The Beauty Industry By Aldous Husley – BA Modern English Essays

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Ans. The beauty industry is the industry that manufactures cosmetics, waist reducing belts, massage machines, and many more such products for the maintenance of physical beauty. It is a big and prosperous industry, though still, it is lagging behind the major American industries such as narcotic drugs, and films. 

The beauty industry has remained unaffected by the general economic depression. American women continue to spend one hundred and fifty-six million pounds a year to beautify their faces and bodies. They have cut their expenditure on other things but not on beauty products. Why is it so? 

One reason is, of course, the increase in the prosperity of the common man. 

The lower and middle classes are more prosperous today than ever before. They can afford to spend money on their faces. 

The other and more important reasons are the change in our attitude towards the merely physical beauty and the change in the status of women. 

‘The merely physical beauty’ is no more considered evil. The present generation demands justice for the body. 

Women, today, are more free and independent than ever before. They have, now, the right to look attractive, and use as many beauty aids as they can afford to buy. A heavily, even ridiculously, a made-up woman may cause an aesthetic shock, but not a moral shock. 

Ans. Women certainly profit from the use of beauty products. Now old women are becoming rare. In a few years’ time, it will be really hard to find a woman with white hair, wrinkled face, hollow cheeks, and a bent back. Mothers will not look much different from their daughters. This will be made possible partly by cosmetics, cosmetic surgery, injections or paraffin wax, and partly by improvement in health. 

This, however, does not mean that the beauty industry has really made women beautiful. Real beauty is not just skin-deep. It is as much the matter of the soul as of the body. Face powders, skin creams, and lipsticks cannot hide the inner ugliness. The ugliness of stupidity, the ugliness of greed, the ugliness of immorality will show through even the thick layers of most expensive make-up. 

Women, and men too, become beautiful when they rid themselves of evil passions; and in this matter, unfortunately, the beauty industry cannot offer any help. 

Ans. Aldous Huxley believes that real beauty is as much the matter of soul as of body. Cosmetics may hide the wrinkle of one’s face but not the ugliness of the spirit. The ugliness of the inner self spoils the beauty of the face. 

There are many kinds of psychology ugliness. One f the ugliness of stupidity or ignorance in other words. Many pretty women suffer from this ugliness. They take great pains to improve their looks but never give a thought to improve their minds. 

Greed is also an ugliness, and so is the mad pursuit of physical pleasure. The faces of those who are always running after pleasure shoe signs of boredom and dullness that ruin their body. 

Many pretty faces lose their attractiveness because of a strange kind of hardness. This unpleasant appearance is often the result of heavy make-up which hides the soft face. Sometimes this harshness of the face is a sign of emotional trouble. 

In fact, vice is ugliness, and each kind of vice produces a special kind of ugliness.