CRITIQUE ARCHIVE

http://www.beauty.com

Beauty.com: Feast your Eyes
By Christa Starr

In 1991, Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth warned women that the beauty industry should be viewed as just that - an industry - selling images of women to women to turn a profit. While Wolf is urging women to see through this degrading system and the impossible standards it sets for non-supermodels, to reject the beauty industry and the myth that we need its products to be whole.

OK. On the one hand, I agree that the beauty industry has gotten a bit out of control. When eleven-year-old girls voluntarily go on starvation diets because they think they’re too fat, something’s going very wrong. On the other hand, women have always enjoyed trying to make themselves up, to enhance their beauty through various skin products and fragrances. The great Cleopatra is even rumored to have published a "beauty guide" that became the standard for wealthy Roman and Egyptian ladies in Caesar’s time.

So female interest in beauty products is nothing new. And, like just about every other product line in the modern world, you can find it on the Internet. Beauty.com is just one of the sites devoted to the female instinct for decoration. Though it may not offer a lot in the way of make-up tips or other advice, it does offer a very wide range of products and has a clear concise interface. The products are also photographed and presented so tantalizingly that it’s hard not to click on the ‘buy now!’ button.

Unfortunately, it is often hard to tell just what color of eyeshadow or lipstick you’ll be getting if you give in to that urge. The ‘color chips’ are often small, hard to make out, and if your monitor gamma is set incorrectly you’ll likely wind up with something very different than what you were expecting. Don’t fear, however, because Beauty.com has the standard beauty product return policy - if you don’t like it, ship it back (at their expense) and they’ll refund or send you a different one.

Still, this is not nearly as convenient as heading down to the local MegaMall and spending half an hour testing pigments on the back of your hand. Also, many of the brands offered I had never heard of - and my three favorite makeup lines (MAC, Nars, and Lancome) weren’t even available from Beauty.com. I have to say, I will still probably do my makeup shopping in the real world, but if you’re the type who loves to browse beauty products just to see what’s out there, then Beauty.com is a good place to start.