If you’re in your 30s and beauty is confusing, join the club. We were born in the decade that Aishwarya Rai became Miss World and Sushmita Sen was crowned Miss Universe. We grew up just as India’s economy was opening up. Our mums started with face wash in a tube. Our older sisters wore colourful eyeliner to college. By the time we got interested, everyone was into retinol, serums had replaced creams, and we’d found ourselves in the middle of a beauty explosion.

So, what’s on the shelf? A tall bottle with a picture of an orange on the front. Smells like Tang. It’s got Vitamin C too. But it’s not for drinking. You’re supposed to pat it on to your cleansed face for some kind of glow. Basic skincare kits now have cleanser, serum, moisturiser and sunscreen. No one slathers lotion before bed – they tap night cream (using their ring finger for the least pressure) all around the delicate eye area.

The beauty aisle is learning from everyone. We’ve borrowed primer from the paint-supply industry. It’s supposed to smooth out the skin before make-up. From cellphone makers, we’ve borrowed alphanumeric labelling. An eye-shadow brush A19 means it comes from a brand’s expensive A series, and we missed the other 18. The mathematicians have clearly been here too. We’re expected to figure out SPF 50 v/s SPF 30++, and the difference between tinted powders called NC42 and W188.

Thirty-somethings have a weird relationship with water. Round-the-clock hydration is deemed so important, we’ve become fussier than potted plants. Yet, micellar cleansers don’t need to be washed off. Plus, everything looks like it came from a lab: Glass vials, droppers, star ingredients with 8% glycolic acid, 10% niacinamide, 1% granactive retinoid. Beauty influencers have long videos on what to apply and when, to avoid mix-and-match burns.

The influencers make it look so easy. Sweep highlighter over the parts of the face where the sun naturally hits, they say. But hello! The sun hits all parts of the face, last we checked. They champion dewy complexions, but don’t tell you how sticky skin looks away from the ring-light. They get excited about flushed cheeks – but who wants to look like they’re blushing on a date with a man who turns out to be a creep?

A top trend in 2024 was ear makeup, assuming people are noticing ears at all. Last year, Rihanna tried to make skinny brows a thing. People were surprised. Or at least they looked surprised – that’s what happens when the brow is thin and arched. And anyway, why are we tweezing our brows only to draw them back on? The years before that were obsessed with rose gold. So, for a while, everyone looked like an iPhone.

Women in their 30s are glad for a wide range of Brown-complexion products. But it still doesn’t account for the skin tones of the North East. We’re excited about contouring techniques that sharpen every feature. But we may need a compass to calculate how to get an angled domed brush to create that exact C shape under our cheekbones. Don’t shut the geometry box. We need the protractor to draw winged eyeliner at a matching 45-degree angle.

What’s worse than too many products, techniques, regimes, ingredients and trends? The sheer gall of anyone who says beauty has no rules. If that were true, how come every model for skincare and makeup is starting to look the same?

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