Visual credit: Sophie Désy — Photographer
Column written by Ismail Bekkali — Journalist
The end of the exams marked the culmination of a long fight, while the dark circles on my face bear witness to this battle. The convalescence period that followed was filled with rest, lie-ins and the relaxing effects of facial masks. Under the influence of other followers, I discovered the therapeutic virtues of a routine skincare, but also the underbelly of this cult.
Beyond its benefits for the skin and mental health, starting to take care of your face also means accepting to be part of a community that strives to find the perfect routine, with the aim of having a immaculate skin.
Everyone develops their own combination of miracle products based on their skin type, and therefore practices their ritual differently. What, in theory, may seem ordinary, in reality reveals an inherent flaw in the market selling these products.
Navigating a cosmetic ocean
Having been newly initiated into skincareI found myself lost in the face of an innumerable range of articles of all kinds. Despite the enlightened advice of more experienced acquaintances, each research on a particular treatment led to nebulous conclusions or divergent opinions which could state everything and its opposite.
However, I managed to unearth the certainty that the cosmetics market was saturated. Although some products seem to be universally popular, I have found that others quickly lose popularity after a few weeks.
The marketing surrounding this industry becomes even more laughable when it relies on public figures to broadcast its advertisements on the networks, where the products, in turn presented as “must-haves”, end up being criticized, thus revealing all the irony of this trade.
The weight of words in the cosmetics industry
These observations led me to further reflection academic on the marketing of cosmetic care and on the reasons which could explain its contradictions.
The way advertising works is to promote the benefits of an item by belittling the imperfections it is supposed to correct. Although few people are completely convinced by this message, it is difficult to deny the values it conveys: en constantly displaying a woman taking care of her skin on screen, cosmetic product advertisements express the gendered reality of this industry. Advertising therefore sets up the feminine ideal of perfect skin and degrades the natural signs of aging.
-With this idea in mind and once I noticed the importance of the mercantile vocabulary used, how these campaigns worked became obvious. It will always be about healing the skin. Regardless of whether it is “repair,” “firm,” or “restore,” the accumulation of terms beginning with “re-” suggests that every crease, wrinkle, or redness in the skin needs to be corrected. .
Some people may claim to have freed themselves from this diktat, but the guilt that advertising generates is today supported by a scholarly lexicon confirming the benefits of the product.
Further details research on the instructions for cosmetic products reveal the vacuity of supposedly “scientific” declarations. While some of them are not false, they are intentionally vague. The effectiveness of the article would be “scientifically approved” by a researcher in a white coat, while the actress on screen sees herself freed from all her torments, and stupidly displays a smile of bliss.
In any case, advertising creates a reality into which the consumer wants to project themselves, whether for cosmetic items or not. The cosmetics industry therefore nourishes the ideal of perfect skinjustifying the annoyance that natural “imperfections” of the skin can cause with a discourse focused on health.
The cult of eternally young skin becomes the best-known example, but ironically also the most contradictory. Regardless of the name of the product in question, adding the words “anti-wrinkle” or “against aging” only increases the absurdity of this aesthetic diktat. In this sense, cosmetic brands implicitly encourage their consumers to desire a supernatural ideal, as if purchasing a facial cream would make it possible to slow down death.
Knowledge and influences for informed consumption
Even though these kinds of ads are becoming rarer and targeting an older audience, I can’t help but notice a similar obsession among a younger age group. The vocabulary has been altered, and old age is no longer directly targeted, but the same ideal of beauty remains. Here, it is no longer a question of “repairing”, but of “preserving” the youthfulness of your skin, or even perfecting it in order to rid it of any defects.
With this new generalized awareness comes learning dermatological terminologies or chemical compounds that I didn’t even know existed. The names of substances such as vitamin C or hyaluronic acid can certainly frighten the uninitiated, but their growing popularity testifies to an increasingly democratized knowledge and a reappropriation of the field.
Finding out about the components of cosmetic products means knowing how to make a more or less informed choice among an infinite number of items at too often exorbitant prices. Although I have criticized cosmetic marketing for several paragraphs, I admit to having found significant satisfaction in discovering this environment.
More than a publicized trend or a saturated market, having a skin care routine involves promoting personal well-being. In this sense, it would probably be necessary to question the products we consume, but also the influences pushing us to buy them.
