Part 2: The Confidence Cost — Selling Doubt Back to Women

From Sydney Sweeny's “great jeans” to the Ozempic boom, the beauty economy turns insecurity into profit — and exclusivity into power

A four-part Op-ed series on beauty, labor, and power

What began as a promise of liberation — “body positivity,” “self-care,” “empowerment” — has quietly evolved into one of the most profitable feedback loops in capitalism. From GLP-1 injectables repackaged as lifestyle choices to beauty conglomerates led by men defining femininity for the masses, women are trapped in a cycle of consumption disguised as choice.

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This past summer, Sydney Sweeney appeared on screens across the United States, reclining on the floor in a pair of American Eagle jeans and gazing seductively into the camera. “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color,” she intoned in her signature, breathy cadence before delivering the punchline: “My jeans are blue.” What was intended as a playful pun on “jeans” and “genes” instead landed with a thud—its languid tone and genetic framing echoing older advertising tropes that link beauty, desirability, and even value to idealized inherited traits.

The backlash to Sydney Sweeney’s recent American Eagle campaign — cheekily titled “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” — revealed how advertising still trades on the cultural shorthand of “ideal” attractiveness and heteronormative sexuality to sell ordinary products. What was marketed as a lighthearted play on words instead drew criticism for its subliminal evocation of whiteness, selective beauty, and even eugenic undertones.  The controversy underscores how modern advertising continues to leverage women’s bodies and genetic “perfection” as aspirational symbols, blurring the line between empowerment and exclusion.

For decades, research has shown that advertising plays a powerful role in shaping women’s self-perception—often to their detriment.  Traditional advertising has long reinforced gender stereotypes by depicting women as homemakers, caregivers, or sexualized figures whose worth is tied to appearance.  A 2018 study analyzed 101 beauty advertisements, nearly  half of which featured sexualized imagery—through seductive expressions, suggestive postures, or partial nudity. It also found that fragmented “body-part” depictions were far more common than full-body images, reinforcing objectification and social comparison. 

A systematic review of 95 studies conducted in 2025 on the psychological impacts of beauty advertising tactics found that advertising continues to have a significant negative impact on women’s psychological well-being—lowering self-esteem, increasing body dissatisfaction and self-objectification, and reinforcing gender stereotypes.  While recent campaigns have attempted to challenge these tropes through “femvertising” — ads that promote empowerment and inclusivity, like Dove’s Real Beauty or Always’ Like a Girl — scholars remain divided on their impact. Critics argue that such campaigns often repackage empowerment as a product to be bought, keeping women’s confidence tethered to consumer culture rather than genuine liberation (Gill & Elias, 2014). 

Who Profits from Beauty?

While women are the primary consumers of beauty products, the industry’s leadership tells a different story. A 2022 report revealed that more than 65% of executive committee seats in the beauty industry are held by men, and 51% of companies have no racial or cultural diversity on their executive committees. This predominantly white male-dominated leadership structure influences product development, marketing campaigns, and definitions of beauty that prioritize profit over genuine representation.

Furthermore, only four of the largest beauty companies are led by women, highlighting the significant gender disparity at the highest levels of decision-making. This raises a deeper, more insidious question: who defines beauty? If the majority of companies selling beauty products are owned and operated by men, then it is these same men — often disconnected from the lived experiences of the women they profit from — who are shaping the standards women are expected to meet. As Katie Gatti Tassin, money expert and author of Rich Girl Nation, observes: “Beauty can shapeshift to accommodate whatever self-aware hangups an easy mark like me might harbor… a self-acceptance rollercoaster reduced, once again, to a single credit entry on Bernard Arnault’s infinite profit-and-loss statement.” Wrinkles become “problems,” gray hair becomes “damage,” natural texture becomes something to be “tamed.” Beauty ideals are manufactured in male-dominated boardrooms, where women’s insecurities are extracted, analyzed, and repackaged into needs designed to be monetized.

When beauty is defined in spaces dominated by those who do not bear its daily costs, it ceases to be about self-expression and becomes a tool of control.

The Ozempic Craze

In her Guardian essay last August, journalist Rose Stokes writes candidly about the new pressures of what she calls “Shrinking Girl Summer.” Despite years of embracing body positivity, she admits to feeling left behind as friends, colleagues, and influencers around her began losing weight through GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. “Everyone’s getting smaller except me,” she confesses, capturing the uneasy dissonance of a movement that once celebrated self-acceptance now giving way to medicalized self-erasure.

