THE COLOR OF BEAUTY: Social and cultural construction of beauty ideals through the influence of advertising media (1920-2022).

Abstract

Advertising has been a strategic tool that has served over the years to inform and persuade audiences about products or services through the media to motivate purchase action. Furthermore is a direct marketing approach that influences consumer decision making and has led many industries to spend significant financial resources in order to boost their sales and awareness of their products and services.

The beauty industry has been no exception, as this kind of marketing is playing an essential role in brand communication and relationship. Corporations are aiming to raise their turnover and to target the right audience to satisfy the right needs, while in some situations are creating aspirational needs through advertisements by sending some indirect statements that may influence the beauty standards in the consumers' minds. Several authors have argued that media and publicity are conveying a notion of beauty that is directly related to physical attractiveness, professional and social success, turning them into stereotypes of contemporary beauty.

Since the beginning, it has affected the perception of women's beauty and has shaped consumers' buying patterns with regard to women's social status. The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze and evaluate how cosmetics advertising has portrayed beauty ideals since the 1920s and how it may have shaped class differences and racial perceptions in mid-19th century America.

This investigation aims to provide up-to-date research through a historiographical analysis that examines the last century of the evolution of the beauty industry and its close relationship with advertising. The main objective is to contribute to the literature in the areas of marketing, management and business in the beauty industry that will serve as a future subject of analysis and reference text for advertisers, students, historians and the general public.