Skincare: the Newest Trapping of Femininity

A personal reflection on the newest beauty ideal that's quietly evaded radical feminist critique

Last night I woke in a panic after a dream that I was rapidly aging, looking in the mirror to find I resembled a 50 year old woman - papery, wrinkled skin melting from my face in exaggerated body horror fashion - while still on the cusp of 30. Since I quit my skincare routine two months ago it seems my sub-conscious has been in a crisis trying to rectify all the fears and anxieties I didn’t want to acknowledge.

I’ve been a radical feminist who abstained from make-up for far longer than I’ve used skincare products and I have to be honest: I was duped. I started skincare for fun, to bond with other women in something that seemed light and inconsequential. I wasn’t wearing make-up after all, so what was the harm? But that unimportant, every-so-often act quickly spiraled into a frantic form of retail therapy that sucked up my time and my money, stomping all over my radical feminist beliefs and morphing me into a private hypocrite.

When it first was becoming a bit of a problem — when I had an oil cleanser, a gel cleanser, a toner, a serum, a moisturizer, a second moisturizer, an over-night face mask, sheet masks, multiple exfoliating acids, sunscreen — I told myself it was about comfort, creating a calming routine; but if it was such a comfortable and calming routine why did I so often feel like it was a chore? Why did I sometimes tuck myself into bed despairing that I had skipped even the bare minimum of washing my face?

Then I noticed a troubling trend: when my stress or anxiety peaked I would immediately distract myself by visiting skincare forums and blogs. I comforted myself by burying myself in a rabbit hole, convincing myself I would feel better if I bought this new product. As I am stingy I didn’t cave often, but when I did I would wait in anticipation for my package to come, my excitement peaking as I tore into the box, just for the stress to seep back in as I rubbed whatever product on my face and realized that, yet again, it made no difference and solved none of my problems.

It wasn’t about my insecurities either. I never felt insecure about my face. If I have a pimple then I have a pimple. If someone wants to judge me for what my skin does naturally, it seems like they’re the one struggling with something. I accepted all my skin flaws, which obscured my escalating problem with skincare. It was almost like I was trying to be a star pupil; when I woke up with dewy, clear skin, I felt like I was excelling at something. I felt like it was a small success I could continuously celebrate. It was cheap accomplishment and I think I always knew that. Catherine MacKinnon said, “Women cope with objectification through trying to meet the male standard, and measure their self-worth by the degree to which they succeed.” All of those products didn’t just slightly highlight what I would have had with or without them — youthful skin that met the male standard of attractiveness for women — they turned my face into the ubiquitous dewy, blemish-free ideal that’s only achievable through the use of multiple products, and I felt proud of that.

Still, I felt it couldn’t be that bad — I didn’t use make-up, after all. I came to believe make-up was a public political act, something other girls and women could see and compare themselves to. No one knew I used skincare, or the obscene amount of products I used, unless I told them — but part of the problem was that I was telling women, thus encouraging them to participate too. Since then I’ve come to realize, “Women can seek to support each other through the ordeals of performing the practices, offer each other advice and shoulders to lean on. This would be a culture formed to survive oppression, however, and not unambiguously worthy of celebration. … This does not form the basis of positive bonding networks so much as support networks of the oppressed.” (Beauty & Misogyny, Sheila Jeffreys)

Even worse, when I went into public with my bare-but-dewy face, I felt I was making a statement about make-up while my use of skincare was secondary, inessential. The reality is that it’s not just about the face you show to the public, the public example you set for other girls and women; it’s about your own time and money that you’re wasting, the “voting” you’re doing with your wallet that feeds into a massive industry that preys on women’s insecurities. Make-up and skincare are inseparable industries, make-up often creating skin issues that the skincare industry then promises to correct — these industries aren’t even shy about this connection, often advertising complementary products. Me being an exception to that rule, never buying or wearing make-up, was meaningless in the face of all the cash I kept forking over to corporations owned by men that fed on women’s fears; I was still feeding the beast and participating in the culture that normalizes make-up even while I personally abstained.

