What is beauty in an era of consumerism?
- Karolina Niewiadomska
- Oct 27
- 5 min read
In the years of literature and art, beauty has been called many. It’s been called a truth, a youth, a goal, a terror. Today - in the times of capitalism, consumption and the Internet - the way humans perceive beauty, what comes to their mind when they hear this word - it’s changed. Beauty does not seem to be assigned to something artistic or creative anymore. How and why has this mutated?
In one of her novels, Sally Rooney has written:
,,I would never describe myself [...] as ‘interested in beauty’, because people would assume that I meant I was interested in cosmetics. This, I guess, is the dominant meaning of the word ‘beauty’ in our culture now. And it seems telling that this meaning of the word ‘beauty’ signifies something so profoundly ugly - plastic [...]. I think the beauty industry is responsible for some of the worst ugliness we see around us”.
Later in the book, the character who is an author of the words also points out that this perception of the facet of beauty - perceiving it as a parallel of the expensiveness or artificialness, - creates a ‘false aesthetic perfection’ which is the ideal of consumerism.
As the quote highlights, today, the word beauty is strictly assigned to makeup. If we talk about the beauty industry, we talk about cosmetics, dermatologist products, hair products or the services done by a beautician. It’s almost like we’re talking about an industry that fixes people in order to make them valuable - beautiful. Absurdly, we cannot use the phrase ‘the beauty industry’ if we want to talk about the industry that makes beautiful clothes because that would mean talking about fashion and fashion is not assigned to be beauty - even if the piece of clothing was beautiful from the beginning and did not have to be fixed in order to align to a category of today’s beauty. The beauty industry’s definition shows that it’s not exactly that people believe that beauty is a cosmetic; it’s that they believe there is no beauty without it.
Why did our perception of beauty change?
Undeniably, the already mentioned consumerism is partly to blame, however it is not that people’s obsession with consuming is a new thing to be happening. Overconsumption has been flourishing ever since it’s been defined (which was in 1921 when Sidney A. Reeve released his book - ‘Modern Economic Tendencies’. His definition obviously slightly differs from the one we have today. Back then Reeve perceived consumerism as a belief that individual well-being and economic growth are driven by the continuous purchase of goods and services, fueled by advertising and mass production. Today, consumerism is defined with a more disapproving manner, e.g. as a situation in which too much attention is given to
buying and owning things). What is also a dimension in today’s perception of beauty is that a big part of the youth living in wealthy, capitalist countries are said to be struggling with the anti-intellectualism crisis. People lack a desire to be educated - they lack a desire to be informed. We see people’s only source of information being their own algorithm, which is deeply personalised. People do not read and therefore they lack a perspective. In social media we can witness a lack of a division based on the quality of speech and therefore people are more likely to buy something after seeing its advertisement. We live in a time when audio-visual media is a substantial transporter of the information. We consider it paramount to look good, to look just like everyone else looks. When we hear someone speak the same shallow way we speak, someone who looks good, the same good we want to look, we will believe their advertisement. We will see ourselves in them and trust that whatever improves their state of fulfillment will also improve ours. We live in a time in which the second most commonly downloaded app is Instagram, in which people are drowning in a content they will not remember as the following day starts. As a result, people mistake simplicity for beauty. Today, beauty is whatever gives people comfort and a sense of satisfaction with their lives and what gives people the sense of satisfaction is looking good.
This captures how the idea of beauty has been exceedingly trivialised. Modern humans do not desire beauty in their lives because they forgot what beauty was. It is something secondary and lost. People have started seeing beauty as a purchase - as something to buy instead of something to be. Nevertheless, consumerism is not the only thing to blame in the modern process of beauty’s corruption. Beauty - the desire to look good - it has always been obsessed over. It’s been over a hundred years since the character of Dorian Gray has been created - it isn’t new. Having reached the new possibilities to improve our appearance, such as make up or special services, people will not cease to use that in order to feel better. People tend to look the same, now. The definition of being attractive has also changed. Attractiveness does not necessarily mean uniqueness. It is not tantamount to standing out in a room full of people anymore.
What is beauty in an era of modernity and overconsumption? As I see it, it is something influenced by society’s state of mind. And as a matter of fact, the social state of mind is constantly occupied. Beauty is shallow and trivial yet still paramount and visual and important. Beauty is often considered superior to intellectualism now. Beauty is a product to buy. A purchase we can make but it will maintain plastic and be short-lived anyway.
Page design: Zofia Kitlas
Bibliography
Rooney, Sally. Beautiful World, Where Are You. New York, Farrar, Straus And Giroux, 2021, p. 209.
Reeve, Sidney Armor. Modern Economic Tendencies. 1921
Cambridge Dictionary. “CONSUMERISM | Meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary.” Cambridge.org, 18 Dec. 2019, dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/consumerism. Retrieved October 11, 2025
Drowning in entertainment: the age of distraction . (2023). Retrieved October 11, 2025, from https://youtu.be/NJZ5YNrXMpE?si=jY-C3j2aLv86j2xX.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. 1890. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.
Walter Pierre https://walter-pierre.com/ , Accessed October 24
Florian Sommet - China Issue 765 Showcase, September 2019 magazine https://www.productionparadise.com/showcase/china-issue-765-1516/editorial-39070.html Accessed October 24
Linh Ha, November 21 2018, Unsplash “a close up of a women’s eye with makeup”, https://unsplash.com/photos/a-close-up-of-a-womans-eye-with-makeup-nt6KRD9im7A utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLinkAccessed October 24 2025
by_lamees, Pinterest https://pin.it/2FQ3OvVMI
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