The American Way of beauty: HYPOXI

19 June 2016

Looking at the history of women in the US it is found that completely differentconcerns were the focus initially and not the (external) beauty. After the relocations in the 17^th century, it was simply mere survival. Today, nearly 400 years later, the possibilities for a woman’s self-realization in the United States of America have pretty much changed. Luckily.

Before women were allowed to take care of their appearance they, fought for their rights. Initially the women’s rights movement of the Suffragettes protested with hunger, strikes and demonstrations against forced studies of prostitutes and finally for the introduction of the right to vote. As a result, they acted in a male manner: by beating, throwing stones and smoking. These acts for women was prohibited in public in those days.

At the same time as the feminist’s forward march, the educated nurse Florence Nightingale Graham followed her personal American dream: absolute female beauty. With only $1,000, initial capital borrowed from her brother, the daughter of a poor Scottish-English immigrants in 1910 founded her first beauty salon in New York 5^th Avenue. Her own manufactured creams were soon joined by her ever increasing new products and treatments such as gymnastics, massages and baths. While the feminists acted rather politically, Elizabeth Arden, as she called herself from this time on, made sure that eyeliner, lipsticks and rouge no longer were seen as war paint for women of dubious reputation but as a natural part of an all- round beauty and health care regime for the modern sophisticated woman.

Elisabeth Arden had her finger firmly on the pulse and quickly outstripped her rival Helena Rubenstein when she founded the world’s first beauty farms for wealthy women in the US states of Arizona and Maine. Before all others, in 1946 Elisabeth Arden was graced as the first woman on the cover of Time Magazine and in 1956 she opened her first men’s beauty salon in New York.

Although until today, Elizabeth Arden does fulfil an important role in women’s beauty, with the decades passing, other beauty gurus have joined her. One of them is nutritionist Oz Garcia. He stands up for a new beauty-consciousness and provides in his books real alternatives to the anti-aging methods of plastic surgery. Garcia, who counts Winona Ryder and Donna Karan as his clients, show middle aged women how to look younger and healthier without Botox and co. He swears by the right mix of healthy eating, wellness and sports and gentle cosmetic treatments. The amazing thing about his success: more and more Americans around their fifties want to achieve a more youthful appearance naturally – and tend to go less under the knife of a plastic surgeon.

When one talks about America one can not ignore Hollywood. What wouldthe most famous district of Los Angeles be without Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman or Jennifer Lawrence? But women do not play in America “Main”-roles. Not only the salaries of male and female performers differ dramatically, this also applies to their speech content in the films. To prove this, the American feminist Alison Bechdel developed a test. This examines whether at least two women working on a script where they converse with each other, and whether this conversation turns to something else than to a man. Conclusion: In most movies, women are usually not much more than pretty but dumb props. Maybe the reason that more than 4,500 of the approximately 6,000 voting members of the Academy, which awarded the Oscars every year, are male. Here, Hollywood would do well to let women have their say. For films that pass the Bechdel-test usually gain more money. “We know how Hollywood is going to earn more money in future”, says Versha Sharma and Hanna Sender, who prooved this in a comprehensive study “Simply show more women!”

 

For more information on the Bechdel-Test see here.

Clearly, where there is so much beauty on the agenda HYPOXI can’t be missed – and it isn’t. Following, Australia and New Zealand, HYPOXI is now in the United States and Canada and also on the rise. “The first studio was opened in October 2015 in Scottsdale, Arizona” says HYPOXI marketing director Uwe Hintringer. “We plan to establish our promising License-concept throughout North America.” Apart from individual locations, the focus will mainly be on gym/fitness studios that could do with this unique method for targeted body shaping which not only stand out clearly from its competitors, but above all, offer its clients a real and unique added value. HYPOXI fulfills exactly the needs of many Americans: looking better, younger and healthier.

How does HYPOXI strike the female and male Americans? “The customers were enthusiastic from the start”, says Uwe Hintringer after the opening of the studio in Arizona. “HYPOXI fits perfectly with the new belief in the states that individual targeted figure shaping can be achieved naturally in a gentle way and more sustainable than with extreme diets or by a medical intervention”.

For further information on HYPOXI in the USA see here.