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Gimmick Products Used for Beauty, Body Image, and Weight Loss

       With Instagram celebrities starting their own companies, and with more and more business adapting their marketing strategies to employ social media, it's not really that surprising that there are going to be a couple of products out there that are not so genuine. Combine that with the female perception that their physical appearance has to be flawless and continually improved or else they risk a life of unhappiness, and you get the gimmick products of the beauty world. A gimmick product is one that is primarily designed to attract attention, but with no substantial value. These products will offer something that's desirable to audiences, such as a hair product that will cause your hair length to triple in a week. As long hair is seen as a desirable trait in women, those who want to grow out their hair may fall prey to the marketing trap. Of course, these product claims are completely falsified and have no scientific evidence to support their claims.

Essentially, the gimmick product is a marketing ploy to trick unsuspecting, and naively trusting consumers to spend money on a useless pipe dream. It's bad enough seeing $80 vitamin supplements designed to make you lose 10 pounds in a week, but it's even worse when it's publicly endorsed by celebrities who should really know better. The problem is, they do know better, but they're also using their appearance and widespread popularity to make obscene amounts of money doing very little work.

Fit Tea, BioLips, Mr. Blanc Professional Teeth Whitening, and Waist Trainers, are all examples of specific gimmick products that celebrities endorse on their personal social media*. Generally speaking, these products tend to have a great interest in the external appearance of the buyer; thus, they are seen as solutions to the body image problems by celebrity's followers on Instagram.


       While a number of celebrities actually use these products and believe that they work effectively, in reality, many of these spokespersons do not use these products and they promote them just to get paid for doing so.

Khloe Kardashian, showing off in a Waist Trainer 

We all know that women love to have long and thick hair, and when they see a beautiful picture of Becca Tilley holding “Sugar Bear Hair” vitamins in both of her hand palms, they probably think that they have found the optimal solution for their weak and damaged hair. Becca Tilley encourages her followers to take two Sugar Bear Hair vitamins by ensuring them that “they taste like scooby doo snacks”.

       Another cheap trick used by top influencers in the fitness world is calling "convenient timing". Often we see posts about specific fitness products, claiming to help lose weight in a very little amount of time. While it may seem too good to be true, there are plenty of photo testimonials proving the miracle product for weight loss. Except that there are a number of factors like lighting, time of day, time of last meal, clothing choice, and posture that can drastically change someones appearance in a matter of hours.

Specific Product Endorsements by Celebrities

Besides the effort that celebrities put into their professional careers nowadays, they also engage in supplementary projects that allow them to pursue their passions as a business endeavour, since their social status enables them to become the representative of their own brand. Most female celebrities undertake projects that involve fashion, beauty, or cosmetic products given that female celebrities are consistently critiqued on their physical attractiveness. Seeing that female celebrities are financially capable of funding their projects, they can hire specialists that possess essential knowledge, skills, and competencies in order to design, produce and manufacture beauty products. Some of these projects are currently well acknowledged and believed to be helpful and profitable in the customer market.

Top beauty influencer on Instagram, Huda Kattan, with approximately 17.5 million followers, created a career for herself by showing her followers how to enhance and reveal their beauty. The 32-year-old makeup artist owns a three-year-old product line named Huda Beauty. One of her most widely known products is a pair of false eyelashes that were launched in February 2013, which sold very fast in the Middle East, and have since been launched in the U.S. at large scale makeup distributors like Sephora. In her interviews, fashionista and entrepreneur Huda has said that the false lashes are all constructed by hand, and that the sales exceeded records on their first day of release. Huda launched her new liquid matte lipsticks in July 2016 after the release of her Huda Beauty Lip Contour Pencils in March 2016. The 16 liquid matte lipsticks come in one package and have the same shades as the lip contour pencils. The Dubai based makeup artist constantly posts pictures and short video tutorials on her Instagram account, showing how to apply the brand's products and teaching followers how to use them in order to get the desired makeup look.

