Have you seen this product pitched on Shark Tank? It only aired two days ago (season 9, episode 24, second pitch – check it out if you have Hulu!), so in case you haven’t seen it, read on for more…
from: https://goo.gl/QCzwSS
It’s a lace face mask. For a little bit of background, it’s basically a new, hybrid version of the traditional mud face mask and the sheet face mask (a.k.a. Hannibal Lector disguise). The mud mask is messy and requires cleanup, and the sheet mask slides off unless you stay still for the approximately 20 minutes that you’re supposed to leave it on (I’m told).
And so the lace mask was born: it leaves no mess, it offers “just the right amount of compression to be soothing” and hooks around your ears for staying power. Ladies, now you can mask in aspiration of unattainable beauty standards AND do other things at the same time. Bethenny even masks on planes! Like, actually:
I’m sorry, but this is just too much. As if it’s not enough to have to be skinny, white, well-spoken and not-too-tall; to be demure, polite and act like a lady (but never bossy); to use makeup, do our hair and wear heels etc. etc., we also have to make sure that our skin (underneath our makeup, of course) looks radiant. Ummm when is enough enough?!
Cosmopolitan magazine did a review of the “13 best face masks” and their Digital Fashion & Beauty Writer, Laura Capon, had this to say of one of the masks reviewed: “One of the things I want most in life (apart from the same genes as Jennifer Lopez) is glowing skin. Normally I can only achieve the glow I like from makeup but after using this decongesting face mask, my skin literally glows through my foundation.” One of the things she wants most in life is glowing skin?! Can’t anybody else see what’s wrong with this?! Another employee – Alex Hering, Multimedia Producer – says: “My skin didn’t feel particularly hydrated afterwards, but I did notice a bit more radiance coming throughout the next day”. Now that’s an impartial, placebo-controlled review if I ever did see one. A bit more radiance you say? Alright then.
You may think ‘but this is just a feel-good product for everybody’. But when I google image searched “face mask for skin”, exclusively thin, white, conventionally attractive, pleased-looking women appeared. And I mean exclusively…
You may think ‘but surely it must be good for your skin’. Surely enough, it is! From the Lace Your Face product page: “nurturing and hydrating skin is an important part of a healthy lifestyle, even if it may be considered by some as unnecessary or frivolous. This may be because most people don’t often think about the critical role skin plays. Everyone knows how important a heart, kidney or lung is to their very existence, but few realize that skin is the body’s largest and fastest-growing organ.” But, strange as it may seem, you do have skin all over your body and not just on your face. And yet there is neither a product nor an expectation to use such a product for your non-face skin – i.e. all your other skin that is doing just fine without the regular use of a lace mask.
Radiant facial skin is quite clearly just another beauty ideal to add to the ever-growing list, and Lace Your Face is just the latest in a sequence of means to this end (and, objectively, ridiculous). I will not be using this, or any face mask for that matter. Ladies, let’s stop spending time and money on stupid shit that the patriarchy tells us we need but really we don’t!
P.S. They chose lace as the fabric for the mask because “it is a material that symbolizes beauty and strength”… yeah right.
