Is skincare biggest con?

A model applying sunscreen. There has been a variety of beauty and skin care products coming into the market lately and women are direct beneficiaries. PHOTO/CHARLES KAMAU

What you need to know:

  • Women with problem skin on YouTube and Instagram have emerged barefaced to challenge the idea of perfect skin.
  • Skin care as self care has over time come to promote autonomy: how much control do women really have over their bodies though?
  • A vox.com think piece says these  wars are about how women choose to spend their money, and how skin care latches onto women’s anxieties.

I’m not sure if you have heard of the skin care wars. They have been going on since January this year when a Krithika Varagur wrote an article declaring skin care a waste of time.

Beauty editors naturally rose up in protest. Seeing how their job is about finding, testing and informing, they felt more than sufficiently equipped to respond to the woman who said “skin care was mostly a con.” Why? Bad person experiences of course.

There has been an avalanche of beauty and skin care products coming into the market lately and women of colour have been direct beneficiaries. Then there is the rise of the 11 step K- Beauty regimen along with the wonderful affordability of Korean skin care products. Varagur then adds why all this is a scam. “Perfect skin is unattainable because it does not exist. The idea that we should both have it and want it is a waste of our time and money.” I find myself agreeing with that specific part. To a point.

Let us examine this ‘scam’ for a moment. Skin care has over the years transformed from hand me down kitchen recipes in a skint agony aunt column to a thriving industry worth billions of dollars with new players coming in every day. It is backed by science which breaks down ingredients and their usage. Skin care is now in the realm of self care.

In fact some say if it makes women happy and is harmless, back off. Skin care is a fascinating phenomenon. It can, and has been, considered to be a pandering to the male idea of beauty. Women seek a standard of flawlessness impossible to achieve.

Women with problem skin on YouTube and Instagram have emerged barefaced to challenge the idea of perfect skin. Skin care as self care has over time come to promote autonomy: how much control do women really have over their bodies though? A vox.com think piece says these  wars are about how women choose to spend their money, and how skin care latches onto women’s anxieties. And how in the era of Trump, more have turned to self care as a way to deal with this “I need a moment’ kind of presidency.

But what is self care and why does it count for so much? Seen as a set of rituals to invest in one self, downtime as me time, an interlude where angry rebellious skin is soothed and calmed, what is it and why are women paying for it?

In A History of Self Care, Slate offers amazing insight. Doctors started out by telling their patients to treat themselves through exercising healthy habits. While these were mentally ill and elderly patients, the group eventually grew to include high risk professions like social workers and trauma therapists. The logic; if you don’t take care of youself, you can’t take care of others.

The civil rights movement erupted influencing women’s rights, the two build on the understanding that where there is no health care catering to minorities and women, there would have to be self care.

This took on an almost spiritual vibe. And it gave birth to fitness and wellness. Blogs formed asking women to navigate the world as their own saviour. Even in the absence of black products women found ways to derive pleasure out of rubbing and soothing unguents.

It’s easy to dismiss these as modern practices. But, our ancestors knew their way shea butter, ghee and coconut oil to say the least. They too, took time out to be, feel and look beautiful. They had their beauty secrets. You know the ones we are trying to reclaim?

I now know most women with smooth iterations of chocolate skin were born with it. Some things not even science can gift. But those quiet moments when a woman goes through her skin care, it turns out they are sacred and women are willing to pay however much they can afford to have a moment alone with their friend, skin.