Madeleine Chapman ponders ageing and skincare in a capitalist world.
A few years ago I asked my great aunt – who was in her mid-80s at the time – how she still had such beautiful skin. I was sitting right next to her, peering at her forehead and the corners of her eyes, where only the faintest of lines were visible. I knew in my bones that she, an elderly Samoan woman, was not conducting a 12-step skincare routine, so wanted to know what other life hack she’d discovered.
She looked at me very seriously and answered: “smoking”.
To this day I don’t know whether or not she was making a joke but why shouldn’t I believe her? I have yet to see any rhyme or reason to who gets silky smooth skin at 80 years old and who gets wrinkles at 18. Which is all to say that I have gone a perhaps wilfully ignorant route with my own skin by assuming that what will be will be, and therefore doing exactly nothing to my face for 30 years.
Last year, I looked in the mirror after a particularly long week and wondered if I should be doing something about the lines that were emerging on my face. In the end I decided I probably should, and proceeded to use a face wash for exactly one week before reverting back to my “water and hands” method. I may not have taken any steps to stall my ageing face but it was a Big Moment as I came face to face (literally) with my changing body.
I’m glad that I don’t spend time thinking about my skin. Not in a holier-than-thou sense but because I know how all-consuming our bodies (whether it’s skin, weight or just our natural features) can be in the worst way. I may not spend hours peering at the pores on my cheeks or fretting over the fact that my funny frown line from childhood is now a deep trench in my brow, but I fill in that time with various other bodily concerns.
Which makes it all the more terrifying to read about children as young as six becoming deeply invested in skincare and anti-ageing products. As Alex Casey reported in her excellent cover story this week, the beauty industry has expanded its consumer base to children, with young social media influencers focusing on skincare routines and bright, fun packaging on serums and toners.
Kids younger than 10 years old now are thinking about anti-wrinkle creams, even if they’re not quite thinking about the process of ageing in the way adults might. It’s a terrifying and inevitable development in a capitalist world and makes me feel lovely and old (at 30) to have not grown up with TikTok.
I’d highly recommend settling in to read Alex’s full feature – the final quote will reward you for it (in a bleak existential way).
Ps. Even if you do nothing to your skin, like me, always wear sunscreen. You want to live long enough to get truly wrinkly.
This week’s episode of Behind the Story
Senior writer Alex Casey has this week written an incredible longform feature about the rising trend of young children coveting skincare. Note: this is not about makeup or wearing your mum’s lipstick. It’s about 10 year olds using serums and anti-wrinkle creams.
Alex has been thinking, writing about and living the beauty industry for years, and this is likely just the first in a series of big features about a billion-dollar industry with controversial aims. She joined me this week to talk about the unique challenges of interviewing kids and her own spotty history with skincare and beauty.
So what have readers spent the most time reading this week?
- Duncan Greive digs into the ratings for Stuff’s ThreeNews and finds troubling news
- Hera Lindsay Bird catalogues the biggest scandals of the 2024 Paris Olympics so far
- This week’s Cover Story from Alex Casey on the insidious and dangerous push by the beauty industry to hook very young children on skincare
- Forty years after Rogernomics, Jo Waitoa imagines an economy grounded in Māori values
- Alex Casey tackles the very last power ranking for this season of The Traitors
Comments of the week
“I think an important point here is the same one made about how measures to get cars off the road are actually pro-motorist. Every car we get off the roads because people are using other forms of transport makes driving better for those motorists who remain. The same thing applies to emergency vehicles.”
— SamStephens
“I reckon it was a great idea to have events in the Seine, even if the odd competitor did become sick. (I realise they would have a profoundly different perspective.) It’s probably the best campaign to make people aware of the pollution we have generally been brainwashed to accept, in decades. I hope that it sets a trend – cleaning up a river is probably still cheaper than building a swimming stadium from scratch – and a lot better for the environment and for the city, long term.”
— Annie
Pick up where this leaves off
Sign up for Madeleine’s weekly Saturday newsletter where I add more handpicked recommended reading and essentially bundle everything up to land in your inbox at 9 a.m.