Beauty Hits Peak Absurdity: A 2025 Review

Observations from Someone Who’s Been in This Business Far Too Long

Another year, another chance to look at where our industry has headed. As we settle into 2026, I wanted to break down the trends that defined 2025 - trust me, it was quite a year. 😳

The Age of Plastic Perfection

This year, we saw a massive push towards procedures that create unnaturally symmetrical and “plastic-looking” faces across ALL age groups - even more than the wave of Kardashian clones (beauty influencers) that dominated social platforms between 2015-2020.

We’ve reached a time where twenty-year-olds are demanding that dermatologists and plastic surgeons perform preventive procedures typically reserved for folks over 40, while their grandmothers are coming out of doctors’ offices and clinics looking like their sisters.

Here’s what’s wild: we (the cosmetic industry) have convinced entire generations that human variation is not aesthetically pleasing, but a problem that needs fixing. And “the work” being done is so seamless that you can’t immediately tell what procedures a person has had done - but you know something looks “different”, unnatural, like you’re talking to an AI-driven figure.

Progress, right? 🙄

Therapy in a Bottle

This year, the cosmetic industry marketed feelings, hardcore. Fragrance collections promised to manipulate your emotional state on demand. Want to feel a particular kind of way? There are now hundreds of new cosmetic and fragrance products promising specific effects on your mental state and how others perceive you.

One particular color cosmetic brand, Fel (pronounced “feel”), wasn’t going to be left out of the surge and introduced a lip/cheek product called “Kissylips™️” that they claim:

• Contains a proprietary fel-good complex™ - which supports holistic well-being.

• Kissylips provides benefits to boost the body’s natural supply of “feel-good” endorphins and oxytocin.

• “Our proprietary ingredients have been shown to increase overall feelings of well-being for a holistic experience beyond just cosmetic.”

WTF is this marketing bullsh*t about?
Are they suggesting that cosmetics should be used to control our emotional state? Apparently, experiencing emotions naturally isn’t enough; we need a lip and cheek tint to really connect with our inner feelings. 🙄

I get it, cosmetics can be potent self-esteem boosters…but it appears that cosmetics are now aggressively marketing themselves as a mental health adjacent industry. Cosmetics and fragrance are being marketed with carefully worded promises (to avoid legal exposure) to help you process and manage your emotional trauma.

Sorry, folks, even though that stupidly expensive bottle of Baccarat Rouge 540 or Creed Aventus will make you smell great, it’s not going to manage your depression or anxiety.

AI Takes Over Skincare

Artificial intelligence is now analyzing your skin from a selfie and telling you what’s wrong with it. L’Oréal’s BioPrint lab goes even further—it calculates your skin’s biological age and predicts problems you’ll have in the future.

Let that sink in: cosmetic marketers are promoting technology designed to tell you about flaws that don’t even exist yet. We’ve turned aging into a shell game where you’re constantly losing. And people are paying for this.

The “Natural” Contradiction

Here’s where things get really interesting. Everyone wants “natural”, “clean” ingredients, but they want completely unnatural results.
Injectable treatments using your own blood and fat are preferable to Botox and fillers now because the blood and fat come from your body and count as “natural”. The industry is even normalizing using fat from cadavers on folks so obsessed with their looks that they refuse to gain “fat” weight that can be harvested for these procedures.

Think about it:
Injecting yourself with dead people’s tissue is apparently part of the cosmetic industry’s “natural” wellness movement now.

Meet the Anti-Aging Parents

A new demographic has emerged: Gen X and Gen Y (millennial) parents obsessed with looking younger who push the same concerns onto their kids. These parents (moms AND dads) are obsessed with aging, and receive regular longevity treatments (dermatology and plastic surgery). They actively encourage their children to follow the same path at alarmingly young ages.

This demographic is instilling an overwhelming level of intergenerational beauty anxiety in kids during childhood. These kids will eventually need serious therapy, but in the meantime, they can use a therapist-founded skincare regimen. 🙄

Men Join the Beauty Anxiety Club

One of the biggest shifts this year? We convinced men that cosmetic procedures aren’t vanity—they’re a career strategy. Politicians and tech executives are getting facial work done and calling it professional optimization.

The messaging is smart: it’s not insecurity, it’s strategic planning. And it’s working, even though some of these same guys argue against other people (women) having control over their own bodies. The double standard is remarkable.

Marketing Through Denial

My favorite trend: products marketed by pretending they’re not really what they are. “Not mascara” mascara. “Not fragrance” fragrance. They’re essentially lying to consumers about what they’re buying, and consumers are OK with it. 😳

It’s clever marketing, but in a somewhat disturbing manner.

#MyTwoCents

So what did 2025 prove? That there’s basically no limit to what people will buy in pursuit of algorithmic perfection. People are letting AI judge their faces, buying products marketed as emotional support, and getting procedures—all of which are called “self-care.”

The business model is simple:

1. Identify and promote a major anxiety people share about their appearance, or create a new problem.

2. Sell them an expensive solution with a “proprietary” complex or ingredient.

3. Market it with trending wellness language.

4. Sponsor a bunch of beauty influencers to promote it on socials.

5. Watch the money roll in.

Looking ahead to 2026? We’ll probably find new body parts for people to obsess over, develop more invasive ways to diagnose “problems,” and come up with fresh ways to profit from the gap between how people look and how the cosmetic industry tells them they should look.

At the end of the day, the current cosmetic industry is in the business of selling dissatisfaction. And business has never been better - so don’t hold your breath for it to change.

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The author has spent over four decades in the cosmetic industry and has witnessed the same ideas repackaged with new terminology at least a dozen times. 🥱