Scenario: Beauty Redefined
From Future
After women have shunned cosmetics and self grooming in the name of female liberation, they will realize that their antagonistic views on gender relations are centuries dated, and that neither the presence nor absence of hair under their arms has any intrinsic relationship to beauty. They will be educated enough to understand that the features people find attractive in one another (symmetry, epidermic clarity, fairness of hair) are simply indicators of health. As the world population draws close to a uniform degree of optimal health, cosmetics may become widely regarded as unnecessary, although the desire for personal refinement and design will likely not disappear. People will continue to do whatever they feel accentuates the attractiveness of their features. They will regard the attitude of their predecessors (namely that self grooming amounts to “banal vanity”), as an indicator of a generation which was both uncomfortable with its biological heritage and unable to separate its social philosophy from its personal dissatisfactions.
The absence of "beauty products" may indeed lead to the reduction of the importance of certain physical attributes in human sexual selection, leaving the affect of some physical attributes unchanged, whilst adding focus to socio-economic, social and pheromonal influence.
It would however, [likely] re-introduce an element of natural selection based upon natural as opposed to artificially enhanced physical appearance/attributes to this process changing the phenotypical [is that a word?] profile of a population. A potential leaning toward the a preference for the masculine and feminine extremes may still pervade the selection process.
It is likely that much of the beauty industry will be supplanted by a move towards permanent solutions such as laser hair removal and anti-aging medical treatments. Nanotechnology will make it possible to change hair color instantanously. Cheap safe plastic surgery will become more common. The end effect will be that people will be able to appear however they wish rather than be dependent on their genetics. Sexual selection, therefore, will be based more on the creativity displayed in the personal appearance, in the personality, and on socio-economic status.
