Numbers You Can Rely On

I guess most of us don’t really like to take things at face value, we want the proof, the evidence to back it up and when it comes to marketing that usually means we want the numbers.

For some reason this seems particularly true of beauty products, especially makeup, and advertisers have sussed this, as they do.  At the bottom of the screen (and in print, on the bottom of the page too), there is some small print which is all that is apparently required for us to put faith in this new, life-enhancing, wonderful panacea.

If the numbers are there to give us trust, build our confidence, inspire us to pin our hopes and dreams in this new wonder concoction and put down the readies, why are they so wretchedly small?  And I’m not just talking about the print size.  I mean, have you read them lately?

I admit that about all I pay attention to in these types of adverts are the numbers.  It’s not a maths thing, don’t worry, no chance of that with me.  I do it for the humour value.  The day that I find a survey of 200 women listed I raise a cheer.  Wow, how did they find so many women, surely there can’t be that many on the planet!  It’s always a percentage of these, perhaps honest, that endorses the product.  They aim high.  I wonder who they choose to sample the product, where they find these woman.  Are they anything like you or me?

Personally, I don’t really trust any of those 50-90% of 100 women, no, take that back, I don’t really trust magic potions full stop.  Does that kind of statistic inspire you to buy, do put faith in something new just because some 78% of 119 women say to?  (You can do the maths on that one, thank you.  My instinct tells me it can’t be that many people after all).

Well today they reached new heights of statistical wonderment.  At the bottom of my screen, it was a makeup advert I can tell you that much, what exactly from whom I have no idea, was the statistic.  Ah, the glorious statistic.

75% of 52 women.

I’m sorry?!

Was that just the amount of women they found in the office that day or something?!

That is pathetic.  That’s not a survey, that’s a chat around the ubiquitous water cooler.

I think I surveyed more people’s opinions for GCSE coursework requirements.  This is a national advertising campaign!

OK, rant over.

If you want some fun, check out the small print the next time a beauty product advert rolls onto your screen.

In the mean time, I’m going to ponder over the beauty industry’s exact methodology in these shenanigans, for example what did those 75% of 52 woman agree to – what they just claimed in the advert or something else? or how do they get these (many) women to test the product – once on the back of their hand, a usual day’s wearing or for a sustained and controlled trial period? or what are these women comparing the product to because I’m pretty sure that most of them would usually all use different products unless they’re sample junkies in which case I’m not sure if I’d trust them anyway? or can the average woman make any reasonable or even scientific claim to the better-ness of a product or is she just trusting on a ‘feeling’? or if they could only find 30% of 50 women to like it does that mean the product gets scrapped or do they just go and find another fifty women?  …  Hmm, so many questions.  There may even be more questions than there are surveyed women!

Exposure

Well (I’m sure it’s bad practice to start a written paragraph with ‘well’ but it is very conversational isn’t it?), the weather has turned.  Naturally this happened the week the children all went back to school but we did manage to have a beautiful sunny Bank Holiday Monday which is something of a miracle.  Now of course we’re all complaining about the heat and ruined school holidays.  Hey, at least it was warm pretty much most days and it only rained consecutively for one week instead of the whole six.

Good weather of course brings its own particular challenges.  In cold weather of course you’re never going to look good wrapped up in enough layers to pass for a human/woollen snowball but that doesn’t really matter when no-one can see you underneath them all.  They can criticise your fashion sense (apparently it is very unfashionable to dress warmly and sensibly when the outside temperatures are plunging to an unprecedented minus ten much less wear practical footwear) but they can’t criticise you as a person for your looks.

Good weather changes that.  Good weather means that hems have to rise.  (Although I am one of the few people it seems who thinks that wearing loose floaty long natural fibre clothing is a far more comfortable solution than wearing clingy latex filled synthetics.)  Hems rising means that you have to show skin.

Skin presents so many hurdles to fail at in our current culture.  We don’t expect to see or show skin in its natural state.  I am one of those unfortunates who happens to come in a luminescent shade of milk white with the odd blue or purple patch to make it even worse.  This is wrong.  I am apparently meant to be a natural shade of brown.  Tango-ed is not an acceptable look, well I don’t think it is.  There are several problems with this skin colour presumption.

Firstly, we live in a climate where there is often very little opportunity to expose one’s skin to the sun.  That’s even before you decide to analyse the health risks associated with deep frying your unprotected exposed self for hours at a time, turning yourself at predetermined intervals to make sure you cook evenly.  I have considered the health risks and own a bottle of sun cream which when I remember to use it or can find it from wherever it got stashed after the previous sunny episode naturally restricts the ease with which I will brown in the limited exposure period.  I also find sunbathing deeply boring, I can’t imagine anything worse then lying still in a prone attitude for hours at a time doing absolutely nothing, it’s a complete waste of time.  I also wilt in the heat, especially if my head is exposed.

Second are the problems with ‘faking it’.  The desire to attain the perfect socially acceptable skin colour drives millions every year to buy a bottle (or several) of something that I can only best describe as body paint.  Again I do not have the patience to stand around trying to evenly apply a cream that runs every risk of staining everything in the house and producing a sunburnt zebra effect on my legs.  That’s if the cream even takes, experiments in my embarassed and will-desperately-trying-anything-to-look-’normal’ teenage years have proven that these products do not work at all on me.  At best I will have orange stripes around my knees and white legs everywhere else.  A complete waste of time and money.

Third is that I do not tan easily.  In fact ‘easily’ can usually be read as ‘at all’.  If it’s sunny over a lengthy period of time (rare in this climate) I can produce a mild brown hint on my arms and face that most people would consider their usual skin colour rather than a tan.  My legs even when stuck out in the sun’s rays with nothing to protect them in an attempt to sunbathe will stay persistently white.  If exposed to fierce sunlight or if I’m pathetic enough to try sunbathing the result is a brilliant lobster red colour.  (Embarassing enough but you should see the painful colour it becomes under fluorescent light!)  The next morning I awake with white skin.  What’s the point in trying?!

Finally, I have to point out that I inherited my skin colour.  It wasn’t something I chose, no-one asked me at conception or birth whether I wanted to be this colour or another one which would prove to be more ‘socially acceptable’.  I got stuck with it.  There is a certain irony in the skin colour that I have inherited too.  I take after my English father in many ways, including looks and colour.  He had that amazing skin that goes deep dirty brown in the shade and never burnt.  My Italian mother has dark colouring and that milk white skin I was telling you about which never tans and burns easily.  Guess which one I inherited?!  Crazy isn’t it?!

It’s funny though how we still discrimanate against people with darker skin tones to our own whilst our own culture is trapped in a headlong pursuit of darker skin, regardless of the risks and costs.  Is it ironic or twisted that half of us are trying to darken our skin whilst the other half are trying to lighten it?  And all in the name of being ‘fashionable’ or ‘socially acceptable’ or worst yet, ‘normal’.

I learnt a very long time ago that I was not normal.  I learnt a long time ago that in fact most people aren’t as we’re all different.  I learnt too that ‘normal’ may not necessarily be a good or healthy or beneficial thing.  It’s one thing learning something but it’s quite another accepting it.  Have I accepted these lessons?  Sometimes, maybe.  It’s just pretty hard when everyone is looking at you like you’re some kind of freak.  It’s also pretty hard when the sun comes around and you have to come out of hiding.