CosBeauty Magazine #80

Feature
Welcome to the
beauty
bank
A new movement in the UK is tackling hygiene poverty
one beauty product at a time. Words by Maria Leahy.
You’ve dropped
produce to the
foodbank, spare
change in the bucket
and preloved clothes to
the relevant charitable
organisation. But have you
ever considered giving away your
unwanted beauty products?
For many of us, there’s a stark
disconnect between beauty and
poverty: beauty equates to luxury,
poverty does not. So when we give
to those with fewer resources than
ourselves, we offer what we believe
to be the essentials. But a new
campaign in the UK is drawing
another side of poverty into the
public consciousness and asking us,
once again, to reflect upon the true
realities of homelessness.
While working on a documentary
for the BBC, Guardian columnist Sali
Hughes came across a stack of plastic
crates ‘filled with mismatched tubes
of toothpaste, little travel bottles
of shower gel and an assortment of
individual tampons and sanitary
towels’. As she wrote in her now
viral article for The Pool, ‘Every
last product had been donated by
either members of the public or
staff members. I was told that when
a homeless woman got her period
and invariably had no money to buy
adequate sanitary protection, she’d
approach the busy, often chaotic
front desk, ask for a towel or tampon
and wait for one of the dedicated
support workers to retrieve one of the
precious items from the crate.
‘Likewise, a homeless man might
approach the same desk for a razor
or deodorant ahead of an important
interview in which he may become
housed, employed or eligible for
support schemes.’
The experience highlighted a
16 www.cosbeauty.com.au