The Best Skin-Care Trick: Be Rich | Hacker News Reader

The Best Skin-Care Trick: Be Rich

theatlantic.com

68 pointscoloneltcb40 comments

I think the article misses the point slightly, in a way that I notice a fair amount. A better title would be "The Best Skin-Care Trick: Spend Money". I often notice that we talk as if there is this magic group of "rich people" that has enough money to spend on anything and everything, instead of a bunch of people that spend various amount of money they have (or don't have) on things that they want.

Famous or Just Rich, or taking on debt to try and make it as an Instagram model?

The largest group of money spenders also happen to be rich, because rich people disproportionately represent money spenders.

Rich people disproportionately represent spent money might be more accurate.

“Rich people” is a relatively small category of money spenders.

That’s fair.

exactly! I know girls who spend 70% of their income on their face.

That doesn't mean that they're rich. It means that they don't spend it on something else like holidays or paying when eating out (going on loads of dates).

Investing in self-improvement is actually a very wise allocation of resources.

True, but a bit sad that we live in a world where it makes sense for a woman to invest 70 percent of her income on her face so she can eat for "free" via dates. Sounds like a polite form of probably very underpaid prostition.

They would likely make more as actual sex workers, but their self esteem and social standing would take a hit. (Which means some of these folks seeming or claiming to "spend 70 percent on their face" may actually be sex workers making more money than others think, but hiding that fact.)

By definition self-improvement raises one’s value in the marketplace, be it the job market, the mating market, or any other. This holds independent of sex. Negotiating in exchange for that value is of course a separate skill.

I’m not sure why you’re so focused on prostitution, but beautiful women have other more advantageous and higher status opportunities if trading on their looks is what they want to do. And who is anyone else to say that isn’t their right if they do?

I'm not questioning their right.

By all accounts, I was beautiful woman back in the day. I was also tall and thin at age 17 and toyed with the idea of being a model as a seeming easy answer for life.

As a woman who has six years of college and a serious interest in intellectual topics, I'm quite frustrated at my inability to get taken seriously and develop a real career.

Most women who have money and power seem to trade on their looks and sex appeal. They seem to mostly be actresses, singers, models, run fashion or make up empires or sell perfume, etc.

My feeling is that a lot of women make such career choices not because they are truly passionate about things like fashion but because that's the most viable avenue for a smart, pretty woman who doesn't want to be a second class citizen who can't stand up to her husband for fear he will leave her and his income is higher than hers.

Even so, the #MeToo movement suggests that women with real careers routinely put up with sexual harassment and even sexual assault as part for the course and it appears this is not generally true for men.

I have no problem with women trading on their looks if they so desire. As a woman who wants something else out of life and can't seem to get it, I have quite a big problem with that seeming to be the only real option a woman has.

My subjective experience makes me feel like it very much boils down to treating women as sex objects, not real people. And women who fail at being marketable sex objects can just go starve as far as the world is concerned.

Your frustration is understandable, but I hope you don’t give up. The history books are full of people who’ve made invaluable contributions despite facing any manner of social challenges.

It’s worth noting that trading on sex appeal for money and power is an avenue plenty of men pursue as well. We are a sexually reproducing species so it’s always going to be of major importance thanks to selection pressure.

Sure. In a nutshell, the problem is that a successful man is sexually attractive because of his success and success can make an otherwise not attractive man sexually viable. This seems to not be true for women. Her career success is often seen as a deterrent to a personal life.

Also, being female seems to make it difficult to network because most successful business people are heterosexual males. So that makes it complicated and challenging.

Networking between two hetero men is obviously networking. Networking between a hetero man and a hetero woman is much less clear and readily leads to unfortunate misunderstandings, even in a best case scenario where he's not actually some troglodyte who sees women as nothing but sex objects.

It’s women’s mate preferences that determine which men are sexually attractive, so that one can’t be laid on men. For the flip side you’re of course correct, because men are primarily attracted to fertility proxies. Nobody can change either of these facts though, so one has to work within those constraints. Similarly sex will always complicate interactions between the sexes. Our society is observably wrestling with that now and I don’t know how it will turn out. What I do know though is that any sustainable arrangement has to be in concordance with reality.

