Americans value beauty over intelligence

[mintcollective1]

i heard recently on National Public Radio that Americans ( i'm assuming women though I may be incorrect) will spend more money on beauty products over the course of their lives than their educations. So, in summary, the only thing I can assume is that we value looks over intelligence...
boo. It makes me want to cash my makeup in for tuition.

 

[SparklingWaves]

Youth is very fleeting, but an education lasts a lifetime.

 

[ratmist]

Hah. I'm an American chick who has spent in the six-figure range for my education - I'm finishing my PhD in Archaeology in the next month or so. I may be one of the exceptions to the rule, but there are a bunch of other American women in my overseas university that have done the same.

(Edit: And we look *good* too!)

 

[*Stargazer*]

I hate "statistics" like this.

If you think about it, unless you go to private schools as a child, you only pay for collegiate and post graduate education, right? But you use beauty products from the time you are a teen until you die basically. Plus beauty products get used up and have to be replaced. It's not like degrees do that. You can't ever use up all of your degree and need to replace it. How can we even compare the two?

I didn't even pay for my undergraduate degree. I could spend more than I paid for it by buying a tube of chapstick.

 

[Beauty Mark]

I've been going on full scholarship. Cost of education? $0, going to earn a masters (I hope) next year. You can educate yourself for free or nearly free.

ITA with Stargazer. Those stats are easily skewed. And what are they counting on spending on your education? There are plenty of things I consider educational or potentially educational that I may not readily factor into the cost, like the internet or books I read out of pleasure.

 

[ratmist]

I'm not sure where the "study" came from, but I've tracked the statement down as best as I could.

It's from The Economist, a magazine I adore, from "Pots of promise - The beauty business." Economist, 5/24/2003, Vol. 367, Issue 8325.

I'm a big damned nerd. Ahem. Anyway, I've reproduced a few excerpts of the article below that I found interesting:

MEDIEVAL noblewomen swallowed arsenic and dabbed on bats' blood to improve their complexions; 18th-century Americans prized the warm urine of young boys to erase their freckles; Victorian ladies removed their ribs to give themselves a wasp waist. The desire to be beautiful is as old as civilisation, as is the pain that it can cause. In his autobiography, Charles Darwin noted a "universal passion for adornment", often involving "wonderfully great" suffering.

The pain has not stopped the passion from creating a $160 billion-a-year global industry, encompassing make-up, skin and hair care, fragrances, cosmetic surgery, health clubs and diet pills. Americans spend more each year on beauty than they do on education. Such spending is not mere vanity. Being pretty--or just not ugly--confers enormous genetic and social advantages. Attractive people (both men and women) are judged to be more intelligent and better in bed; they earn more, and they are more likely to marry.
​

Gotta say, that makes for uncomfortable reading. Young boy's urine? I think I'd rather have the damned freckles, thanks. As for pretty = advantages, I've read anthropological texts and other sociological studies that back this up though, as painful as it sounds.

The fact is that neither moral censure nor fears about safety will stop people from wanting to look better. The desire is too entrenched. An 18th-century British law proposing to allow husbands to annul marriages to wives who had trapped them with "scents, paints, artificial teeth, false hair and iron stays", had no effect on women, who continued to clamour for the latest French skin creams.

During the second world war, the American government had to reverse a decision to remove lipstick from its list of essential commodities in order to prevent a rebellion by female war workers.

The beauty business--the selling of "hope in a jar", as Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon, once called it--is as permanent as its effects are ephemeral.
​

Hope in a jar? Isn't that a Philosophy cream?

 

[ratmist]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Beauty Mark I've been going on full scholarship. Cost of education? $0, going to earn a masters (I hope) next year. You can educate yourself for free or nearly free.

To be fair though, not everyone gets a full scholarship. (I know you know this, but I'm just saying it because it's a topic close to my heart.) I got partial scholarships when I was studying in America, and hardship scholarships to cover the rest. My friends were extremely bitter about how their parents made *just* over the hardship threshold, despite being completely unable to help their kids go to college, and thus they were trapped with the choice of either big loans or not attending school. Some of them couldn't get the loans at all anyway, especially if they were forced to apply off the back of their parents, who often times didn't have good enough credit.

As for scholarships, the competition is very fierce and in my experience, it isn't always about how good you were in high school... it's about what boxes you tick. A lot of my friends didn't go to college because they simply couldn't get the money to go unless they committed themselves to thousands of dollars in student loans, which they felt they simply could not do.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Beauty Mark ITA with Stargazer. Those stats are easily skewed. And what are they counting on spending on your education? There are plenty of things I consider educational or potentially educational that I may not readily factor into the cost, like the internet or books I read out of pleasure.

I think the stats are taken by looking at the growth in consumer spending in the beauty industry, including cosmetics, plastic surgery, cosmetic dentistry, etc. Once you add all those up, it probably does add up to spending more on beauty supplies than on education, per head. But it doesn't take into account why people invest in one and not the other. I think it's a bit obvious - one is cheap, readily available and used throughout the whole lifetime (as Stargazer pointed out), while the other is extraordinarily expensive, far more difficult to come by for many, but probably racks up a smaller total cost over the course of one's lifetime. (Unless you were a big ole geek like me, looking for extra punishment, and took three degrees instead of just one, in which case I reckon I could buck the trend!)

