Editor’s Note

Afew years ago, my skin — which had never really been problematic — broke out in adult acne, and it knocked my confidence a bit. During that time, someone I loved very dearly said to me: “You look like a Lunch Bar.” Ouch doesn’t even begin to describe how wounded I was, and possibly continue to be. (Okay, I’m still hurt, and haven’t eaten a Lunch Bar since.)

A year or so before that, I showed up to work without wearing even a stroke of mascara. A colleague I got along with quite well looked me in the eye and said: “Don’t you ever show up to work again without wearing makeup. You look sick!” (She said it in Zulu, which somehow made it sting even more.)

Since then, I have been obsessed with my skin and makeup. Of course I know better than to spend so much of my time and money on something as “silly” as looks, and I would love to tell you that vanity doesn’t impact my selfesteem, but that would be untrue.

I went from spending my teenage years buying into the scam that “a girl can either be pretty or smart but never both” (I chose smart) to obsessively trying to prove that of course we can be both if we choose to.

And now I’m drowning in books, sociopolitical discourse and research links as much as I’m drowning in concealer, makeup brushes and sheet masks.

I’m not alone.

The shape-shifting scourge that is “beauty” has influenced many a woman’s feelings, behaviour and wallets — the first two since time immemorial, the third since we were allowed to have our own wallets (although they’re kind of empty because of that pesky little thing called the gender pay gap). It’s a topic that won’t, for better or worse, get old (which is one thing women still aren’t allowed to do).

So this week we’re talking about, you guessed it, beauty. But we’re not necessarily having a philosophical discussion about the meaning of beauty — there aren’t enough pages in the world for that.

In our main story, Andrea Nagel gives us a brief history of beauty and shows us how the age of the Instagram influencer has been a long time coming; Bryony Gordon misses the days when looking like yourself was considered “normal” rather than “brave”; and Yolisa Mkele claims that men are also victims of beauty standards (To quote Marcia Brady from the Brady Bunch: “Sure, Jan”).

And in a touching piece, Claire Keeton speaks to a tattoo artist who helps cancer survivors restore what they lost by tattooing new nipples onto their breasts.

The point we’re making is that whether we give in to it or not, the pressure to be considered “beautiful” (the definition of which the goalposts are forever shifting) touches almost all of us in one way or another.

There’s nothing wrong with a little (or a lot) of vanity.

But we need to control our vanity rather than let our vanity control us.