Monday Musings: Why You Should Never Gift A Beauty Girlie Random Beauty Products
This is dedicated to everyone who has a beauty girlie (or anyone of any gender identity) in their lives. You know who she is: she’s always in the know when it comes to new releases, she has a signature lipstick and scent, and she is the proud owner of a well-curated set of products that she researched heavily before buying. It’s tempting to go online or walk into her favorite store and grab something that looks good. After all, there are so many amazing gift sets out during the holidays! It’s not that hard to pick out something nice and with good value to boot. But I’m warning you: don’t do it. Just don’t.
One of the first things I told my husband when I met him is this: never gift me beauty products. Aside from the fact that my job has me swimming in samples from different brands with new launches, it can be frustrating to receive things that I don’t need or already have. When we receive gifts we don’t want, we’ll be polite about it as we accept it but trust that it’s going to be re-gifted or worst, left in a forgotten corner of a cabinet. They say it’s the thought that counts, right? But if the gift-giver gave it just a tiny bit more thought, then they would know how much we care about having beauty products that we’ll actually love to use.
Beauty products are difficult to gift because beauty is such an incredibly personal thing. A lipstick shade or blush that looks good on someone may not necessarily look good on someone else. A popular scent may smell amazing on certain people with a certain combination of laundry detergent, natural musk, bath products, and so on, but may smell like a trash fire on others with different lifestyle variables. Don’t even get me started on skincare! We don’t even know if a product is “hiyang” (or suitable) for our skin type after researching, and this is worse for someone blindly buying us something.
That’s not to say that you should never gift beauty girls beauty products. Most of us still love to receive nice things as beauty enthusiasts! But here’s the cardinal rule: just ask or listen to what we want to have. Just don’t pick something up at random. Maybe we’ll drop some direct hints, and if not it’s best to just ask us. You also can’t go wrong with picking up a gift certificate to our favorite beauty stores - ahem, Rustan’s, LOOK Beauty, SM Beauty, Watsons, Beauty Bar, Sephora.ph! From there we can choose something that will truly bring us joy, and then you would have been the architect of that experience. Everyone wins!
So yes, just FYI. wink
