The double bind of beauty work: Looking real in a fake-perfect world

From weight-loss drugs to AI-enhanced beauty filters, modern consumers are under constant pressure to improve their appearance – yet risk being judged for trying too hard.

So how much change is too much?

Rosanna Smith, associate professor of marketing at Gies College of Business, looks at the balance between looking one’s best and being authentic in her conceptual review article, “The Double Bind of Beauty Work.”  The article was published in the Consumer Psychology Review and co-authored with Linyun Yang (University of South Carolina) and Adriana Samper (Arizona State University).

“On one hand, people are pressured to meet certain expected beauty standards and are often judged poorly if they fall short,” Smith said. “But as they try to meet these expectations, they risk being judged for going too far—by being seen as fake or not true to themselves.”

What is the “double bind of beauty work”?

Smith earned a bachelor’s degree in art, but an interest in combining her passion for psychology and aesthetics led her to pivot her career and complete both a master’s and a PhD in marketing from Yale. Her research has long focused on consumer motivations for authenticity and how it translates to products, brands, and people. Today, Smith has become an expert in both authenticity and beauty in marketing.

“The motivation for pursuing the intersection of authenticity and beauty is that, despite how much consumers are spending on their physical appearance, this area has been somewhat neglected in research,” she said. “I don’t think the desire for beauty is treated with as much rigor and respect as it deserves. What else could have predicted the rise of Ozempic as an aesthetic tool, for instance?”

The double bind of beauty work framework integrates empirical research from top marketing journals, including Smith’s own published work. By synthesizing this research, the team identifies two key forces that shape how beauty work—defined as the effort people put toward their appearance—is evaluated.

As attractiveness is widely valued, certain beauty standards become so ingrained that they are treated as expected. People who fail to perform the expected beauty work designed to meet these standards often face negative social judgment, forming one side of the double bind.

“Although we claim to value naturalness, ironically, being truly natural in the context of appearance can lead to judgments of laziness or even disgust,” Smith said. “As a result, people feel compelled to put effort into their appearance to avoid such judgments.”

At the same time, excessive effort carries its own social costs. On the other side of the double bind, consumers who invest too much in their appearance may be perceived as inauthentic or vain.

This tension is illustrated in Smith’s 2022 study on the “no-makeup makeup” trend, which examined how women sought to enhance their appearance with makeup while still appearing as though they were not wearing makeup at all.

While much of the bind may appear to apply to women, men are not immune. In fact, men may be particularly motivated to conceal their beauty work. The brand Just for Men, for instance, offers a product called “Touch of Gray,” designed for men who don’t want their hair to go fully gray or go fully colored because doing so would appear unnatural.

Why beauty and authenticity collide in modern marketing

In this paper, Smith explores how the two sides of the double bind -- expected beauty work and excessive beauty work affect the marketplace.

Marketers are incentivized to increase what is perceived as expected beauty work since stricter beauty standards can lead consumers to view their natural bodies as insufficient, thus increasing consumption.

However, marketers can also promote positive messaging that reduces the negative associations with beauty work. In Smith’s 2021 published study, companies that framed beauty work (e.g., makeup use) as a form of self-expression reduced perceptions that such practices are inauthentic. Instead, beauty work was seen as consistent with, rather than contradictory to, one’s true self.

Smith notes that the moderators of the double bind are different based on gender, age, and ethnicity. For instance, it’s a lot harder to look naturally young the older you get.

“Our beauty standards are tightly linked to youth,” Smith said. “Older consumers are thus often subject to more expected work because they are further from the standard.”

How does the double bind intersect with social class?

In the United States, most plastic surgery is not covered by insurance; in contrast, countries such as Brazil subsidize plastic surgery for low-income populations, acknowledging the social and economic disadvantages of being excluded from an appearance-focused society.

“One could argue that having the ability to improve your appearance is increasingly becoming an essential—almost as fundamental as food,” she said.

Smith is focusing much of her future research on AI and how it is constantly evolving beauty expectations.

“I care about AI because it presents images of perfected people that continually raise expectations,” says Smith, “I do this work in general because I care about the struggles that everyday people have, particularly women. It’s a hard time to deal with the constantly evolving beauty expectations in an age of perfect AI appearances.”

Ultimately, she said, people do make inferences about others based on appearance.

“We can’t look directly into each other’s souls, but we use physical appearance to make inferences about who someone is,” Smith said. “This includes not only someone’s natural form, but also the choices they make about their appearance—their clothes, their hair, and even their glasses. These are the cues people use to determine whether someone is their true self.”