Confessions of a recovering beauty junkie - Part One: The 80s
First in a 5-part series chronicling my cosmetic follies across the decades. Today: It was acceptable in the 80s
So I seem to have inadvertently nominated myself1 as The Lady On The Internet Telling You What To Do With Your Face. And 90% of my motivation for being here is to try to prevent you from wasting a) money and b) emotional outlay in the same vast quantities that I have done over the years.
I thought it might be helpful to contextualise this and share just how many products I’ve slathered on myself, and why - often with decidedly mixed results.
Are we really starting in the 80s?
Yep. I was born in the 70s23, but my formative experiences with beauty were in the 80s.
My beauty lineage
I’m an only child4 and didn’t grow up near my extended family, so my mum was the centre of all my early exposure to product. My mum, it is fair to say, is a beauty.
Her mum (also a beauty) was one of 4 sisters, the most glamorous of whom was called Joan. She used to work on a beauty counter and get embroiled in scandals.
All the sisters were quite ‘appearance aware’ and my mum inherited that from them. She would always bring a meticulously organised vanity case with her on holiday and had a proper dressing table in her bedroom5.
I have always had a dressing table everywhere that I’ve lived since, no matter how small the room. Doing my make-up at the bathroom mirror is hell to me - I want to sit and contemplate my face quietly for a few minutes at the start of each day.
I was obsessed with makeup - especially eyeshadow6 - from as early as I can remember. I was told strictly no make-up until I was 13, so the 80s were largely a makeup-free zone. Instead, I had to channel all of my childish wonder (and wallet) into skincare, whilst imagining the infinite possibilities of tomorrow.
How did I feel about the way I looked in the 80s?
So the 80s take me from 3-12 years old and it was A TORRID TIME.
I was actually a very cute kid:
But then I went through puberty at 87. That meant I had a face and body that a child shouldn’t really have, and it caused me some issues8. There are vanishingly few pictures of me during this period, because I felt - frankly - like an ugly freak and fled from cameras, but here are a couple. I AM TEN HERE. TEN.
All of this was Pretty Horrid9. I had boobs and pubic hair at 8, and my features were just too big for my face for a while.
I was first told by a friend when I was 8 or 9 that my nose was too big. That stuck with me until I was 30, at which point I had the first of two nose jobs, so that I’d stop crying into the mirror weekly about my face.
I also have profound autism, which went undiagnosed until my 40s, and my experience of the late eighties was characterised by an overwhelming desperation to be normal, inside and out. But that wasn’t the hand I was dealt, and I became (I now realise) obsessed with finding the magic bottle that was going to transform the outside, at least10.
What products was I using in the 80s and why?
Face:
Camay (i.e. highly perfumed soap) to wash my face.
With the benefit of hindsight, all this did was simultaneously break my skin out and make it dry. Because it was the 80s and there was no internet, I was at the mercy of TV advertising and hardcore in-store psychology, and therefore made Bad Choices.
So I added these to the party, in the hope that they would help:
Clearasil
I can’t find a photo of the stuff I had - it was a gel. And it was never going to solve my sebaceous filaments. There’s a non-zero chance that Procter & Gamble have destroyed all evidence that it existed after it11 was single-handedly found to be responsible for melting the polar ice caps.
But check out this messaging for another product in the range12
Be ladylike, girls. Spots and loud music = dying alone.
Witch Hazel (generic)
That black residue on cotton wool in the Clearasil ad was pretty enticing though. And witch hazel promised an astringent experience par excellence. So I added it to the ever-increasing collection of bottles around the sink. To zero positive effect. I also had it in stick form, with the enticingly named Witch Stick13. That also did nothing except make my face, essentially, feel on fire.
Body Shop Cucumber Cleansing Milk
I can’t find a photo of the actual 80s bottle, but when I tell you that I am viscerally experiencing the smell as I type this 😂
I was just smearing this on14 and hoping for the best. That went about as well as you can imagine.
Body Shop Japanese Washing Grains
At the time, this was the best thing I could imagine scraping over my reddened, compromised skin barrier. Sheer lunacy. It did make a very satisfying little paste in my trembling girlish hands though.
