Eight years is a long time in beauty. Long enough to change your mind, sharpen your thinking, and occasionally receive a message from someone furious because a mascara you recommended melted directly into their eyes in the sun. (To that reader: I remain sorry. Also, yes – yikes.)
When I began writing my Observer beauty column, I had a very clear line in the sand – or at least in my head. I did not want this space to make anyone feel they were not enough. Society does that perfectly well on its own, particularly to women, without my assistance. I was never interested in “fixing” faces, erasing time or pushing the joyless fiction of “anti-ageing” – a term that still drives me up the wall. Ageing is not a condition to be cured; it is simply the price of not being dead.
I wanted to challenge beauty ideals, but I also wanted to celebrate and enjoy this thing called beauty – because those two positions are not mutually exclusive. Beauty can prompt us to question who we’re doing it for, while still being something we choose to do and enjoy for ourselves. Interrogation doesn’t require abstinence. The beauty industry, for all its contradictions, is also a serious economic force. It employs millions of people, fuels innovation, funds research and allows creativity to flourish at every price point. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be challenged – it absolutely should – but it does mean it deserves to be understood in all its complexity. Beauty standards are rarely neutral. They are shaped by money, politics, race, gender and history. To pretend otherwise is naive at best, disingenuous at worst.
So yes, I questioned the industry. I wrote about ageism, about the language we use, about who beauty is marketed to and who is quietly – and sometimes not so quietly – excluded. Which probably explains some of my more frustrating “lost in translation” moments. Like the time I was accused of colourism and hypocrisy for championing a product that addressed dark spots. Treating hyperpigmentation is not an ideological stance and it is not the same as advocating skin-bleaching. Context matters. Or, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once put it: we should all eat nuance for breakfast.
Politics aside, I wanted my notes on beauty to be received as joyful and, ultimately, useful. Formulation, I insisted (and still insist), is king. Not marketing. Not packaging. Not price. A £300 cream is not inherently better than a £30 one. In beauty, price is a terrible indicator of quality – though this does not apply to fragrance, where spending more generally does buy you better.
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I also wanted to tell you about products! Which retinol worked without making your face fall off. Which SPF sits well under makeup. Which cleanser genuinely cleans – something you’d think would be a given – and why everyone, unless they enjoy resembling a corpse, needs a decent liquid exfoliant. Choice was always at the heart of what I did. Hence I also defended your right to buy ridiculous things, too. No one needs a beauty fridge. No one. But what fun. Because if you don’t have to store your foundation and setting spray next to raw chicken thighs and a block of cheddar, why would you?
For a while, though, I told you not to bother with eye cream – because there was a point where eyecream was simply a useless moisturiser in a smaller pot. Then the industry stepped up. Actives were introduced. Eye creams improved. I revised my position. (That said, if you came into the world with heavy dark circles that have remained faithful to you ever since, let me save you time and money: no cream on earth is changing that. Genetics are undefeated. A good concealer and radical acceptance will take you much further.)
Other things I’ve changed my mind about: celebrity beauty brands (many are now genuinely excellent) and cream blush (once useless on darker skin, now just as good as their powder counterparts).
Things I will never advise anyone to buy: neck cream and cellulite cream. Because please.
So, dear readers, I say all this to say thank you. This marks my final Observer beauty column as I am moving on to become British Vogue’s new Beauty and Wellness Director.
Thank you for reading critically, laughing along, challenging me and trusting me with your faces, your bathroom cabinets and your beauty choices – even when my mascara recommendation melted in your eyes.
Image by Getty