Have you ever been in the campus bookstore, looking for a copy of Confucius's "Analects" and your favorite neon highlighters, while wishing that there was more stuff to distract you from your academic purchasing? If the cute baseball caps and fun stickers weren't enough, now your campus bookstore could be getting a beauty station. It even has a fun name!
Barnes and Noble is expanding its college bookstore shops with a new section called "The Glossary." The Glossary features cosmetics aimed at college students, or as BusinessWire writes, a "first-of-its-kind, dynamic shopping environment that offers students the opportunity to explore, sample and purchase a wide variety of mass and prestige beauty products on a growing number of college campuses nationwide." According to InStyle, the idea has already been test run at Emory, Southern Methodist, Tulane, and the College of William and Mary. Now, they are ready for a national roll out. These test sites also determined which brands would be carried in the shop, which include college students' favorites of Smashbox, Burt's Bees, and Bliss, to name a few.
Maybe it is a proven business fact that females are more likely to purchase things than men, and let's get real: There are probably a lot more things for us to want to purchase. However, it feels to me that the plan to appeal to women, who are now greatly outnumbering men in applying to and attending college, is inherently outdated, for while it claims to be something offering convenience, it also implies that women won't be able to go looking for their books without fighting the urge to stop and try out a new lip gloss.
We should also look at the campuses where this idea was tested out. They're all located in the southern United States, and also have large Greek cultures. Traditionally, both of these atmospheres tend to suggest more feminine women and more events that require beauty and dressing up. I'd be curious to see how the Glossary performs in its newest location opening in California, and how it would be taken at Northeastern campuses where things have always been more progressive. Will they perform as well, or will other women feel as slightly offended as I do?
I'm not saying I wouldn't shop at the Glossary if it came to NYU (though it won't, as our bookstore is independently owned) because it would be convenient. But that doesn't mean I don't feel that it sets back the place women have tried to carve out to be taken seriously in academia for the past 50 or more years. I can acknowledge that struggle has been difficult and is ongoing, and no mascara, no matter how natural looking, is worth setting that struggle backwards, at least not to me.
So, will you be visiting "The Glossary" if it comes to your college? Do you already have one, and if so how do you feel about it? Let's talk about it in the comments.