Aapri
My under-developed frontal lobe apparently determined that the overarching problem with my skin was that I still had too much of it. So I added yet another exfoliant to the pile. This stuff was the UK’s answer to the infamous St Ives Apricot Scrub. We didn’t need to rely on our US cousins to scratch our faces into oblivion. No siree.
Old Lady Face Creams
These can all actually have merit, in the correct context. That context is not an 12 year-old with a compromised skin barrier, undiagnosed eczema and a sensitivity to perfumed skincare. But this is what was on TV and cost under a fiver, so this is what I bought.
NB: I don’t mean to imply by this roster of products that I had a consistent daily routine. Oh no, no. I just had this stuff knocking around that I would use sporadically and could very easily go from just the soap one day to throwing every single product listed here at my poor little face in one go, because I was feeling especially bad about myself that day. This behaviour will continue until my late twenties.
Make-up
Not relevant until the 90s, when I turned 13.
Hair
No major investments happening here. Whatever shampoo and conditioner was around. Forays into glitter gel15 and the deep joy of my combination crimper/straightener.
Body
Literally nothing, from memory. I’m not convinced anyone in my home town was applying body lotion in the 80s. We’d just get into a bath16 full of lavender bath pearls/cubes, then get out and call it a day.
What did I smell like?
Other than possibly burning skin and exhaustion?
I grew up in the UK, but my dad is French and we would take multiple trips to France a year to fill the car to the brim with all the Frenchy things. I was doing beauty hauls decades ahead of my time. It led to a lifelong habit of stockpiling product that I’m still struggling to shed in my 40s.
In the 80s, my perfume and deodorant were from France17. I used a lime-scented deodorant by a brand called Fa, but the real work was being done in the hypermarket perfume aisles. For the purposes of this post, I dredged my memory and remembered that I wore a perfume called Garçonne. That was easy to track down. But then I realised…
…I owned 4 of these at any one time (1, 2, 3 and 5). The other 3 must have smelled unimaginably appalling for me to have rejected them.
And that brings us to the end of the 80s. Let’s say goodbye to Little Me.
Send her some love; life was BRUTAL for her quite a lot of the time.
We also say goodbye to the 80s. I leave you with this slice of utter insanity from that decade. The whole thing is delightfully unhinged, but peaks at about the 1 minute mark.
Until the next time! x
(Next week: the 90s.)
TBF, I had largely had this greatness thrust upon me by you and all your questions. I could be out with Aleksander Skarsgard right now*, but instead I’m typing up my childhood memories/traumas for your reading pleasure. Life’s a funny thing, eh?
* I mean, I’ve never met him, but I would have had a lot more time for he and I to cross paths if I’d never started this blog†
† Imagine what an incredible moment this footnote reveal will be at our future wedding
You normally wouldn’t be able to waterboard this information out of me.
The fucking craziest part of this is that around 50% of my baby photos ARE IN BLACK AND WHITE.
I mean, fucking OBVIOUSLY
Which was also my Dad’s bedroom, but I didn’t really know how to phrase this. As far as I’m aware, he was not a user of the dressing table, but it’s really none of my business
It was the 80s, soooo…
Yes, I know. It was shit.
Probably an understatement.
Also probably an understatement
Spoiler: magic bottle remains elusive.
Probably
Rickaaaaaaaaaaaay! [This one’s just for the UK readers]
Witches for the win
I think, without rinsing it off afterwards
Fuck yeah
To clarify, we weren’t all getting into the same bath. It wasn’t that kind of town.
FLEX
Ohhh, the memories!!! Ticking so many of the same memory boxes here, and not just the Aapri (with the crucial extra 'a', so true!) but also, St. Ives!!!! Astral!!! And, not forgetting, the CAMAY!!! I remember that wrapping, and I can still smell all of these!! And Demi's crimping in St Elmo's!! (The pink and white Babyliss crimpers!) Also, so sorry you had such a tough time - and all these pics, your childhood ones and your mama, are beautiful. Look forward to the 90s edition!!!! (Suspect the brows will be near non-existent!!).