The (Looking) ‘Good’, the ‘Bad’ and the ‘Ugly’

It is a great pleasure being given the opportunity to introduce Sam Barnes’ first book to readers. As one of Barnes’ supervisors of her PhD thesis, which this book is based upon, I was able to personally witness her systematic approach, hard work and resourcefulness in the field, which the end-product is a testament to. The Harms of Beauty is an original work, which fully does what it promises: ‘it explores the wide array of harms associated with legal, illegal and counterfeit markets within the beauty industry to develop an understanding of supply and demand beyond a traditional criminological framework’. Written with the crispness that is the result of state-of-the-art knowledge, this impeccably organized book is based on eight chapters that seamlessly link to one another, covering both the demand and the supply side of an industry with an overlooked sinister side.

Drawing upon advances in ultra-realism, zemiology and deviant leisure (see Hall and Winlow, 2015; Raymen and Smith, 2019), Barnes theorizes on the changing nature of identity, leisure and consumption in late capitalism (see also Hall, 2019). The work is based on a remarkable methodological effort: an ethnographic, ‘offline’ study in a town in the southeast of England, which Barnes refers to as ‘Beaufort’, as well as observations and interviews carried out in relevant settings in East London, neighbouring towns to ‘Beaufort’ and in online spaces.

Barnes offers an extremely rich account on the changing nature of beauty and fashion, and shows how within this context, harmful practices are not only accepted but also widely celebrated.