The medicalization of everything

In Paris, the divide between beauty products and medicines can be ambiguous. Yes, in NY, lipstick is sold at Duane Reade, and yes, Kiehls looks like an old pharmacy, but in general, no one's confusing Sephora for a health clinic. But in Paris, the establishment where one gets a pedicure is also a podiatrist's office. Beauty products not only make health claims - for sensitive, delicate skin, etc. - but are packaged and marketed in a way that suggests all these seemingly indistinguishable bottles of clear liquid are medical necessities. Brands like La Roche-Posay - which makes a mean nail polish - sell a seemingly endless array of products that go beyond the kind of creams that gosh darn get things done (sunscreens, antibiotic or anti-fungal ointments, cortisol creams, moisturizers, acne washes), liquid makeup (foundation, concealer), or even that classic cream-that-does-nothing, the anti-aging cream. There's this whole array of products to be applied before, after, or in lieu of makeup that, even understanding the words on the label, I cannot figure out. Soap is frowned upon, but there are 1,001 products sold in Paris, I'm sure of it, just to remove eye makeup. All that's missing is, pardon the "Seinfeld" reference, a Julliard-trained dermatologist to prescribe the stuff.

All of this, I should explain, exists separately, and is sold apart from, what we Americans refer to as "makeup." Monoprix will sell makeup in one area, regular shampoo, conditioner, and soap in the other, but then in this special area, called a "parapharmacie," exists the world of tonics, washes, gels, creams, lotions, and balms, through which women presumably sort to find the one product that truly expresses the particularities of their skin. (Gwyneth Paltrow, on the aptly-named GOOP, does a thorough round-up.) Where the US is holistic with college admissions, France seems to be with women's skincare products.

There are also free-standing parapharmacies, which are a great place to get overwhelmed. I popped into one today - the spectacular one on Monge that seems like a discount store but isn't all that cheap - and it was just aisle after aisle of products that are neither medicine nor makeup nor soap, yet obviously incredibly necessary for being the kind of woman who has a rockin' sex life at 80. I wouldn't know where to begin with these products, what complaints I'm supposed to have about my skin that wouldn't be fixable with makeup or soap, or serious enough to require actual medicine. All I could think was that it would be easy to drop hundreds of euros on products that look nice in a cabinet but do absolutely nothing.

What, then, does it all mean? Is it that I'm just so American in my thinking that a real dermatologist, as opposed to a tonic in a minimalist container, should deal with issues having to do with the skin that are significant enough to spend money on, and that if you're going to buy something non-medical, how about eyeliner? Am I too suspicious of not-quite-as-Western medicine? It's not that I'm inherently suspicious of beauty products - I will pay more for the better shampoo and conditioner, and I only know they're better from having tried a whole bunch at different price points. But here, there are things that are put into hair that I can't begin to fathom, products meant to be left in the hair, virtually all of which are intended for a European hair type that, unlike mine, could be wash-and-go without startling people, and does not even have frizz to contend with.

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Oh the Well blog. First we learned how the holiday season stresses out youngsters. The new-old stressor in their lives is slumber parties. A part of me almost agrees - it was at such a party that I saw, as a 10-year-old, "The Silence of the Lambs." Big mistake, and I'm still scared of moths. But is this really something pediatricians need to get involved with, advising children to take "a prophylactic nap" beforehand? Yes, sleepovers mean losing sleep, yes one friend's mother showed us all a sex book or movie, I forget, far too young, and yes, I got to see how it goes in a family where the parents do have enzymes for copious alcohol consumption. (We, however, may have even eaten some simple carbohydrates and trans-fats.)

Yes, also, Kids Can Be So Cruel. But if they weren't a little cruel, we'd all have the annoying tendencies that sleepovers and the like socialized us out of, making it harder for us to behave at cocktail parties, dates, job interviews, and so forth. I was a pretty odd kid; I owe the fact that I'm only a mildly odd adult to my parents having allowed me to go on sleepovers and such. What does it mean to call the sleepover "a step toward mock independence and at the same time an intense exposure to peer standards and pressures"? It's a step toward real independence, which involves navigating the world of people outside your immediate family.