Six Senses' Anna Bjurstam discusses 'Beautiful wellness'

Anna Bjurstam, Wellness pioneer, Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas, Global

To look good is incredibly important and vanity is the doorway to wellness. We know that people who look good get hired more, paid more and generally in life have an advantage. This has been shown in research, but we don’t need research to confirm this, we already know it. We also know that we don’t look good, whatever our appearance, unless we feel good. Hence beauty and wellness go hand in hand.

And to add to that, we have the ‘lipstick effect’ – as in, when societies have bad times, lipstick sales go up because we feel the need to make even more sure that we look our best. So, wellness is at the centre of beauty on so many levels, physically, psychologically and of course topically.

The pressure of beauty Spending on beauty products that make all kind of claims and promises has always been high – we want to have that fast-track magic potion that will make us more attractive. We humans are always up for a shortcut, a pill, a trick that can solve the issue. This is how our brain is constructed, to always find the easiest way out.

Bad self-image, fashion, social media and trends in beauty all create a huge pressure on people to look good. Whether it is being skinny, curvy, having big lips, small lips etc – it is an incredibly unhealthy thing. We are being influenced by fabricated TV shows and false social media pictures and we are letting them lead us.

Norway has recently put a ban on retouched images – it can only be 8%, which is very little. Be Real and other apps are coming out and hopefully we can get away from an unhealthy beauty image, but I doubt it.

Opportunity knocks

Whatever the case, the wellness industry is presented with a huge opportunity. What we as an industry can do is advocate the importance of ‘inside’ beauty – brain beauty, gut health for beauty etc. And I am very much for making the most of this.

We know that sleeping badly and stress cause wrinkles and make us look bad from the inside-out and outside-in, and perhaps we should focus more on talking not only about sleep and stress but also about beauty sleep, de-stressing for less wrinkles and such like.

Beauty shifts to watch

Homecare beauty is growing rapidly, where you can do at home what the salons do, for a much more affordable price. Especially when it comes to equipment such as red-light LED face masks, EMS for hair growth, deep cleanse devices and electrostimulation. I also think that the collagen market has only just begun, as well as many other supplements that can help beauty and wellness.

Furthermore I think we are going in the direction of natural beauty, as consumers are getting more and more educated about what works – false claims, chemical beauty brands and other equipment, services and products will have problems continuing to grow unless they jump on the ‘integrity bandwagon’, which I hope will become big in the next couple of years.

I am very excited for the frequency with which beauty businesses are coming out with high-tech devices that can make a big difference – I see more and more of these coming my way and it will be interesting to see how this market grows.

We are finally moving away from anti-ageing to focus on either pre-ageing or longevity, which is also great.