Perpetuating Beauty Ideals through Health and Beauty Claims in TV Promotional Segment

Abstract

Health and beauty have been proposed as mutually inclusive physical and psychological constructs, mediated by one’s own personal emotional and spiritual state of well-being. While it has been widely accepted that health and beauty are interrelated in the sense that beauty reflects one’s inner health, there has been a worrying trend in which health is exploited in peddling beauty products and vice versa. In understanding how health has been commoditized in the beauty market, this study examines the manner health in the name of beauty, have been constructed in propagating beauty ideals and hegemonic values in a popular daily television program in Malaysia, Wanita Hari Ini (WHI). The findings concluded that within the prevalent capitalist hegemony, health had been turned into an apparatus in selling beauty. For the product owners, it is not about promoting health in gaining beauty, but rather about capitalizing on health because it can sell beauty.