2025 Beauty Predictions: Stepford Skin, SpaceX Technology, Products As Pets, & More!

The Don't Buy List: Issue #86

Hello and welcome to another edition of THE DON’T BUY LIST! 2025 is careening toward us at a speed I find distressing, if only because I fear the coming year’s beauty trends will seek to further reduce human beings to objects and infuse objects with our stolen humanity — perfume as a proxy libido; blush that imitates the physiological effects of experiencing an emotion; lip balms that carry their own phone cases, purses, water bottles, etc. But more on that in a minute.

First, as social proof that signing up for this newsletter was a good idea, a round-up of its 2024 accomplishments: In January, I was profiled by Country & Town House and formally celebrated my new monthly column at the Guardian, Ask Ugly, with a launch party. I spoke to the BBC about tween skincare in February, and was a guest on one of my favorite podcasts — Nymphet Alumni — in March. Come April, I relaunched the newsletter with a new name: no longer The Unpublishable, but The Review of Beauty. (I actually regret the new name now… but rebranding the newsletter again is a bad idea, right? Right??) I traveled to Wales to speak at HowTheLightGetsIn, the world’s largest philosophy festival, in May — and also launched The Review of Mess, my podcast with

Emily Kirkpatrick

. The next month, I published my most popular column to date: The State Of The Bush. I published a small piece in The Drift in July. I took it easy in September (thanks to Anita Bhagwandas and Ochuko Akpovbovbo for guest-editing during my break) to get ready for October’s most memorable moment: this newsletter’s first-ever in-person event, The Hole Debate! In November, I spoke on a panel hosted by Dazed on Hedonism, Wellness, and The New Face of Gen Z. And to close out the year, I was interviewed by Emily Algar for the Legacy Issue of RUSSH Magazine.

Throughout the year, my work in this newsletter was quoted in or highlighted by NBC News, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New York Post, New York Magazine, Business of Fashion, Vogue, Vogue Business, Glamour, Vox, the Evening Standard, A Rabbit’s Foot, Dazed, Atmos, Grazia, InStyle Australia, theSkimm, and more.

I published 78 articles here! The Review of Beauty’s readership grew from 91,000 to a little over 117,000. More than 113,000 of you access most of my reporting for free, thanks to a small percentage of paying subscribers, to whom I am very grateful.

Lest this all comes off as gloating, I want to share that paid subscriptions haven’t grown this year. The opposite, actually. I have fewer paying subscribers today than I did at this time in 2023 — meaning my income declined in 2024, even as my free reporting reached more people. There are a few reasons for this, some within my control (fresh content plan coming soon) and some outside my control (or not aligned with my values). For one thing, the newsletter market is more saturated now than when I started this project five years ago; every day there are more independent writers competing for readers’ limited time, money, and inbox space. For another, the rise of recommendation culture — accelerated by the drive to define oneself through consumption — doesn’t bode well for an anti-product beauty newsletter. Readers want to shop! And of the Top 10 fashion and beauty newsletters on Substack, The Review of Beauty is the only one that does not feature brand advertisements, collaborations, sponsored posts, or affiliate sales. That means The Review of Beauty is the only top fashion and beauty newsletter not adding to its profits by selling you stuff. (For context: Magasin, a popular fashion newsletter, can earn up to $7,000 in affiliate sales in a single post.) I could offset the dip in paid subscriptions by pushing you to buy my favorite Manuka honey cleanser or jojoba oil — or by writing more articles about how a particular product can change your face rather than why beauty culture makes you want to change your face — but I won’t. It would undermine this newsletter’s mission. I started The Review of Beauty after years in traditional beauty media, where I saw firsthand how good reporting gets shaped, cut, compromised, and corrupted by advertisers and affiliate sales. I’m committed to keeping those influences out of this newsletter.

Unfortunately, I need to increase the cost of a subscription in the coming year to $6/month, or $65/year — my first price hike in half a decade. (The beauty industry can’t say the same!) If you’re already a paying subscriber, you have nothing to worry about; you’re locked in at whatever price you subscribed at for life. If you’re not a paying subscriber yet but would like to be, now is the time to upgrade at the original cost of $5/month. Prices will increase on January 5.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading.

