In a society dominated by inequality, self-care is becoming more of a distraction tactic – so how do we take care of our skin without becoming unhealthily fixated on our appearance?
If you talk to people about their skincare habits, especially those who religiously follow routines, most will tell you that they engage with skincare for many reasons, but most importantly, because they want to “take care of themselves.” Over the last few years, “wellness” has been one of our most prevailing socio-cultural fixations, and for obvious reasons: Climate change is intensifying, and it’s killing us. The cost of living crisis continues to wage on, and it’s been predicted that it will cause thousands of premature deaths. The COVID-19 pandemic is not over, with it being reported that around 20,000 people have died of the disease in the United States since the start of October, and the Palestinian death toll has surpassed 25,000, according to the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip.
We live in a society dominated by inequality, and as a result, death is everywhere. While the world is on fire, wellness and self-care have been marketed to us as an essential form of self-protection. Once an impassioned political philosophy, self-care has now been reduced to the consumption of products such as foot spas, fancy-smelling candles, and, of course, skincare.
Skincare products are marketed as items that will improve our self-confidence, help us gain control, and essentially provide us with a sense of calm in our lives. Unsurprisingly, however, they have often done the opposite. In 2020, Refinery29 reported that gerascophobia, which is an extreme fear of getting older, is on the rise. Nothing has highlighted this more than the viral TikTok videos of 10-year-olds sharing their skincare routines that include anti-ageing products to prevent the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines. Being fearful of ageing isn’t new, but it does have a detrimental impact on our health and wellbeing. A 2002 study by Yale University found that negative thinking about ageing took seven-and-a-half years off people’s lives. Another study produced in 2020 similarly found that ageism led to worse health outcomes in people, including depression, a number of physical health conditions and, as the 2002 study found, a shorter life expectancy.
While skincare is purported as a way to “take care of oneself”, the skincare industry continues to reinforce prevalent fears around ageing and our appearance to place consumers in a permanent state of anxiety. To convince us to buy the products, first the brands must convince us there is a problem to be solved. How much glycolic acid would be sold if no one had ever heard the phrase ”enlarged pores”? You wouldn’t need to buy a retinol if ”fine lines” weren’t an issue, or a hydrating moisturiser if ”dry” skin wasn’t a problem. In fact, the skin types ’oily’, ’dry’ and ’normal’ were created for marketing purposes, not by medical professionals but by brand founder Helena Rubinstein. Meanwhile, it was razor company Gillette that created the cultural expectation that women shave off their body hair.
Many of us know that the skincare industry is insidious, but this knowledge can sometimes leave us feeling more confused than empowered. Our skin is our largest organ, and we should take care of it – but how do we do that without becoming unhealthily fixated on our appearance or worrying about ageing?
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Beauty content creator Ankita Chaturvedi considers her skincare routine to be one of her most important rituals. She believes that to have a healthy relationship with skincare, one’s actions must not come from a place of fear. “This is easier said than done, obviously, because skincare messaging is so sneaky. One day, you’re sitting down thinking, ‘Oh, maybe I should start thinking about Botox’, but you don’t even remember who said it to you or where you read it first,” she says. Regardless of this, Chaturvedi asserts that her skincare practices, which range from a simple routine of moisturiser and sunscreen to double cleansing, amongst other things, are acts she does only for herself. “My skin looks better once I do my skincare, and that makes me feel good.”
But when you follow this thought to its conclusion, it starts to unravel. One of the reasons skincare makes people feel good is because it can make them look good – i.e. fit into contemporary beauty ideals – which, in turn, makes people treat you better, James Hamblin argues in his book Clean: The New Science of Skin and the Beauty of Doing Less. “[There are] very real ways that appearance informs how people treat others,” he writes. It’s one of the reasons we gravitate towards skincare, make-up and particular clothes, not entirely for ourselves, but for others too. No one lives in a vaccum, and so it is almost impossible to conceive of what would make us feel good if removed from our context and the reactions of others.
It’s not only our ‘glowing’ appearances that make people treat us better, but our actual engagement with skincare products. “Our society glorifies product use no matter the outcome,” beauty reporter and critic Jessica DeFino tells Dazed. “Especially in beauty, it’s almost more celebrated to appear as if you are trying to meet the standard of beauty than not. Actually caring for your skin has nothing to do with it at all.” 28-year-old membership officer Sophie can attest to what DeFino is saying. “I used to be really into skincare, but my skin cleared up as soon as I quit in 2017, and I haven’t looked back since.”
