While shopping at the parapharmacy today, I couldn’t help but notice that there is an entire store dedicated to female beauty and personal care products, while male products account for a little tiny shelf in the back of the store. It covers some male essential product, such as shaving foam, razors and deodorants. While there’s a whole bunch of shelves stuffed with “very essential” female products, such as facial clay masks, vanilla scented body lotions, pinky, peachy, rosy nail polishes, chocalate and strawberry scented lipglosses, volumising mascaras, dead sea salts for bath, hair removal wax strips with honey and I could go on and on. And on! One can’t help but wonder: how come women need the entire store dedicated to such products, while men can survive with a tiny isle of male products in it? Is it something in the nature of women, that makes us want to be beautiful or are we just brainwashed by clever marketers, that we desperately need all of those products?
And I must say I really struggled to get out of the shop with the only product I actually needed – the bar soap, cause somethere half way the shop my hands were already full with strawberry flavoured lipgloss, coral coloured nail polish, a discounted mascara (come on, you always need a mascara! And it was on discount!) and black clay cleansing and purifying facial mask… I had to put myslf together and put those products back, cause honestly: my entire bathroom is stufded with these already. But still – I could so hardly resist!
The situation is even more dangerous if you stop by not just a parapharmy, but some fancy beauty specialist retailer, which has premium fragrances and all that premium skin care, that caust your weekly rent a piece! It’s a serious danger to one’s budget and I must admit I had several visits to stores like that after wich I had to tell myself – this week there’s only pasta on the menu (home made pasta to be clear)…
I have counted how many beauty and personal care products I use on a regular day then I stay at home and work by my laptop – 11 products in total! Shower gel, shampoo, balsam, hair oil, toothpaste, toner, face cream, eye cream, lipbalm, body lotion and hand cream. And that’s on the day I’m staying home! Add at least the same amount of stuff on the days I’m going out and try to look pretty…
Where’s that border line between the essential products and products glossy adds in the magazines convinced us to buy? Why can’t body lotion serve as a hand cream too? And doesn’t face cream suffice the face? I only got an eye cream cause the sales lady at a fancy cosmetics shop told me I should start using it already at the age of 25 for prevention. FOR PREVENTION! And I fell for that.
Makes you kind of wonder, not only how millions of men can survive without all those “essentials” products everyday, but also how the entire generations of our grand- and greatgrand mothers have survived without them as well?..
And please, don’t say that you don’t use footcream!!!
Oh dear, no, I don’t. What was I thinking when I decided that body lotion is as good to my feet as it’s good to my entire body?
))
But you know, I think that male actors and singers on the red carpet are way in front of us!!!
14 last words of the first paragraph nail it.
If you don’t use your organic-fair trade-rainforest certified-Everest-grown-papaya-soaked-honey-infused-cocomilk-scented-refreshing-replenishin-envigorating-protecting gel now, by the time you are 25.5 you die of ugliness.
That’s it.
Never has my naivety been critised with such irony!
However, it’s very straight to the point.