I discovered cosmetics when I was 22 years old. My first child had just been born, and as silly as it now seems, I was worried that I didn’t look old enough to be a mother. People kept assuming that I was the babysitter, and it occurred to me that perhaps I needed a new image, preferably something “womanly.” That’s when I started reading cosmetic ads. One day I spotted an ad announcing a beauty workshop taking place that weekend in a New York City department store. Sponsored by a major cosmetic company, the workshop promised a complete makeover. The ad also said that a “name” beauty expert would be on hand to give instructions on application. It was just what I wanted, and I could hardly wait.
On Saturday morning, feeling like a teenager about to buy her first tube of “Fire and Ice,” I left my daughter with my best friend and dashed off. Well, reader, they did a cosmetic “makeover” and I loved it. I thought I looked wonderful-so wonderful that I vowed, Scarlett O’Hara fashion, that I would never again face the world without cosmetics. I didn’t even want to wash my face. I had my new look and, come what may, I was prepared to keep it. As you might imagine, it wasn’t hard for the sponsor’s salespeople to convince me to spend 100 preinflationary dollars on its products.
The next morning I got up 45 minutes early just so I could start trying to re-create the magic on my face. Forget it. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t duplicate the results of the day before. I ended up with an image that was definitely “new” but not one that anyone would want. My eyes were “on” crooked, and the shading was all wrong. To compound the problem, I was beginning to sprout a good case of cosmetic acne and had no idea what caused it. That day, staring at a table full of cosmetics that I didn’t know how to apply, with at least one of them making me break out, I guess I knew that I had been oversold. But it didn’t really matter to me. My desire
to retrieve the look that I loved made me disregard any resentment and anger I might have felt over the salesmanship-and the pimples.
Since I prided myself on having an artist’s eye, then and there I determined that I wasn’t going to give up until I used makeup like a professional. That’s how my long love-hate relationship with cosmetics started to take form. The next week I bought myself a cosmetic mirror and began practicing with colors and brushes. I read articles and articles and checked out all the various brands for prices and shades. It was fun, and within a few months friends were complimenting me and asking for help. But cosmetics was still a hobby until a couple of years later when there was a fire in the studio in which I was working, and I lost several paintings. It made me feel as though my future as an artist was jinxed, and I wanted a new career. A friend who had always admired my skill with cosmetics suggested that I get a job as a beauty professional. It sounded good to me. If I couldn’t paint canvases, perhaps I would be able to paint faces.
Within weeks I was hired by a large company and was being trained as a beauty representative. Now
was the beauty expert, sent into a major department store, by a major cosmetic company to work at its counter, doing makeovers and selling the products. I did this for the next 12 years, and that’s where I learned firsthand how the business works. Sure I would do makeovers and give advice, but I could only suggest products manufactured by the company that I was representing, and I would be given a quota to sell. The quota for the work was usually in the thousands. If I didn’t sell the quota, it was clear I would be a candidate for unemployment lines.
Hard sell was the name of the game, and I’m ashamed to tell you how easy it was for me to do. Women would look into the cosmetic mirror and, just as I had after my first makeover, they would fall in love with what they saw. They bought whatever was recommended. Although I had been trained to recognize skin types, I wasn’t told to advise customers about which products were good or bad for their individual type. If the company had a specific moisturizer it wanted promoted, I was instructed to sell the moisturizer to everyone. It didn’t matter if the customer was 17 or 70, had breakout oily skin or dry skin. And I never questioned the wisdom of these directives. I worked only for major cosmetic lines, and I was still sufficiently naive that I simply couldn’t imagine why large, successful companies would want to sell anything that would cause dermatological problems. I knew that many of the women would never be able to use the makeup they bought, but I tried not to think about it. I had been instructed to sell, and sell I did. I remember sending women home with hundreds of dollars worth of cosmetics. I would have nightmares that one of them would return explaining that her husband threw her out for spending so much on makeup. Fortunately, it never happened. However, something else did.
I became friendly with a woman whose husband was a dermatologist, and we began to talk about cosmetics. To my horror, I discovered that many of the products I was promoting were doing more harm than good. I started to learn about cosmetic ingredients and what effects they could have on the skin. Thinking that my new information would make me a more valuable employee, I was actually feeling very pleased with myself when the ax fell. I was working for a company that produced a cosmetic line with a high oil content. A very pretty woman in her early twenties came in. She wanted to get a makeover and to buy some products. I did the makeover, but I advised her not to buy any of the products in the line because she had very oily skin, and I thought she might be running the risk of cosmetic acne. She took my advice, but when she left without buying anything, the salesperson representing the line asked her why, and my young, would-be customer repeated what I had said. I was fired on the spot. I tried to explain to the company that they would be better off doing customers a service. I said I might have saved them from a lawsuit and appealed to reason. No way. The company didn’t want to use me again.
That’s when I started a course at the local adult evening school. I quit selling and began to teach women how to be educated beauty consumers. At first my lecturing centered in the local Philadelphia area, but it wasn’t long before I began getting invitations to speak nationally. After every lecture I was asked for more information by women who wanted to know more about buying cosmetics. Then I began thinking about this article.
