauty.com, and drugstore.com. New Web sites such as bellasugar.com, Beauty at style.com, beautyaddict.blogspot.com, afrobella.com, and beauty snob. com bring the discussion of beauty out of the realm of stylists, makeup artists, and celebrities into the voices of real women. Even youtube.com has tutorials on how to apply makeup, such as those by Michelle Phan, who has over 100,000 subscribers. These sites have transformed the beauty industry and made not only the products but also the looks global. So intrigued was the Dove company with the findings of a 2005 Unilever survey of 3,200 women that revealed that only 2 percent of females would call themselves beautiful that it started a new campaign in which real women defined real beauty on their own terms. The campaign, which began in Europe, has spread to the United States. On a Dove Web site (www.campaignforrealbeauty.com) women are asked to define what is beautiful— freckles, wrinkles, pregnancy, straight hair, curly hair, underweight, overweight. With taglines such as, “Oversized or Outstanding?” women are encouraged to vote for their favorite ads. The Internet has proved a powerful tool in both globalizing and diversifying notions of beauty.
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