Botoxed Bridezillas
posted by Frank Pasquale
The NYT reports on a new twist in the Bridezilla trend: wedding parties compelled to be more glamorous by demanding brides:
A bride’s request that you whiten your grayish teeth can strain a relationship. [A] wedding planner in Chester, N.J., recalled a bride who asked her attendants to get professionally spray-tanned for a Hawaiian-theme reception. Alas, two women were claustrophobic and couldn’t bear standing in a tanning capsule. “They asked the bride if they could use regular tanning cream from a salon,” [the planner] said. The bride refused; she wanted everyone to be the same shade. The women ultimately declined to be bridesmaids. “Friendships of 20-plus years gone over a spray tan? Sad!”
Meanwhile, a new film (America the Beautiful) documents the collateral damage from an image-obsessed culture, including facts like these:
(1) “Three minutes of looking at a fashion magazine makes 90 percent of women of all ages feel depressed, guilty and shameful,” (2) three years after the introduction of television to the Fiji Islands, the culture’s rate of teenage bulimia went from zero to 11 percent, (3) a model who is 6 feet tall and weighs 130 pounds is told she must lose 15 pounds, (4) the “average woman” in those crypto-feminist Dove soap ads became “average” only after complex makeup and photo retouching.
But hey, this sure shouldn’t be an industry we tax, now should it?
Hat Tip: Paul Caron.
August 1, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Posted in: Health Law
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Responses (1)
A.J. Sutter - August 2, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Some proponents of the décroissance/decrescità (”de-growth”) movement in Europe, e.g. Serge Latouche, have proposed a tax on advertising, or at least on certain categories of it. And Edo-era Japan had many sumptuary taxes and restrictions on dress (though these were intended, at least in part, to preserve privileges of rank).
Still, if your target is body image specifically, how would taxing cosmetic procedures change the images in fashion ads, movies, etc.? Do you think it would deter ambitious models and actors from undergoing the procedures, to the extent they need them at all when they’re in the early part of their career (sc., when it might be more of a financial bite)? And how would it reduce bulimia and anorexia, which are free?
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