The Binge/Purge of Project Pan
And the overconsumption of anti-consumption.
Author’s Note: It feels genuinely insane to be sending a Substack about makeup while my entire city is on fire. I’m a third generation Angeleno; this is the only home I’ve ever known. But at some point there is only so much clonazepam you can take and go bags you can prep and KTLA broadcasts you can watch. I needed a distraction, and this post was written over the weekend before everything went to hell in a handbasket. All I want to do right now is scream so instead, I’m going to focus on normalcy. Thank you for receiving my extreme cope in your inbox. And for everyone who’s reached out—I am safe and my loved ones are safe. We are ready to go at a moment’s notice. I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. To my fellow Angelenos: be safe. Stay ready. I love you all.
And now for some lighter fare…
If you’ve been on TikTok in the last few weeks, you might have seen a hot new(ish) trend sweeping your feed: Project Pan. For those unfamiliar, Project Pan is basically another viral challenge, but with an anti-consumerist bent. To participate, you pile all of your beauty products in one place and gaze with horror upon how many chemicals you’ve purchased in pursuit of perfection. So many Patrick Ta eyeshadows! A glut of Rhode glosses! You self-flagellate. You rage against the system. And then you vow not to buy a new product until you’ve gone through your entire backstock of said product.
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When I first saw these videos, relief washed over me. Finally, we as a nation were gonna tackle our obsessive hoarder tendencies. I also let myself revel in what I can now identify as smarmy smugness—I am not like you other girls. I have one Olaplex shampoo, one Verb hair mask. I purchase a new Charlotte Tilbury eyeliner only when my last one is down to a nub. I am different!! (Never mind that I have so many pieces of clothing I have to rent them out on a goddamn app to justify the investment.)
But the more of these videos I watched, the more a certain queasiness took over me. Women threw out perfectly good powder bronzers in the pursuit of “decluttering” while also swearing to use up Fenty foundations that simply did not match their shade. They alternately created more waste and/or punished themselves for having fallen victim to good marketing.
Project Pan isn’t a glorious rejection of capitalism. It’s just another way to make women hate themselves. And it utilizes the puritanical binge/purge tools of disordered eating to do so.
Before I go further, I’ll give the requisite qualifiers: if this #trend is in some way helpful to you, god bless. I’m happy for you, and I wish you many hyper-organized, Kardashian-esque bathroom cabinets. I will mainly be addressing the content creators who stand to profit from this craze. Now that that’s out of the way—
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