Halsey: ‘breast milk is the best skincare ingredient, it’s full of antioxidants’

Halsey launched their makeup line, About-Face, in 2021. It’s very much centered on fun, bold colors that go with her artsy, change-it-up vibe. Like, it’s a far cry from those Urban Decay Naked palettes. I’m pretty basic and unskilled when it comes to makeup, but my friend Ameerah is an expert and she really likes Halsey’s line. As of last month, the brand is now available at Ulta and Halsey spoke to Nylon about their approach with the makeup line, beauty thoughts, and a surprise skincare tip: breast milk.

“About-Face is based on being creative as opposed to correcting your face,” Halsey describes. With the line, the “Closer” singer hopes to steer their fans away from today’s unrealistic beauty standards by encouraging them to embrace their own features instead. “I wanted to give that same power to the fans that I had found in accepting that this is what my face looks like, and I need to love what my face looks like,” they note. The fun-focused brand encourages using your face as a canvas for personal expression.

On mental health and beauty: “They definitely go hand in hand. I find that when my mental health is better, I’m looking in the mirror less and when my mental health is worse, I’m looking in the mirror more because I’m looking for external validation when I can’t find it inwards. It’s almost like when you’re feeling insecure or unworthy, you break out the magnifying mirror and you want to just feed into it and make it worse. So I try to reject that.”

On makeup vs. no makeup: “I spend a decent amount of time with no makeup on. That’s really important to me because with press and photo shoots and shows, you see yourself done up all the time and then it can be really easy to believe that you are only beautiful or worthy when you look that way. You start to build this psychological divide of what you think your face looks like versus what your face actually looks like. It’s become exceptionally more important to me to be able to to look at my face and say, ‘This is who I am, this is how I look, and that is okay and I accept that’. I want to make sure that I’m setting myself up for success as I continue to age in this industry and to be at peace with that process.”

On breast milk as skincare: “I’ve always been really conscious about what goes on my skin, but when your baby is kissing you or snuggled up against you, you become hyper-cognizant of what’s on your face. I love the Biologique Repecharge’s colostrum VG serum, which I got into when I first had my son. I started breastfeeding and I figured out that breast milk is the best skincare ingredient ever because it’s so full of antioxidants and good fats and stuff that speed up the healing process.”

[From Nylon]

I would never have thought of breast milk as skincare, but I have heard it described as “liquid gold” so that tracks. I would totally try it if I produced some. I wonder if Halsey read something about breast milk as skincare or there was some sort of spill and then they were like wow I’m glowing. Halsey says that they look in the mirror more when their mental health is bad, for external validation, but I find it’s the opposite for me and avoid the mirror when I’m feeling bad. I do like what she says about makeup as personal expression instead of correcting your face. So much of the beauty/style/fitness industry focuses on fixes as if we are broken and for me the negativity of those messages has the opposite of the intended effect — it’s not motivating. And I like what she says about accepting and appreciating yourself with or without makeup. We are the same people either way and makeup is a part of self-expression.