I know the beauty industry is a big deal – it’s a multi-billion dollar mega-empire.

We only have ourselves to blame though, because ultimately we are the ones who buy the products. We do have the choice not to. Although obviously you have to overcome the insiduous advertising that is often designed to undermine the way you feel about yourself, so that you then feel like you ‘need’ the product that is going to make you more glamorous!

That’s the way it works though. If you can see through this cycle however, you can start to break it. Personally I think the first step towards that for most women is to stop buying the trashy weekly magazines that promote celebrity as a valuable commodity. I know, I know. They are fun to read, they are entertaining, I enjoyed them too. But are they a good way to entertain yourself? Do they ultimately make you feel better about yourself, or do they just make you more critical and snide about the way people look or behave?

It all feeds in to the products that get created, that we are then worked on to decide to buy. Go back 100 years and compare the range of beauty products – they are constantly inventing things we simply do not need just to make even more money out of us.

Here’s an example of the kind of thing I mean. There is a skin lightening cream called Meladerm (you can read a review of it here and find Jen on Twitter). Now Meladerm appears to be a very well put together product – it doesn’t have any nasty chemicals like some of the rival products. It’s an all natural skin lightener. Which is great. Except, do we really need it? Why do we need to lighten our skin tones – what is wrong with our own natural skin color just as it is? It’s not just a facial thing either because these products are also sold for other dark areas of skin such as armpits which can also be improved. You might wonder who would want to lighten their armpit skin, but some women do naturally have darker armpits. Of course they want to wear sleeveless outfits or bikinis too, but they want to look like the women in the TV ads that have zero body hair and skin so white it glows, even under their arms!

Just look at any typical deoderant advert targeted at women.