The Beauty Industry and the Military Have Long Been Good Friends

Hello! Trying something new today - now that Substack has finally integrated Tiktok properly onto this platform. I want to talk to you a little about the long relationship between war and beauty companies, using some news from Innisfree as an example. You can watch my explainer, here:

@arabellesicardiJust a quick explainer on my fav themes - beauty and terror ☠️ lon live my tumblr tag for this. I cover this subject in my substack newsletter for paid subscribers also. 🫶🏼 ok bye have a good day #beautynews #beautyandterror #beautyhistory #beautytok

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Darcie Draudt @darciedraudt

Korea has upped its game on marketing skin care to men. Innisfree is offering a gift set that includes CAMOUFLAGE CREAM for sensitive skin that has SPF for men doing their mandatory service: innisfree.com/kr/ko/ProductV…

August 3rd 2022

2 Retweets10 Likes

This news might raise eyebrows if you aren’t aware of the deep connection between beauty companies and the military, but it’s a relationship that you can find in pretty much any country, not just South Korea. A lot of cosmetic procedures and products were created in wartime settings, plastic surgery being the main and obvious one. Military exchanges during WWII are one of the main reasons some of your favorite beauty products (including Chanel perfume) managed to survive a world war that threw production and material supply into chaos - you know, because everyone everywhere was being bombed. Quite a bit of my book research was just on WWII era beauty, so I could go on forever and I won’t.

But I’ll link you to the explainer I mention in the TikTok if you’d like to read more:

• The Business of Blending In: How a Hollywood Makeup Artist Helps the Miliary, TOPIC

My own writing on these themes:

• A Brief History of Makeup as Protest and Power, Teen VOGUE

• A History of Lipstick as Warfare, The Cut

• Seductive Doom: Spas as Statecraft, REAL LIFE (which is all about the relationship between wellness design and the military’s torture techniques… light stuff)

• A Shockingly Gruesome History of Beauty Marks, Racked (RIP)

• A DEEP CUT: Is This a Beauty Tool or a Torture Device?, BuzzFeed (HAHAHA)

As for my own take on this news, well -

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I’ve got nothing against Innisfree rolling out this kind of product. (Full disclosure, they are a one-time consulting client of mine.) I just wanted to provide some historical context to this kind of decision. Both beauty and war are very profitable businesses and in fact some of the biggest beauty companies in the world are so successful because of their decisions regarding war and politics, not in spite of them. As a Mary Kay business presentation once stated (and was subsequently quoted in The New York Times: “If your business is not involved in politics, then politics will run your business.”)

Stay cool,

Arabelle