A fun fact about me is my slightly obsessive love of the world of beauty. Skincare, cosmetics, haircare, you name it.
The roots of this love probably took hold doing ballet as a child. I can still remember inheriting a bright red lipstick from my mother to wear during concerts. It had the shiniest of gold packaging, the little tube fluted for elegance, and I would click and unclick that lipstick case in my bedroom just to feel glamourous.
I would inhale its pungent smell, a scent I cannot describe in words but can still pick out to this day. I’m fairly certainly it was either a Max Factor or L’Oreal product, as even now some of their lipstick ranges have that same strong odour. The odour of “beauty is pain”.
As the years went on I would collect makeup to wear “going out”, or for use onstage. Like so many of us in the late 1990s/early 2000s, I did not have the internet and social media to turn to for advice and instruction. There was also no Mecca or Sephora: your choices were Maybelline, Revlon, L’Oreal or the odd local brand like Australis at the chemist; or you went to the beauty counters at Myer or David Jones for Clinique if you were starting out (so many of us had the three-step system, despite its unholy alcoholic toner!), Estee Lauder or Lancome if you were posh.
Eventually Mac became a thing if you love colour, or you could try Bobbi Brown if you were into the neutral cool girl aesthetic she pioneered in the 90s, but they were always too expensive for me.
As a uni student, I prowled the discount bins at discount chemists at places like Stones Corner. I bought nothing full price. I chose the stickiest of lip glosses. As catering for a wide variety of skin tones and undertones was not a thing, and I was as pasty as dough, I wore nothing but yellow foundation.
Somewhere in a forgotten album there is a photo of me next to Rob Thomas, taken before a Matchbox 20 concert in Brisbane around 1999. I was working for a local radio station as a volunteer on their “Community Switchboard” at the time, and manage to wrangle some freebies, mostly so I could take a diehard fan friend. For this date with (my then friend’s) destiny, I tried to pancake my face as much as possible, apply a frosted lipstick, and a bit of eyeliner. Contouring was not a word anyone knew back then, but my most egregious sin was not even using a hint of blush to give some definition to my cheeks.
Because I had bad acne (more of a type of rosacea, but that’s a long skin story for another day), I used to think my face was already too red. Blush, surely, would make things worse. I needed to disguise the red. Spackle over it with some sort of Revlon ColourStay or Covergirl Clean Makeup, in a shade that could accurately be called “ivory” only if the elephant had severe tusk rot.
There I am, standing next to the bloke who sang “Smooth” with Carlos Santana, looking like the exact opposite of a “Spanish Harlem Mona Lisa”. I looked more like a tortilla with lips.
Well, would you look at that, I found the photo. The flashback on my skin is so harsh that it makes this pic look almost photoshopped now!
These days blush is one of my favourite products. The only upside it seems to carrying more weight than I’d like is a fullness of the cheeks that seems to take a few years off, particularly with the enthusiastic application of a pretty pink powder or a dewy tangerine cream.
The years I spent working in a political advisory capacity - the first time in my adult working life I had a significant disposable income - coincided with the rise of Beauty YouTube and the cult-like following of beauty brands.
Reader, I went all in.
I LOVED it. It was a world built for 20-somethings, but I embraced it with the delight of someone finding their tribe 10 years too late. It helped to zone out completely from politics and into the world of fellow beauty nerds, others who understood that sure, the application is skin deep, but the self-care and creativity involved is hardly shallow.
I’ve always found the ritual with skincare and cosmetics as soothing.
I am sadly no artist, but experimenting with the colour and texture of paints, creams, powders, sticks, lotions and pencils always gives me great joy. Frustration, of course, when I can’t recreate the intense editorial looks of makeup artists or beauty gurus on my own mug - but hey, at least you can wash it off and try again!
I did briefly try adult colouring in books for mindfulness, but bah to that. I immediately criticised myself for poor colour choices and tacky techniques. I’d much rather bathe my fingers and face in ten different eyeshadow palettes.
