The Hidden Costs of Beauty

In this Advanced ESL lesson plan, students explore the true price of pursuing beauty ideals, from money and time to mental health and ethics, through discussion, vocabulary practice, video comprehension, and reading.

Warm-up

The lesson starts with an exercise where students discuss opinions about beauty standards.

Video

Students will watch a video titled “Looks aren’t everything. Believe me, I’m a model.” After viewing, students match sentence beginnings with their endings.

Exercises

Students fill gaps with the correct words. In the second exercise, they complete the sentences so that they have a similar meaning to the first sentence, using words in brackets. In the third exercise, the learners match idioms with their meanings. After that, they play a game of two truths and a lie. Next, the students use words in capitals to form words that fit the gaps in sentences. Next, they match each beauty-marketing phrase with what it really means. At the end of this section, the students play the game of taboo, choose opinions they will defend and finish sentences with whatever comes to their minds first.

Writing

Learners create two dialogues between a cosmetics marketing executive and a consumer rights advocate.

Reading

Students will read a short text, followed by a Q&A session.

Discussion

Students rearrange words to form questions, then answer them.