 

[SparklingWaves]

How do you not pay for an undergraduate degree? I am still paying for my student loans & will be for years to come? I wasn't eligible for grants.

I was thinking about this. I don't know many people with PhD's. I know some that are working toward that goal. I know several people with ADs. I know a few with a MD.

The mass majority of people don't have a higher education. More and more people are dropping out of High School. Each state keeps two books of stats about their drop out rate - one for the No Child Left Behind Program and the actual drop out rate. The actual drop out rate in each state is higher than people realize.

Americans have a stereotype as being undereducated.

20/20 had done a special on the education system in American and how poor it is compared to other countries.

So, are American more concerned about their vanity than their education? It's quite possible.

 

[*Stargazer*]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SparklingWaves How do you not pay for an undergraduate degree?

Full academic scholarship. Parents with money. Full athletic scholarship. GI Bill. Service academies. ROTC Scholarships. Just to name a few.

I had the first two. I probably won't pay for my Masters degree, either. I'm fortunate to have parents who paid for my sister and I to go to college. As soon as my youngest is in preschool, I'm going to start working on a Masters in Art History and I'm pretty sure my father will volunteer to pay for whatever I can't get scholarships to cover.

 

[Simply Elegant]

I think that study is so biased and misleading overall. Lots of people aren't going to take the time to actually go through it and look for limitations and just accept that and think that because people spend more on beauty products than education that it's more important.

I go to a good university, but it's in Canada, and the costs of going to school here are so much more reasonable than in the US so I know I spend way more on beauty products. Even without the scholarship that I had, I would still spend more on beauty products.

 

[M.A.C. head.]

School is not for everyone, so if a woman is spending her own money how she wants and she's happy, who cares if it's on make up?

 

[M.A.C. head.]

I need to add something:

EDUCATION SHOULD BE FREE. It's ridiculous that people are up to their eyeballs in debt because they wanted to "get an education". I value education very much, but I don't believe in the institutionalized hype.

 

[athena123]

Baahh! I find studies like this distasteful in the same sense as a preliminary study that tells me I eat too much chocolate or not enough, drink too much coffee or not enough, blah de blah de blah

What costs are factored into education vs. beauty? Is all the $$ we spend improving our knowledge outside of a classroom included? No, I didn't read the entire article sorry if this question was already asked and answered.

I would ask the same of how much we spend on beauty; if you lump health in with beauty as I do, then it could arguably be higher. I'm talking food, vitamins, supplements, gym memberships, sports equipment, personal toiletry, clothing and everything that my own personal idea of beauty entails. When I look at it that way, yeah I probably spend more on "beauty" than I do on my knowledge but that doesn't mean I place less value on intelligence by any means.

 

[elegant-one]

There are some days where I feel like I've spent equal amounts on both

 

[SparklingWaves]

I checked into a lot of things. I researched until my eyes were sore. I got $0.00.

It was so weird. All of my siblings were in the same boat.

It must be on our family crest.

That's great you are getting some help. It is defiantly worth it. I wish you all the best.

 

[Beauty Mark]

In terms of financing your undergraduate degree, there are ways of cutting the costs. Some people do a year or two at a community college, then they go onto a 4 year school. Some people opt to not go to a prestigious school and go to a state school

I'm not pretending that it's easy or fun, but it is possible.

As to whether Americans value beauty over intelligence... who knows?

 

[gabi1129]

lol. i dont know much about women over seas but it seems everyone, not just women will do anything to look beautiful and young. I say beauty comes and goes. Your education never will! but whatever make you happy! thats why i like both!

 

[Babylard]

hmm.. statistics can be goofy... i quote my statistics prof "whats the difference between a statician and a mathmatician? a statician can say whatever he wants!" (nobody really laughed until my prof asked us if it was funny)

im not american, but i can honestly say that the amount of money i spend on a year's education can buy me a heck of a lot of MAC + beauty products.... tuition and supplies are soo expensive *tear* if i was going to be a student for the rest of my life, it would be very expensive.

i think the comparison is kind of unfair. we arent gonna be students for our entire lives, but of course we are going to buy beauty products for our entire lives. the products will add up and surpass the amount of money we spent on tuition.. duh :/ i mean.. god knows im not gonna be in school when im 50, but i will be on my deathbed wearing my favourite lipstick

so all i can say is, but of course

 

[Beauty Mark]

Quote:

god knows im not gonna be in school when im 50, but i will be on my deathbed wearing my favourite lipstick

And it doesn't mean you won't stop learning. Going to museums, checking out books from the library...

There are so many free and wonderfully educational things available to us, even if they aren't going to college. There's really no free makeup.

 

[mintcollective1]

i don't think that the person on npr was saying that people are wrong or right for spending this money...it was actually a side note on a conversation about a book written recenty about a family living carbon free for a year.
whew. i believe this topic struck a nerve with some.