Back-to-School Beauty

The back-to-school issue was the most important of the year for teen magazine publishers, bringing in more ad pages than any other month, but it was even more momentous for the reader. No other month had stakes as high as August. When you’re 14 and your classmates haven’t seen you for three whole months, you feel as though you’re returning to school as a completely different person and you want your appearance to reflect that. Teen mags were there to help you become a “totally new you!”

Cover lines of back-to-school issues always made big promises, and they only got more over-the-top as the years went on. In 1999, for example, a Seventeen cover featuring Katie Holmes offered 250 “back-to-school cool” ideas. By 2008, a cover with Blake Lively offered an astounding “838 ways to look pretty” as part of its “ultimate back-to-school preview.” A CosmoGIRL! issue from that same year promises a whopping “959 style tips to reinvent yourself.”

Several decades have passed since the circa-2000s teen magazines, but certain cover models, headlines, spreads, ads, and—especially—products remain as present as ever. When you factor in an absolutely relentless revival of this era, driven at least in part by a societal obsession with nostalgia, these beauty must-haves of yore might feel more familiar than ever.

Flip through pretty much any issue of a teen magazine, back-to-school or otherwise, between the years of 1995 and 2005, and you’ll find a tube of Great Lash in there. What Glossier Lash Slick is to Gen Z, Great Lash was for millennials. With its iconic pink and green tube, the instantly recognizable mascara was lauded by many a beauty editor as the best formula on the market, and there was always an extra push around the product (both in terms of ads and editorial placement) ahead of back-to-school season, a time when many teens discover makeup for the first time. If you’ve used it (and if you’re a millennial woman, you’ve definitely used it), you know that the mascara is merely fine, at best, and that Maybelline’s publicity team worked overtime in the early aughts.

In the September 2004 issue of CosmoGIRL!, Sally Hansen’s Airbrush Legs is suggested under the headline, “Tan in a Can.” Hilariously, they recommend the product not as a sun-safe alternative, but rather as a budget-friendly one. “Addicted to spray-tanning booths? So are we,” they write. “But for $25 a pop, our wallets were begging us to stop.” Advertisements for Airbrush Legs appeared in nearly all of the back-to-school issues analyzed for this piece, often with taglines that touted the formula as a way to extend one’s summer glow well into the fall.

Piece-y, choppy bobs were an It Girl haircut of choice in 2002, appearing on the heads of celebrities like Reese Witherspoon, Mandy Moore, and, of course, the John Frieda twins, who were the face of the Sheer Blonde line. (Neither here nor there, but their mom was an executive at the hair company, according to a 2000 fall issue of Teen Vogue.) Perhaps the most memorable product from the line is the gold-inflected pomade. In the October 2002 issue of Seventeen, a beauty story called “Chop Shop” instructs readers how to master uneven layers and undone bobs ahead of returning to school. This shimmery golden pomade, part of John Frieda’s classic Sheer Blonde range, comes recommended as the goo behind the ‘do.

Around 2001, CoverGirl came out with a new lip product that was heavily marketed to teenagers and promised “kiss-proof” lips. It came in 34 different base colors with six pearly topcoats that somehow sealed the color on, meaning you could, as the September 2002 issue of Seventeen put it, “smooch and chow down on chicken wings without having to worry about reapplying your lipstick!” The editors at CosmoGIRL! put it to the test, quite literally, with a “kiss test.” “You can’t mark your territory with this stuff,” one staffer said, adding that it “didn’t rub off on his face.” The product was such a moment in time, in fact, it even had a jingle sung by a peak-fame Brandy.

Dineh Mohajer launched Hard Candy in 1995 when she was still a college student. The beauty line was best known for its candy-colored pastel nail polish that came with a matching plastic ring on each bottle. As a young founder, she understood how to market to young people like herself, and back-to-school was the right time to advertise. For many, having a fresh manicure on the first day of school was a nonnegotiable. And if you were a student in the late ‘90s or early ‘00s, your polish was almost certainly Hard Candy. A 1997 issue of Seventeen even includes a blurb about Hard Candy’s short-lived “guy-version” called “Candy Man.”

