Are we becoming too preoccupied with beauty?
With Professor Heather Widdows
Removing body hair, dying hair, buffing nails, applying make-up. There’s nothing new about people caring about how they look. There’s nothing new about people trying to enhance their appearance with cosmetics and other products. What is new, according to Heather Widdows, is the degree to which society expects us to pursue the beauty ideal and the pressure to conform.
Thanks to Oxford University’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and the Journal of Practical Ethics for help in setting up this interview
Professor Widdows' forthcoming book is Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal (Princeton University Press) which can be preordered on Amazon and she co-runs the Beauty Demands blog.