Now, as for my 2025 beauty trend predictions…

• The coming year is all about the unsettling perfection of STEPFORD SKIN. It’s Instagram Face meets dollcore beauty meets tradwife ideology, a continuation of cyborgian beauty standards with a can’t-quite-put-my-finger-on-what’s-weird-here vibe (think: Megan Fox as an AI assistant in the new film Subservience, no prosthetics needed; Lindsay Lohan’s new face). When the female body is viewed as a machine, it’s fine if it wasn’t pre-programmed with the perfect features — it can be reprogrammed with the perfect features! Advancing technology makes for undetectable if uncanny cosmetic work, with a focus on symmetry, smoothness, and agelessness. (Robots don’t wrinkle.)

  

• Feelings are a luxury in the era of the girlborg. As we aesthetically dehumanize, we’ll attempt to re-humanize by PURCHASING FEELINGS THROUGH PRODUCTS. I’ve said it before: Fragrance is popular because it’s as close as it comes to mass-producing and consuming emotions (see Charlotte Tilbury’s “Fragrance Collection of Emotions” — including scents to enhance feelings of “love” and “seduction” — which launched in April). That potential will be harnessed by other categories; consider Fluff’s latest blush launch, with shades names like Nervous and Shy and colors inspired by the physiological effects of… feeling a feeling. To this point, NEUROCOSMETICS will also continue to grow. We may even get the first THERAPIST-DEVELOPED BEAUTY LINE, perhaps through a celebrity partnership (imagine a cross between Jonah Hill’s film collaboration with Phil Stutz and Lili Reinhart’s beauty brand with Dr. Mamina Turegano).

  

• Consumers will double down on ACCESSORIES FOR PRODUCTS. Treating products as pets or dolls or even extensions of the self will be commonplace — people won’t hesitate to get a phone case for their lip balm and adorn jars of eye cream with little charms and tote tubes of moisturizer around in specialized purses, furthering Western society’s objectification of the human and humanization of the object.

• PERFUME will get one more big year before slowing. We’ll see an increase in reports on the negative health effects of PHTHALATES in fragrance, but due to pushback against incoming U.S. Health Secretary RFK Jr. and the MAHA movement, health concerns will be downplayed and discredited by mainstream media and liberal consumers.

• After his success in the fragrance category, President Trump will expand his beauty empire — perhaps with a DEODORANT or BODY WASH? I also wouldn’t be surprised to see a J.D. VANCE-BRANDED BEARD OIL or LASH SERUM (“Feminist BackLASH by J.D. Vance”? jk…), or even an USHA VANCE WELLNESS LINE.

• The SURVEILLANCE STATE comes for skincare with the normalization of UV SKIN SCANNERS and AI ANALYSIS MACHINES, which use ultraviolet light and artificial intelligence to detect skin “issues” not yet visible to the naked eye.

• The new “high maintenance to be low maintenance” will be NATURAL TO BE UNNATURAL. People will look for “naturally-derived ingredients” — even ingredients derived from their own bodies, like fat and plasma — that promise the same aesthetic outcomes as “unnatural” interventions. (Think: stem cell treatments for facelift-level tightening, peptides for Botox-level firming, etc.)

• DENYING REALITY will be all the rage. I foresee a continuance of concealer marketed as “not concealer,” beauty ads with taglines like “This is not a beauty ad,” overconsumption framed as “underconsumption,” $300,000 cosmetic surgeries explained away as “getting sober,” etc.

• Beauty enthusiasts will flock to wellness clinics and med spas for INJECTABLE SKINCARE: syringe-delivered infusions of skin-boosting vitamins like NAD+, glutathione, and vitamins B12, C, and E. (Never mind that the best way to absorb these nutrients is through food; eating is out.)

• Skincare and wellness brands will release OZEMPIC REPLENISHMENT SUPPLEMENTS — ingestible, injectable, topical — to account for “Ozempic skin” and other side effects of semaglutides.

• As smoking becomes “cool” again, we’ll see SMOKING-SPECIFIC SKINCARE MARKETING (Alex Cooper and Unwell, I’m looking at you).

• The industry will continue to invest in the child and tween cosmetics market — better to capture loyal, lifelong consumers before they’ve developed critical thinking skills — via a resurgence of TWEEN MEDIA and TWEEN STORES. A youth-focused beauty magazine (ALLURE GIRL, for instance) would do well; I could also see a curated Sephora pop-up for adolescents in the style of Limited Too. (SEPHORA JR.? Or simply SEPHORA TWEENS to capitalize on all the SEO from last year’s media frenzy…)

• PUBERTY BEAUTY will be the new MENOPAUSE BEAUTY.

