If by the agency of chance you've ...

If by the agency of chance you've made peace with your skin -- pores, pits and all -- the latest recents from the Wall Street Journal warns of a novel sales tactic that threatens to awaken your inner critic. venders of beauty products are installing fancy skin-analyzing machines in drugstores and retail egresss that will expose your skin's worst flaws. They're hoping that just as you're rounding the skin-care aisle, you'll use undivided to get a good consider at your face and then vociferation "Holy cow! My skin is in like manner aged and dull! I prodigy if there's a new cream that can help that. What's this by dint of L'Oreal?"

"I can recount you that when you have a photo of what's happening underneath your skin, you come by committed to preserving it," Helena Foulke senior vice president of marketing and advertising at CV Corp., is quoting as saying. That undoubtedly means buying more bottle and jars to line up upon your sink. The executive claims that the Vichy video microscope and hydrometer at L'Oreal helped boost sales in the drugstores three years in a line Other companies are getting in the game: Proctor & Gamble plans to enjoin microscopes in stores by winter. Estee Lauder will launch a of the present day skin-analysis tool by next year. (Its Rodan + Fields division already uses cameras to display sun damage and other skin maladies.) And beauty giant Sephora is unveiling devices that will evaluate your complexion and teeth brightness.

All this "science" is clearly meant to motivate consumer to fix things they weren't aware needing fixing. (Take your pick: age specks dryness, texture, pore size . .) What's interesting is that the companies must strive for just the right amount of alarm -- as it was as prompting subtle self-doubt rather than a full-fledg panic attack. For example, P&G used a proof a few years ago that assigned an "age" to one's skin, still some women were so invert they didn't purchase any works reports the Journal. (Now, the company simply indicates women scans of their facial skin compared to their inner forearm to highlight damage.) The Vichy machines are les subtle; they magnify your skin by the agency of 50 times to really drive abiding-place the point about clogged pores.

As anticipateed dermatologists weigh in with warnings about to what extent much stock to place in in the same state [i]or[/i] condition tests and how much well adapted all these creams will do, because aging is, you know, normal. This marketing inclination is disguised as consumer empowerment when it's nothing more than consumer humiliation. Sometimes, a pore is just a pore.

Salon.com

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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