FEBEA (the French Federation of Beauty Companies) has just published the results of a unique survey intended to measure French women’s level of wellness. Conducted by Claude Fischler, Director Emeritus at CNRS (the French National Centre for Scientific Research), and based on an innovative method called DRM (Day Reconstruction Model), it accurately quantifies the emotions associated with the various moments of the day, in particular those dedicated to hygiene and beauty.
What are the main emotions dominating women’s daily lives? What are their sources of pleasure and pain? How important is beauty in their relationship with life and wellness? All these questions were clarified by the figures and learnings of this survey.

The method

The study was conducted in May 2016 and based on a panel of 311 women aged 25 to 50. It comprised two parts:
• A global survey on life satisfaction, on the reasons for being happy or sad in life, and on the relationship with beauty
• A DRM questionnaire which consisted in gathering all the episodes of a day, the duration of these episodes, and the emotions associated throughout the week

Every day, the women surveyed reviewed their activities of the day before, describing everything they had done from sunrise to sunset (going to work, facilitating a meeting, reading their mail…). Then, they assessed the intensity of ten feelings they had at these moments, from 0 to 6:
• glad/happy
• competent/self-confident
• affectionate/warm
• calm/relaxed
• interested/focused
• eager for things to come to an end
• sneak/depressed
• irritated/angry
• tense/nervous
• tired
This method helps obtain a sort of emotional profile for each episode identified, both to define a wellness index (understand whether an activity, by nature, provides wellness) and the level of wellness provided by an activity during the day.

French women: satisfied on the whole, but tired!

Almost 9 French women out of 10 (89.1%) declare they are satisfied with their lives, and 61% consider it almost ideal. Those that state they have financial security, health, sexual or couple concerns get a significantly lower score, but it is still high.

And if women are globally satisfied, it is because they have the feeling they have got the important things they wanted (76.9%), and they consider their life conditions excellent (62.4%). 58.2% of them would not change anything if they could relive their lives.

Between feeling positive emotions…

To the question ‘Overall, how did you feel yesterday?’, positive emotions definitely dominate for the women surveyed. But the survey also reveals French women’s agendas are almost full!
Every single day includes about fifteen episodes on average, from sunrise to sunset. Working, eating, looking after the children, or doing some housework (all in all, the last two items take more than 2 hours and 20 minutes per day) are the episodes that take the most time every day.

The survey identified the level of wellness felt during each of the activities declared on a scale from 0 to 6. Making love comes first (5.43), followed by doing sports (4.21), reading (3.60), and leisure time (3.24)… while working (1.07), transports (1.28), grocery shopping (1.48), and the housework (1.58) get the worst scores.
Overall, most French women say they are ‘glad/happy’ (4.83) and ‘calm/relaxed’ (4.50).

… and feeling really tired!

However, if positive emotions are definitely dominant in women’s daily lives, they are counterbalanced by another feeling, which considerably impacts their level of wellness: tiredness.
French women’s average tiredness scores reach 3.56/6 and, among them, 20% declare a very high score, from 5 to 6.

‘It is not just the family or professional situations that condition the perception of this tiredness and these emotions, but also the nature and number of daily activities. For example, Wednesday, a day when French women’s agendas are very busy, is considered critical. They do 19 activities on average on that day, that is, four episodes more than on the other days of the week. This explains the fact that their wellness index is the lowest (1.3/6) on that day. By way of comparison, French women’s overall wellness index is the highest on Sundays (3.46/6),’ specifies Claude Fischler, Director Emeritus at CNRS, who conducted the survey.

Beauty: a concern, but also a factor of wellness

The survey paid close attention to women’s relationship with beauty and their physical appearance, as well as to the importance of these hygiene and beauty moments, in order to identify their contribution to women’s wellness.

A contrasted beauty

66.9% of women declare they are satisfied with their physical appearance. But this global satisfaction hides quite a few concerns with their beauty.

For example, 56.6% of women admit their physical appearance is a source of concern, in particular as regards their weight or skin issues, which affect 30.5% of French women. Among those, acne is mentioned more often than other problems (47.4%), before eczema (20%), and psoriasis or pigment spots (12.6%).

Comfort provided by hygiene-beauty gestures

The moments dedicated to hygiene and beauty play a major role in women’s lives. They spend 53 minutes a day on this on average (and it can actually last up to 2.5 hours on the days they go to the hairdresser’s), mainly at home (67.5%), but also at work (13%), and in transports (4.5%).
And the average wellness index related to hygiene/beauty gestures is high: 3.02/6 (compared to 2.4 for all the other activities).

For 39% of French women, these are moments they spend on their own, apart from their partners or children. And it should be noted that the index of wellness felt is higher when women indulge in a few moments alone (3.26 when they are doing their skincare routine, 3.50 when they have a bath…). By contrast, the hygiene-beauty gestures more firmly fixed in their daily lives and considered as ‘mechanic’ gestures (brushing their teeth, for example) get a score of 2.52. Only having a shower gets a higher index, 3.01, as this moment is experienced by women as a moment for themselves.

It should be noted that the women that feel the best during hygiene-beauty moments are no different from others in terms of concerns or sadness related to their appearance, weight, financial security, or love life, and they are neither richer nor more qualified or younger than the average. They are mostly women who want to look pretty for themselves, without considering beauty as particularly important to succeed in life, and who think they are happier than most other women and feel self-confident…

‘The DRM method helps understand the exact episodes that impact women’s level of wellness and identify the moments of happiness, hardships, the importance given to time for ourselves in our daily lives…’, commented Patrick O’Quin, FEBEA’s President. ‘It is interesting to find out how key cosmetics are. It is a very strong signal for our industry because it confirms cosmetics are useful in developing wellness day after day, but also that they contribute to the quality of the relationship with others. Cosmetics enhance women’s life quality very concretely!’