How The Beauty Industry Keeps Us Poor 

Walk down any drugstore aisle or scroll through your social media feed and the message is clear: your face is a project. Pores must shrink, aging is a flaw and “natural” beauty requires a 10-step routine. The demand to enhance, correct and conceal is as ubiquitous as it is costly — which is why deciding to go bare-faced is not simply a preference, but a form of resistance. 

Valued at more than $500 billion, the global beauty industry continues to expand, largely driven by the commodification of insecurities. Beauty norms become both a trap and a tool for survival, especially for those navigating identity, security and acceptance within romantic, social or professional spaces. This choice can feel especially fraught in the latter, where women and female-identifying individuals are often expected to appear ‘put-together’ in ways their male colleagues are not. Those who choose not to participate in beauty culture are often dismissed as unsanitary or lacking in self-care.  

But what if opting out was less about neglecting oneself and more about rejecting a system built to profit off our insecurities? Not “enhancing” one’s face can be a rejection of the idea that consumption earns visibility. It’s a refusal to buy into the myth that worth is something you purchase, one product at a time. For some, it’s also a way to reclaim time, energy and money that would otherwise be spent chasing unattainable standards. 

Defenders of beauty culture often repeat a familiar refrain: It’s just a personal choice. And it’s true that many people find real joy and creative expression in makeup — it’s also undeniably an amazing art form — but the idea that these choices exist in a vacuum ignores the massive cultural and capitalistic machinery pushing individuals to make that choice. When mass marketing and celebrity campaigns all point toward the same aesthetic ideals, can we really say our choices are entirely our own? 

Resisting beauty culture doesn’t mean rejecting all forms of grooming or style, nor does it mean to shame those who feel the need to conceal themselves. Rather, it’s about interrogating the systems that have made basic self-worth something you have to buy.  

In a world that conditions women to conform in order to belong, a bare face can be a quiet act of defiance. It’s not a rejection of self-care, but a refusal to be controlled.