When I see those ads featuring models or celebrities, one thing that always stands out is how flawless and healthy-looking their skin is and just how overall stunning they are. Put aside the fact that these images and commercials are heavily edited and carefully curated with a whole team of people behind the short amount of time you spend looking at them. Great skin does not come easily or naturally to a vast majority of the population. There’s a reason why the skincare industry is worth billions of dollars and growing. We’re sold an ideal that we’re convinced can be achieved by buying this one product and using that ingredient. And it may be true, just not to the extent bordering on magical or fast.
Take it from my experience – I must have spent hundreds of dollars trying to get my skin to be as unblemished as it once was when I was blissfully ignorant and unappreciative of the perks of being a kid. It doesn’t help that the daily stressors and responsibilities only build with time and we each have our own baggage trailing behind us as we make our way through life. It all contributes to how we look and feel.
I wish I could tell you that beauty doesn’t matter. But it does. Pretty privilege is a very real phenomenon and it’s not going away no matter our acknowledgment and awareness of said bias. However, I can tell you that these beauty standards are never going to be within reach. The goal posts keep moving further away. The world is evolving at a rapid pace with the virility of social media which means that the beauty standards will keep changing from this to that, from place to place, and group to group.
It’s simply just not achievable because there are notes of artificiality and enhancements. Real skin and bodies in the real world don’t look like that moment in time captured in a photo or captured in a few-seconds clip. These days, digitally altering content has never been more accessible. People can transform their faces and bodies to look slimmer, toned, and enhanced to perfection in the span of minutes or seconds. Not even videos are immune! For example, there exists software that can help create the illusion of a slimmer waist all while the person moves around.
Skincare and other beauty items sell the dream that using their product will get you what they are advertising. But that is not true! There are no magical potions out there. That’s not to say to stop using them altogether. A lot of results are not seen in the short term, requiring years to see a visible difference. And we’ll never know for certain unless there are ample case studies and research to back it up. However, that scientific evidence typically calls out an ingredient that can contribute to anti-aging or restorative properties. But even with all the hype behind an ingredient, that doesn’t mean that long-term studies following subjects across decades won’t call out issues or disprove previously held notions that became dispersed as common knowledge.
For example, let’s talk about filler. When it was first introduced, it quickly captured the public’s attention because it was advertised as temporary. Lo and behold, almost a decade later, now it is known that filler migrates and doesn’t actually dissolve. Since that filler migration creates the belief that now it has “disappeared”, more filler needs to be injected to achieve the same result thus creating volume that subtly balloons over time, contributing to an overall puffy effect.
This post is a cautionary tale that while we’re making decisions to try this product, that procedure, or those ingredients, all that glitters is not gold. Cast a critical eye onto what you’ve been told and think about the repercussions of introducing new variables into your life. It may just be the case that that new, shiny thing creates problems in the form of breakouts or even worse long-term damage.
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