Cosmetics Selling Quotes

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Our society does reward beauty on the outside over health on the inside. Women must not be blamed for choosing short-term beauty "fixes" that harm our long-term health, since our life spans are inverted under the beauty myth, and there is no great social or economic incentive for women to live a long time. A thin young woman with precancerous lungs [who smokes to stay thin] is more highly rewarded socially that a hearty old crone. Spokespeople sell women the Iron Maiden [an intrinsically unattainable standard of beauty used to punish women for their failure to achieve and conform to it]and name her "Health": if public discourse were really concerned with women's health, it would turn angrily upon this aspect of the beauty myth.
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
Man has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of war, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation – all these things make him more and more venal. The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can’t afford ideals. He has to buy food for his family. In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can’t expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can’t have quality with mass production. You don’t want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence. Mass production couldn’t sell its goods next year unless it made what is sold this year look unfashionable a year from now. We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk.
Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6))
Spokespeople sell women the Iron Maiden and name her "Health": if public discourse were really concerned with women's health, it would turn angrily upon this aspect of the beauty myth.
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
Everyday, you get home from the shops with a bag of cat food and bin-liners and realise that, yet again, you failed to have cosmetic surgery, book a cheap weekend in Paris, change your name to something more glamorous, buy the fifth series of The Sopranos, divorce your spouse, sell up and move to Devon, or adopt a child from Guatemala.
Lynne Truss (Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door)
Publicity is effective precisely because it feeds upon the real. Clothes, food, cars, cosmetics, baths, sunshine are real things to be enjoyed in themselves. Publicity begins by working on a natural appetite for pleasure. But it cannot offer the real object of pleasure and there is no convincing substitute for a pleasure in that pleasure's own terms. The more convincingly publicity conveys the pleasure of bathing in a warm, distant sea, the more the spectator-buyer will become aware that he is hundreds of miles away from that sea and the more remote the chance of bathing in it will seem to him. This is why publicity can never really afford to be about the product or opportunity it is proposing to the buyer who is not yet enjoying it. Publicity is never a celebration of a pleasure-in-itself. Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The image then makes him envious of himself as he might be. Yet what makes this self-which-he-might-be enviable? The envy of others. Publicity is about social relations, not objects. Its promise is not of pleasure, but of happiness : happiness as judged from the outside by others. The happiness of being envied is glamour. Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest - if you do, you will become less enviable. ... ... The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product. She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself. One could put this another way : the publicity images steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product. (P. 128)
John Berger (Ways of Seeing)
Do you know that besides our Tania, I don’t know any other women who work outside the home?” The women at the table seconded with murmurs. The men glanced at Alexander and then at their dirty forks. Tatiana stared at Alexander sitting across from her, and he gave her a look that said, You want to handle this one? All right, Shura, I’ll handle it. “Well, Karen,” said Tatiana, putting down her fork and folding her hands, “I know I’m not the only nurse in my hospital. There are 194 other nurses, all women. And Anthony’s teachers—all women. The librarians—women. Oh, and the tall ladies selling you makeup at the cosmetics counter at Macy’s, women, too. Maybe,” Tatiana said, “you don’t know any women working outside the home, because they’re too busy working.
Paullina Simons (The Summer Garden (The Bronze Horseman, #3))
Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon and an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur, once said about his company: “In the factory Revlon manufactures cosmetics, but in the store Revlon sells hope.” The commodity is cosmetics; the product, hope.
Michael E. Gerber (The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It)
commodity. Understanding the difference between the two is what creating a great business is all about. Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon and an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur, once said about his company: “In the factory Revlon manufactures cosmetics, but in the store Revlon sells hope.” The commodity is cosmetics; the product, hope.
Michael E. Gerber (The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It)
Women are the only “oppressed” group to share the same parents as the “oppressor”; to be born into the middle class and upper class as frequently as the “oppressor”; to own more of the culture’s luxury items than the “oppressor”; the only “oppressed” group whose “unpaid labor” enables them to buy most of the fifty billion dollars’ worth of cosmetics sold each year; the only “oppressed” group that spends more on high fashion, brand-name clothing than their “oppressors”; the only “oppressed” group that watches more TV during every time category than their “oppressors.”33 Feminists often compare marriage to slavery—with the female as slave. It seems like an insult to women’s intelligence to suggest that marriage is female slavery when we know it is 25 million American females34 who read an average of twenty romance novels per month,35 often with the fantasy of marriage. Are feminists suggesting that 25 million American women have “enslavement” fantasies because they fantasize marriage? Is this the reason Danielle Steele is the best-selling author in the world?
