Rosewater Remedies and Sixty-Dollar-Serums: The Ambrosia of Youth, Overconsumed

Hebe: Goddess of youth & beauty in ancient Hellas

Photo Credit: Breanna Gergen. Phoenix Medley '26, along with her medley of favorite skincare and makeup products.

Just as the cup-bearer Hebe proffered divine nectar to immortalize the Olympian gods, beauty and skincare companies of the modern age are seducing us with the same siren song of youth. If you walk into any given Ulta or Sephora nowadays, you’ll find yourself bumping elbows with a ten-year-old carrying armfuls of fuchsia-capped Drunk Elephant bottles. She will most likely have a mother trailing behind her, debit card ready to be wiped clean. In our current hyperfeminine era of midnight makeup vlogs, pastel plumping lip-glosses and extensive skin care routines that grow scarily closer to car payment prices, young girls and women are contributing to American overconsumption more than ever. It was once thought that the ‘fountain of youth’ lay within Botox and infomercial creams sponsored by celebrities, but now these elixirs line the shelves of massive, easily accessible franchises. What has stirred our generation into believing we need so many high-dollar products as our modern ambrosia? Is it Hollywood’s influence? Radiant, supple-skinned models on Vogue covers? Or is the culprit more so online trends and marketing ads meant to illude our perceptions of beauty altogether?

To find a verdict on this, I spoke to numerous young women within Greek life here on campus, seeking out their skincare and makeup routines as well as their consensus on what prompts women to have such lengthy must-have product lists.

For Aryanna Gordillo ’27, a sister of Alpha Xi Delta here at Stetson, the art of makeup is a daily ritual that includes products from INKEY List, Charlotte Tillbury and Shiseido. “I do my makeup every day, because I love doing it. I find comfort in it,” said Gordillo. Although she takes inspiration from TikTok influencers such as Yolanda Diaz, Gordillo considers her older sister to be her true muse. “Growing up watching my sister do her makeup all the time made me want to do it, too. Every now and then, she’ll mention, ‘Did you see Ariana Grande is releasing new r.e.m.? Or, Rihanna’s releasing more Fenty Beauty?’And I’ll be on that,” Gordillo said. 

Celebrity-owned makeup lines indeed induce an ultra-contemporary incentive to purchase cloud-shaped perfume bottles and purple-dusted highlighters with the promise of looking like Rihanna. Because, let’s face it: Who wouldn’t want to in a society that exalts A-listers so frequently? This scheme targets women not only in makeup aisles but across other markets as well; Oreo has recently succumbed to plastering Selena Gomez’s name on their packaging, in light of this ongoing popstar worship. All of it is a capitalist strategy; a corporate marketing scheme zeroed in on young women – and yet we continue to play along.

“All the pretty colors are marketing. They are just trying to reel you in to get your money,” said Phoenix Medley ’26, a member of Zeta Tau Alpha. Rarely seen without her bedazzling Colourpop eye glitter, Medley flaunts her shimmery shades of pink and green set against a strawberry-themed eyeshadow palette. Yet for skincare, Medley swears by a simple Good Molecules-followed-by-sunscreen routine. “For makeup, I find that I am overconsumption-core. With skincare, it’s not as fun. What is the impulse to buy moisturizer? I will impulse buy a lipstick, though, or an eyeshadow,” said Medley. “When I think of my Colourpop collection, that's all just for fun. I love glitter. But when it comes to the concealing part of it…to mask my under-eye bags or when I’m breaking out…all of that feels more like pressure from social media and society at large. The capital ‘B’, capital ‘S’ beauty standard,” Medley said. This in itself seems to be the societal motto: You require a product to be perceived as prettier.  “Once [you] start doing that every day, then you don't even like what you look like without makeup on,” Medley said.

Gordillo offered similar words to comment on this self-destructive hyperfixation. "Growing up, I felt very insecure about certain facial features that I was told weren’t the standard of beauty…now I’m wishing I had never even touched a razor or a tweezer,” Gordillo said. “Now I know that I like the way I look, so I put on the makeup to enhance the features I already have,” Gordillo said.

From this perspective of makeup as an enhancement – not a replacement – Medley agreed. “Without the concealer…your face is beautiful regardless. You don't look like a zombie, you look normal,” Medley said.

Yet, Kameron Matanis ‘28, a sister of Pi Beta Phi, has found herself receiving noticeably more chivalrous gestures from strangers while donning a full face of makeup. “People do treat you differently when you look better. When my makeup is done [and] hair is done, people open doors; they see you,” Matanis said. “With American standards, beauty is a preference…There is always something new that you have to buy. There is the pressure of everyone talking about it, everyone else is buying it, [so] why shouldn't I? They make everything so convenient now, but it comes at a price. And it is normalized,” Matanis said.

Normalization, the casual disease within the beauty realm to ‘try all, buy all’ has even begun to plague pre-pubescent generations below our own. “There was a whole Sephora epidemic with…children going in and trying all the serums. Girls in elementary school that want to wear makeup,” Gordillo said. “Biologically, you have the tools you need to have great skin at a young age. You don't need a hyaluronic acid. You don't need to buy stuff from Good Molecules, Bubble or Drunk Elephant.” 

Medley wholeheartedly agreed once again, comparing Gen Z’s childhood and its relationship with makeup to the tainted one that followed it for Gen Alpha: “That transitional period that we had is now completely gone,” Medley said.

All of this makeup mania? The mutant child of overconsumption and America’s love of it. Do not be fooled by the TikTokers romanticizing their endless collections of perfume bottles, titling it ‘overconsumption-core,’ in block letters. There is certainly nothing romantic about it.

“There are a lot of ecostrategies that other countries do that we just don’t take the effort or time to do ourselves,” Gordillo said. Perhaps if the U.S. allotted some of the profit it was making from beauty lines towards greener policies, we would be able to consider justifying the mass consumption.

Medley acknowledges that we are far from this ideal. “We are the overconsumption capital,” said Medley. “In reality, beauty is constructed for the purpose of gaining a profit. That is the only reason we feel inclined to buy all these things. Because somebody told us, ‘you’re worth less if you don't have this.’” 

It is for that reason that beauty bears a hefty price tag in today’s culture. Many of you who read this may be impulse shoppers yourselves – I ask that the next time you pick up that eyelash curler, serum or bright tube of lipstick, you have a long, hard think before buying. Not only are you adding to the mountains of money that pad the accounts of corporate fatcats, but in just a few months time, you’ll be adding to a mountain of makeup in the landfill.