• If 2024 was the year of the small breast, 2025 will be the year of the SMALL ASS. There will be an uptick in BUTT LIPO and BUTT IMPLANT REMOVAL, and maybe even SMALL BUTT IMPLANTS a la this year’s small breast implant craze. (On the pod,

  Emily Kirkpatrick
  dubbed this the “WASP BBL.”)

• FILLER ILLNESS will follow the trajectory of Breast Implant Illness. Medical research will start to confirm the many serious and mysterious symptoms patients have documented in Reddit threads and online support groups for years: fatigue, headaches, burning sensations, and more.

• LIPS will continue to dominate across sectors — color cosmetics, skincare, injectables, procedures. LIP LASERS will be the new LIP FILLERS; the ideal aesthetic will be smaller than in years past (yet still artificially enhanced) with an emphasis on symmetry.

• LASER TECHNOLOGY will be big for skincare, too. Expect cheaper versions of LYMA’s $2,700 at-home laser kit to hit the market and CO2 laser resurfacing to take off as an in-office treatment. Keywords will be: RESURFACE, REJUVENATE, REGENERATE.

• 1970s AESTHETICS that nod to nature and sustainability will reign: LONG HAIR, MESSY WAVES, BANGS, BOHO VIBES, and EARTH TONES (which will, of course, be achieved through generally unnatural and unsustainable means).

• More LUXURY FASHION BRANDS WILL LAUNCH BEAUTY LINES in an effort to reach fast fashion shoppers (accessibly-priced beauty products are the fast fashion of high fashion). In line with the above ‘70s-inspired style prediction, perhaps CHLOÉ and ISABEL MARANT?

• In terms of beauty buzzwords, JELLY will be the new GLAZED. JELLY DONUT BLUSH and JELLY BALM are only the beginning…

• “NASA-backed technology” abounds in the cosmetics space, but as Elon Musk’s influence on American business and politics grows, we’ll see the first beauty product made with “SPACEX-BACKED TECHNOLOGY.”

• HANDS and CHINS will be the hot new body parts to hate. Expect new anti-aging products and procedures to address the former and lipo, injections, and implants to address the latter.

• As plastic surgery becomes more popular (and more accessible due to Buy Now Pay Later arrangements), REVISION SURGERY to fixed botched procedures will account for a larger portion of the industry’s growth.

• The SUNSCREEN WARS will heat up come summer. The loudest voices in the space will lean into extremes — either “a single drop of sunscreen will give you cancer” or “a single ray of sunlight will give you cancer.” Neither side will be correct; most Americans will be fairly ambivalent about sun protection. Last year’s SUNBURN BLUSH will give way to ACTUAL SUNBURN, the TANNING BED BOOM will continue (perhaps, in the style of Kim Kardashian, as a “treatment” for psoriasis or eczema), and approval of POTENTIAL NEW SUNSCREEN INGREDIENTS will be blocked by RFK Jr.’s all-but-dismantled FDA.

• This might come to a head in 2026 depending on the marketing and timing of the movie, but I see an AUSTIN BUTLER SKINCARE CONTRACT ahead of his turn as Patrick Bateman in the American Psycho remake — and pop culture’s de-ironized embrace of Patrick Bateman as a beauty icon. American Psycho will be Barbie for boys, in that its marketing will enforce certain appearance ideals even as its script critiques them.

• Beauty will continue to reach more men — not through the gender-inclusive language popular over the past couple years, but by positioning skincare, injectables, plastic surgery, and hormone treatments as POWER TOOLS FOR ALPHA MALES. This will further expose masculinity as nothing more than an effortful performance — and yet! The industry’s most hyper-masculine devotees (many of whom have influence in conservative politics) will 1) still insist that femininity and masculinity are biologically fixed and 2) work to restrict trans people’s access to gender-affirming healthcare.

• Empowerment marketing will slow; beauty will be advertised with more explicit CALLS TO POWER (sex, love, friendship, career, money, privilege — social and economic mobility) instead.

• Say hello to the LONGEVITY DAD. Like last year’s Serum Mom — herself the beauty culture equivalent of diet culture’s Almond Mom — the LONGEVITY DAD is obsessed with living longer and maintaining a youthful appearance, and encourages the same obsession in his children (who will eventually need therapy, but will settle for a therapist’s skincare line).

Happy New Year!