Our second Instagram celebrity is known as Lilly Ghalichi, another beauty influencer with 2.5 million followers. Lilly is a businesswoman and uses her qualifications as an attorney and her role in the Shah’s of Sunset to her career advantage. In addition to Lilly’s co-ownership of the two well known fashion companies, Have Faith-Swimgerie and WantMyLook.com, she also plays a great role in designing for these two companies. Lilly has expanded her business ventures by developing her own product line, called ‘Ghalichi Glam’. Ghalichi Glam produces luxurious false eyelashes and voluptuous human hair extensions created and customized by Lilly, and are known as Lilly Lashes and Lilly Hair, respectively. Additionally, Ghalichi recently launched a new line of fashionable jewelry, that is known as the Lilly Ghalichi Collection by Avitan and Glampagne. Most of Lilly’s Instagram posts are pictures and videos about her and testimonials of her followers wearing her products.

How Image Content is Unfavourably Affecting Adolescents and Youth

       One of the most familiar forms of social infrastructure is Instagram. As parents, friends, and siblings we don't realize how large the negative impact Instagram content has on adolescents and youth. Just because social media sites have widespread popularity and growth, doesn't mean the various social platforms can be exercised in a healthy manner. Social media is now considered to be the norm, and is known as the "most common activity" of adolescents and youth. But the negative consequences of social media do not have to become the norm for adolescents and youth of today, as long as we can educate others on practices for mental wellness and positive body consciousness.

       Image content on Instagram could lead users to visualize themselves comparatively to the images posted. As previously stated, this can depend on the level of celebrity worship. "Celebrity worship has been linked to body dissatisfaction, a higher frequency of voluntary cosmetic surgery (Maltby and Day, 2011) and eating disorders (Shorter et al, 2008)". Most image content viewed propagates the overt sexualization of females, a concept that equates a woman's personal worth to her physical attractiveness. Sadly, a majority of this content is perpetuated by the postings of female celebrities. These posts are viewed by hundreds of millions causing mass global influence and affect of imagery promoting female sexualization. The pictures of the 'perfect' bodies and faces posted on Instagram also have a harmful effect on the education of many teenage girls. Eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and obesity are often a result of negative body image. Often the resultant feelings of inadequacy associated with negative body image will result in the development of eating disorders, mental illness, exhaustion, decreased social involvement, and weak performance in school.*

       Consequently, as a result of both male and female audiences, both genders end up with highly corrupted ideals, causing them to think that all females should look like society's impossible beauty standards suggest. Beauty standards include body structure and proportion, facial features, skin tone, clothing style, degree of sexuality, etc. This causes females to compare themselves to ridiculous standards, and whichever ways they don't match up with those standards will cause their self confidence levels to decrease, eventually leading to poor mental health development. Females in particular will feel pressured to take certain measures to change their physical appearance, in the hopes of boosting their confidence and self-esteem. Studies show that social media is the top influence when it comes to advertisements*. Instagram pictures and videos of the diverse gimmick products influence followers to spend money in order to achieve some desired attribute. This involves the purchase of beauty products, dressing in a different (often more sexualized) manner, and most worrying of all, undergoing plastic surgery to change physical appearance. The resulting sustained belief is that material objects and a traditionally beautiful appearance will lead to infinite happiness.

Celebrity Answers on Instagram Popularity & Strategy

Each one of us has a desire to discover more and more about celebrities’ personal life and their latest news. Celebrity interviewers are able to update us on what is going on with celebrities; they obtain the most appealing and interesting information from the stars.

Let’s share some of the interesting questions that were asked to some of the top IG celebrities...

The following questions were asked to top beauty influencer, Huda Kattan:

What has been your most popular Instagram post? 

"The one that got the most comments for me 

was a video I did on boob contouring. I think 

I got 15,000 or 20,000 comments."

Do you edit, filter, or photoshop? 

