Further Secrets of the Beauty Industry -- Revealed!

A former teacher of mine stumbled upon this blog, and read my post on the language of the beauty industry. In her email to me she pointed out two errors which she has kindly given me permission to post below:

"Traditional Javanese massage ain't no bump n grind. It's a continuous hell of pushing in the points in your body. Think needling in but with your fingers. Incidentally, I swear by Javanese massage to get back my figure after childbirth. Check with my massage lady. The picture of a sweet looking Javanese lady with flowers in her hair kneading your back is a LIE

Rejuvenating essence is boiled placenta. It's the placenta that supposedly has rejuvenating qualities not infant's blood. My aunt-in-law has a fat ang bao ready for me if I give her my next placenta.

I have yet to splurge on pureed pond scum or blinking red lamps but frankly speaking, as long as these products work, no one (ok, except those organic/environmental purists) is going to question too much about what goes into them."

As further evidence of the manipulativeness and lie-mongering of the body-image industry, there is an advertisement that appears quite regularly in the papers, showing a female celebrity leaning forward in a low-cut top and a headline screaming: "Push-ups should be in the gym. Not on your bust!" In the text of the ad, this company touts "all-natural bust enhancement", promising "pure essential oils that we massage gently into your breast tissues to give you a more shapely, curvaceous, and feminine bust-line." Unfortunately, the same advertisement also prints in type three times smaller at the bottom of the page: "There is no scientific proof that any non-surgical treatment currently available can enlarge breasts." One is met with a conundrum -- which part of the ad is lying? Is it the part claiming bust enhancements or the part saying that there's no proof any of this works that is in error? Contrary to what years of source and contextual analysis have taught us to think, it is actually the latter that is wrong. While one might doubt the efficacy of this particular herbal treatment for bust enlargement, the blatant statement that no proof exists for non-surgical breast enlargement is outright wrong. There are a number of processes that do result in breast enlargement without recourse to surgery! Namely

1. puberty,


2. pregnancy,


3. weight gain (and the proportional bulking up of all the fleshy bits of the body) and


4. inflammation.

Therefore, heed this warning: just because it's fine print doesn't mean it's more reliable that the stuff that's printed in big letters. It can be just as or even more in error than the main text!