When recessions hit, lipstick sales spike. Or so thought Leonard Lauder, a former chairman of Estée Lauder. In 2001, he came up with the term “the lipstick index” which described how, when times get hard, consumers opt for inexpensive treats, like a tube of lipstick, over big-ticket items.
This index may have outlived its usefulness now that masks routinely cover the lower half of one’s face. Over half of women have reduced their makeup use since lockdown, according to Mintel, an international market research company. Global beauty sales fell by 10 to 30 per cent in the first half of 2020. But skincare has been a bright spot for the beauty industry, including for Estée Lauder, whose skincare sales went up 13 per cent to $7.4bn compared to 2019. “The significant rise in face wash and facial toner usage in particular may well be impacted by a greater focus on health and hygiene during the pandemic,” says Roshida Khanom, head of beauty and personal care at Mintel. What, then, do we understand by health?
Efrat Tseëlon, a professor of fashion theory at the University of Leeds, says beauty businesses have always straddled the line between the medicinal and the cosmetic. The cosmetics industry emerged at the end of the 19th century, with firms using all sorts of marketing ploys to sell products that promised to clean, clarify and smooth skin. Makeup was hard to sell—due to its association with prostitutes and actresses, cosmetics were seen as “false” and “indecent.” But skincare, which presumably achieved cleanliness, became an indicator of moral and social superiority. Advertising became critical in spreading these ideas, “creating a need, and persuading people that their product [were] the solution to that problem,” says Tseëlon.
Much like the natural, no-makeup look of the Victorians, skincare today searches after a “healthy glow.” The goal is framed in the language of “health,” but is really a concern with beauty. To some extent, that makes sense in a world where appearance is a badge of success, particularly for women, says Michelle Wong, a science educator and founder of blog Lab Muffin Beauty Science. Studies show that good-looking people are more likely to get hired and promoted. “There are rational reasons to care about how you look,” Wong says.
Lockdowns have been a prime time for what The Atlantic in 2018 called an “at-home science experiment,” with more people learning about and trying a growing number of products. “I think there’s been an increase in people using stronger ingredients, perhaps ingredients that weren’t really meant for consumers before,” says Wong, citing retinol, a popular skincare ingredient that can be abrasive. She has heard stories from dermatologists who say they are seeing more and more patients with burns from experiments gone wrong.
In their quest for the perfect combination of products, skincare obsessives might be another iteration of what sociologist Francesco Morace called the “ConsumAuthor,” an individual who rejects mass consumerism to seek unique, personalised experiences. The problem with skincare, like with many other consumer goods, is that the science behind it is often flimsy. Information within peer-reviewed papers remains inaccessible, so the general public turns to dubious sources for guidance. Wong gives the example of a recent TikTok trend around a peeler, a solution that sloughs off the top layer of skin on your face. “People were using that every day when really that should be used once every two weeks probably,” she says.
According to her, brands themselves have no incentive to share scientific findings about these ingredients because that could compromise their ability to sell stronger chemical products. Under US legislation, for example, cosmetics are not intended to affect “the structure or any function” of the skin, and if they do—and Wong argues some of them do—they should be regulated as drugs. “If brands actually recognised that skin care could have drug-like actions, I think the implications would be really messy.”
Meanwhile, the tech industry has also gotten on board with the skin care craze. Devices with names like “vibrating skin spatula” and “blackhead vacuum,” as well as a range of massagers and LED masks, are readily available for those eager to strike out on new paths. As for lipstick and makeup, only time will tell if they survive the age of the mask. Citizen science, hopefully, will remain in the spotlight and steer people away from empty promises.
