Just like fast fashion, fast beauty is the new term I came across today morning. So thought of discussing this with you all. I’m also sure that, most of you haven’t come across this term as its new and still evolving. So, the fast beauty is when the beauty brands create and launch their products at a faster unsustainable pace. New products are constantly pouring in to get ahead of beauty styles.
The problem with humans is we always want something flashy, shiny and fast. When I started learning full face of make up back in 2018 – 2019, I needed to buy a long list of products. Over the period of time, I realised that I don’t need all of those things. For daily makeup to supermarket or café, I genuinely don’t need a full face of makeup. I just needed to feel the confidence in my guts to feel good. The feel-good factor is more than enough to make you look beautiful.
Rise of fast beauty:
The waves of fast beauty came into being since the launch of ColourPop in 2014. Back those days, Instagram was just an app getting likes, business didn’t shoot up on Instagram. Later, ColourPop was so popular on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. Laura and John Nelson, quickly understood that great pigmentation, colour varieties based on the skin colour and shades and pocket-friendly budget are the only means to capture the lion-share of the market.
Just like fast fashion, fast beauty also don’t keep a long gap between production, sale and distribution of the products all over the world. The R&D keeps going in the back end, but they constantly keep dropping new products. At times, these brands launch products with minuscule difference which is hard for the users to find. The greatest impact can be found in the sustainability of the planet.
Though these brands are trying to make the packaging more sustainable and recyclable for further use; but still, it impacts the ecosystem. When we through the empty bottles or containers out, till the time they are being collected and recycled, it keeps producing a certain amount of pollution. In fashion, its about rolling the polyester in varieties of designs, whereas in beauty industry, ‘fast’ means bringing the range of products with bare minimum variations.
What can you do to ignore fast beauty?
- Start buying sustainable and environment conscious brands and their products. In India, animal testing for the beauty brands are banned. So we know that all the brands are cruelty-free but not all the brands are vegan. Check all the labels and tags before making the payments.
- Also check the date of manufacture and expiration. On the beauty e-commerce apps, some brands mention the date of expiration at the end, which we generally skip to check. Be a cautious buyer.
- Don’t fall for the 8-step or 10-step skin care routine or Korean glass finish skin care routine. The more you will simplify your skin care process, the more you will save up and the less products you will end up purchasing. That won’t lead you to get into fast beauty.
- Don’t buy too many alternatives for one thing. If you want to buy foundation, then keep one or two options. Don’t buy 5-6 bottles of foundation, you won’t be able to finish them before it gets expired and that will increase the pollution and product waste on so many levels.
Buying and applying beauty products to enhance your own beauty is not a crime. It’s a kind of self-expression, self-love and self-care. Everyone is liberal enough to have the kinda beauty products they need. But in my opinion, the beauty content creators are giving us a tough time. All the brands approach them and they keep receiving all sorts of beauty products for promotion. Most of the times, they post fake reviews about the products.
I am not barging the beauty content creators, probably it’s part of their job to lie a bit. But what I can see here is, they must take necessary actions to not be a part of fast beauty. This is how the beauty brands will get a direct message and they will move the things to bring a massive change to not promote fast beauty and save the planet from this unnecessary torture.