In Woman Hating, Dworkin said, “Standards of beauty describe in precise terms the relationship that an individual will have to her own body. They prescribe her mobility, spontaneity, posture, gait, the uses to which she can put her body. They define precisely the dimensions of her physical freedom. … The relationship between physical freedom and psychological development, intellectual possibility, and creative potential is an umbilical one.” This has lead me to believe that skincare is a covert way the beauty industry can bleed into women’s lives even when they believe they’re free from influence ; just as I believed I was separate from the beauty industry because I don’t purchase make-up, nail polish, extraneous haircare, or even shaving accoutrements - whilst still spending money on the more insidious, invisible side of the beauty industry. I was spending vast portions of my day ensuring I was protecting my face from the sun — making sure I had adequate sunscreen coverage at all times and sometimes choosing to abstain from activities for fear it would be too much sun exposure. (While sun protection is important for all skin types, an irrational fear to the point of constant sunscreen use, even indoors, and abstaining from activities even with proper sun protection is too far and unnecessary.) I was policing my face to ensure I wasn’t scowling, which I came to believe was the cause of my fine lines. Every morning and night I spent at least 20 minutes staring at myself inches from the mirror, checking the incremental effects the products were making. What experiences did I deprive myself of in service of patriarchal beauty ideals? How much of my mental space was wasted? How much of my precious time did I lose?

Right before I decided to call it quits, a war began waging on skincare forums over the safety of chemical sunscreens. While I have chosen to not have an opinion because I’m not an expert, I chose to switch to a mineral sunscreen because I know that the beauty industry is already allowed to sell women products with untested chemicals and known toxins. I thought I was conscious of this issue, doing my “research” (wasting more of my time) and buying products that fit what I believed to be safe. But I finally had to confront myself and ask, what am I doing to myself? What if these products do have toxins, known or unknown? They’re not necessary products after all. What are we doing to ourselves? And in the case of chemical sunscreens that are leeching into the oceans, and any other possible toxin from unnecessary beauty rituals, what are we doing to the environment?

Where am I now? Full transparency, I’m still struggling. After reading Face: One Square Foot of Skin by Justine Bateman, I came away realizing an uncomfortable truth that I wanted to ignore as long as I could: older women are discarded by society; my fear of aging is my fear of being irrelevant. I’m stuck in the uncomfortable position of a young woman who acknowledges what society doesn’t want me to know about aging: that I could do nothing, I could let my face, my hair, and my body age naturally, and I could fade away. Or I could continue minimal interventions and hold onto that relevancy for a couple more years. But what is the meaning of that relevancy when it’s measured by my attractiveness? Men don’t take me anymore seriously than if I was old and grey, they only pretend to because I’m a relatively attractive young woman.

Just like before I quit skincare, I study my face closely in the mirror; now I see the map of small freckles and remember the evening I went out for pizza with friends and sat with my face warming in the golden setting sun; the afternoon I threw my bike down in a sunny patch of grass and read with no concern; the morning I sat in my arm chair in front of my picture windows with a steaming black coffee while the first rays of sunlight streamed in. My face is no longer a pale, spotless expanse; it tells a story of a life lived with no concern for aging or “discoloration,” even in these few weeks.

Shortly after consciously fighting to stop myself from self soothing by obsessively looking at skincare online I noticed my algorithms shifting; it began showing me haircare. I hadn’t thought about nor looked into haircare before, but I learned it’s followed in the profitable footsteps of skincare — scalp exfoliants, toners, serums, masques, treatments, oils, etc. I’m still working out where the line between necessary grooming and excessive grooming sits, but the real question I ask myself is: where does it end for women? We have skincare routines and haircare routines and nailcare routines and make-up routines and hair removal routines, and self care routines that bleed all the different kinds of routines into one, making these excessive, expensive, time suck routines seem pleasant and necessary. Where does it end? When can women simply live?