Before dewy became the preferred look for skin, it was all about matte, a state not easily achieved by sweaty, oily-faced teens. (A line from the July 1999 issue of Seventeen: “You want your lip gloss–not your T-zone–to be shiny.”) Enter: Clean & Clear Oil Absorbing Sheets. Marketed as an on-the-go staple to keep in your locker or even your pencil pouch, the October 1999 issue of Seventeen even included a sample packet so readers could experience the “breakthrough way to instantly take away oil and shine.”

This fragrance, inspired by the designer’s daughter, was the perfume to have during the fall of 2000. The inaugural issue of Teen Vogue, published in the fall of that year, opens with a three-page advertisement for the new fragrance—and the prominence of the little turquoise-blue bottle doesn’t stop there. The September issue of Teen that same year declared it one of the must-have fragrances for fall. It “evokes warm thoughts, like friendship, with green apple tree leaves.” The debut issue of ELLEGirl, which came out the following year, listed the fragrance as one of the “editors’ most wanted,” alongside a tattoo doodling tool and rhinestone manicure set.

Another facial feature teen magazines taught us to be perpetually anxious about is the humble pore. We lived in fear of having pores that were too large, too oily, too dirty. At the time, a seemingly endless array of products promised to perfect your pores—Neutrogena Clear Pore Soothing Gel Astringent, Clean & Clear Daily Pore Cleanser, Clinique Pore Refining Solutions Instant Perfector—but no product was pushed on us quite like Bioré Pore Perfect Deep Cleansing Strips. In the September 2001 issue of Teen, the magazine tasked three teen readers with testing them out to rave reviews. “It works. I could actually see dirt, oil and blackheads stuck to the strip after I removed it. It was kind of disgusting!” says a 15-year-old from Illinois. The effectiveness of pore strips is dubious, according to derms, but that didn’t stop millions of Bioré strips from flying off the shelf.

Were you even a teen in the early aughts if you didn’t have a tube of Lipglass in your pocket? The August 2003 issue of ELLEGirl called it “the best damn lip gloss out there,” and though all of the shades got plenty of play in teen mags, the clear version, a sticky-sweet potion so shiny you could practically see your reflection in it, was the go-to for makeup artists, young celebrities, and teen girls alike. A 2001 issue of Teen Vogue features an interview with Destiny’s Child in which Kelly and Michelle—both of whom were in their early twenties at the time—namecheck Lipglass as their favorite makeup item. (Beyoncé, ever the professional, only names “mascara” as a must-have).

Gen X and elder millennials’ answer to Olaplex, Alberto VO5 Hot Oil Treatment had a stronghold on magazine editors throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, but it was especially prominent in back-to-school issues, endorsed as a treatment to revitalize hair damaged by sun and chlorine. The September 1996 issue of Seventeen suggests using the treatment the “next time you need to chill,” as it combines “the stress busting benefits of aromatherapy with the hair-repair benefits of essential oils.” The August 1999 issue of Seventeen has an advertorial (pre-internet sponcon) for the product with a recommendation to “start using it at least four weeks before school begins for shiny, healthy looking hair,” promising to leave your hair “up to 60% stronger.”

Teen magazines taught us to worry about dark under-eye circles long before we knew just how dark those under-eye circles could truly get. But the fearmongering worked, and in the late ‘90s, millions of girls bought this Pond’s Cucumber Eye Treatment that came recommended in teen glossies. The 1998 September issue of Seventeen describes the product as “ultracute, faux ‘slices’” infused with cucumber extract that will fix under-eye imperfections. You may have to pull all-nighters to pass AP biology, the magazines reasoned, but you shouldn’t look like it.

Casey Lewis is a writer and editor based in New York. She publishes a daily newsletter about youth culture called After School and runs the Instagram account @thankyouatoosa.