Warren Farrell (The Myth of Male Power)
cheeks quite vigorously before one enters a room.” Thaddeus looked grim and irritated. “This is all rubbish, and well you know it. The makers of cosmetics and beauty aids do very nicely in England. Do not try to tell me that they are making their fortunes selling their products solely to actresses, prostitutes and the occasional French tourist.” Leona sipped her tea, silently deferring to Victoria. “Very well, Thaddeus,” Victoria said, tight-lipped. “I will allow that, in truth,
Amanda Quick (The Third Circle (Arcane Society, #4))
Nature vs. nurture is part of this—and then there is what I think of as anti-nurturing—the ways we in a western/US context are socialized to work against respecting the emergent processes of the world and each other: We learn to disrespect Indigenous and direct ties to land. We learn to be quiet, polite, indirect, and submissive, not to disturb the status quo. We learn facts out of context of application in school. How will this history, science, math show up in our lives, in the work of growing community and home? We learn that tests and deadlines are the reasons to take action. This puts those with good short-term memories and a positive response to pressure in leadership positions, leading to urgency-based thinking, regardless of the circumstance. We learn to compete with each other in a scarcity-based economy that denies and destroys the abundant world we actually live in. We learn to deny our longings and our skills, and to do work that occupies our hours without inspiring our greatness. We learn to manipulate each other and sell things to each other, rather than learning to collaborate and evolve together. We learn that the natural world is to be manicured, controlled, or pillaged to support our consumerist lives. Even the natural lives of our bodies get medicated, pathologized, shaved or improved upon with cosmetic adjustments. We learn that factors beyond our control determine the quality of our lives—something as random as which skin, gender, sexuality, ability, nation, or belief system we are born into sets a path for survival and quality of life. In the United States specifically, though I see this most places I travel, we learn that we only have value if we can produce—only then do we earn food, home, health care, education. Similarly, we learn our organizations are only as successful as our fundraising results, whether the community impact is powerful or not. We learn as children to swallow our tears and any other inconvenient emotions, and as adults that translates into working through red flags, value differences, pain, and exhaustion. We learn to bond through gossip, venting, and destroying, rather than cultivating solutions together. Perhaps the most egregious thing we are taught is that we should just be really good at what’s already possible, to leave the impossible alone.
Adrienne Maree Brown (Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds)
Eaton was the original upbeat undertaker. His goal was “to erase all signs of mourning.” Forest Lawn was the genesis of some of the American funeral industry’s most beloved death-denial euphemisms. Death became “leave-taking,” a corpse became “the loved one,” “the remains,” or “Mr. So-and-So,” who, after elaborate embalming and cosmetic treatment, awaited burial in a private, well-furnished “slumber” room. An article in a 1959 issue of Time called Forest Lawn the “Disneyland of Death,” and described Eaton as starting his day off by leading his staff in prayer and reminding them that “they were selling immortality.” There were, of course, limits to who would be allowed to purchase immortality. The same article tells us that “Negroes and Chinese were regretfully refused.
Caitlin Doughty (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory)
It is important here not to confuse publicity with the pleasure or benefits to be enjoyed from the things it advertises. Publicity is effective precisely because it feeds upon the real. Clothes, food, cars, cosmetics, baths, sunshine are real things to be enjoyed in themselves. Publicity begins by working on a natural appetite for pleasure. But it cannot offer the real object of pleasure and there is no convincing substitute for a pleasure in that pleasure's own terms. The more convincingly publicity conveys the pleasure of bathing in a warm, distant sea, the more the spectator-buyer will become aware that he is hundreds of miles away from that sea and the more remote the chance of bathing in it will seem to him. This is why publicity can never really afford to be about the product or opportunity it is proposing to the buyer who is not yet enjoying it. Publicity is never a celebration of a pleasure-in-itself. Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The image then makes him envious of himself as he might be. Yet what makes this self-which-he-might-be enviable? The envy of others. Publicity is about social relations, not objects. Its promise is not of pleasure, but of happiness : happiness as judged from the outside by others. The happiness of being envied is glamour. Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest - if you do, you will become less enviable. ....... The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product. She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself. One could put this another way : the publicity images steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product.
