Why I Love Beauty Products

Meg at Faking Good Breeding has been asking me to voice my thoughts on “Why I Love Beauty Products…” and the main thing that I can come up with is only two words: Bottled Promise.

You know the moment: you finally get home after an afternoon of shopping and break open the little black bag from Sephora. The little boxes are wrapped in sleek tissue paper, and you begin to peel it away, layer after layer. Your heart palpitates, you are breathless with anticipation…You get to the box, it takes a little maneuvering, but you get the little precise cardboard layer off until you get to the gem that lies beneath. You open it, you admire the color, take in the scent, read the forty-words-or-less blurb of “how-to-use-it”… You smile, take it to the bathroom, and gently tuck it into the medicine cabinet. This. Is. The. One. The Bottled Promise.

That’s what they are really - bottled promise, hope in a jar, cream of life – concoctions of basic chemistry packaged and marketed in a soft-porn sort of way to compel people everywhere to buy them. There is a distinction between “buy” and “use”; as someone who has been seduced by this kind of shiny product appeal many times, I know that many such miracle elixirs do not meet up to the hype, but this never stops me from buying the next one that comes on the market only to drop it from usage rather quickly.

Okay, sometimes I am won over, but I know what I like and I know what works for me. Something new is a bit like a new boyfriend: my first question is “why”? followed closely by “what’s in it for me”? and “how do I know it will work”’?...skepticism reigns. But sometimes…sometimes… even an old jade like me can fall in love.

This is the very thing about beauty products I love the most: the pure potential of the way that these products mix sociology, psychology, and economy in one swoop of the finger. The way that companies put together product marketing, design, and packaging to make their items newly-appealing (when it’s really the same old shit,) is absolutely fascinating.

I’ve written about the inherent promise of beauty products before, but I haven’t given too much consideration to the why of the matter. So I’ve taken a bit of time to think it over, and I’ve come up with a few ideas.

There are three main components to the appeal and success of beauty products: their perceived ability or potential, their appeal, and their actual ability. Of course, two of these three are “pre-purchase” factors, heavily-weighted to influence the initial purchase. After all, once you’ve spent your money, how much of a factor is the actual ability of the product? Not to say that companies don’t care about the efficacy of their products, or that they don’t try to create high-quality items, but ultimately it’s all about how well the item is shined-up, sexed-up, and photographed in soft lighting that promotes the purchase. Who knows a thing about how well it works when they're gobsmacked by a gorgeous advertisement and luscious packaging? Once the item comes home with you in that tidy Sephora bag, the marketers have already won.

The sub-components to this successful interplay come together where the main factors cross-over. The marriage of the product’s “perceived ability” and its “actual ability” create it’s problem-solving proficiency, while where “perceived ability” meets “appeal” on the opposite side, the packaging & marketing factors interface. How well the item is packaged directly correlates to its “perceived ability” and therefore “appeal.” (Confused? I have a chart. See above.)

Between “appeal” and “actual ability” lies the other area of marketing success: “word of mouth,” or where the celebrities get in the game. If Jennifer Lopez poses seductively with a bottle of perfume, or if Jessica Simpson tells you that her skin care regimen has worked wonders, then of course, the non-celebrities among us will make the purchase. Remember the old slogan “So I can be like Mike…”? well, the marketing gurus at Nike had something in their very direct message. We all want to be a celebrity and this is why celebrities are signed on for big endorsements to sell products - so they can show us how to be celebrity-like. It’s Marketing 101, and it’s selling you a screw-topped jar of beauty.

However, sometimes the stars align in said jar, and the real magic happens. The sexy package holds a sexy product, the celebrity wasn’t simply endorsing something mindlessly, and what you think the jar is all about really *is* what it’s all about. Every so often this happens with our latest must-have products, but even more rarely it happens with our beauty products. The rarity of this instance is because beauty products are so particular to each person; their personal chemistry, their tastes, and their peccadilloes all come into play, so when they work together in one product it truly is something to shout about.

It is at this moment when the Bottled Promise isn’t just a wispy filament of a philosophical idea; no!, it is an actual living, working, effective item of beauty. Every new beauty product holds this potential, this optimism, this promise... and this is why we all buy them, and why I personally love every single one.

Comments

[maura]

Creme de la Mer is the absolute real deal. I worship it. It doesn't even have an insert or an explanation on how to use it --- it's all very mysterious. And supposedly it was developed by someone at NASA. True geek-chic! ;-) My skin has never ever never never been happier. I think if properly applied it could solve global warming.