Everyone wants your mum positively drenched in overpriced goo this Mother’s Day, writes Alex Casey.
After entering a brief state of Chemist Warehouse-induced catatonia in the hand soap aisle, I lined up to pay next to a giant L’Oréal stand for Mother’s Day. Eva Longoria smized next to shelves of serums, creams, retinols and “instant eye bag erasers” as a worrying red laser scanned across her own poreless, lineless face. “Every mother is worth it,” the big tagline read, followed by a list of increasingly Hannibal Lecter-sounding demands: “give the gift of smoother skin, give the gift of plumper skin, give the gift of firmer skin.”
It’s not just the perverts at Chemist Warehouse who are determined to see your mum drenched in overpriced goo this Mother’s Day. Farmers (which has form in this area with its 2019 shave her, weigh her, brush her teeth Mother’s Day catalogue) is promoting Dior Prestige Micro-Nutrive & Repairing Ritual Skincare Sets for a bargain at just $860, or a Lancôme Rénergie HCF Triple Serum Mother’s Day set for $393 if you are slumming it. Kmart recommends The Smoother Effect Aqua Renewal Peptide patches for your mum to whack on her forehead for $8, and even The Warehouse is hawking a facial LED mask to “revitalise your skin” for just $69.
With so many wonderful, thoughtful, enriching, affordable gift options to choose from, I thought it would be best to ask my own 69-year-old mother what she would think if I bought her an anti-ageing whatsit for Mother’s Day. “It’s fiendishly, fiendishly insulting,” she said, furrowing her brow in deep defiance of even the most powerful peptide patch. “It’s making a statement that my appearance is not good enough for you – but this mother ain’t gonna get any younger, no matter what you slam on her face.”
She posited a role reversal. “It’s a bit like me buying you something to improve your appearance like acne cream,” she said. “You’d get the hump with me.” Desperately trying to not get the hump regarding my adult acne journey being laid bare, I asked Mum if she had anything else to say about this kind of Mother’s Day promotion. “I bet if you look at the women in these ads, they aren’t crinkling 70-year-olds but fresh-faced 50-year-olds,” she said. “It’s all just a big con capitalising on insecurities and the commercialisation of Mother’s Day to sell product.”
Indeed, Eva Longoria of the L’Oréal Tri-Peptides Age Correcting Serum is just 51 years old. “There’s a supposition there that all older women want to look like younger women,” Mum added, “and that’s just absolutely ridiculous.”
Ridiculous to a militant Scotswoman whose self-professed beauty idol is 1970s children’s character Worzel Gummidge perhaps, but you can see how we ended up here as society. The beauty industry is projected to be valued at close to $700 billion in 2026, with skincare estimated to hold roughly 40% of the total beauty market. Botox has become commonplace in Aotearoa with over 400 clinics nationwide, and beauty megastores like Mecca and Sephora are attracting girls as young as 10 to preen over their pricey viral potions.
And while the men’s appearance industry is also on the rise (welcome to hell, fellas), the gendered expectations are vastly different. For example, 70-year-old Kris Jenner shows up on a red carpet with a whole new head and the world says something akin to “I’ll have what she’s having!”. Meanwhile, 64-year-old Jim Carrey shows up on a red carpet with a touch of filler in his cheeks, and the world becomes so convinced that he has been replaced by a clone that his own publicist has to issue a statement that Jim Carrey is indeed still Jim Carrey.
I write this all as a reminder to myself as much as anyone else that, Mother’s Day aside, all of these different products and procedures are being churned out by an insidious industry that is hellbent on keeping women miserable, insecure and financially ruined in the hopes of looking as dewy and poreless as a blobfish at the bottom of the sea. To borrow a phrase from beauty writer Jess DeFino: we are all going to die someday, no matter how young we look, and no amount of discounted Rénergie HCF Triple Serum is going to change that fact.
As for what my mum really wants for Mother’s Day? “Just a phone call and a card.”
