eat your lip gloss

but remember spit don't you dare swallow

Makeup is officially on the menu. From glazed lips to latte makeup to strawberry girl summer, beauty brands have gone full food-core. Rhode is a smoothie bar, Tower 28 looks like a dessert shop, and every new makeup trend sounds like it should come with a side of oat milk. But while our faces are dewy and delicious, the body trends are looking straight out of a Y2K nightmare - heroin chic, ozempic-core, the visible ribcage renaissance. How are we supposed to feast on beauty trends when body trends tell us to starve?

It’s giving ‘eat with your eyes, but not with your mouth.’

Beauty is having its dessert era. We don’t just want gloss; we want it glazed. Blush isn’t just pink; it’s strawberry-flushed. Foundation isn’t warm-toned; it’s cinnamon cookie butter or whatever the fuck they call the shade that is reserved for black people. The words we once reserved for bakeries are now repackaged, resold, and repurposed onto our faces. It’s sensory marketing at its finest - makeup you can practically taste (but don’t actually eat, because, you know, chemicals).

credit: Instagram

And yet, while our lips get juicier, the rest of our bodies are expected to disappear. Fashion is quietly resurrecting its old ghosts - the ‘90s waif look, the protruding hip bones, the era of “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” We’re contouring our faces like we’re milkshakes, but god forbid we actually drink one.

It’s funny how beauty trends tell us to indulge, but body trends demand restraint, and yet, somehow, we accept both without questioning it. Maybe that’s because we’ve been conditioned to. We’ve learned to hold opposing ideas - indulgence and restriction - as if they can exist in perfect harmony. Psychologists might call it cognitive dissonance¹, but honestly, it just feels like a scam. We want to be glossy and glowing, but we also want to be small and contained. And because our brains hate contradictions, we do mental gymnastics to make it make sense - like convincing ourselves that looking like a dewy strawberry is self-care, but eating one too many is losing control.

It’s the ultimate contradiction: the makeup aisle tells us to indulge, and the rest of the world tells us to starve. Be glossy, be glowy, but also be tiny². It’s the same cycle we’ve seen before - just dressed up in vanilla-scented lip balm.

The thing is, beauty and food have always been in bed together. “Cherry lips” and “peaches and cream” skin have been around forever. Even Cleopatra used burnt almonds in her kohl eyeliner, and Lip Smackers had Millennials slathering their lips in artificial fruit flavours. But now, it’s not just poetic - it’s a full-on marketing strategy. It’s not like food; it is food. The branding is intentional, and the aesthetic is calculated. It’s lifestyle marketing at its peak: don’t just buy the gloss, buy the fantasy. And it’s working—sales for lip balm, a staple of the ‘glazed doughnut’ look, hit $285 million in 2023, an 85% jump from the previous year. Blush, the hero product for the strawberry and tomato girl trends, peaked at $426 million, up 60% year-over-year.

Take Rhode, for example. Hailey's brand isn’t just selling skincare; it’s selling a smoothie aesthetic. The pastel packaging, the “glazed” terminology, the literal Erewhon smoothie collabs - it’s all designed to make you feel like using Rhode is part of some aspirational, dewy, clean-girl, almond-mom-approved lifestyle (don’t get me wrong, I’m not above it - your girl has three grainy lip peptides that I reluctantly still ³). And it’s paying off - Rhode’s Krispy Kreme collab alone sparked massive engagement on Rhode’s socials. Since then, the brand has doubled down with flavours like espresso, jelly bean, and toast, proving that the food-beauty formula isn’t just a gimmick - it’s a goldmine. Similarly, Kylie Cosmetics just pivoted to softer pastels and a more “hydrating” aesthetic - because looking like a dewy fruit is more in than the matte Kylie Lip Kit of yesteryear.

Credit: Rhode

But at the same time, culture is subtly policing how much we actually consume. The “clean girl” aesthetic isn’t just about looking fresh - it’s about control, restraint and discipline. Drink the green juice, but don’t have the fries. Be soft, be feminine, but also be small. Sorry, but no one can convince me that Stormzy only eats 9 nuggets.

It’s hard to ignore the historical parallels. The ‘50s had its hourglass figures and red cherry lips. The ‘90s had its waifs and frosted gloss. Now, we’ve got food-inspired beauty and Ozempic-fueled thinness coexisting in the same cultural moment. The only difference? The marketing is slicker this time. It’s being served with a pink straw and a side of TikTok-approved branding.

And that’s where it gets tricky. Trends are just trends - until they start dictating our self-worth. Until we start internalising the contradiction: indulge, but not too much. Glow, but don’t grow.

So where does that leave us? Maybe it’s time to enjoy the aesthetics without swallowing the messaging - but I haven’t figured out how to. Maybe we can wear the cinnamon blush without subscribing to the calorie deficit. Maybe it's time to stop treating makeup like a meal and our bodies like a hunger strike.

Or maybe, just maybe, we should stop letting marketing trends tell us what to do with our bodies in the first place.

mwah x

1. Cognitive dissonance is the mental chaos we feel when we hold two conflicting beliefs at the same time.

So, when beauty brands tempt us with these indulgent, food-inspired products (hello, glazed lips) but society’s also telling us to be small and restrained, it creates this weird tension. It’s like saying, “Go ahead, enjoy that cinnamon blush” while also hearing, “But don’t enjoy it too much - you need to be tiny.” It's that uncomfortable tug-of-war inside our heads when our desires don't match what society expects. (Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press.)

2. see what I did there

3. Sorry Az I’m topicals girl