What in the Billy Crystal-Princess-Bride-Soothsayer-Patent-Medicine-Mountebank-Bullsh*t is this?
Adventures in marketing with Miracle Balm
For several years I have been subjected to adverts on my Instagram and Facebook feeds asking me questions like
“When you look in the mirror, does your face appear to have been replaced by a dried pear?”
“Does normal human make up flee to the crevices, leaving you apparently wearing a beige Spiderman mask by the end of the day?”
“Are you developing a sort of vulva in your neck?”
“Does your phone sometimes say it can’t tell that your face is even a face?”
“Yes? Then you are old and therefore ugly! Beauty is in your past. You are no longer eligible for foundation, or blusher or any of the Normal Human Makeups. Frankly, dear, you need some kind of miracle!
You need Miracle Balm!”
Miracle Balm? What in the Billy Crystal-Princess-Bride-Soothsayer-Patent-Medicine-Mountebank-Quack-quack-homeopathic-Bullsh*t is it?
Miracle Balm! It should be called “Fabulous Ointment”, “Incredible Linament”, “Phenomenal Unguent” or “Magical Pomade” because if it was, it would at least have the decency to be sold by someone who makes money by riding into your village, setting up a stall and using their Wonder Elixir to distract the crowd from their accomplice, the pickpocket.
As it is, it’s make up artist Bobbi Brown selling us beautiful white pots of Miracle Balm for £36.
Thirty-six quid? THIRTY-SIX QUID?
What kind of gullible rube spends THIRTY SIX POUNDS on a pot of Miracle Balm?
.
.
.
This woman. Me. I did.
More specifically, I made my mother buy it for my Christmas. For THIRTY SIX POUNDS. From her pension.
She caught me on the hop a bit.
[Mum] What do you want for Christmas darling? From my pension money?
[Me] Er… I dunno. Not sure really. Haven’t really thought about it.
[Mum] Well do tell me soon because I need to get it ordered. With my pension money.
[Me] Well, I’ve seen some adverts for that Miracle Balm. I suppose I’d quite like to try Miracle Balm. Could you spend £36 of your pension on that?
[Mum] Of course, darling. Yes, I’ll spend £36 of my winter fuel allowance on a jar of Miracle Balm for you darling. What colour would you like?
[Me] oooh - not sure. Let me look into it.
So I look into it. There are several colours. They’ve got names like “Sunkissed” “Magic Hour” “Dusty Rose”. Some of them look like they might make me appear incongruously orange, some might make me look like I have rosacea. The thing is, you can’t get a tester, because you can’t buy Miracle Balm in the shops.
You can’t buy Miracle Balm in the shops, I think, because it’s just too good.
If there were Miracle Balm testers in the shops, women would stampede to Boots and just scoop it straight out of the jar and then carry it home in their bare hands, accidentally coating buses, trains and door handles in the sticky, slimy, miraculous goo.
If there were Miracle Balm in the shops, Women over 40 would be so aggressively beautiful it would cause traffic to stop; men would faint as blood rushed to their groins; cows would stand up when it rained; the earth would spin backwards; helicopters and planes and birds would fall out of the sky; everything else would float into space because gravity would be so distracted by our beauty it would forget how it works. We can never know the true consequences of Miracle Balm being available in the shops. But one of them is that you can’t try before you buy.
I went low risk. I asked my mum to spend £36 (from her pension, I don’t know if I made that clear) on a pot of Miracle Balm in the colour described as “au naturel”. For a truly nude look.
I’ll tell you what gives you a truly nude look. Nudity. Do you know how much that costs? Much less than thirty-six quid. Why, in some places you can get it for nothing! Many of us already have it on our skin all day under our clothes and glasses and hats.
Anyway I chose au naturel, and my mum ordered it for 36 quid and I opened the parcel on Christmas day and there it was. In a box inside a box inside a bag. A beautiful pot of sort of shiny, pinkish Vaseline.
Thirty six pounds of my mum’s pension money on a pot of vaseline the colour of a pregnant woman’s mucal plug.
And you know what? It actually does make my skin look really quite shiny and feel a incredibly … well … sticky. Which in a way does make me more attractive. (to flies, dust and those small feathers that occasionally escape from old pillows).
So totally worth it.
Look, all beauty marketing is bollocks. We’re all already perfect. Dried pears are beautiful in their own way; Spiderman is cool (even in beige); neck vulvas are funny. And most importantly, my mum’s pension is massive.
I’m asking her for Miracle Balm again this year.