John Berger (Ways of Seeing)
If you had an Internet connection and lived in North America at the time, you may have seen it. Vasquez is the man behind the “Double Rainbow” video, which at last check had 38 million views. In the clip, Vasquez pans his camera back and forth to show twin rainbows he’d discovered outside his house, first whispering in awe, then escalating in volume and emotion as he’s swept away in the moment. He hoots with delight, monologues about the rainbows’ beauty, sobs, and eventually waxes existential. “What does it mean?” Vasquez crows into the camera toward the end of the clip, voice filled with tears of sheer joy, marveling at rainbows like no man ever has or probably ever will again. It’s hard to watch without cracking up. That same month, the viral blog BuzzFeed boosted a different YouTuber’s visibility. Michelle Phan, a 23-year-old Vietnamese American makeup artist, posted a home video tutorial about how to apply makeup to re-create music star Lady Gaga’s look from the recently popular music video “Bad Romance.” BuzzFeed gushed, its followers shared, and Lady Gaga’s massive fanbase caught wind of the young Asian girl who taught you how to transform into Gaga. Once again, the Internet took the video and ran with it. Phan’s clip eventually clocked in at roughly the same number of views as “Double Rainbow.” These two YouTube sensations shared a spotlight in the same summer. Tens of millions of people watched them, because of a couple of superconnectors. So where are Vasquez and Phan now? Bear Vasquez has posted more than 1,300 videos now, inspired by the runaway success of “Double Rainbow.” But most of them have been completely ignored. After Kimmel and the subsequent media flurry, Vasquez spent the next few years trying to recapture the magic—and inadvertent comedy—of that moment. But his monologues about wild turkeys or clips of himself swimming in lakes just don’t seem to find their way to the chuckling masses like “Double Rainbow” did. He sells “Double Rainbow” T-shirts. And wears them. Today, Michelle Phan is widely considered the cosmetic queen of the Internet, and is the second-most-watched female YouTuber in the world. Her videos have a collective 800 million views. She amassed 5 million YouTube subscribers, and became the official video makeup artist for Lancôme, one of the largest cosmetics brands in the world. Phan has since founded the beauty-sample delivery company Ipsy.com, which has more than 150,000 paying subscribers, and created her own line of Sephora cosmetics. She continues to run her video business—now a full-blown production company—which has brought in millions of dollars from advertising. She’s shot to the top of a hypercompetitive industry at an improbably young age. And she’s still climbing. Bear Vasquez is still cheerful. But he’s not been able to capitalize on his one-time success. Michelle Phan could be the next Estée Lauder. This chapter is about what she did differently.
Shane Snow (Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking)
I am not. Selling overpriced cosmetics with false promises or gadgets that congest kitchen cabinets that do the job of a simple knife is simply atrocious.
Sarah Noffke (The Ruthless Negotiator (The Unconventional Agent Beaufont Book 2))
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In the factory we make cosmetics; in the drugstore we sell hope.” —Charles Revson,
Bernadette Jiwa (The Fortune Cookie Principle: The 20 Keys to a Great Brand Story and Why Your Business Needs One)
PRIME Prime is an ever-changing condition, a segment of a journey, not a haven at the end of the road. Companies in Prime are recognizable: All aspects work well together, all operations thrive, and all members of the organization know where it is going and how to stay on track. Prime is a state of balance: Flexibility and control, function and form, imagining and producing, innovation and administration. But companies in that exultant equilibrium — so hard to achieve, so easy to lose — continually risk sliding back to childish habits or stumbling into the rigidity of old age. An organization is no less vulnerable in Prime than it is at any other stage of its lifecycle. The cash shortage of Infancy, the founder’s heavy hand in Go-Go, the infighting of Adolescence — those are challenges it has overcome. Now the complacency that comes with a surfeit of success looms as a potential and significant threat. I have a rule of thumb by which I judge an adult company: If it does not produce significant new products or spin off promising start-ups within any three-year period, it is either decaying or on the brink of decline. Ask yourself what percentage of your revenues come from products you were not selling three years ago? Be honest. There are enhancements, changes that are cosmetic in nature that make old products look new. Pharmaceutical manufacturers are well known for
lchak Adizes (The Pursuit of Prime: Maximize your Companys Success with the Adizes Program)
He abstains from dancing, singing, instrumental music, and from watching shows. "He abstains from wearing garlands and from beautifying himself with scents and cosmetics. "He abstains from high and luxurious beds and seats. "He abstains from accepting gold and money. "He abstains from accepting uncooked grain... raw meat... women and girls... male and female slaves... goats and sheep... fowl and pigs... elephants, cattle, steeds, and mares... fields and property. "He abstains from running messages... from buying and selling... from dealing with false scales, false metals, and false measures... from bribery, deception, and fraud. "He abstains from mutilating, executing, imprisoning, highway robbery, plunder, and violence.
