I was reading an article recently in the March issue of Bazaar called "Get the Glow, Neck to Toe". (Unfortunately it is not featured online but you can check it out in the magazine on p.352) The story contains a list of beauty products aimed at perfecting the following parts of your body: neck, stomach, chest, butt & legs. It tells you what treatments you can have at the "doctor's" office and then shows you the must-have products for making the skin on each of these areas look (and remain) youthful.
Halfway through this article it suddenly occurred to me that I did not want to know more. It is hard enough not shopping for clothes and not being able to buy the latest make up, but these seemingly ludicrous and expensive suggestions just put me over the edge. Do normal non-celebrity woman really apply five different creams to various parts of their body on a daily basis? Or is this just a way to make us feel like...we are only as beautiful as the products we use? I take very good care of the skin on my face, and for the rest of my body I use sunscreen and a daily moisturizer I cannot spend $120 on neck cream (doesn't my face moisturizer also go on my neck?) nor do I have $2500 lying around for a special laser treatment to get the flab smoothed out on my belly. I also will not be artfully applying self-tanner on my belly for a six-pack. Isn't that what sit-ups are for?
Who has time for all of this? My man often falls asleep before I make it into bed at night, claiming that I take too long in the bathroom. This is when I am only washing my face and brushing my teeth! If I started polishing my butt every night we would never see each other. I love the idea of a simple beauty routine and I want to keep it that way. Why couldn't the beauty industry just keep all of the skin care products aimed at our face?
I bet Helen Mirren doesn't have a butt polisher and she still looks amazing.
Love, A
P.S. Let me know if you are into the idea of having a daily beauty regime for your body. I love to be proven wrong!
10 comments:
My boyfriend has complained every night for the three years we have lived together that I take too long in the bathroom at night! (He, too, is often asleep by the time I get to bed.) To me, it doesn't seem like I'm doing anything crazy: wash my face, brush and floss my teeth, put on my two face products for nighttime. I can't imagine doing more, and have been trying to scale down my overall beauty-product routine. I actually just wrote about it all on my blog a couple weeks ago!
And, I also often lose interest in beauty articles after reading half of them. My issue: I always hope to read something new, but either it's all the same stuff (how many times do we need to be told to exfoliate?!), or it's way too expensive to ever consider buying!
Agreed. I spend a LOT on my face cleanser/moisturizer (mostly because I have rosacea and have only found one product line that helps and does not exacerbate the problem), but for everything else, SPF moisturizer, some of those exfoliating gloves and plain ol' soap in the shower.
I'd love to see a focus on aging gracefully--I know it will never happen because aging gracefully does not require as many PRODUCTS for companies to sell us. More sickening to me than the idea of La Mer $400 face cream is the increasing number of "beauty" articles about surgery and invasive techniques. The normalization of procedures that inject, cut, snip, pull, etc. is very scary to me. And I can't understand why people want to do it: look at all the creepy-looking ladies in the media. SJP (woe is me! I love her and she just looked too thin and too pulled tight at the Oscars), Madonna, Courtney Cox, basically anyone over 30 in Hollywood.
Helen Mirren has it right: she looks fit and healthy.
Tirade over. :)
That is so funny that you just wrote that about your boyfriend! I read your beauty post, I admire your dedication to your routine (I don't even use a toner and apparently I still take too long!). It is so true about beauty articles. Exfoliating is exfoliating, no matter how you spin it. Everyone has such different skin and lives in different climates that it is always so interpretive. And with all of the products out there it would take a million years to find the "right" one. I am guilty of finding a product that I really like but instead of buying it again when it runs out I will reach for something else thinking it might be better than the last. So ridiculous! Love, A
All I do is SPF lotion in the morning on my whole face, and a stronger moisturizer at night.
Then coconut oil for my whole body seems to work just fine (even for the ends of my hair)
It's horrible to expect women to buy and apply 5 different lotions or more
eye cream, neck cream, breast cream, hand cream, leg cream, body cream... it's just ridiculous
Hey YYZ! I couldn't agree more. It seems like all of the magazines have monthly features on surgery and injections, as if it is a normal part of everyone's beauty routine. I can't say how I will feel 20 years from now but I think more emphasis on a healthy diet and natural ingredients would be so much more beneficial. Unfortunately there is no money in that for the cosmetics/beauty/ad industry. I, too, felt bad for SJP, obviously we love her but it was just a bit extreme! Same with Molly Ringwald. Her eye job was wack! Love, A
I used to use coconut oil on my belly when I was pregnant and it was such a good moisturizer. For some reason I strayed away (perhaps the lure of a body moisturizer in cute packaging lured me in!) but I am definitely into the idea of using it again. Thanks for the reminder! Love, A
I thought Molly Ringwald's eyes looked crazy, too! I commented they were of the "fembot" variety in my Oscars roundup. Just so wide, staring and unmoving. *Shudder*
I love Jezebel's breakdown of women's magazine headlines - called "Cover Lies" http://jezebel.com/tag/coverlies/. It's really funny, and I'm trying to think of a way to summarize it to do it justice, but I can't. Women's mags basically just recycle the same ideas, but change the words around and insert different products.
Also, in terms of beauty routine, when I have extra time I like to take a long shower and then slather up in the Body Shop's scented body butter. I also sometimes use some fancy dead-sea skin care products that I was talked into buying at the mall. Every morning I wash my face, sometimes user toner, always moisturizer. I should wash my face more in the evening than I do. But I also don't have a boyfriend - much less a live-in one, so I guess it doesn't really matter. =P
The "cover lies" are hilarious. Just read their take on the insanely ridiculous sex advice in Cosmo. I love the Body Shop butters, too. The body cream I am using right now is sucky. Bought it on sale. Why didn't I just stick with what I knew? Love, A
I think it was J. Aniston who said that she only uses neutral soap for her face, since she was a teen.
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