Cheap cosmetics

Both women and men cultivate their personal appearance. Men have taken to it in a noticeable manner since the 1990s; and men devoted to enhancing their attraction are known as the metrosexual male. However, they are still far behind women in spending money and time on their faces and bodies. Worldwide women spend billions of dollars a month on increasing their attraction. This is a tidy amount — more than the total revenue of many developing countries. In Third World countries, a face can cost as much in upkeep as a small private fleet of cars. However, the trend of more physical beauty seems to be both a tremendous success and a lamentable failure. It is because while the increasing use of cosmetics have done the magic of preserving beauty and youthful look much beyond youth, the ever-growing demand for beauty products has resulted in flooding the market with fake products, which do more harm than good.

Cheap cosmetics are available in abundance the world over. In Pakistan like elsewhere in the world, spurious cosmetics and handling of skincare by untrained hands have given rise to skin and scalp diseases. Skin specialists attribute these disorders to the absence of rules for regulating the cosmetics business. Also, there are reportedly no rules for setting up beauty parlours, neither are there rules to check advertisements that make tall claims about turning white into black or tan or vice- versa.

In Pakistan and other developing countries, wedding ceremonies without brides getting their make-up done at beauty parlours are unthinkable. Now nearly every woman visits a beauty parlour at least once in life. The cult of beauty has surpassed reasonable limits due to the contemporary habit of over-painting. Such women seem to be wearing masks after they remove their make-up. Many women still enhance their beauty by simply washing their faces with soap and water. The magic of cosmetics is undeniable. Experts are of the view that the old and young will soon become indistinguishable; old ladies are already becoming rare.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 15^th, 2020.

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