The beauty industry is worth over $500 billion. With the majority of its consumer being women, the industry is on a rapid upward trajectory as women continue to gain more and more economic power. Time has changed, yet cosmetic advertising stay stuck in the last century, sending out offensive and harmful messages to women in order to sell beauty products. This web design project is inspired by the worst ads that I have seen in Vietnam, my home country. The point of the project is not to condemn, but to raise the problem, and ask the question:
Is it ethical to bully women into buying our products?
Concept
In recent years, many brands have taken advantage of new technology to build interactive websites that encourage direct participation from users, creating an engaging, fun, and memorable shopping experience. This is a concept for a fake beauty brand's interactive website.
“Pretty B.S.” is a fake up-and-coming beauty brand with a website that introduces its products and services through games. The website combines outright offensive messages with bright and colorful visuals.
There are 3 games for 3 products in total. While the games load, the users are shown a cacophony of demeaning and harmful messages, inspired by some of the worst taglines and hashtags found in beauty ads. The twist is that these games are unwinnable no matter what the user does.
Onboarding Screen
This is what the users see first when they go to the website, which introduces the fake brand.
The Homepage
As the users enter the world of Pretty B.S., they'll see 3 products and 3 doors behind them. Behind each door is a game that is connected to the story of the products.
The rigged chess game – Introducing Pretty B.S. Whitening Facial Cream
Background
The skin-lightening industry was valued at $4.8 billion in 2017, and projected to be growing exponentially. In Vietnam, skin-lightening products are more popular than ever as the demand for whiteness grows, due in no small part to skin care ads that dominate every household’s TV screens, women’s magazines, and social media.
Multinational brands spend their massive ad budget on perpetuating and amplifying the idea that light skin color is connected to success, happiness, and power, to cash in on the growing middle class in Vietnam.
These ads mainly feature women of Caucasian descent, or light skinned local models and celebrities living their best lives thanks to their skin color. The story for each commercial maybe different, but they all allude to white as a beauty standard and dark skin as an undesirable flaw. These messages have been spread to the point that there’s no escaping them if you live in Vietnam.
In a Southeast Asian country where a large portion of the population are born with skin color ranging from light brown to olive, do we have the right to force them to change an integral part of their identity purely for the sake of selling products?
Product Introduction Interaction
Concept
Users are asked to play a game inspired by chess and go, where they have to avoid losing their chess pieces to the white side and the board. However, they cannot win because the system is rigged against them. In level 1, after the user place their first black chess piece, they will meet a rain of white chess pieces that immediately capture their black chess piece and turn it white. In level 2, no matter where they place their chess piece, their chess pieces will be absorbed by the white board. In level 3, their chess piece will turn white as soon as it hits the board, leading to game over.
Concept Mockup
The unwinnable race – Introducing Pretty B.S. Cushion
Background
Vietnamese women are taught from a young age that marriage is considered a priority above all else in a woman’s life. Those who don’t conform face constant pressure from society, especially as they reach their 30s. They are often deemed to be selfish, abnormal, too picky, or just wrong in some way that makes them undesirable to men.
Preying off women’s fear of judgment and discrimination, beauty brands roll out ads to further strengthen these existing patriarchal ideas, urging women to beautify themselves with cosmetics to snatch a man before their expiration date. They perpetuate the idea that women over 30 are leftover goods, and that women have only themselves to blame for their unmarried status.
Meanwhile, married women also face misogyny in a different way. They are expected to sacrifice their career for their families, while the same is not asked of their husbands. They are mainly in charge of household chores, taking care of children, their husbands’ parents and their own parents, while many of them work full time. At work, they are often passed over for promotion because companies don’t want moms who can’t dedicate all their time to their work. If they somehow manage to take care of their families while still advancing to high levels in their career (often sacrificing their health in the process), people always question whether they’re being good mothers and wives, which, again, is a question never posed to men.
Vietnamese women are taught to think of marriage as the ultimate prize in the race of life, but they lose whether they get that prize or not. Is it fair to perpetuate these sexist ideals that trap women in a lose-lose situation, for the sake of sales number?
Product Introduction Interaction
Concept
Users are asked to participate in a race where they have to avoid obstacles on the way. They’ll be trapped by a glass case if they hit one of the rings. The twist is that they’ll lose regardless of what they do, because when the countdown timer above their head reaches 30, they will also be trapped by a glass case and the game is over.
Concept Mockup
The building blocks that keep breaking – Introducing Pretty B.S. Plastic Surgery Services
Background
The phrase “the fair sex” is still accepted and used widely in Vietnam to refer to women. “Be pretty” is the mandate issued to all women the moment they come into this world. If a woman doesn’t measure up to Vietnamese society’s very narrow definition of beauty, she becomes the object of discrimination and ridicule.
To level the playing field for themselves, many women resort to using plastic surgery to change their appearance to fit the prevailing beauty standards despite all risks and side effects. Many of these women have become victims of cosmetic surgery malpractice that left them disfigured, deteriorated their health, or worse, killed them.
Cosmetics ads helps to uphold these unrealistic and unfair standards by constantly churning out images of heavily photoshopped models and telling real women that they must do whatever they can to be pretty, no matter the cost. The worst plastic surgery ad that I’ve seen features celebrities telling women to hate themselves, and that they should use that self-hatred as motivation to fix any flaw they find on their body. Do we have the right to bully women into buying our services?
Product Introduction Interaction
Concept
Users are asked to build a structure with blocks coming from above. They can move the blocks up and down using the up and down arrows until they're satisfied with how their structure look. The twist is that they won't even have a chance to build anything, because soon after the blocks come down, they crack and break into pieces. There is nothing the users can do to retrieve the broken blocks. The game is over when the last piece comes down and breaks.
Concept Mockup
Conclusion
The project was created at first as a way to relieve my anger from being bombarded by beauty brands' ads, telling me that every inch on my body is wrong. It started out as something very personal. As I did more research on the subject of cosmetic advertising, and speak to more women, I realized that I was not the only one feeling mistreated by the beauty industry.
As a woman and a creative working in advertising, I believe that we can and must do better by Vietnamese women. It is not just the right thing to do, but it's also good business. The world is changing. As women in the West use their purchasing power to demand brands to improve on their messages, it's only a matter of time until this wave reaches Vietnam and smashes everything in its way. It is high time for us to reassess our biases and prejudices that have influenced the way we advertise to women, and improve diversity at the decision making table.