By 2022, these injectables had moved beyond the medical sphere and into the mainstream. Once prescribed for diabetes, they became status symbols of discipline and self-optimization — a pharmacological shortcut to thinness marketed as wellness. As Business of Fashion observes, the wellness industry quickly “wanted in,” launching copycat supplements, skincare lines, and aesthetic treatments that promised similar results without the syringe.

The pharmaceutical industry soon recognized what the beauty industry had always known: insecurity is profitable. The Washington Post reports that GLP-1 marketers have begun courting plus-size and body-positivity influencers to destigmatize medical weight loss and expand its reach. Across pop culture, a wave of high-profile transformations — from Adele and Rebel Wilson to Lizzo and Mindy Kaling — signals how widespread the “Ozempic body” has become. Some credit lifestyle changes; others openly acknowledge using GLP-1s. Either way, the result is the same: a new beauty ideal defined by medical intervention.

As Fashionista notes, “GLP-1 beauty” has become a marketing category of its own, with brands releasing products to “support” users’ thinner faces and looser skin — proof that even side effects can be monetized. Far from signaling liberation, the Ozempic boom extends the logic of beauty capitalism: under the rhetoric of health and discipline, women are encouraged to shrink themselves in the name of social acceptability. What began as a treatment for chronic illness has become a cultural barometer of control, success, and desirability.

The Economy of Aesthetics

The beauty and pharmaceutical industries aren’t the only ones profiting from women’s perceived inadequacies. Retailers and lifestyle brands have all learned the same lesson: low self-esteem sells. From pastel-hued cleaning products promising domestic bliss to color-coded planners designed to fix your “messy” life, marketing plays directly to women’s insecurities. According to Harvard Business Review, companies targeting women generate enormous profits by identifying emotional “pain points” and selling products as aspirational solutions — offering not just a cream or a candle, but the illusion of control, calm, and self-worth.

Retail therapy, often framed as a harmless indulgence, is actually part of a larger system that monetizes emotional distress. Psychology Today notes that women are significantly more likely than men to engage in emotional spending, especially when grappling with anxiety, sadness, or low self-esteem. Advertisers know this — and they leverage it. Whether it’s a face mask to “reset” after a tough week or a new outfit to feel “worthy” of being seen, the message is clear: Buy your way to better.

Instagram accelerates the pressure. In the age of the aesthetic lifestyle, even everyday items are marketed for their photogenic potential. Vox reports that women are encouraged to curate their homes, wardrobes, meals, and even personalities for the algorithm. Self-worth becomes performative — and profitable. As one Guardian article put it, anti-aging ads no longer just suggest improvement; they frame aging itself as a personal failure, a war to be won with the right serum. Even moments of resistance — opting for “natural beauty” products, “minimalist” routines, or self-acceptance trends — are swiftly absorbed into the commercial machine. What looks like empowerment is often simply a more sophisticated marketing funnel.

But this isn’t just about stuff. It’s about silence. Research links higher self-objectification to greater support for the gender status quo and lower engagement in gender-based social activism. An experiment that temporarily induced self-objectification lowered willingness to challenge sexist norms and reduced willingness to take collective action—suggesting self-objectification functions to maintain gender inequality by dampening activist motivation. A recent review titled The Psychological Mechanism of Self‑objectification: the interaction between sociocultural pressures and the self‑system (2025) shows how self-objectification harms cognitive, emotional and self-regulatory capacities — suggesting women preoccupied with appearance may have less mental bandwidth for other activities.  A woman who is constantly fixing, perfecting, comparing — is a woman who has less time, energy, and confidence to question power structures. She’s less likely to speak up, push back, or lead. 

Aesthetic control doesn’t end with beauty or lifestyle. It seeps into deeper roles — how women live, love, mother, and serve. Just as the market sells self-worth in jars and curated feeds, society sells purpose through sacrifice. The promise of peace, fulfillment, and feminine “rightness” now comes wrapped not only in a serum or scented candle, but in the image of the perfect mother or submissive wife. These aren’t just marketing trends. They’re cultural directives that shape women’s ambitions, bodies, and desires to align with systems that profit from their restraint.

If confidence is the asset we’re sold through beauty, then service is the interest we keep paying once that illusion fades. In Part 3, we’ll trace how the performance evolves — when youth and polish no longer suffice, femininity is rebranded as selflessness. Because once a woman’s worth is no longer defined by how she looks, it’s measured by how much she gives.