“Of course. I use Facetune. I always use it to 

smooth out my skin. Everybody uses it. If they say 

they're not I find it very hard to believe.” 

Does it really take dozens of shots to get the perfect one? 

“Oh my gosh, totally. I have taken a hundred pictures before.”

To IG celeb, Lilly Ghalichi:

How long does it take you to look so beautiful? 

“Well, that depends, a glam day like today will take 

anywhere from 2 to 2 and half hours but I don’t do

 it myself, my hair and my makeup artist glam me 

out and that takes a long time.”

Beauty product you can’t leave the house without?

“Hair Extensions! I love big hair so much, I even

 created my own line!”

If you had to choose just one, what beauty product

 has most changed your life do you think and why?

“I would have to say the beauty blender. It has literally 

changed the world of makeup and how we apply it.”

To IG mega star, Kylie Jenner:

What is the biggest misconception you think people 

have about you? 

“Probably that I'm just super fake and that at 16/17, I got 

my full face reconstructed and that I only care about 

materialistic things.”

How does it feel to be considered a worldwide style and
beauty icon for generation Z?
“It's really crazy. I never really think about it until I'll do a
hair colour and then I'll see all my fans in the same hair colour.
It's just crazy how much influence I have. It's cool.”

When was the first time you realized the level of influence
 you had on fans?
“I think it all started with my lips when I would overline them. 
I didn't see one other girl wearing nude lipstick -- 
I didn't even care about the lipstick, I just wanted my lips to be bigger 
-- and then I started seeing a bunch of girls wearing nude lipstick.”

Top 10 Female Instagram Celebrities and Endorsement

                 When it comes to the world of the celebrity, the worst thing is becoming irrelevant in the eyes of the public. Enter Instagram: a social media platform that allows celebs to post content for the whole world to see. As long posts are updated on a continual basis, followers are constantly reminded of the success, popularity, and of course, relevance of the celebrity Instagram user. This is also a clever way for corporations and celebrities to work together to promote both their fanbase and the newest upcoming product or brand.

                  Endorsements work like this: a company approaches a well-known influencer of the public to release a statement recommending a brand or specific product in exchange for a sum of money. Companies are banking on the influence of the endorser to increase overall advertising effectiveness and reach a larger audience, and on the fact that a recommendation from a celebrity will convince more people to buy their products. This is becoming a widely used marketing tool for companies in the beauty industry, especially because female celebrities are so celebrated for their physical appearance. In fact, statistics show that women are twice as likely to buy celebrity-endorsed products than men*. So naturally, many companies will pay top dollar in order to sign celebrities for even one Instagram post, because they will likely experience an increase in their return on investments due to increased sales levels, and potentially even an increase in company stock prices (Bergström and Bäckman, 2013).

                  Just how much money can a celebrity make for one endorsed Instagram post? Well, that depends on the number of followers they have. It makes sense that the greater the following, the greater the asking price, and with top celebrities having follower numbers in the hundred millions, that price can get pretty high. According to online sources, Beyonce Knowles made $50,000,000 for a multi year contract with Pepsi (Aubrey, 2016). It’s estimated that Kylie Jenner makes about $400,000 per sponsored Instagram post (Toronto Sun, 2016). That’s a lot of money for 100 characters and a selfie, but then again she does have an Instagram following of about 85.3 million and counting. So if you think you’ve got the stuff to overrule a celebrity, here’s a list of the Top 10 Most Popular Females on Instagram along with their current number of followers.

Don’t forget to fill out our poll for your favourite celeb!

1. Selena Gomez – 109,000,000

2. Taylor Swift – 97,000,000

3. Ariana Grande – 95,800,000

4. Beyonce – 93,900,000

5. Kim Kardashian – 91,800,000

6. Kylie Jenner – 85,300,000

7. Kendall Jenner – 73,700,000

8. Nicki Minaj – 73,300,000

9. Katy Perry – 60,200,000

10. Miley Cyrus – 60,000,000