Where am I going with all this?
Well, having a decent income and a love of pretty things allowed me to develop quite a serious collector’s habit. I still looked for sales, but I “treated” myself to nicer things when the stress of the job would get to me. I wound up with so many beauty products I had to buy a special buffet cabinet to store them all - and it’s still overflowing.
I do go through and declutter old products from time to time, but a lot of make-up keeps very well, particularly if you don’t open it until you plan to use it, or if it’s a powder product.
But then I changed careers into the arts, and then the pandemic happened, and all of a sudden all make-up wearing stopped. The irony of my large collection is that I didn’t even WEAR much make-up everyday, even in politics. But now I have a very limited disposable income, and so the days of carefree treating myself are over.
In the second half of 2021, I decided I needed to start actively using my collection. Because it’s so much easier, I decided to focus first on skincare. I started focusing on what the beauty community calls “panning”, which is deliberately focusing on products with the goal of using them up.
I assume many reading might find this incredible - perhaps you buy a shampoo, conditioner, body wash and sunscreen and use them until they’re done, then buy more.
But for beauty keenos, it’s not unusual to have multiple products on the go at any one time. Because sometimes I might have a small breakout, so I want to switch from a usual hydrating cleanser to something with salicylic acid. I might alter my serums from hyaluronic acid to an AHA. I’m trying to incorporate retinol, which is probably already 10 years too late, but it’s often recommended to do every second night with that super ingredient.
Even sunscreen - I have some more high-end sunscreens designed and specifically used for my face, that wear well under makeup. I’m not slathering that on my whole body if I’m going for a walk. In that instance, I’ll slop on the Cancer Council stuff from my 1L bottle knowing it will sweat off and eventually be showered off.
Do you see what I mean? There are little choices, everyday. Is it a bother? Possibly. But it’s how my mind works. It doesn’t take me much time to make different choices, and gives me a pleasing sense that I have, at least, made some decisions in my day.
So at the start of this year I decided to collect all products - skincare, toiletries and makeup - that I used up in the first quarter of 2022. Keep in mind some of these I began in 2021 or even earlier. But if it got finished in this three month period, it went in the bin.
Now that it’s April, I can reveal the results:
This is my attempt to make it look a bit fancier than just a photo on my kitchen bench.
Yes, this is a photograph of my trash. It’s called an “Empties” in the beauty community, it’s a thing.
Deodorant 2
Shampoo/Conditioner 2
Bodywash 1
Handcream 3
Body lotion 2
Sheet mask 1
Toothbrush 1 (there was also a toothpaste, which I accidentally threw out)
Toners/mists/wipes 6
Cleansers 2
Moisturisers 5 (one was a deluxe sample)
Serums 2
Sunscreen 1
Small sample packets 6
Lip gloss 1
All in all that is a total of 22 full size (or deluxe sample) products, 6 small sample packets, and 1 make-up item, which was the lip gloss. Those will probably be reasonably easy to finish regularly, as I do like keeping my lips plump, but BOY do I need to step up using other make-up products. That is the challenge for the second quarter.
All in all I’m reasonably happy with my progress. I mean, it’s probably not great to create waste, but much of this packaging will go in the recycling bin, and I’m investigating now some stores which have buckets you can toss empty makeup products in and they take them off to be properly recycled.
It’s also nice to use up stuff to see what works well, what I like, what I’d repurchase and what I’d not bother with again.
For example, I was really excited to try the Mecca Cosmetica Glow-Giver Exfoliating Tonic, as I love an AHA toner in my routine for skin cell turnover. It had heaps of hype, but personally, I prefer the Ren Glow Tonic I’d finished before I started using the Glow-Giver. I have a small sample bottle of that, plus a few other AHA toners to use up before I will repurchase the full size. I mean, unless something else comes along, which is always the temptation.
Thanks for reading this very niche post about beauty, cosmetics, skincare and nostalgia. I’d love to know what you do for your personal skincare/hygeine routines, and feel free to recommend products that you love.