Before I get back to books1, I’d like to talk about another obsession.
I’m a complete product whore, and few things make me happier than unboxing an overpriced beauty product. I’m talking Goop-level stuff, in packaging designed by the most cutting-edge tastemakers in the industry, with sleek tubes and pots encased in boxes made of expensive toothy cardboard that goes immediately in the bin. I want lots of extra frippery to make it all feel like an experience. I have an eye cream that came with a little teeny tiny spoon fer crissakes.
Intellectually I know it’s all bullshit. My mom ingrained in me an understanding of the snake oiliness of it all but I can’t resist the seduction of transformation that beauty products provide. I weirdly cling to the belief that there’s a difference between these products and what I can buy at CVS. I’m like a 11-year-old who isn't ready to let go of the Santa Claus myth.
So it pains me to wholeheartedly recommend the following two products.
Eucerin intensive repair balm
It’s the consistency of vaseline but with no petrochemicals, instead made of glycerine and other essential oils, like shea butter. I started by putting this on my elbows and heels, then one night on a whim, I dabbed a little on my eye area. I know this seems excessive, but to paraphrase Beyoncé, if you don’t wake up dessicated, then you don’t know my pain. When I woke up the next morning, my skin was so happy. This costs $15.99 at Walgreen’s, and it’s clear none of this money is going to package designers. I believe this was packaged by the same people who market health care aids to skilled nursing facilities.
I have a tiny little pot of eye cream that I spent $98. I’ll say it again: Ninety-eight dollars, USD. To be fair, it did come with that adorable little spoon. It makes me a little sad to admit what I always knew deep down. I got played. (And for any highly imaginative 11-year-olds who might be reading, there is also no Santa Claus.)
Eucerin spot treatment
Sure, it’s bottled to look like it’s for spackling tile, but this mystical potion provides me the very transformation I perpetually seek. My feet get so dry, I can snag sheets with the jaggedy rough skin on my heels. Well, I put some on before bed last night and woke up with smooth silky feet. $9 at Walgreens. C’mon–how am I supposed to feel good about spending $300/month on skin care when this cheap crap works?
This leads me to two Substacks I want to send you to. First, How to Not Fuck Up Your Face, by Valerie Monroe, the former beauty editor of Oprah Magazine and a writer at New York magazine. Her writing is warm, expert, funny, and terrific. A delivery from her in my inbox feels like an email from an old friend, and she packs each missive with well-researched intel about the sorts of services and products perpetually pushed at women–botox, lash serums, filler, etc., etc.
She seems to be walking the same tightrope as me, balancing between a vain desire to succumb to the siren call of the beauty industrial complex, and a sensible, intelligent, feminist understanding that it’s 98% pernicious bullshit. (I reserve the other 2% for the legitimate need to wash your face and moisturize your skin.)
Here’s the line that completely hooked me from the first time I read her in an entry titled “Winning at the Beauty Game”:
“It's crucial to learn to love your face no matter how you choose to accept or confront the aging process, because you'll never be really happy with how you look unless you can actually see yourself uninhibited by objectification.”
That’s really hard to do when you’re an American female, but an absolutely worthwhile pursuit.”
This, for me, is the gold standard. The point of it all. This quest to actually feel good about how you look yet get outside of the tyranny of objectification. I want to find a way to accept my face and like my face because it’s my face.
As for objectification, it’s easy to look at some ding-dong 20-something model sticking her tush out on Instagram and tsktsk how sad it is that she feels the need to objectify herself in such a way. But are we that much different when we spend so much of our money and mental energy on how dewy we can get our skin to be?
If you like HTNFUYF and you’re maybe ready to go a little more radical, take a peek at The Unpublishable. It’s written by Jessica DeFino, who started her career as a beauty editor, including a brief stint working for the Kardashians when I guess they had an app. The scales slowly fell from DeFino’s perfectly lined lids, however, and she’s now this punk rabble rouser with a take-no-prisoners approach to calling out the truckloads of BS that accompany even the smallest bits of beauty marketing. For example, a line from DeFino on anti-aging/aging gracefully from her piece critiquing Madonna’s kind-of-shocking face from the 2023 Grammys:
“‘Aging gracefully’ is a beauty culture psyop. It’s a euphemism for anti-aging. If ‘aging gracefully’ weren’t a euphemism for anti-aging, it would just be referred to as ‘aging.’”
About that term aging: Diane Von Furstenberg eschews it entirely and suggests instead we use the word “living.” I like that.
Sometimes I’ll admit, The Unpublishable goes too far for me, starts to feel like a killjoy. But I check in with this Substack from time to time to remind myself it’s all a con. At least for me, that understanding feels relevant. And thanks to the hard-working chemists at Eucerin, I’ve rededicated myself to not buying the expensive stuff this year: 2024 is my year of drugstore bargains. I’ll go cheap, but I won’t give up beauty products entirely–it’s all too much fun for me.
Once, back in the days when we lived in a college dorm–where we had no access to an oven–my friend and I bought a box of vanilla cake mix purely to make the batter and lick the spoon. A friend from the boy’s side of the floor, in a proto-moment of mansplaining, came in and said “You know that’s not good for you, right?” To this day she and I trot this line out any time someone states the painfully obvious. Of course we fucking know it’s not good for us–did you think we thought it was?
So with beauty, I’m not ready to let my hair go gray and I won’t be proudly marching about the metro NYC area makeup-free. By doing so I supposed I’m complicit in the patriarchy, but I also look pretty good for my age. So what can I do? Life is a tightrope.
Thanks for reading! And Happy New Year.
I absolutely love your spokesmodel! Really snappy piece that has me looking at this products with delight. x
You had me at “frippery”. Loved this, Alix. And the photos of your sweet dog with the flawless skin!