Shifting (un)concerns in considering appearance important among Finnish adolescents and young adults

Abstract

Due to hyper-visual culture, the importance of physical appearance has allegedly grown among young people. Given the role of appearance in socialization and identity formation, understanding how appearance-related values vary by gender, age, and socio-economic status is crucial for exploring their impact on social inequalities and cultural norms. Using Finnish youth survey data from 2005 and 2019 (N = 3343) and ordinal logistic regression, we examine whether there is a change in self-reported importance of one’s own appearance according to survey year, gender and age, and whether parental socio-economic status plays a role in appearance-related values among 15- to 29-year-old Finns. Our findings reveal that indifference towards the importance of appearance has in fact increased. Overall appearance importance has not risen, but rather become more pronounced among certain social categories, such as young men whose parents
have vocational or university education. The alleged significance of appearance regimes may manifest more in forms of self-expression and social belonging among youth, rather than being strictly tied to the perceived importance of physical appearance, thereby hindering the reported importance of appearance. We conclude by discussing the differences between appearance pressures and appearance importance.