The Evolution of Skincare and the Role of Teenagers
Trying to recall what my skincare routine was like at 14 is a bit of a challenge. If I used anything besides soap and water, it was probably an occasional drop of Johnson’s Baby Lotion – Ireland’s go-to face cream in the 1980s. Back then, there wasn’t much need for more than that, especially with the lack of SPF and the naturally clear skin of teenage years.
The only makeup I might have used was some blue eyeliner, which was common back then. It didn’t exactly ruin my complexion, but it also didn’t do much for my appearance either. It’s hard to imagine that young Harper Beckham would have had a big market in the early 1980s for her upcoming teenage skincare brand.
Marketing Beauty Products to Young Teens
Where do we even start? Let’s begin with the least concerning of the Beckhams’ many issues: the cultural appropriation of the South Korean beauty industry. To be fair to the senior Beckhams, they are not the only Westerners taking advantage of the Korean cosmetics market; social media is full of white women promoting ‘miracle’ products inspired by K-beauty.
Then there’s the issue of creating commerce where none is needed. Unless they are prone to acne or spots – in which case, there are already approved, medicated products on the market – 14-year-olds don’t need to invest in skincare. You might as well spend your money on driving lessons for toddlers. My own daughters were 16 before I started encouraging them to cleanse, tone, and moisturise – and even in their 20s, their skin can easily survive their somewhat haphazard beauty routine. Convincing 14-year-olds that their naturally supple skin can somehow be improved by chemicals is a dark art indeed and sets in motion the notion that there is something ‘wrong’ with their appearance.
Trust me, there will be time enough for that as they get older.
Harper Beckham’s Public Role Rekindles Family Brand Criticism
Harper Beckham is a child. She is not, as she is sometimes promoted, ‘a young woman’. She cannot vote, she cannot marry, she cannot drive, and she cannot legally leave school, although in her promotional work for the brand – including a trip to the fashion houses of New York with her mother during term time – she’s really racking up the days off.
She’s also the youngest sibling of a young man (no longer a child) who recently pressed the nuclear button on his relationship with his famous family. While Victoria and David Beckham’s initial response to Brooklyn’s devastating claims about his parents valuing the ‘brand’ above all else was a dignified silence that seemed to buy them some credit, their pushing Harper into the spotlight indicates they have learned nothing from the Brooklyn debacle. If anything, it suggests the 27-year-old’s petulant-sounding claims were absolutely spot-on.
It really does appear to be brand before Beckham at all costs.
Critic Accuses Beckhams of Exploiting Daughter for Fame
It doesn’t matter if Harper has been, as the publicity claims, studying Korean beauty for a year. I bred guinea pigs at 14 but it didn’t make me a zoologist. Harper Beckham is a child, and her parents have a duty of care to her in that capacity and no other.
The grown-up world of commerce is no place for children, and deliberately exposing a 14-year-old to the savage cruelty of an inevitable online backlash – no matter what the profit margins are – is surely a form of child abuse. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, then the Beckhams need to take a hard look at themselves.
They’ve already lost their relationship with one of their offspring due to their voracious appetite for fame and money, and now they are willing to jeopardise another. None of this is Harper Beckham’s fault. She is a child who, in an alternative universe, would have been allowed to finish school away from the spotlight.
If she wanted to dabble in skincare, she should have been given a bottle of baby lotion and a blue eyeliner. Tragically, it’s all too late for that.
