Fashion and Beauty Creator's Ketchup

What are ‘misogynistic products’ the internet is talking about and why should you care?

author-image
Piyush Singh
New Update
female products

The phrase “misogynistic products” has suddenly been everywhere online. And it’s making people look at the beauty industry and the products we use every day a little differently.

For years, some of the most controversial products in the beauty industry were fairness creams. Through the 2000s and well into the 2010s, they dominated television commercials and billboards, often suggesting that lighter skin could open doors to confidence, success, and sometimes even romance. Over time, those messages began to face scrutiny. Conversations around colourism became more common, and many people started questioning why fairness had been positioned as a beauty ideal for so long, especially in a country known for its diversity of people and complexions.

Cut to 2021, I suddenly noticed how serious everyone around me became about skincare. Most people I knew stuck to a face wash and maybe a moisturiser, so seeing entire shelves of products become normal felt like a noticeable shift. Clearly, there is a market for it because people were genuinely interested and willing to spend on it. This is not to suggest that having a skincare routine is a bad thing. Many people enjoy it, and for some it has even become a small, therapeutic part of their day. What stood out to me was how the skincare culture has expanded, revealing many new concerns alongside the noticeable growth of the industry.

Also Read: Your favorite beauty brands come to life in Leilani Green’s viral makeup series!

There seems to be a product for nearly every possible concern. Not just dry skin or acne, but even things that many of us may not have even thought about earlier. Each issue appears to come with its own serum, treatment, or solution. This thought returned to me recently when a particular beauty brand found itself at the centre of an online controversy. People have been criticising and calling some of its offerings “misogynistic products”, a phrase that immediately caught my attention. 

Products are often described as ineffective, overpriced, or misleading, but calling them misogynistic made me pause and consider what that truly means in the context of something on a beauty shelf.

The criticism largely revolved around the kind of concerns these products were designed to address. Creams and treatments marketed to lighten intimate areas of the female body being a prominent one. The brand, founded by male entrepreneurs, had people arguing online how these products seem to reflect a certain viewpoint when it comes to designing items for women. Many felt that these products don’t take women’s experiences and concerns into account and instead are influenced by what men have typically expected female bodies to look like. The idea that naturally occurring variations in skin tone, including intimate areas, should be treated as something that requires correction has started conversations for how deeply unsettling it is.

But what makes the phrase “misogynistic product” interesting is that it does not necessarily suggest that a single cream or serum is harmful on its own. Instead, it points to the larger cultural framework around it. When products repeatedly frame normal features of women’s bodies as flaws that need improvement, they begin to reinforce a certain way of thinking about those bodies. 

Another aspect that becomes difficult to ignore once you start paying attention, is the language beauty marketing relies on to introduce and sell these products. They are never directly framed as solutions to insecurities, even when the entire premise of the product depends on identifying something about the body as a concern. Instead, the vocabulary is noticeably softer and far more appealing. “Brightening,” “refining,” “correcting,” and “enhancing” appear repeatedly across product descriptions, advertisements, and influencer recommendations, often accompanied by the promise of confidence, care, or self-improvement.

The messaging rarely states that something about the body is a flaw, yet the marketing structure often begins by subtly suggesting that a particular feature, tone, or texture requires attention before presenting the product as the solution. Over time, this creates a subtle but effective cycle in which new concerns enter the beauty vocabulary, new products are introduced as solutions, and what may once have been considered a completely ordinary aspect of the body gradually begins to feel like something that requires treatment.   

What has been equally noticeable is the way many women online have begun pushing back against this constant framing of the body as a series of problems waiting to be solved. Conversations around self-acceptance and being comfortable in one’s own skin have become far more visible, not as a trend or slogan but as a fairly straightforward reminder that many aspects of the body people are now being encouraged to “fix” are simply natural to begin with. 

The beauty industry has always thrived on solving problems, but it is worth asking who decides what qualifies as a problem in the first place. Strangely, it feels reminiscent of an earlier moment when fairness creams were finally met with similar resistance, and a beauty standard that had once been widely marketed began to look increasingly difficult to justify.

What are your thoughts on this conversation around beauty and insecurity? Tell us in the comments below.

For more such content, follow @socialketchup

Beauty content creator beauty and skincare beauty bloggers Beauty trends beauty