Fitting to the body: the role of embodiment in beauty information seeking

The body has long been recognized by other disciplines as a site of meaning-making, a medium through which individuals experience the world, convey meaning to others, and act on the world. However, when it comes to searching for information, the body is often ignored, overshadowed by a focus on cognition. Studies are beginning to fill this gap, pointing to the role and potential impact the body can have on information practices, prompting further attention to the role of the body in information seeking and how it can inform the design of interactive information retrieval systems. Beauty information practices, due to their close association with the corporeal, physical, material, and symbolic nature of the body, potentially harbours significant insights for re-centering the body in information sciences and informing user-, or in this case, body-centered information retrieval systems. Our research aimed at answering the overarching question: How does ‘embodiment’ manifest in beauty related information seeking using digital tools? We undertake a survey through Prolific asking participants to describe a recent beauty information search task using digital tools, encompassing the type of information sought, their motivation, and its usefulness. The findings reveal the significance of the socio-cultural context of users, in terms of both social pressure and user agency, and the intersection between the physicality of the body and materiality of beauty products and procedures in shaping how users search for and select useful information.