Tushar Gundev (Common Questions, Great Answers: In Buddha's Words)
Although “liquid gold” appears on lots of Web sites selling olive oil, the phrase doesn’t appear in any translation of Homer’s Odyssey that I could find. Indeed, the actual passage in the Odyssey says something quite different: Odysseus is given “olive oil in a flask of gold” to anoint himself with. In fact, nowhere in any of the Hellenic texts is there any mention that olive oil was consumed as a part of the diet. The oil was ancient, true, but—as it turns out—not as a food; it was employed mainly as a cosmetic, for rubbing over the body during ritual activities and athletic contests or simply to enhance physical beauty among gods and mortals alike.
Nina Teicholz (The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet)
The very same spices, powders, and mixing methods that were used in medieval medicine and cosmetics were useful in making pigments, too, so apothecaries also sold ink. This saved scribes and illuminators who could afford it the trouble of making their own inks, and the apothecary’s long practice and skill with mixtures gave them a better chance at having regular colours and consistency, as well. As a complementary skill, apothecaries’ proficiency with wax as a binding and mixing agent led them to create and sell wax products alongside their other wares, such as candles, votives (as seen above), and sealing wax. The combination of ink and sealing wax made it a logical step for apothecaries to sell parchment, and other stationery items, too. Our modern habit of heading to the pharmacy for a headache cure, grooming products, and stationery is part of a long tradition, indeed.
Danièle Cybulskie (Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction)
My store is going to be aimed at women. I’m going to primarily focus on cosmetics, and I also want to sell confections that are sweet and keep well. That said, if I introduce too many products at once, it may hurt my sales, so I think I’ll just focus on cosmetics at first.” The need to buy things was stronger in women than in men.
Rui Tsukiyo (The World's Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat, (Light Novel) Vol. 1)
He drove on, head-banging to the backbeat of Ozzy Osborne’s Paranoid. On a steep hill, he downshifted and said, Mary, do you believe you live by what you earn? I said sure, stunned less by the question than by the breath he’d exhaled—real snake-shit breath. He shouted, Some live by what their own hands take. Others feed like buzzards on the carcass’s leftovers. That’s right, I said, wondering what he was getting at. Maybe he wanted me to sell Tupperware or cosmetics door-to-door. Some of the want ads I’d answered offered that. He said, Samson after his haircut could not break his chains, and the stones of the temple rained down. I nodded at the King James Bible cadence he’d slid into, his accent no longer evoking Grandpappy on the porch with a slab of pie, but a preacher whose fire and brimstone maybe came from a guilty conscience about underage choristers. I tried to adopt the big-eyed face of a church girl with a well-armed brother. A crumb of fear. He drew a snuff can out from under his seat and tucked a pinch in his jaw, saying around it, You dip? No, sir, I said.
Mary Karr (Lit)
The connections between appearance, identity, and consumption, forged initially by women beauty culturists at the beginning of the century, have inexorably tightened at its end. Moreover, the cosmetics industry has hastened to absorb and profit from the challenges mounted against it, even as it produces the normative ideals of beauty for which it is criticized. If image and style have long offered women a way to express cultural identities, now those identities offer business a new set of images to sell.
Kathy Peiss (Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture)
Product demonstrations, long used within beauty culture, were embraced by mass marketers, not only to sell specific brands but to acclimate women to systematic cosmetics use .
