In 1887, a man named William Radam started selling a product he called “Microbe Killer.” He was a gardener by trade, but he had a flair for the dramatic and a keen understanding of the Victorian obsession with the invisible. Radam claimed his concoction was a revolutionary molecular discovery that could cure everything from consumption to yellow fever.

He filled his advertisements with pseudo-scientific diagrams of microbes being obliterated by his secret formula. In reality, it was about 99% water, with a tiny, negligible splash of sulfuric and hydrochloric acid. People didn’t buy it because they understood the science; they bought it because the science sounded so complex that they were afraid not to believe it. Radam became a millionaire because he realized that when people are faced with a technical vocabulary they don’t understand, they don’t walk away-they reach for their wallets.

The Modern Skincare Aisle

We like to think we are more sophisticated than the Victorians. We look back at their “Microbe Killers” and “Electric Belts” with a smirk, yet we stand in the modern skincare aisle performing the exact same mental gymnastics.

Dana is standing there right now. She’s in a brightly lit aisle, holding a heavy glass jar that feels expensive. The label tells her she is looking at a “dermatologically engineered micro-encapsulated lipid complex with bio-available peptide sequences.” She reads it once. Then twice.

She doesn’t know what a peptide sequence actually does to a skin cell on a Tuesday morning, and she certainly couldn’t explain “micro-encapsulation” to a child. But she feels a specific kind of pressure. It’s the pressure of the Baffled Consumer. She thinks that because the words are difficult, the solution must be profound. She buys the $110 jar precisely because it sounds like it knows something she does not.

If a brand can convince you that your skin is a series of high-level chemical equations that only their “patented delivery system” can solve, they have successfully removed you from the realm of common sense and placed you in a realm where they control the price.

I fell into a Wikipedia rabbit hole recently about the history of “Cold Cream.” It turns out the original formula, Ceratum Galeni, dates back to the 2nd century. A Greek physician named Galen mixed beeswax, olive oil, and water. That was it.

For nearly eighteen hundred years, that simple mixture was the gold standard of skincare. It survived the fall of empires and the industrial revolution. But you can’t charge $110 for beeswax and olive oil if you call them beeswax and olive oil. To get to the triple-digit price point, you have to rename the beeswax “stabilized cera alba” and talk about the “synergistic hydration barrier” of the oil.

Confusion as a Strategy

Confusion is a sales strategy. When understanding less makes you spend more, plain language becomes a competitor that nobody in the marketing room wants to invite to the meeting. They want you to feel slightly stupid. If you feel stupid, you will defer to the authority of the jargon.

“A pipe that needs a five-page manual to explain why it’s out of tune is a pipe that belongs in the scrap bin.”

– Leo G.H., Pipe Organ Tuner

I was talking to a friend of mine, Leo G.H., who spends his days tuning massive pipe organs in old cathedrals. It’s a job that involves an incredible amount of actual, difficult physics-fluid dynamics, acoustics, the structural integrity of zinc and lead. He’s the most technical person I know.

He believes that if the core of a thing is sound, the explanation should be simple. “If the pipe’s mouth is cut wrong,” Leo said, “no amount of theory will make it sing.” The same applies to what we put on our bodies. If the ingredients are genuinely nourishing, they don’t need to hide behind a curtain of Latin and laboratory-adjacent adjectives.

The modern skincare industry has built a cathedral of jargon, but much of it is just a “Microbe Killer” with better graphic design. We’ve been conditioned to believe that nature is “basic” and synthetic complexity is “advanced.”

But if you look at the actual chemistry of a substance like tallow-rendered animal fat-it’s remarkably similar to the oils our own skin produces. It’s bio-compatible in a way that a petroleum-based “lipid complex” could only dream of. Yet, for decades, we’ve been told that we need something “dermatologically engineered” to fix the problems that the engineering itself often causes.

I’ll admit to my own contradictions here. I am the first person to criticize the “proprietary blend” on a supplement bottle, yet last week I found myself staring at a bag of expensive coffee beans, trying to convince myself that the “high-altitude nitrogen-flushed roasting process” was the reason I was paying an extra six dollars.

I knew, deep down, it was just coffee. But the jargon is a powerful siren. It promises an edge. It promises that we are part of the elite group that “gets it.” When we look at brands that refuse to play this game, it feels almost jarring. It’s like someone speaking at a normal volume in a room where everyone else is screaming through megaphones.

In New Zealand, there is a small movement toward this kind of radical honesty. Instead of forty-five ingredients you need a chemistry degree to parse, you see products built on 100% grass-fed tallow, cocoa butter, and jojoba.

The problem with the “Micro-encapsulated Lipid” approach is that it creates a cycle of dependency. When you don’t understand what you’re putting on your face, you don’t know how to fix it when it stops working. You just look for a jar with even more complicated words.

You move from peptides to stem cells to DNA-repair enzymes, chasing a horizon of technical jargon that keeps receding as fast as you can spend. A doctor who can’t explain your condition without using words you have to Google is likely hiding their own lack of certainty.

A skincare brand that can’t explain why their product works without resorting to “proprietary molecular complexes” is likely hiding the fact that their base formula is mostly water, cheap glycerin, and preservatives.

The Lindy Effect

The shift toward tallow-based products is, in many ways, a return to the “Lindy Effect.” The Lindy Effect is the idea that the longer something has been around, the longer it is likely to stay around. Jargon-heavy synthetic creams have a shelf life of about five years before they are replaced by the “next big breakthrough.”

Tallow has been used for millennia. It doesn’t need a “breakthrough” because it already works. When you choose a product that lists five ingredients you actually recognize, you aren’t just buying skincare. You are opting out of the Baffled Consumer Tax. You are reclaiming the right to understand your own ritual.

There is a profound dignity in knowing exactly what is touching your skin, whether it’s the grass-fed tallow from a New Zealand farm or the anti-inflammatory properties of a plant like kawakawa.

Dana eventually put the $110 jar back on the shelf. She didn’t do it because she suddenly became a chemist. She did it because she realized that the confusion she felt wasn’t her fault-it was the product’s design. She walked away from the “peptide sequences” and started looking for something that spoke a language she actually used.

We live in an age where information is everywhere, but clarity is rare. The skincare industry is a microcosm of this. They give us 1,000 words of technical data to hide the fact that they aren’t giving us much of anything else. But the skin doesn’t care about marketing. It doesn’t care about the prestige of the “lipid complex.” It cares about moisture, protection, and biocompatibility.

If we want to stop being the target of the “Complexity Tax,” we have to start valuing the simple. We have to stop assuming that expensive words equal expensive results. Sometimes, the best thing you can put on your face is the thing that has been working since the time of Galen, updated only by a bit of modern cleanliness and a better scent.

The next time you’re in that aisle and you feel that familiar twinge of “I don’t know what this is, so it must be better,” remember William Radam and his Microbe Killer. Remember that jargon is often just a mask for a lack of integrity.

And then, maybe, look for the jar that doesn’t need a translator. Look for the tallow, the jojoba, and the honesty of a product that treats you like an adult who can handle the truth. After all, your skin deserves to be fed, not fooled.