“Don’t knock it ’til you try it”: The Ridiculousness in the Skin Care Market

Kelp, vegetables, venom, superhero serum — call your ingredients whatever you like and throw them in the mix as long as you can guarantee one thing at the end of the day: it will work. As long as it is effectual, the skin care product industry will tolerate preposterous absurdity. Doctors long ago slung bird poo onto skin and prescribed using a dead man’s hand to apply a medicine, assuring patients that these were cure-alls for their skin troubles. Here are some of modern products that future generations might laugh at the same way.

Tomato Brightening Mask

Using tomato oil in a lotion doesn’t seem that crazy once you wrap your head around the fact there is such a thing as tomato oil. However, what puts this product from TONYMOLY on this list is it’s packaging. This moisturizer comes in an actual plastic tomato. Like you hosted a poor showing of MacBeth in your home, someone might hurl it at the stage kind of tomato. What a time to be alive.

At-Home Seaweed Wraps

Outside of skincare, seaweed has very few pleasant connotations. Although seaweed wraps aren’t unheard of, taking on the task of bringing the toxins out of your body and improving your skin with kelp is a long process. It takes about 45 minutes to prepare for your one and a half hour soak, and that is after you gather all the ingredients. The time and effort dedicated here is the odd part of this skin care product.

Dermaflash

Zapping off unwanted immature hairs with lasers. Genetic engineers will surely one day laugh at our magic wand for peach fuzz, but for now, this is a weirdly awesome product. Shaving sucks. This makes it easier and a bit more fun to get your face from bristley to “kiss me” with the only bummer some light radiation exposure.

Smoothie Beauty Face Mask

This product is genius. Not because it’s made with all natural ingredients. Plenty of products claim that. It is because they spell out those natural ingredients in layman’s (the right kind of) terms: raw cacao powder, almond milk, dark maple syrup, coffee granules, greek yogurt, fruit, and cold-pressed, unrefined extra virgin coconut oil. With enough elbow grease and trial and error recipes, you might only have to buy this product once before you’re creating these at home.

Until we’re all born with perfect skin, or the perfect skin product graces the world, we’ll continue to be able to laugh at and then secretly try out the hilarity in the skin care market. Rather than say it’s all mularkey, we’ll end with some sage advice: make sure it makes sense to you, and then don’t knock it until you try it.