Originally published in October 2020.
We’ve been had. Swindled. Bamboozled by Big Skincare. And while I could be talking about all the creams and potions your Instagram ads are trying to terrify you into purchasing lest you crack and wither like Barbara at the end of Beetlejuice, the scam I speak of has been happening to us since our first tube of Clean & Clear, and I for one, am over it.
The bottoms of our bottles and tubes have been robbing us of countless dollars since time immemorial. Those bits and globs you can’t squeeze or scrape with the pump straw in order to get access to. You know what I’m talking about, you’ve stared in through the top of a glass bottle, longing for what looks like at least a week’s worth of product, laughing at you. “Come and get me! Hahaha!” Bitch, I’d love to.
There’s a conspiracy afoot. Aface? Afoot. We, those who enjoy clean, moisturized skin that smells vaguely of money—we’re the ones being taken for fools. We’re throwing away the remains of product we’ve purchased because we know we can’t access it any way short of smashing a glass bottle into a million pieces and we know that hyaluronic acid mixes poorly with blood. So we give up, we resign ourselves to a certain amount of fallout, and accept that we just have to repurchase. The dregs of products long tossed away could fill an Olympic swimming pool by now, but we’ve come to accept that this is simply our loss to bear.
Could they innovate? Could they do away with pump and squeeze bottles altogether and just give us everything in a fucking Tupperware? SURE. But they don’t. Because they’re not incentivized to. They know we’ll keep buying their products regardless of whether or not we actually have goddamned access to all of their contents. They know we’re addicted to skin that doesn’t itch and glows kind of when the light hits you right.
But my friends, this long con is over. This wasteful tango we’ve been Pacino-ing with the skincare giants of the world is at its end. We don’t need to accept the shortcomings of their product design any longer. We can fight back, reclaiming our dignity and our fucking retinol. All we need, is the spatula.
The spatula is a very tiny version of the thing you use to make muffins on weekends and delicately push your eggs into omelette format in a pan the way you saw them do it in Julie & Julia. It’s a silicone tool made miniature, the ideal size for weaseling down into the bottom of your pots and squeeze tubes in order to access that which has previously escaped you. I know you’ve heard of this shit on the blogs and listicles, but today I’m telling you that you actually have to buy it.
Illustrative photo via Amazon.
A few months ago, I purchased this $7 version of the spatula. (This is a set of two, I use the tiny one for skincare, and the large one actually lives in the kitchen to help me stop wasting nut butter.) I could say I did it with intention, in order to access some alarmingly expensive serum from the deep, but really, I was just feeling sad that day. It’s a long pandemic, I live alone, and I don’t have a backyard to sit in. I’ll take my kicks where I can find them.
It was an impulse purchase, one I wasn’t really sure I’d use. And then I pushed the pump nozzle of my favorite Vitamin C serum (I bought it during the Sephora sale and I got 8% back with Rakuten, calm down) and instead of product, I got a sad sputtering reminiscent of a whoopie cushion on its last legs. Panic set in of course, 2020 has left me with a short fuse, but there was also some confusion present. I can’t possibly be out of this shit yet, can I?
I MOST CERTAINLY FUCKING CANNOT. There was at least a teaspoon of glorious serum waiting for me in the bottle like a lost child at the bottom of a well. I was furious, thinking to myself how little regard the brand must have had for me based on the flaws of their product design, but then I remembered: THE SPATULA. I located the device, inserted it into the offending vessel, and oh my god. The triumph. THE TRIUMPH! This incident occurred one week ago and I’ll have you know I am still procuring product from that very container. I will not be repurchasing this item until I am good and damned ready, let me tell you.
I feel like I’ve won. I feel like I spent $7 on a piece of rubber on a very small stick and gained back a part of myself. I’ll not be had anymore, I’ll not be made a fool of by what’s just out of reach. I’ve deployed the assistance of the right tool for the job, and you sir cannot fuck with me any longer.
It’s hard to say exactly how much is working in our favor these days. In my opinion, we should take any upper hand available to us. Today, I choose to have control over my creams. Tomorrow? The world.