Beauty Products Frugal Women Don’t Need

There are so many pointless items for sale in the shops and online. Particularly many of the beauty products aimed at us females. If you believe the hype you cannot survive without a multitude of cosmetic items in your bathroom cabinet, and there is always the next must-have product that TikTok or Instagram tells you to buy.

Because I am old enough now to have been alive before many of these were invented, I know they aren’t essential. To my mind they are just part of our rampantly consumerist culture, aimed more at emptying our wallets than making us beautiful. I was thinking about beauty products frugal women don’t need, and here are some of my thoughts. Yeah, it’s a boomer rant….

I should make it clear before I start that I’m not saying you shouldn’t look nice or make the best of yourself. What I feel is that you can do that without spending a small fortune on loads of products that you probably won’t finish, with all the resulting packaging that ends up in the waste. It’s also a good idea not to take the claims made by the beauty industry about the efficacy of the products it wants to flog you at face value.

Beware the pseudoscience

As a teenager, my magazines told me I needed to cleanse, tone and moisturise. I dutifully did this for many years, but soon realised all I needed was some means of getting makeup and grime off my face and a moisturiser, as I do have quite dry skin. Nowadays, skincare has become much more complicated. We are blasted by pseudoscience and ‘research’ telling us something is ‘clinically proven’ to do such things as ‘revitalise your skin’. How vague is that? Clinically proven by who? Using how large a sample? What does revitalising your skin actually mean? This article gives an interesting take on pseudoscience used to sell us beauty products and confirmed that my cynicism is well-founded.

My skincare regime, if you can call it that, consists of a liquid cleanser for night time, which I take off with a bamboo pad and water. I then use Weleda night cream in a glass jar. In the morning, I splash my face with a bit of water and apply Weleda day cream, also in a glass jar. I’m in my 60s. I have lived a life and therefore I have wrinkles! Because I have avoided too much sun, don’t smoke and lead a reasonably healthy lifestyle, I think my skin is OK. 

There are many beauty products I wouldn’t consider purchasing, and the only one I really feel I ‘need’ is a decent moisturiser. I certainly won’t be investing in Botox any time soon!

What I don’t need

What I DONT need are eye creams, facial oils, skin peels, serums, neck cream, lip scrubs, brightening polish, glycolic acid treatment, face mist, cleansing wipes or sleeping masks. This is just stuff I found in my daughter’s bathroom!

I also really don’t need a mask like this, because I’m not planning to join Darth Vader’s team any time soon…(Allegedly, it’s an LED mask, to treat wrinkles, acne and other skin issues). Call me a cynic if you like, but…

On a similar note, I am not planning to rush out for a heated eye wand, a double chin face shaper, or red light under eye pads to reduce puffiness (only £75!). 

Making up is hard to do (and expensive)

Another item I find baffling is primer, for use under foundation. I understand putting a paint primer on bare wood, but a greasy layer underneath another greasy layer on your face? Primer wasn’t a thing until a few years ago, so I am sure it is a product frugal women don’t need. Setting spray is another item of dubious usefulness in my opinion, as is eyelash primer.

I also don’t use makeup sponges to apply foundation. My fingers have worked perfectly well for this task for many years, and I feel like you lose a lot of the product as it gets sucked into the sponge.

If you aren’t a photographic model, do you need to contour your face? I have watched YouTube videos where makeup influencers apply layers and layers of primer, foundation, contour, highlighter, bronzer and blush. It looks pore-cloggingly heavy and time consuming! The women in the videos don’t look real in my view, presenting a cartoonishly perfect version of their real face.

So much stuff

I have also come across influencers with whole rooms stacked full of cosmetics and beauty products. Of course, I realise most of these are gifted, but what a waste! They normalise the idea that you need to buy vast quantities of beauty products, when you can’t possibly use them before they start to go off.

I don’t need multiple eye pallettes, 20 different lipstick shades, several highlighters (I don’t even use one, but if you do, are five or six necessary?). In fact, most of us use the same few makeup products daily, with a few extras for nights out, so it seems a waste to have multiples of most things if they will sit unused and end up being thrown away.

I have no plans to spend £50 a month on collagen supplements and I honestly don’t see how body contouring cream will do much for my saggy post-menopausal and childbirth belly at this point.

There are so many beauty products that frugal women don’t need need (well, any women, in fact) that I could go on. However, I think you get my drift. I would love to know in the comments the beauty products you have tried before you realised they were pointless and any that you wouldn’t be without.

For more frugal inspiration, you might like my book! Extreme Frugality: Save Money Like Your Grandma.