BOTTLED ASS MILK

Why get listeria when you could have botulism instead?

Cleopatra, famous for being one of the greatest beauty influencers of all time, is known to have regularly bathed in ass milk. This makes me wonder if she really was such a great influencer after all, because I’ve never heard of anyone else bathing in ass milk. I’d like to think that this is because there are some things that people won’t do for beauty, such as risking a lethal dose of listeria. But we all know that’s not the case. There is nothing that people won’t do for beauty, and the only reason people don’t bathe in raw ass milk is because they can’t buy it in a bottle at Sephora.

I’ve never been inside a Sephora store, and I assume that they wouldn’t let me in one anyway, on account of my old age and the fact that I would likely be wearing a cardigan. I also wouldn’t want to go inside a Sephora store, as I hear they are teeming with tweenagers elbowing each other out of the way to get to whatever the 2025 equivalent of ass milk is.

The fact that twelve- and thirteen-year-olds want ass milk, snail slime face masks, and false eyelashes badly enough to risk life and limb in some kind of zombie apocalypse remake of Mean Girls is one of those things that makes me want to break out into a verse of “In my day…” followed by a chorus of, “When I was that age…”.

This (being old) in no way makes any of my objections less reasonable or true, but it does make them less likely to be taken seriously by the freshly botoxed and micro-needled children of this world. One look at me, and they know I have no right to say anything on the matter. My face is blatantly unqualified to have an opinion. Even when fully made up, as it occasionally is, it would not be mistaken for the face of a person who knows all about the latest beauty trends. For instance, my skin has pores, which is apparently a very bad thing for skin to have. I have crinkles around my eyes from smiling too much — as if there’s anything amusing about allowing myself to get so old! And my lips remain entirely the size and shape that nature intended, rather than ballooning out of my face like a couple of mating sea slugs.

It’s all very uncool. And what’s more, I don’t really care. As far as I’m concerned, the most important of “the seven visible signs of ageing” include: using punctuation in sentences, knowing how to use a rotary telephone, and remembering when the only overpriced ass milk on the market was the greasy unguent known as Oil of Ulay, which everyone’s nan said was a pointless waste of money and women should make do with coal tar soap and cold cream like they did in their day.

I’m generally of the opinion that statements such as “capitalism is evil” are little more than over-simplistic slogans at best and meaningless virtue signals at worst. But when I think about the way actual children who can’t spread butter on toast without help from an adult now consider it normal and necessary to have a daily seven stage skincare regime, it strikes me that we’ve gone a bit wrong somewhere.

When I was a kid, no one had even so much as heard of a peptide, let alone hyalauronic acid or a glycolic facial rejuvenation program. We had cucumber peel-off face masks and strawberry lip gloss, and if you turned up at school with a blaze of blue eyeshadow smeared over your lids, you’d be sent to the bathroom to wash it all off.

Not even our pop idols were up to much in the face department. I’m pretty sure Pepsi and Shirlie knew nothing about setting powder with light reflecting pigments. Kate Bush never did an instagram tutorial in blusher placement. Even Bonnie Tyler’s smoky eye could be easily replicated with a free eyeshadow duo sellotaped to the front of Just Seventeen, the magazine of choice for twelve-year-old girls. Meanwhile, the actual seventeen-year-old girls all copied their make up from Robert Smith and Adam Ant.

At least we had a choice. Maybe you wanted to look like a bubblegum princess, or maybe you wanted to look like an evil pixie or a Victorian ghost. Any look you wanted could be achieved with enough hairspray, eyeliner, and willingness to risk a gentle mocking by your peers. These days, for all the vast cornucopia of different skincare products, make up, and hair technology on offer, it’s notable that everyone is striving to look exactly the same.

Personally I’m glad to look different — and by ‘different’ I of course mean old and a bit of an uggo. I may not be on trend now, but if crimping your hair and backcombing it until you look like you’ve walked out of a Tim Burton movie ever comes back into fashion, you know where to find me. Well, you don’t. But you know I won’t be in Sephora, fighting off a glowy pre-teen for the last bottle of ass milk.

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“Forgive me, Your Highness. We’re all out of ass milk. But if you can wait two thousand years or so, I can get you some fresh botulism injected right into your face.”

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