Skincare for the soul-hungry:
Inside the Hunger Aesthetic.
Our bodies are wired for contact. From birth, touch shapes our understanding of comfort, safety, and connection (sidebar: shoutout to the Polyvagal Theory experts out there who talk a TON about safety). Nevertheless, in today’s world, genuine physical interaction has become limited. We swipe, scroll, and type more than we embrace, hold, or feel. Our fingertips meet mucked-up cold glass screens more often than they do texture, fabric, or skin. The absence leaves us hungry.
Enter beauty’s tactile, sensory revolution. Campaigns now whisper promises not just of radiance, but of feeling. Creams billow like fluffly little cumulonimbus mousse clouds. Oils melt into parched, flaky skin like warm butter meeting toast. Balms cling to lips with the viscous luxury of manuka honey. Yeah, it’s pleasant, but on another level, it’s primal. They answer a real hunger for physical engagement.
A few random examples:
Videos demonstrating fingers gliding through pots of blush with a texture that resembles squishy, ripe fruit.
Swatches are applied in slow, satisfying movements.
Sounds like soft lids popping open, thick product scooping are part of the experience.
Très ASMR, très sensorial.
Not only do these demos sell a product, they awaken dormant nerves. They tap into a viewer’s longing for tangible texture in a world rendered flat, hell, even abysmal. Sensorial design slips in like quiet therapy, dressed up as product play. It soothes under the surface, doing emotional work while calling itself beauty. When skin registers something decadently rich, the mind **sighs** in relief. Beauty shifts from the purely visual to the deeply felt. It says gently, feel this. Feel yourself. Come back for a second. And a show of hands: Who wouldn’t want a moment to melt into that kind of relief and slow the frantic spin of this chaotic world?!?
Beneath the trend sits real psychology. People buy textures and scents, sure. But what they’re really after is a sense of emotional safety, a way to feel held in the middle of the chaos.
This craving for comfort often manifests as a pull towards childhood, family rituals, seasonal nostalgia. It’s subtle, yet undeniable. A scent like honeysuckle on a humid Pennsylvania evening can pull you back decades without warning. Beauty ads leverage this brilliantly! TikTok floods feeds with moisturizers glowing like custard under soft light, lip tints as rich as crushed cherries. These visuals trigger warmth, evoking simple satisfaction, the feeling of being nurtured. We’ve seen what it did for rhode. That’s one tasty billion-dollar deal.
The link to food, especially desserts, is instinctive. Pleasure needs no translation. Beauty products with these tones and textures tap into something deep and familiar. They reach the part of us that’s relentlessly chasing comfort. This sensorial surge reflects a collective exhaustion. Faced with global uncertainty, info overload, and visual noise, we grasp for small, tangible joys.
TikTok keeps pouring gas on the flame. Case in point: Rhode. Hailey Bieber cracked the code. Her campaigns zoom in on texture like it’s dessert, with soft-focus melts and lighting that could sell frosting. Beauty and culinary content blur deliberately, and she’s aced that blend. The brain clocks shine and thickness as comfort. Suddenly, you’re not just watching a balm. You’re craving it. And somehow, your fingers are already dancing near the add-to-cart button, like they made the decision before you did.
Even the way we talk about products shifted. Descriptions turned into whispers you lean in to hear. Feels like silk on damp skin. Glazed donut lips with matching nails. Not specs, not claims. Just intimacy in list form. The language itself got soft around the edges. Whipped. Cushioned. Velvety. Jammy. Like someone reciting dessert names straight to your skin.
Pleasure stopped asking for permission. The body didn’t need a reason. It just responded.
Beauty began to unbutton. It let go of the need to fix. Feeling took the lead. The ritual became the reward. Each jar, each gloss, each creamy texture dipped into wasn’t just skincare. It was a quiet reach for something that’s been missing. A touch without filter. Warmth without performance. A break from having to explain what you need and why.
Because we do ache. Quietly. Collectively.
And while these products won't fill the space entirely, they press against the edges. They offer substitution. Temporary, ehhh maybe. But soothing all the same. A stand-in for the hugs we miss and the presence we crave. The long, unhurried conversations we used to have more often.
So we keep reaching for balms that smell like the fun parts of our childhood. For creams that feel like comfort. For routines that pull us out of the noise and back into our own skin. We just want to feel it again. That’s the charge hiding under the shimmer and the real reason behind the repeat purchase. Not because the product promises transformation. But because it quietly walks us home.
Back to memory. Back to sensation. Back to the parts of us still capable of softness.
Thoughts/feelings/musings? Drop me a few!!