Cosa rende felice una donna? Siccome ancora oggi escono articoli titolati così (con tanto di punto interrogativo), forse vuol dire che l’insoddisfazione femminile è una condizione a priori dell’esistenza. Eppure sembra di no. L’autrice del pezzo lo spiega con quello che si potrebbe definire «assioma L’Oreal».
A century ago, a woman could let her hair go grey and still feel she was making the best of herself. Between the 1950s and 1970s, the proportion of women dyeing their hair rose from 7 per cent to 40 per cent. Then, during the 1970s, an advertising campaign for L’Oreal Preference made dyeing practically mandatory. The campaign slogan, ‘Because I’m worth it’, ostensibly referred to the slightly higher price of Preference than the market leader, Clairol. But the genius of the ad campaign was to shift the emphasis from dyeing as something women did to fake looking younger than they really were, to something a woman did as a means of self-expression, something she did for herself.
