I’ve spent some time lately thinking about beauty marketing, precipitated by a comment from a reader disappointed that she didn’t find more advice here about how to look younger, including specifics about poutier lips and that kind of thing. So I wondered how I might share that info with a wider audience. The more I thought about that, the more inauthentic I felt — and the further I drifted from my intention to help us feel more generous about our appearance as we age.
As you might know, I’m not against taking great care of your skin or receiving aesthetic treatments, in-office or otherwise. But it isn’t easy to stay balanced and upright while navigating the slippery slope of managing expectations in a beauty culture that prizes youth and hypersexuality. The way I see it, if you have a face, you’re going to have lots of feelings about it — and the point is to learn how to be comfortable and familiar with all the feels. How do you market that?
But marketing is in the air we breathe and the stuff our dreams are made on. (Don’t believe me? A headline from WWD online: “What to Watch: Space Is the New Frontier for Luxury Brands.”) And if you’re temporarily unexposed to marketing, as I once was while on a trip to rural India, it can look a lot like something else when you return to it: It looks more like a sickness. One that’s persuading, coaxing, and enticing us to want want want more more more. More youthful skin, more perfect skin, fuller hair (or just more hair), whiter teeth, prettier nails, etc. etc. etc. You’re already aware of this. But I bring it up here because I want to remind us that marketing can reduce not only our financial resources, but also our spiritual ones.
We might be amused by the creative ways beauty marketers attract our attention (and magically open our wallets). Recently, I received an email from a PR person advocating something called “The Fit Face,” which, in conjuring up the vague notion of “fitness,” unfortunately suggests we must think of our face as something requiring a workout. (The idea isn’t new; did you break a sweat at FaceGym?) You’ve probably heard of skin cycling, moisture sandwiching, situational cleansing, donut nails, and, speaking of 🍩, glazed skin. The inimitable Jessica DeFino has pointed out the relationship between many of these marketing ploys and the beauty industry’s insatiable appetite for comparing us to foodstuff. Such a smart strategy: Consumers consume! And aren’t we delighted to be on the menu!
But absorbed in such a feast, we can become hungry ghosts. Because though consuming this junk may momentarily fill us up, it ultimately distracts us from our most reliable source of happiness and contentment: presence; now-ness; the beauty of being right where you are.
Again, you’re already aware of this. But do you, like me, keep forgetting? A friend of mine says it’s the hardest thing to have one foot in both worlds, meaning the corporeal and the spiritual. That is especially true in the beauty arena. (Also, every arena.)
Maybe it’s then wise to think of the beauty industry as a circus. We go there to be entertained, to marvel at the transformational sideshows like butt lifts and eye jobs; the procession of clowns squirting “youth-renewing” creams and lotions from fancy fake flowers; the multi-diploma’d experts cracking the whip at the loud, ferocious threats of aging. But when we leave the Big Top, let’s remember it’s all a distraction — and, blinking our way into the bright light of day, focus on the majestic pageantry right before our eyes, which includes you! And you! And you! For better or worse, that focus seems to be what I’m marketing here. I hope you’re buying it.
Reprinted with permission from the weekly Substack newsletter How Not to F*ck Up Your Face. Val Monroe spent 16 years as the beauty director at O, The Oprah Magazine and has been an editor at Ms., Redbook, Self, and Parenting magazines, among others, a contributing writer at Parents, Entertainment Weekly, The Cut at New York Magazine, and has written hundreds of articles for national publications; she’s now a contributor at Allure Magazine.
