Anti-Haul (aka "What I'm Not Going to Buy"), Seventh Edition

The holidays are coming, which amounts to plenty of pointless collections and collaborations to fuel a final 2017 Anti-Haul. Unlike many of my other anti-hauls that focus on products I've talked myself out of, this post will feature a number of products that I have zero desire to buy. But frankly, I don't think you should buy them, either. Hence, anti-haul!

As always, these posts are not meant to make you feel bad for liking a product or spending your money; I'm just trying to think carefully about my own consumerism and maybe encourage you to think carefully about yours. Once again, mad props to Kimberly Clark for popularizing and promoting the Anti-Haul movement!

1. Any of these shitty "I'm Really Only Meant for Cool Instagram Photo" masks, especially the GlamGlow collab with the Power Rangers franchise ($29) and this Too Faced "Glow Job" nonsense -- Look, I totally love to browse #masking, but the current trend of creating products that are really only meant to look cool in selfies is starting to bug me. It'd be fine if unicorn frappes had tasted good, but they were actually vile sugar bombs; the same goes for masks like this, which do nada for your skin. No mask is going to truly firm your skin. The ingredients list for this GlamGlow product make me think it'll provide some softening and plumping that will temporarily give the illusion of firming, but it won't last more than a day or two. And again, we all know that the real draw for products like this is that they look cool in pictures. The same goes for glitter masks, like Too Faced's proposed "Glow Job" mask. Obviously, the name is just obnoxious, but I find the idea of rubbing what looks like glitter hair gel all over my skin even more repulsive. Speaking of repulsive: the only good part of the new Power Rangers movie was this delightful Rita Repulsa x Krispy Kreme moment:

Beyond that, let these masks die alongside the franchise, please.

2. NARS x Man Ray Love Triangle Blush/Lipstick Sets, $24 each -- I actually think some of these sets look really beautiful, and $24 is a nice value for a blush and lipstick with great formulas. In fact, when I found out these were being released, I totally planned to break my lipstick no buy and snag one during the upcoming Sephora VIB sale. But then they released the packaging, and I'm just...so deflated. I know that Man Ray's photography had a minimalist quality to it that they're trying to mimic here, and it's not awful, but compare these sets to some of the packaging from the rest of the range. and you'll see why I'm disappointed.

(This photo is from Chic Profile.)

Check out those palettes! And how gorgeous is that round lipstick coffret? If you wanna give me Man Ray, give me Man Ray!

3. CoverFX Custom Enhancer Drops Vault, $235 -- If you like shimmery, almost metallic, high-impact highlighters that will beam like the sun in July, it's hard to top the CoverFX Custom Enhancer Drops. That description alone might make a set like this tempting, but stop and look at how much product you're getting. Each bottle contains half an ounce of highlighter, and there are 7 bottles in the set. That amounts to 3.5 ounces of liquid highlighter. Speaking as somebody who is still working through a one ounce bottle of Becca Shimmering Skin Perfector that is decidedly vintage at this point, I can say that you will never, ever finish these. They have a dropper applicator instead of Becca's airless pump, too, so they'll likely go rancid before you can even finish a single bottle. And will you need all seven of these colors? No; depending on your skintone, some will be too light or too dark for you. I recommend that you pick up one full bottle of a shade that interests you or this much smaller variety pack instead.

Honestly, let me repeat that statement and apply it to pretty much every "mega vault" being sold right now: You will never finish all of it. If you already own a few lipsticks or blushes or highlighters or whatever, you likely won't even use it that often, because you'll have so much stuff. It will be a waste of hundreds of dollars. Save your hundreds of bucks. That goes double for sets like this Hourglass Confession Lipstick Vault, which costs a whopping $650. You do not need it.