The Skincare Industry Needs to Follow Tree Fairy's Lead. Here's Why.
Let's be blunt.
The skincare industry is embarrassing itself.
Not because the products are bad. Some of them are fine. But the way it sells? The pouting. The kissy faces. The vacant, glassy stare into the middle distance while someone strokes their own collarbone. The endless parade of women performing attractiveness to sell you a face wash.
It's not skincare. It's self-objectification with a pump dispenser.
And everyone involved seems completely fine with it. We are not.
What skincare actually is
Skincare is maintenance. It's looking after the organ that holds you together. It's for people who want genuinely healthy skin, not people so young they'd have great skin regardless of what they put on their face. Using a 22-year-old with perfect genetics to sell anti-ageing moisturiser is not a testimonial. It's a joke.
Real skincare is for eczema that flares every winter, redness that won't quit, menopause skin that arrived uninvited and redecorated without asking, scars that stuck around, dryness that makes you feel like you're made of paper. And it's for people who just want their skin to be healthy, properly healthy, not "healthy" as a code word for young, tight, and filterworthy.
It is not a personality. It is not an identity. It is not something that requires you to perform femininity, attractiveness, or sexual availability to a camera to justify purchasing.
You wash your face. You moisturise. You get on with your day.
Tree Fairy makes skincare for that. The actual thing, not the performance of it.
The industry needs to grow up
Every time a brand posts another video of a woman doing a kissy face while applying lip balm, or staring soullessly into a camera while someone narrates about her "dewy luminous glow," the industry makes a choice. It chooses to reduce women to props in their own skincare routine.
Tree Fairy made a different choice. Our skincare doesn't require you to look a certain way to use it. It doesn't require you to be any gender. It doesn't require you to post a selfie proving you're attractive enough to deserve hydrated skin. It just requires skin, which, good news, you already have.
The industry should follow that lead. Not because it's nice, but because it's accurate. Skincare is for skin. Not for content.
Wilbur agrees. And he's our Chief Woofing Officer.
We also get this from the pet industry, which Wilbur, Tree Fairy's Chief Woofing Officer, does not approve of.
Have you noticed that dog food ads barely show dogs? Leash brands doing close-up shots of a woman's chest and stomach with the leash draped over her shoulder. Treat brands where the dog is essentially a prop for a woman to crouch next to while looking luminous. Harness campaigns where you spend the whole time wondering what the harness actually does because you're too busy watching someone toss their hair. Activewear catalogue faces everywhere, and somewhere in the background, presumably, a dog.
Wilbur would like to see the dog. He would like to hear about the food. He does not care about the close-up of someone's stomach.
He is, in this as in all things, correct.
What Tree Fairy stands for
We are here to make effective, natural, vegan, palm-oil-free skincare for real skin at every age and stage. Eczema skin. Menopausal skin. Sensitive skin. Reactive skin. Itchy, dry, angry, over-it skin. And skin that's just going about its life and wants to stay healthy without being sold a fantasy about it.
We are not here to tell you what your skin should look like. We are not here to cast you in a campaign. We are not here to sell you a beauty standard disguised as a moisturiser, fronted by someone who wouldn't need the product even if they tried.
We think the industry should catch up. We'll be here when it does.
No beauty standards. No self-proclaimed influencers. No gender roles. Just healthy skin. And healthy skin is your best skin.
