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Eleanor Tucker, The Independent
One afternoon, rereading old articles I wrote as a beauty journalist, I smiled at pun headlines — “How now brown brow” was a favourite — and looked longingly at the price of an eye pencil back in the Noughties.
I also mourned the loss of Clarisonic cleansing brushes (what happened to them?) and wondered why BB creams caused quite as much excitement as they did. But as I kept reading, I came to a feature I’d written about skincare that made me stop in my tracks. That was when it started to feel like less of a trip down memory lane and more like a walk of shame.
I worked as a beauty journalist for most of my thirties and forties, writing for beauty websites, parenting magazines and even setting up one of the UK’s first beauty blogs. Most of it was during the Noughties and 2010s — a time when magazines routinely scrutinised women’s bodies.
Back then, I never thought of myself as doing anything but a good job. I gave helpful advice to women like myself who had small children and not much available in the way of time or sleep. I shared my top tips and tried out products so I could recommend the best ones for readers. But that wasn’t all I did.
I was looking back through my old work as research for my new novel, Turn Back Time, which tells the story of a middle-aged beauty journalist, Erica, who faces so much appearance-related pressure that she tries a high-tech treatment to make her look 20 years younger. I thought I’d just feel pride looking back at my work — and I did, for a lot of it. But I also felt regret.
There was a lot that jarred. Like my use of the phrase, “anti-ageing”, which I would never use today. I mean, how can you be against a natural process? It doesn’t make sense. And it wasn’t only that phrase that caused me to feel regret. It was the actual lies I told — in good faith, I hasten to add, but still, lies. It wasn’t that I told readers I liked a product when I didn’t, or that I’d tried something when I hadn’t. No. I lied when I said that ageing visibly was a problem — a fault. And that if you weren’t “managing” that problem, you were failing.
I implied that you should be able to “prevent,” “reverse the signs,” “minimise the appearance…” you know the phrases, because you will have read them too. They apply to things like fine lines, crow’s feet, crepey eyelids, lack of radiance… the list goes on, and they’re all just changes that women experience as they grow older — naturally. Telling women these things needed to be remedied just wasn’t true. Worse, it might have changed how they saw themselves — and I was part of that. Let’s put this into context. Beauty journalism works best when it’s about problem-solving. Everyone wants to read a “how to” or a “five ways you can” or a “quick fixes” article. I loved reading them myself as a new mum, and I love them now as a perimenopausal woman. Life is complicated — of course, we all want easy wins. But anti-ageing became a part of this.
No one forced me to write that way, but it was the language of the time. At about 35, women boarded the anti-ageing train whether they wanted to or not — and once they were on it, they were expected to keep moving. I believed this just as much as my readers.
That’s not all I lied about, either. I also told my readers that transformation was just one shopping trip away — something I really regret now. Back then, I got parcels practically every day, containing the most expensive creams, oils and balms you could possibly imagine, way beyond what I could afford on maternity pay — and it was all for free.
I encouraged readers to spend their hard-earned money on these same products. And when they didn’t reverse ageing as promised, the implication wasn’t that the micro-cellular regeneration serum with added peptides had failed — it was that you had.
Now I’m in my fifties and no longer work as a beauty journalist. Over the years, I gradually shifted into writing about a wider range of topics. But I still love a good skincare routine — double cleansing, facial massage, nighttime oils, the whole shebang — and I don’t think that will ever change. Only now, it’s not about hope; it’s a confidence-boosting ritual that gives me a few minutes each day that are just for me.
