Millennial Trends in Beauty: The New Way to Handle Aging
The term “anti-aging” has been coming at us rapid fire over the past couple of decades. It’s on every type of beauty label, from night cream to lipstick. We get it. Wrinkles, bad. Eternal youth, good. But Millennials appear to be pulling away from this the-more-youthful-the-better notion in favor of an “aging gracefully” attitude.
The Kardashian-esque, perfection-is-best culture we live in may lead you to believe Millennials would resist the idea of aging. Super taut skin, perfect little noses, uber- full lips, and a year ‘round tan are certainly not the way most of us were born.
But beauty trends show Millennials tend to look at aging differently than the Real Housewives age group. Rather than spending tons of money and time on treatments and products meant to undo damage done, this age group is more solution focused.
Millennial Trends in Beauty: How Gen Next Does Anti-Aging
Gen Next-ers want to look good, of course, and stay looking good as they age. But rather than turning to injectables and fillers or the next big thing, Millennials appear to take a more natural approach. We are talking healthy inside and out.
A study shows 63 percent of women ages 18-34 say they read beauty product labels and are the most likely to spend money on natural beauty products. With retail sales of beauty products in 2015 reaching over $56 billion, this isn’t chump change.
Nutritional beauty has been around for a while now. Those superfoods everyone is chowing down on are showing up in beauty products. We can now eat our kale and chia seeds, and rub them into our skin, too. The farm-to-face beauty movement is buzzing with super fresh, small batch, hand-crafted goodness that targets carefully edited ingredients for maximum healthy skin benefits. Products that contain probiotics, and otherwise user-specific (gluten-free, vegan) ingredients, are also rising in popularity.
So, Millennials may be choosing natural products over conventional, but how they choose what they use is also interesting. They appear to prefer expert recommendations, and we are not talking celebrity endorsements, here. Nope, Millennials would rather hear from professionals, like dermatologists, before they put down any change on a beauty product.
Another huge area seeing product endorsement cred? Social media influencers. Millennials prefer recommendations by those they trust (including people they follow on social media) over glossy advertising, then turning around and recommending the products they like to those who follow them. A report by Meredith’s Women 2020 study shows that 75 percent of Millennial women try beauty products based on recommendations, and 55 percent make product recommendations themselves. Beauty advertisers, take note.
It looks like Millennials are paving the way toward a new generation of gracefully-aged women and men. This beauty-from-the-inside-out approach is a drastic turn of events from the fix-it-now culture we are used to. Still, this age group has yet to see a wrinkle, so it’s a wait and see game.
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