However, in news you may find encouraging, women are achieving overwhelming success in at least one field where they aren’t trading on sex appeal: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/02/how-women-took-ove...

It’s women’s mate preferences that determine which men are sexually attractive, so that one can’t be laid on men.

I wasn't blaming men for anything at all at any point.

Wow, talk about correlation != causation. Being attractive increases your likelihood of being wealthy. You know what else is good for your skin? Lower stress, something else correlated with high incomes. People who are wealthy also tend to take better care of themselves, via healthy diets, adequate hydration, and enough sleep, which the article mentions as also helping skin health.

There is no effort to exclude these confounding variables in this article, or even that the aforementioned expensive skin treatments do anything at all. Or that the rich people even use these treatments. All it says is that only the rich have access to these treatments, and therefore that's why their skin looks better.

You could just as easily write an article with the title "The Best Trick to Get Rich: Have Good Skin".

During my childhood I lived in the most exclusive and with the (actual) most rich families of my hometown. I think, in fact, the factors you mention make it for better skin than using skin-care products.

I say this because in retrospective I remember a lot of the girls there did NOT use makeup of any sort, and they had beautiful, almost perfect skin (some with acne, but the skin itself was smooth), compared to my sister or any of my girl friends at school (living among the richest doesn’t mean I was). I lived there for 14 years, but studying the change between my neighbours and my friends (and myself) at school, wow, the difference was incredible.

Even these days, no matter how hard they try, I can pretty much all the time distinguish if a person really comes from rich backgrounds or not, by their skin and their voice tone/accents (no matter how hard some people try).

Two things strike me about that article. First, a lot of those treatments and creams are known bullshit. A lot of beauty products are, and paying more for them isn’t proof against that. Second, it almost feels like a submarine designed to get people convinced that the products really do work, and if they just spend money on them they can look rich beautiful too.

Yes, I think it is trying to imply the causation that the industry wants to enforce.

I would posit that people who had time and money for (undeniably) damaging treatments of ancient times also had wealth and better skin.

And those extra natural ingredients, or worse, aromas or scents, often added to skin-care products can be irritants or sensitizers.

But I still have a hard time selling people on Petrolatum (Vaseline). Even when I show that it’s the first or second ingredient on whatever they’re using anyway.

Anecdotal but I have long noticed a correlation between money and “skin care” at the spectrum of middle class level. In high school and college when I was dating a lot, the girls with the best acne control/make up regiment we more often to live in a better neighborhood so I assume richer family. I’m sure there’s some social component of their mom dresses up nice, cares about looks, and has passed that down.

Now I’m married now and know the costs of maintaining my wife’s face. It’s not cheap at all. A few hundred dollars a month at MAC. And she doesn’t really do much extra in terms of serums/lotions/spa but I think she does buy premium makeup (not luxury). She’s fairly “basic” in her needs but enough to be girly. It just adds up quick and it doesn’t last long.

Hair cuts and shampoos and nail care are also pretty big expenses. Probably averaging another 200-300 a month.

Dang. I’ve never added it up like this. This is crazy! So my wife’s grooming costs about $500 a month.

Absolutely. I remember noticing it in high school - the grooming of all my female friends who went to private schools vs those who went to public schools even. It's little things, but they add up quickly.

I think the correlation between money and skin is also partly due to factors like diet and lifestyle. The more money you have the more you can afford to eat healthier foods, keep a regular sleep schedule, spend time on regular exercise, etc, which I feel are all components of good skin.

In addition to the factors you mention, there's also freedom from chronic stress.

The only proven medication to reverse skin aging is humble, generically available Retin-A (or other retinoids). Surgery is available only to the rich, but that carries the risk of winding up with a strange, uncanny valley face.

edit: I really attribute more of the difference in appearance between rich and poor as due to lifestyle as opposed to any fancy spa treatments. The poor are more likely to drink more, smoke more, and be overweight. I imagine sunscreen use is much lower as well. All of these factors absolutely do contribute to poor skin.

