LOS ANGELES (Reuters Life!) - America’s obsession with beauty is posing serious problems for the health and economic well-being of women and young girls, according to a report on Monday on the pursuit of physical perfection and the rise in cosmetic surgery.

The nonprofit YWCA in the United States said women and girls are spending increasing amounts of money in their bid to look like idealized, air-brushed magazine models.

The report, Beauty at any Cost, noted U.S. women spent some $7 billion a year, or an average of about $100 each, on cosmetics and beauty products.
An Iranian woman receives a facial in northern Tehran September 20, 2007. REUTERS/Caren FirouzView Larger Image View Larger Image
An Iranian woman receives a facial in northern Tehran September 20, 2007. REUTERS/Caren Firouz
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That $100 a month, if saved and invested for five years, would pay for a full year of tuition and fees at a public college, the report calculated.

“We believe that the obsession with idealized beauty and body image is a lifelong burden that takes a terrible toll on all young girls and women in this country,” said YWCA USA Chief Executive, Dr. Lorraine Cole.

“What’s really new here is the sheer extent to which women and girls are now willing to go…to be ‘beautiful,’ according to standards perpetuated by a youth-obsessed media culture with literally thousands of messages, 24 hours a day,” she said.

Nearly 11.7 million cosmetic surgical and nonsurgical procedures were performed in the United States in 2007 — a 446 percent increase in 10 years, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Surgery.

Botox injections and liposuction are the most popular nonsurgical and surgical procedures.

The report cites other research linking smoking to attempts by women and girls to control their weight. It notes that some ingredients in U.S. cosmetics, such as hair sprays and nail polishes, contain phthalates that have been shown to cause liver and reproductive system damage in animals.

The YWCA teamed up with the makers of a new documentary on the issue, “America the Beautiful,” in a bid to alert the 2.5 million women and girls the YWCA serves in the United States.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

Barack Obama’s historic run for the White House recently announced a strategic and ongoing effort to maximize the African American electorate throughout the country in places where Blacks congregate often: barbershops and beauty salons.

The Obama campaign has initiated the Barber Shop and Beauty Salon National Voter Registration effort to register new African American voters in traditional locations where national politics and other related topics are regularly discussed.

The campaign says there are some 56 million unregistered voters in the U.S., making up 32 percent of the total eligible voter ranks. Among them are some eight million African Americans, or about 32 percent of Black voters.

Taking a lesson from the past, Democrats hope to reverse the shortfall of African American voters in the 2004 presidential elections, especially in key battleground states like Ohio, Virginia and Florida where they lost to Republicans by single digits. Democrats say those states were lost due to the high number of unregistered voters.

By registering new voters, particularly in the Black community, the Obama campaign hopes to correct that problem and to make a significant difference in states like North Carolina, which has a Democratic state legislature and governor but has not succeeded in winning voters to side with a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976.

To shift North Carolina from a red Republican state to a blue Democratic one, the campaign plans to focus on voter education, particularly in the African American community, that highlights important issues to propel a massive surge of voters to the polls.

The campaign says mobilizing the African American vote nationwide, as never before, will be a major factor in winning on Nov. 4.

“It’s not just about registration, but we have to make sure that people understand why their vote matters, and what’s at stake in this election,” Michelle Obama told the Wilmington Journal. “We need people to understand the disparities not just at the economic level, but also in health and education … you name it. And I can guarantee you that our efforts aren’t just limited to registration,” she added.

The Obama campaign also plans to increase the involvement of African Americans throughout the Democratic National Convention with a host of speakers and participation of many Black young people.

For the past 40 years African Americans have overwhelmingly favored Democratic presidential candidates by ratios of up to 9 to 1. Other minority groups such as Latinos and Asian Americans have also historically voted Democrat. Overall, registered Democrats are about 35 percent non-white and 65 percent white, whereas 90 percent of registered voters in the Republican Party are white.

Meanwhile, a recent Census Bureau report projects that by the year 2042 non-whites or minority groups will make up more than half the U.S. population.