Your Face Cream Reveals Your Feminine Identity
The idea for this article was contributed by Dr.J, one of our readers at I Love to Cheat Diet blog.
It seems that a woman’s choice of face cream can tell you how she copes with stress, deals with conflict, and evaluates herself.
Whew! I had no idea.
My face breaks out when I use face cream so I can only imagine what that says about me.
But the study by researchers at the Institute of Psychology, Russian Academy of Sciences, doesn’t deal with hard-luck cases like me.
They wanted to find out how a woman’s preference for certain types of face cream relates to her “structure of feminine identity.”
By that, they mean what I mentioned before: how a woman copes with stress, deals with conflict, and evaluates herself.
The researchers grouped the properties of face creams into 6 categories: protection, purification, treatment, nourishment, anti-stress and age prevention.
Then they studied 28 women from ages 22 to 65.
By asking the women to pretend they were cosmeticians, the researchers had each woman identify what properties she believed an ideal face cream should have.
Those results were then correlated with psychological tests the women had taken.
Here’s what the researchers found:
Women who preferred “protection” properties in face cream were psychologically vulnerable. They were more prone to internal conflict, emotional responses to problems, and an inability to ask for help.
Women who favored “purification” properties usually moved their personal problems outside themselves, as if being “purified” from them.
Women of advanced age believed that “treatment” properties were most important.
Women who chose “nourishment” properties were rational. They successfully coped with resolving problems in stressful situations.
Women who desired “anti-stress” properties got particular pleasure from relaxation after fatigue.
I didn’t see anything about the women who chose “age prevention” properties.
There also was no mention of which brands of face cream fall into these categories.
The researchers admit that their interpretation of these results does have some limitations.
But they believe that a woman’s attitude toward her skin defines herself and how she relates to the outside world.
Their rationale is that the skin is the border of your body – which is the border between your “self” and your “non-self.”
Hmmm… I’m a fairly private person. I wonder if that’s why face cream makes my face break out?
Calling Dr. Freud…
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