“Our society glorifies product use no matter the outcome. Especially in beauty, it’s almost more celebrated to appear as if you are trying to meet the standard of beauty than not. Actually caring for your skin has nothing to do with it at all“ - Jessica DeFino
Sophie didn’t quit skincare for political reasons; the practice just became too expensive while she was at university. “I only cleanse and apply sunscreen now, and I think less about my skin overall, which has been great. For me, [skincare] was part of a larger cycle of worrying about my appearance, and I felt like I was dependent on it to feel like I was taking care of myself.” Now that she doesn’t worry about skincare, we takes care of herself in other, “healthier” ways. ”That can be taking a walk, calling a friend, baking a cake or scheduling a therapy appointment.”
Like Sophie, 23-year-old Sanya also used to have an intense skincare routine, but got rid of it after working at the billion-dollar beauty brand Glossier last year. “At Glossier, I would lie to people about whether I used or liked products, particularly skincare, and then they’d compliment my skin and I felt like such a fraud. Especially because [Glossier] sell their customers an unattainable version of beauty and dress it up as self-care and acceptance,” she says. Even after being exposed to the insides of the skincare industry and seeing how deceiving it is, Sanya admits that she can’t help but buy into it. “I’m not sure I would have found it easy to opt out of skincare if I didn’t already have near-perfect skin. I am also still very afraid of ageing, and because of that, the only product I still use religiously is sunscreen.”
DeFino, who has been a leading critic of the beauty and skincare industry, doesn’t believe we should beat ourselves up about being fearful of ageing. “I don’t know if it’s possible to not worry about ageing, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s a bad thing,” she says. ”I think that’s an essential part of being human. Not to be morbid about it, but through death, life is given meaning. So I don’t necessarily think that we need to stop having these little moments where you realise, ’What does this mean for my mortality and my life,’ that’s going to happen. The important part is handling those emotions without manipulating our physical form.”
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DeFino believes that it is possible to take care of your skin in a way that doesn’t feed into beauty standards or centre anti-ageing; we just have to think about our skin differently. “I think the framework is to remember that your skin is an organ like any other. However much you take care of your other organs or don’t, you can do the same for your skin.” If you have an issue that is showing up on your skin, she says, it’s probably tied to something else happening within your body or in your environment that is worth investigating. “[It’s] not as a matter of ‘I must erase this patch of flakes on my skin’, but as a way of saying ‘Oh, that’s interesting. What is making this happen? And is my body perhaps giving me a visual cue that it needs something from me, perhaps more hydration or electrolytes?’”
Skin health expert Jasmina Vico agrees, calling the skin a mirror that reflects what’s going on within us. “Our skin is an organ that functions as part of a larger system, we miss so much when we treat it in isolation, both in what it can tell us about what’s happening inside our bodies such as intolerances or deficiencies but also the support it needs externally.” For Vico, looking after your skin means learning about the relationship your skin has with the rest of the body and thus understanding what your skin might be signalling to you. “When we are informed, we’re much less swayed by trends and buzzword ingredients because we know what our skin needs to function at its best, on a biological level.”
It’s also important to remember that your skin is alive. Like a jungle, it is home to different microorganisms that truly take care of our skin and body. While it might feel unsettling to learn that we have tiny mites that live on the surface of our skin, they remind us that our skin is part of something much bigger than our physical appearance. “If you research the skin microbiome, you find out that you have microorganisms on your skin that can be traced back to at least three generations,” DeFino explains. “Parts of our ancestors live on our skin as part of the built-in care of our body, and I just think that’s so beautiful. Once I started learning those little things, it made this urge to eradicate layers upon layers of my skin in service to the beauty standard less appealing.”
So, can we have a relationship with skincare that won’t kill us? The answer is yes. But we must try to let go of our fears of the inevitable. If we’re lucky, we will all age. We will also all lose our ‘beauty’ or, more accurately, what society deems as our ‘beauty’. What comes with this acknowledgement is a release – if you allow it – from the superficial and oppressive. Only then can we really and truly take care of our skin.