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Today’s modern society puts a premium on youth and good looks. In fact to look better, to look younger, to look more attractive has become the basic need for most of us because people who look good are made to feel good.

[The Lasertone Beauty Therapy Treatment leaftet, 1982, quoted by Mike Featherstone in the Consumer Reader.]

The self-confidence which a good appearance fosters is a most important contribution towards success. It is to a very great extent the measure of other people’s confidence in you. If you lack a good appearance you are suffering a perpetual handicap. To keep up a good appearance you need: to dress well; to get plenty of nourishing food; to have money and leisure for congenial recreation; to live in healthy surroundings. How can you do this if your wages and working hours do not permit it?

[Organising leaflet addressed to women by the National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen, Etc., entitled Why it means so much to her!, (for your husband to stop letting down the side and get in the union) from around 1925.]

Who wins the guilt and shame arm-twisting competition out of these two? And can the NAUSAW (Etc.) lay claim to pioneering the art of making people feel shabby in order to get them to fit in? Hah… probably not, eh? I’d probably need at least two quotes to make an historical theory…