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To Everyone Working in Beauty

“My fellow beauty professional,
Does it ever happen that you’re sitting in a café, at a bar or around a small kitchen table, and your job comes up?

You say you work in beauty and people light up straight away.

They want to talk, they want tips, and very often they admit they’re not happy with their skin – not only because of lines or glow, but for many different reasons.
And then comes the twist. After a while, someone almost always says it: “I’m thinking about Botox. Maybe fillers.”

These are the same people that don’t wear SPF because it’s “too much hassle”.

They probably sleep with their makeup on.

They wash their face with whatever soap is in the shower or don’t even bother.

They pick at their skin, cover everything with heavy foundation, and get upset when they break out again.
So you sit there, just like I do, and you wonder: how do we not see the obvious?

How did we become so relaxed about a needle in our face, but still so resistant to basic protection and care? “

How Did We Get Here?

You’re right, the “add to basket” idea and “we boosted it” repeat. Here’s a cleaned version with the overlaps removed and the flow kept tight:
Millennials grew up watching faces change.

Actors, singers, reality stars – you could see their faces get smoother, tighter, fuller from one year to the next. What used to be a rumour quietly became normal.

Some still deny it and swear lemon juice is their secret ingredient (the nerves!), but celebrities and influencers now name their doctors and clinics like they name their stylists. Cosmetic work turned into “self‑care” and “maintenance”, not a big dramatic choice.

At the same time, the industry saw a huge opportunity and ran with it. Ingredient‑first brands like The Ordinary made acids and retinoids feel clever and affordable. “Clean” brands like Drunk Elephant turned full routines into lifestyle sets.

Then celebrity lines like Fenty Skin arrived, with products like “Fat Water” becoming instant best‑sellers and TikTok favourites. Between roughly 2014 and the early 2020s, skincare stopped being a quiet category and turned into a growth engine: more launches, more steps, more reasons to buy.
We didn’t just watch this; we helped build it.

We created campaigns, routines and trends around this new world, and skincare became a full universe to explore, collect and display, not just a few quiet basics in the bathroom.

That is how we slowly shifted the balance: injections became casual, skincare became a spectacle, and somewhere in between, simple daily care started to look almost too small for the noise we had created.

The ‘Quick-Fix ’ Era of Beauty

To be fair, Botox and fillers give people exactly what our generation has been trained to want: fast, visible change.

You walk in with a line between your brows, you walk out with a smoother forehead. You can see the difference straight away and, in the “before and after” era on social media, that matters.
Global data shows that botulinum toxin is the number one non‑surgical cosmetic procedure in the world, with around 7–8 million treatments a year just for this one category.

Most of these injections are done for women, but the share of men is growing, especially in Europe where facial injectables are now a multi‑billion‑euro market and still rising.

In some reports, non‑surgical treatments already make up more than 60% of all cosmetic procedures in Europe, and injectables like Botox and fillers lead that list. ( more data here )

“Baby Botox” pushed the quick‑fix idea even further. Smaller doses, more often. The message is: start early, stay “fresh”, stop lines before they show up.

Some clinics report big jumps in Botox for people in their 20s — one analysis mentioned more than 70% growth in treatments for the 20–29 age group in just a few years. For many millennials and Gen Z, it doesn’t feel like a serious medical procedure anymore. It feels like a top‑up, the way you top up your hair colour.

I want to be clear: I don’t hate Botox or fillers. One day I might be tempted myself. This is not a “never do it” manifesto. It is an honest look at how fast things have changed.

It is just ironic that daily SPF — the most basic non‑negotiable — is still not seen as effective or “worth it” in the same way.

Skincare Turned Into Homework

At the same time injectables were perceived as easy-access , skincare was taking another path.

The hype of a 10–12 step routine turned into a trend, boosted by K‑beauty and “glass skin” promises, and bathroom shelves filled up with toners, essences, serums, mists and masks.

Routines stopped being private habits and became a performance: GRWM videos, shelfies, “Sunday reset” clips where the number of bottles on the counter proved how serious you were about your skin.

Tools and gadgets joined the show. LED masks, face massagers, gua sha, ice rollers, sheet masks and eye patches became props that looked good on camera and often more like an accessory than a treatment.

Did Skincare had to become more visual and complex to keep up with a feed where injectables and “after” photos set the standard for what “real” results look like ?

For many people, this was fun at first – a new serum here, a mask there, a roller from the fridge at night. Then it became confusing and expensive: products layering, specific active ingredients not to be mixed, skin goals, and suddenly people felt guilty if they didn’t “do all the steps”.

What was sold as self‑care slowly started to feel like homework, while the quiet basics – cleansing, hydration, sunscreen – was read as too simple = not effective.

Is This Just How Beauty Works Now?

Beauty seems to repeat the same pattern: we blow up a category, make it bigger and bigger, and then everyone gets tired and walks away.

Makeup already went through this once. In 2016 it was full glam – contour, baking, heavy brows, liquid lipstick – then Covid pushed the softer “clean girl” look, and now bold makeup is creeping back.

Skincare is in that phase right now and Hair is clearly joining: hot tools, hair perfumes, masks, “hair botox”, scalp scrubs, hair serums, styling creams and “CC” products are starting to look like skincare for your head.

Brands and social media love the “more, more, more” moment. New launches, hauls, long routines and heavy layering all mean more clicks and more sales.

After a while, people feel overwhelmed and start to cut back: smaller routines, fewer products, talk about “skinimalism” and using what you already have. It’s not that they stop caring about beauty. They are just tired of the work, the money and the pressure.

At the same time, we are still watching all this from our phones. We keep scrolling through GRWMs and hauls, even while “digital detox” and going more analog are becoming new goals and new flexes. More people talk about deleting apps for a while, muting beauty content, or swapping some screen time for real‑life habits because the constant stream of faces, routines and “must‑haves” feels heavy on mental health.

What’s tricky is that this backlash can easily swing too far. When the noise feels toxic, some people don’t just step back from trends – they step back from basic care too, because everything feels part of the same pressure. The real challenge is not to stop caring, but to find a way to care for skin, hair and self without letting an endless scroll decide what “enough” looks like.

So maybe the real question is not only “Will Gen Z and Gen Alpha change skincare, makeup and hair?”

but “Will we change the way we consume beauty content at all?”

Is this blow‑it‑up‑then‑burn‑it‑out cycle simply how beauty works now, or are we finally ready to say “enough” – in our bathrooms, in our showers and on our screens?