Kathy Peiss (Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture)
Advertising's ultimate triumph of background over content may have been recently achieved in New Zealand, where graphic designer Fiona Jack conducted a peculiar billboard campaign to market her new product, Nothing.6 "I was thinking about advertising and all its strangeness, its coercive ability to sell the most completely bizarre things to people who usually don't need them," Jack observed. "I realized that the ultimate nonexistent product would be nothing." New Zealand's Outdoor Advertising Association became interested in her idea and agreed to feature the slogan "Nothing-What you've been looking for" on twenty-seven billboards around the Auckland area. The billboard company soon began receiving calls from potential customers wanting to know where they could buy some of that Nothing. "The majority of the population," Jack says, "seem to be convinced that it is either a teaser for a campaign, or a new cosmetic product of a similar nature to the `Simple' cosmetic range.
Robert V. Levine (The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold)
The Cats in the City Location: an Arab city. Time: the age of defeat. The twenty-first century. General atmosphere: “fancy” neighborhoods. Expensive houses painted in tombstone colors. Beautiful and well-maintained gardens. Flowers that no one dares to smell. Imported cars. Imported devices. Imported clothes. Imported foods. Endless consumer shops for anything and everything. Between every other restaurant, there are shops selling cosmetics and souvenirs. Between every other consumer market, There is a worship place. All consumer shops are built skillfully On the scab of the same old wound; A wound that can flood the city with blood and death With the slightest fingernail scratch. As I walk farther from the city, The consumer shops vanish. The lights are suddenly dimmed. The cheering and the hustle and bustle of the consumers go silent. I see myself in total darkness. I am alone hearing nothing but the sounds of my footsteps, And the meows of hungry stray street cats, Covered with the ashes of daily existence. A thin and hungry cat approaches me, She meows in despair and starvation, Begging me for her bite of the day (or the week?) I throw her a small piece of my sandwich. She picks it up and runs away To celebrate her temporary gains! She leaves me alone wondering in darkness: What reflects the reality of this city more The 'fancy' neighborhoods I saw earlier, Or the starving cats in the darkness? June 8, 2014
Louis Yako (أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower])
A person has flaws but Jesus has none, quite like the images of models on billboards - you know why, because both images are doctored to sell a product - in case of the models, it's some cosmetic or some apparel, and in case of Jesus, it's religion.
Abhijit Naskar (Girl Over God: The Novel)
Pair 3: American Home Products Co. (drugs, cosmetics, household products, candy) and American Hospital Supply Co. (distributor and manufacturer of hospital supplies and equipment) These were two “billion-dollar good-will” companies at the end of 1969, representing different segments of the rapidly growing and immensely profitable “health industry.” We shall refer to them as Home and Hospital, respectively. Selected data on both are presented in Table 18-3. They had the following favorable points in common: excellent growth, with no setbacks since 1958 (i.e., 100% earnings stability); and strong financial condition. The growth rate of Hospital up to the end of 1969 was considerably higher than Home’s. On the other hand, Home enjoyed substantially better profitability on both sales and capital.† (In fact, the relatively low rate of Hospital’s earnings on its capital in 1969—only 9.7%—raises the intriguing question whether the business then was in fact a highly profitable one, despite its remarkable past growth rate in sales and earnings.) When comparative price is taken into account, Home offered much more for the money in terms of current (or past) earnings and dividends. The very low book value of Home illustrates a basic ambiguity or contradiction in common-stock analysis. On the one hand, it means that the company is earning a high return on its capital—which in general is a sign of strength and prosperity. On the other, it means that the investor at the current price would be especially vulnerable to any important adverse change in the company’s earnings situation. Since Hospital was selling at over four times its book value in 1969, this cautionary remark must be applied to both companies. TABLE 18-3. Pair 3. CONCLUSIONS: Our clear-cut view would be that both companies were too “rich” at their current prices to be considered by the investor who decides to follow our ideas of conservative selection. This does not mean that the companies were lacking in promise. The trouble is, rather, that their price contained too much “promise” and not enough actual performance. For the two enterprises combined, the 1969 price reflected almost $5 billion of good-will valuation. How many years of excellent future earnings would it take to “realize” that good-will factor in the form of dividends or tangible assets? SHORT-TERM SEQUEL: At the end of 1969 the market evidently thought more highly of the earnings prospects of Hospital than of Home, since it gave the former almost twice the multiplier of the latter. As it happened the favored issue showed a microscopic decline in earnings in 1970, while Home turned in a respectable 8% gain. The market price of Hospital reacted significantly to this one-year disappointment. It sold at 32 in February 1971—a loss of about 30% from its 1969 close—while Home was quoted slightly above its corresponding level.*
Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)