The Don't Buy List: Injectable Happiness, Prime Day Hypocrisy, & SPF WTFs

Plus, HELP ME WRITE MY BOOK.

Hello, dewy dust bunnies, and welcome to another edition of the The Don’t Buy List! Today’s top skincare trends include “jello skin,” “glazed donut skin,” and even “mirror skin.” Now, I could tell you how these trends encourage literal self-objectification. I could explore how our collective obsession with products has moved beyond buying products and into becoming products. But I won’t, because self-reflection is OUT and skin reflection is IN, baby!!!

Anyway.

Yesterday was Amazon Prime Day: a holiday celebrating a product (Amazon Prime) that incentivizes you to buy more products (the stuff on Amazon) by incentivizing you to buy even more products (the stuff on Amazon eligible for Prime Day discounts).

Have you ever wondered why beauty outlets — Allure, Vogue, ELLE, The Cut, etc. — publish so goddamn many Amazon Prime Day articles? (This year, Allure alone published 17 Prime Day lists that I could find. SEVENTEEN!!!) Or why every makeup, skincare, and wellness feature seems to link to products on Amazon throughout the rest of the year? It’s because when they link to an Amazon product, and a reader clicks on and buys that product, the publisher is paid a percentage of that sale. These are known as “affiliate sales,” and they’re a significant source of income for digital media platforms. Plenty of other retailers offer affiliate programs, too, but Amazon is an industry favorite. (In most of my previous beauty writing gigs, I was encouraged to use Amazon links for this reason — there were even times when I wanted to feature a particular product that wasn’t on Amazon but, because there was a similar-enough product that was on Amazon, editors would have me switch out the product I originally selected in favor of the Amazon product.)

My point is: