CHENNAI : This week presents itself with a very pressing challenge: Why be productive when you can just enter into an endless loop of reading Pride and Prejudice and then watching the 2005 movie adaptation and then reading it again and then watching it again and then reading it again and then… well you get the point. The natural progression is to move on to the 1995 adaptation. Television hasn’t been quite the same since Colin Firth came out of a lake in a white shirt; and this should satisfy your restless quarantined spirit.
Well, as you can see there are a lot of things in this world that I recommended with a big heart. Having said that, here is something I have little to 0.001 percent interest in: beauty influencers peddling more products. The industry is overwhelmingly saturated with things, and the last few months for me have been all about simplifying my collection, figuring out my relationship with makeup and understanding my beauty budgets. The coming few weeks will see me discuss these in detail.
Let’s start with highlighters. There was a time when I was just starting off my collection (2012-2013) and these were awfully hard to come by. They were not as consistently released as they are now, and they didn’t come in so many shades or forms. We are spoilt for choice today. They are cream, liquid and powered.
They’re in our setting sprays, could be chrome, they change colours, they are limited edition… they are endless. Someone even released a black highlighter in 2017. Please read that again. You cannot walk into Sephora without meeting a new highlighter, and we continue consume them endlessly. I’m guilty too, they’re sparkly — which, by default, lowers my sound judgement by about 75 percent. I’m delightfully drawn to everything shiny like a giant, derailed magpie.
The truth is that nobody is really going to be able to tell what highlighter you are wearing or spot a big difference between them. I recently swatched all the pans I own (a shameful number above 20) to find that they looked similar in swatches, and more alike once I blended them out on my face. Despite all the “rationalisation” in my head, they looked exactly the same. Sure, one is more glittery than the other but I couldn’t even see it unless I was focussing inches away from the mirror. I could be wearing 4 different gold highlighters on different parts of my face and no one would know, trust me.
Obviously there are ones that wear better or are made with better ingredients — but no beauty guru should be taken seriously when they say that you “NEED” the latest release. All you really “need” is a liquid and a powder formula in a shade that suit you. That’s all. That can be forgone too, if you use an eyeshadow or a lighter concealer instead.
I’ve always thought of highlighters to be one of those products that exist only for the experience of the user. It’s the gilded packaging, applying finishing touches, the sparkle. It’s an enjoyable cosmetic to buy and consume. Much like all Pride & Prejudice fan fiction, which do not harm our planet or our pockets as much. I’m off to binge on Pride & Prejudice & Zombies… yikes, Jane Austen must be turning over in her grave after that one.