Girls Aloud, beauty secrets and lies

The smiling, happy faces, the slim, shiny bodies, poreless, glossy, smooth and clean, perfect and proper, beam at us every day. They come at us from magazine covers, billboards, television advertising, shop windows, music videos. We see them and hear the messages they send: "You too can look like this"; "You deserve to be this"; "This is how to look to be happy." L'Oreal tell us we're "worth it"; Dove "celebrate" our "real beauty" and the cosmetic surgeon lures us in with the promise of "transforming" us into our "true selves".

All these seemingly positive mantras aim to make us believe we are empowered and in control when we buy into them, that only when we strive to be like her are we really a woman. It all comes across as innocuous and natural, simultaneously maintaining and creating the myth that the most important thing for a woman is to look attractive.

Of course, it isn't as it seems. There are some evil machinations at work behind the glossy images and their slick slogans. The beauty corporations and their messengers, the media, don't really think we 'deserve' to look like the women in the adverts. They don't really want us to feel good about ourselves. What they are really saying to us is that we are 'supposed' to be like the women in the adverts.

So what L'Oreal really mean is we're only "worth it" when we buy their shampoo, because we're worth nothing otherwise. "Celebrating real beauty" still relies on engaging with our insecurities and attempting to 'fix' them. After all, if Dove really wanted us to embrace our real imperfect selves, why would they push firming lotions on us? As for cosmetic surgery, what their promotional banter really means is that you can only be "you" with some help, because "you" isn't good enough when left alone.