The beauty industry’s biggest con

[Mumoftwo52]

I truly believe that one of the beauty industry’s biggest cons is making women believe they need to wear foundation. Whenever I say this to friends they reply ‘oh but I definitely need foundation for discolouration / spots’ but SO many women wear foundation when they have perfectly lovely skin. I just don’t get it?

Watch celeb / model / influencer skincare/makeup routines and they always use foundation. Even if you have the odd spot or red patch, doesn’t it look better to use concealer? I think foundation often looks cakey and really obvious on the skin.

Obviously people can and should use what they like on their face, but it saddens me to think people feel like they need to wear foundation when their skin is perfectly fine!

I married the one who said "It's you I love, not the person you pretend to be. "
Must have saved me a fortune over the years.

Beauty ‘experts’ who say we need to buy their expensive products as they only thing to make you have wonderful skin…when they have very expensive facials, Botox, fillers etc.

I agree.

Moreover, no one needs foundation.

If it looks cakey and obvious it’s bad foundation badly applied.

I guarantee you that a lot of women you think are not wearing foundation are, in fact, wearing foundation. Some foundations are very sheer, for a start. Some have a very natural finish. Some can be buffed in to the point where you wouldn’t notice them.

Ultimately, nobody ‘needs’ foundation, or any makeup. But as a woman of nearly 50 who has read a lot of beauty writing over the years, I don’t remember ever being told it was essential. In the 90s, very bare faced natural looks were very trendy and heavy foundation was considered really dated.

I sometimes wonder about wedding makeup. The trial I had made me look like a different person. Which seemed a bit counter intuitive on my wedding day…

I wear make up because I love it. The art of application. It’s fun. I can’t paint or colour conventionally but I can on my face. I believe in good skin prep and prefer very light coverage and glowy look. I’m mid 40’s. I try to look after my skin but I could eat better diet and drink less wine. I think women look beautiful with or without makeup - some would look better the other way IYSWIM but, I think it’s about how YOU feel with yourself. When I wear some makeup my confidence soars. Because I’ve chosen what to wear/look like at that moment in time. My choice.

This ☝

I kid you not I worked for a very large company years ago who sell eventhing from washing liquid to high end beauty products. I will never forget sitting in a induction session and being told our job was to sell as much water to the public as possible.

As a consequence I try to use as few products as possible.

I hate putting foundation on but I do need it. Whether folk would agree or not it makes me feel more confident. I have a lot of redness and would be embarrassed to go out without it. Someone would comment.
imo anti aging creams are cons.

The entire beauty industry is a con. Predominantly to entice and sell to women but the male market is growing. And it is all based on the gaze of others, how we are seen by others. I wouldn't say it is just the male gaze (as the bulk of the industry is geared to women, irrelevant of their sexuality) but how we know we look to.others.

Face creams, decolletage creams, serums, anti wrinkle treatments - have brighter, younger, fresher looking skin. Why? So you look brighter, fresher younger, thats what you will look like others. Why should it matter.

Fillers, botox , lip fillers, implants suh as cheek / chin... look younger "better" - again, how you look to.others.

Foundation - have better, clearer, smoother, 'glass' skin. Why? So people see a younger, clearer skin on your face? Why? Wrinkles, dark under eye shadows, acne, etc are normal - yet we have been preconditioned to beaghast at them, to aim to hide or remove them yet they are normal, why do we not want them? Because of how orhers will see us.

Beauty industries are big business, the biggest challenge to these is to normalise looking normal - have wrinkles, have no make up, have un microbladed eyebrows. When you begin to say "But I look awful.if I don't.... " or "But I look much better if I do..." that is the point ot is us teacting to.how society has become - being judged on looks of un.unecessary heightened standard.

Normal is good, normal is healthy, normal.is what we should promote and aspire to for future generations, not a reliance on filters, cheek.implants, botox, covering your face in liquid to look natural or to contour and reshape your looks . By falling for this industry and aspiring to unnecessary and often unreasonable ideals we are causing harm to young people and the bar for what is basic or normal becomes high maintainance in reality and costly.

