Skinfantilization
The Don't Buy List: Issue #77
Hello and welcome to another edition of THE DON’T BUY LIST.
Amazon Prime Day 2024 — a two-day affair that took place over July 16 & 17 — netted $14.2 billion in sales, injured an estimated 45% of Amazon warehouse workers, and likely “accounted for more than 1.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions — equivalent to the annual emissions of 68,000 Americans,” per Fast Company.
Last year, 22% of Prime Day sales were beauty sales; this year, the percentage of beauty sales increased by 16%, with the makeup category specifically growing by 30% and skincare by 14%. This mimics the growth of Amazon beauty overall. The expansion of Amazon’s cosmetic category (up 26% YoY) is outpacing that of Amazon itself (19.9%). Add to this the recent onboarding of prestige brands (Kiehl’s, Estée Lauder) and an accessible affiliate program (for the 53% of Gen Z who want to be influencers), and Amazon is on track to be the nation’s top beauty retailer by 2025.
Worth mentioning here: Amazon has a long history of funding anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion legislation; see my reporting here (“How The Beauty Industry Funds Anti-LGBTQ+ Politicians”) and here (“The Beauty Brands Backing Abortion Bans”).
This is relevant to the beauty conversation in particular because the language used to market these products — by Amazon, by influencers, by editors and even customers — is often the language of social justice: They promise health, wellness, care, empowerment, autonomy, community. And if we insist on using those stated values as justification for participating in the beauty industry, we should acknowledge when the beauty industry does not align with those values (often).
Anyway! Onto the links.
IN THIS ISSUE: Smelling like yourself! The infantilization of skincare! Baby blush! Minis en masse! The great mascara debate! The fall of clean beauty! Alopecia! Renata Adler’s braid! Matt Gaetz! J.D. Vance! Auramaxxing! Botox alternatives! Boardroom beauty! Butthole mirrors! & more!
SCENTS OF SELF: I have a short piece in the latest issue of The Drift!
“This fragrance becomes you,” reads the ad copy for Victoria’s Secret scent “Bare,” one of the latest in a series of perfumes promising to make you smell like yourself. (Victoria’s Secret being among the nation’s top fragrance brands, “Bare” becomes plenty of other people, too.) Some scents are more explicit about selling a sense of self: take Yves Saint Laurent’s “MYSLF” or Millie Bobby Brown’s “Wildly Me,” which the brand claimed amassed a 13,000-person waitlist within a week of its announcement. Glossier says that a bottle of “You” sells every forty seconds. Those looking for a perfume truly up-front about its artificiality might instead consider a recent offering from Joseph Duclos: “Eau de Manufacture.”
Read the rest of the issue here.
LASHING OUT: Glamour asked if “mascara was out for 2024” back in February; this week, the debate raged on.
