Beauty Products Review

It's the mother-daughter spat that has gripped the French cosmetics world. The family who control the beauty giant L'Oreal have brought a whole new meaning to the slogan "because you're worth it" as they row over money and generous gifts to a jet-set photographer.

In the latest twist of the long-running family dispute, it emerged yesterday that Liliane Bettencourt, the 86-year-old principal L'Oreal shareholder and one of the world's richest women, had accepted being tested by a psychiatrist to prove that she has not lost her mind.

Bettencourt's daughter, Françoise, had brought a legal complaint over her mother's generous gifts to a Parisian society photographer and author, suggesting her elderly mother was weak, open to "abuse" and might not have the mental faculties to understand what she was doing.

Over a number of years, Bettencourt, a philanthropist who has a vast private art collection including works by Monet, Matisse and Miro, is said to have given gifts to the photographer, François-Marie Banier, 61, worth up to €1bn (£890m).

In an interview last year with the Journal du Dimanche, Bettencourt shot back that she had bequeathed almost all of her fortune to her daughter, who would inherit it after she died, but that she could spend her money as she wished. She said she had not been coerced into making any gifts. She said the legal case was "stupid", that she got on well with her friend Banier as he was "an artist" and "artists see things differently". She said her daughter was just "jealous". The mother and daughter relationship had broken down years ago. Bettencourt said her daughter should understand that she was a "free woman".

Until now Bettencourt has refused to submit to a psychiatrists' assessment demanded by the state prosecutor. But Le Figaro reported yesterday that she had chosen an independent psychiatrist to assess her and a report had been given to the prosecutor testifying that she was in a "perfect" state of mind. However, the prosecutor is now demanding an additional report by a panel of psychiatry experts, including one of his own choice.

Selfridges, Harvey Nichols and Topshop all have their own "bars" dedicated to them, a Japanese brand offers 60 different versions, and Girls Aloud have endorsed a new range of them.

It seems that false eyelashes, à la Lady Gaga, are this season's must-have beauty accessory, with sales rising 110% in Superdrug and 30% in Selfridges. For those who lack the steady hand to fix their own, lash bars are springing up around the UK where professionals can fit them.

Japanese make-up brand Shu Uemura, which offers 60 styles, says the number of eyelash services their professionals perform in the UK has doubled over the past year .

Companies such as Jinny Lash and Nouveau Lashes, which offer extensions that can last up to three weeks, are also flourishing, while Nails Inc is rolling out a "Get Lashed" service nationwide so customers can get their nails and lashes done together. The Girls Aloud endorsement is for a new range by Eylure.

Photographer Zed Nelson spent five years in 17 countries discovering how far people will go in their quest for physical perfection. His subjects were ordinary men and women, cosmetic surgeons, bodybuilders, models, schoolgirls; he met Iranian women undergoing nose jobs and New Yorkers having foot surgery to fit into Jimmy Choo shoes. The resulting images, shocking and poignant, are shown here

I began this project in my mid-30s. I'm sure that was no coincidence. I don't know exactly when the idea seeded itself: perhaps it began one day when I looked in the mirror and realised I would not live for ever. I'm sure I am not alone in being surprised by that revelation. The moment comes when you realise that the body you inhabit has been loaned to you, is not fully yours, not fully under your control. I realised, too, that the way I perceived myself was influenced by others.

I'd begun my life as a photographer trying to make sense of what makes us human, and spent over a decade travelling the world documenting "foreign" cultures. Yet even in the farthest, most conflicted corners of the globe, I could see the insidious influence of my own culture.

We live in a world that celebrates and iconises youth: the pursuit of body improvement is a global industry now worth $160bn a year. And the promise of bodily perfection is largely driven by western media. The modern Caucasian ideal of beauty has been packaged and exported to the rest of the world, and just as surgical operations to "westernise" oriental eyes have become increasingly popular, so the beauty standard has become increasingly prescriptive. In Africa, the use of hair-straightening products is widespread. In South America, women have operations that bring them eerily close to Barbie dolls: blond-haired models appear on the covers of most magazines. Anorexia is on the increase in Japan, and in China beauty pageants, once banned as "spiritual pollution", are now held across the country.

"Beauty" has become a crude universal brand. The more rigorously our vision is trained to appreciate the artificial, the more the beauty industry benefits. But who creates this culture? However much we may confidently point the finger at sinister forces, we can't deny our own tacit involvement. Like it or not, we have created a world in which there are enormous social, psychological and economic costs attached to the way we look.

Few of us can deny we want to be "attractive". And we have been brainwashed into believing that in order to be appealing - lovable - we need smaller noses, bigger noses, tighter skin, longer legs, flatter stomachs. Banks offer - or at least used to offer - loans for plastic surgery in Europe, and Americans now spend more each year on cosmetic surgery than they do on education.

As our role models become ever younger and more idealised, so our obsession with remaining forever youthful intensifies. Today average life expectancy in Europe and the US is 78. Fifty years ago it was 68. A hundred years ago it was 48. As a society, we simply cannot face the degeneration and indignities of extreme old age, and nothing in our culture prepares us for them. The signs of ageing are reckoned to be so unacceptable that many in the public eye choose a strange, artificial appearance over a reflection of their actual years.

My first book, Gun Nation, was inspired by my frustration at witnessing western governments playing power games in developing countries and the arms industry profiting by it - in short, the legacy of colonialism. Perhaps my new book, Love Me, is not so different. I am again appalled by the commercially driven export of questionable ideals. These photographs are my response to the insidious forces that exploit and prey on the weakness and insecurities that are perhaps within us all.

• These photographs are taken from Love Me, by Zed Nelson, to be published in September by Thames & Hudson at £29.95. To order a copy for £27.95, with free UK mainland p&p, go to the Guardian bookshop, or call 0330 333 6846.