There's more to skin-care than skin aging - some women struggle with acne for hormonal reasons and as a side effect, blemishes.

Sunscreen is also incredibly useful to prevent sun damage, and moisturizers can prevent deep lines later in life.

None of which is to say that people need to spend an arm and a leg on skin care products, but finding skin-care that works for you might be costly

(e.g., finding a moisturizer that is light enough for daily use, a daily sunscreen that doesn't make your face look metallic from zinc, a non-prescription retinoid available in a container that won't oxidize readily).

That's true. Although Retin-A is the most effective topical acne medication as well. Aside from some medical moisturizers with urea, the most effective moisturizer is just Vaseline (I say this as a person with extremely dry skin and many problems resulting from that). It prevents the evaporation of water effectively. For the most part, moisturizers are only as effective as they are greasy.

> None of them mentioned Mzia Shiman, who tends to the skin-care needs of Victoria’s Secret models. The facials at her New York spa start at $200, and more advanced services offer tightening and plumping via LED light bed or electric microcurrent.

How sure are we that these $200 treatments do anything and aren't just snake oil? I feel that the reason why Victoria's secret models skin looks great has a lot to do with when you see them. You see them in professional photos most often. These photos benefit from:

1) Skilled photographers 2) Skilled make up artists 3) Perfect lighting 4) Photoshop

Also them being picked to be VS models because of their good skin.

At the age models break into the industry (often mid-teens), many women have decent enough skin (and after they get their break, they can afford to maintain an effective skincare regimen).

newsflash: rich people have better access to _______, making them more likely to _________, what are the implications for people who can't afford _________ and what should the _______ industry do about it?

> To play, all you have to do is notice a person and try to decide if they’ve caught your eye because they’re famous. It will feel like they’re famous. But more often than not, it’ll just be a regular person who looks like a celebrity, with that polished glow they always seem to have.

One of the first things I noticed after leaving SoCal was how rare it was to see a plastic surgery disaster - something that's a daily occurrence there. Most times I saw one I thought, "is this a B-list celebrity that jacked up their face?"

That's something you notice immediately when you get to places in Southern CA like Santa Barbara. People look super healthy. Part is probably weather but part is certainly money.

Personally i think its the accessibility of year round outdoor activities (surfing, biking, etc)

The area is known to be very image focused. I think a culture of people who believe you must be a certain kind of physically attractive to be worth dating is a huge reason.

I find it hard to believe that skin products actually change your skin quality. My wife has been applying all kinds of creams and products to her face half an hour or more every day for decades. We're the same age and our skin quality is pretty comparable.

Now, she does look a lot better when she's wearing makeup, that stuff really works when it comes to hiding minor imperfections especially from a distance.

Yes, there are absolutely skin products that improve the skin. If you read the article, they mention tretonoin (originally marketed as Retin-A), a retinoid, is frequently used as a skin rejuvenating agent. It has genuine medical uses; softening fine lines is a happy side effect more than anything. It's a prescription cream. There's also urea (also called carbamide), niacinemide and many others that modify skin biology in subtle ways. As the article mentions, many of the beauty treatments are in fact not creams, but things like laser treatments.

My wife spends a lot of time (and money) on skin care, but I'm very skeptical of the regimen that she follows. I've suggested that she secretly only treat one half her face for a few months and then ask me which side I like better, but she isn't that curious about the efficacy of her facial products and procedures.

One reason rich people tend to look better than the rest of us is genetics: the only reason the rich marry out of their class is for physical beauty.

> Even if you forgo high-tech treatment and avoid skin problems such as cystic acne or dermatitis, which Saxena notes usually require intervention from an expensive dermatologist

Iunno, I think most family doctors should be capable of taking a first or second attempt at treating these.

And what the heck is broader than dermatitis?

Some skin care products are marketed as luxe products yet don't product any results.

People think higher the price, the more effective it is. That usually isn't the case in skin care industry.

Best Skin-Care Trick: Have Good Genes and a Few Good Habits.

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