I don't completely agree that no one needs foundation. I do, as my acne has been extremely severe (with Roaccutane recommended to me by many doctors). I remember once venturing to the GP to see him about my skin, and I wore no foundation so he could see the problem. People were staring and talking about me in the waiting room, and a child was saying "Mummy, what's wrong with that lady's face?" That was a very hurtful day for me. I would argue that I do need foundation because I don't have the energy to deal with that kind of thing day in day out. (My skin is a lot better now, but I couldnt have got through my teens and twenties without covering up under a lot of makeup!)

I just bought a new foundation yesterday after spending quite a bit of time researching the best one for ahem 50 year old skin. Less is more was the main message. Don’t cake it on, go light you want sheer, nothing heavy that sits in wrinkles.

verdict - after ELDW (which I always thought very heavy) this new one is lovely so light like I’m hardly wearing any

I wouldn’t wear it if I didn’t have truly awful pores on my nose which are very very visible

I agree. If expensive anti aging creams really worked then wealthy people would all look younger, but they don't. They age at the same rate as everyone else who can't afford to spend hundreds on a pot of cream.

Surely Vogue’s channel main purpose is to sell cosmetics? And influencers make money by showing off the products whether they personally use or even need them.
It’s like all those ads featuring young women advertising ‘anti wrinkle’ formula. 19-24 year olds are not going to convince me, 63, that the serum/lotion/moisturiser works just because they have smooth skin. But the beauty companies need to sell, Vogue (and the like) need the ad revenue, influencers need the money, women (some men) are the buyers.

its absolutely not a lie that I look better with foundation, it’s obvious. I do need foundation to look good. I don’t need eyeshadow so I don’t wear them on everyday basic.
People can make choice themselves.
The influencer is doing it because it’s how she earns money. She is not an innocent victim of cosmetic industry.

If they didn't think it looked better, then they wouldn't do it.

Such a pompous sermoning. I haven’t worn foundation for nearly two decades but I do enjoy bit of make-up and skincare. And nice clothes and hair products. People have painted and decorated themselves throughout the human history, we are no different.

And if you have never suffered from acne, you’ll never understand the deep scars it leaves in you and how the make-up is a coping mechanism.

I'd agree that most foundations make the skin look worse after a few hours of wear. More targeted concealer would be better for most faces, but that requires more skill than just sliding one shade all over your face lol.

I've never liked foundation or worn it much at all, but recently I have started to wear a BB cream when I do wear makeup as my skin is now a bit drier with age and it just provides a better texture.

Anti aging expensive moisturiser

Perfume

The beauty industry isn’t a con. Products that make me feel more beautiful and confident are worth their weight in gold.
Fellow acne sufferer here in my teens right the way up to 45 - I would never have got a degree, danced in world dance championships, had the confidence to have boyfriends, travel the world, get married, have babies if I couldn’t have concealed my acne and scars. I wouldn’t have left my house.

People who spout this rubbish clearly have nothing wrong with their skin. But try facing a mirror every morning and dreading what you will find.
Now I love beauty products for their transformative effect - those saying anti-ageing products don’t work just haven’t found the right ones!
And as for perfume, it is one of my great joys in life.

As I have said previously, I understand why people with acne wear foundation. I DONT understand why millions of people with perfectly lovely skin feel the need to wear foundation. We have been made to believe we need it, as much as using moisturiser or mascara. Tell me: does this woman need foundation? No, but she incorporates it into her daily makeup routine anyway. And that baffles me. m.youtube.com/watch?v=seCR_uYH8OI&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD

People can do what they like with their faces. I’m not saying women shouldn’t wear foundation. I’m simply saying I believe we have been conditioned to think we need to wear it when many of us don’t. And that’s a shame.

I think foundation with a sun protection factor incorporated are worthwhile using

I gave up foundation about 5 or 6 years ago. Something about my make up was looking ‘off’ and, after a process of elimination, I realised it was the foundation, which surprised me as it was the most expensive element, matched at the Bobbi Brown counter etc. I tried some lighter ‘skin tint’ type products but then got fed up with the whole faff and stopped wearing it completely. And I have to say, it’s been great for my skin which looks the best it has in years.

So I do see where the op is coming from. But on the other hand I adore clothes and I agree with previous posters that dressing up and decorating yourself is timeless and appears to be part of the human condition.

But I view the anti aging industry less benignly than I do cosmetics because it preys on women’s insecurities about age and uses cod science to suck us into a battle we’re never going to win.

Editing to add that when I gave up foundation, I started wearing lipstick instead so this is not an anti make up post.