Things I find totally ✨cringe✨ in skincare

[Mohan]

There's something oddly exhausting about how skincare has turned into a performance rather than actual care.

- The overconsumption, for starters. Somewhere along the way, "taking care of your skin" became synonymous with owning an entire shelf of products. Multiple serums doing the same thing, backups of backups, and a constant hunt for the next "must‑have." At that point, it's less about your skin and more about the thrill of buying.

- And the product waste that comes with it – using something twice, deciding it's not life‑changing, and abandoning it halfway. Pumps still full, jars barely dented. Not every product is going to transform your face overnight, but that doesn't mean it's useless. If it's working fine, why not finish it? Skincare isn't meant to be fast fashion.

- The obsession with "only expensive works" is another one. As if effectiveness is directly proportional to price. Good formulations exist across price points, and sometimes your skin genuinely prefers the simpler, no‑frills option. But no, if it's not luxury, it can't possibly be doing anything, right?

- Then there are these elaborate 10, 15, 20‑step routines that people swear by. It starts to feel less like skincare and more like a ritual you're afraid to skip. Half the time, the skin probably just needs consistency, not complexity.

- What really stands out is the "this is the only right way" attitude. Someone finds a routine that works for them, and suddenly it's universal law. Skincare is deeply individual – what works beautifully for one person can be completely wrong for someone else, and that's normal.

- The unsolicited advice culture doesn't help either. You could simply exist with your skin, and suddenly there are five recommendations you never asked for. It's rarely about helping and more about asserting expertise.

- There's also a very specific tone of superiority in some corners whether it's the "I don't wear makeup" crowd (said in a way that's clearly seeking validation) or the "I don't even do skincare" group who treat it like a personality trait. Both somehow manage to circle back to the same thing: wanting to feel above everyone else.

- And then, of course, the "naturally gifted" narrative. Good skin is often just genetics, environment, or luck but it's presented like an achievement, as if effort had nothing to do with it.

- Another pattern is how quickly opinions flip. An ingredient is a miracle one week and "toxic" the next. Products are declared useless after three uses. Routines are changed constantly, but the blame always falls on the product, never the inconsistency.

- Even sunscreen somehow becomes optional unless there's a beach involved, which says a lot about how selectively advice is followed.

- At some point, normal skin texture, pores, the occasional breakout started being treated like a problem that needs fixing. As if real skin is supposed to look filtered all the time.

It's all a bit much.

Skincare doesn't need to be this complicated or this performative. Use what works, give products time, finish what you buy, and maybe step back from the idea that more is always better.

[Deepika]

Love you for this!

[Aftab]

Nice post, but those ChatGPT paragraphs gave me a headache while reading.