Most Men and Women Say Dryness Is Their Major Skin Concern

For a moment there in April, it looked like women were becoming more interested in their skincare routines. The spring brought out the sun and possibly shed some extra light on wrinkles, blemishes, and imperfections. Or maybe it was the mass amount of video calls that constantly showed a close-up of one’s own face in the corner of the screen.

Nearly eight months later, attention to skincare among women has waned. The percentage who were paying “more attention” to their skincare in April dropped from 15% to 13%, and those who reported paying the “same amount of attention” dropped from 64% to 60%. The gains were among women paying “less attention” to how they care for their skin.

One reason to check back in with how consumers feel about their skin comes with the shifting seasons.

Among men and women over 18, 53% report changing how they care for their skin for seasonal weather. While women are overall more likely than men to change their routines to fit the weather, both genders report making major changes to their routines at the same rate (8%).

Because skincare tends to go hand-in-hand with makeup, the conversation often becomes gendered. But, both women and men show concern for the human body’s largest organ, so the following data will incorporate sentiment from both genders.

Seventy-one percent of Americans over 18 have some kind of skin concern, the most popular being dryness.

Complaints about dryness are likely coming from men; almost half say that is their biggest concern right now. Dryness and fine lines and wrinkles tie for most concerning among women, while only 11% of men are thinking of aging.

While the pervasive dryness is seen among men and women of both ages, it sits more heavily in the older age brackets. And fine lines and wrinkles are oddly very concerning for the youngest among us.

The majority of consumers spend under $100 on skincare products every year, and under $100 for treatments as a well. When broken out again by gender we see that women spend more overall on both, but men put more money to treatments than they do toward products.

Skincare is a huge market and although we aren’t seeing a continued interest in skincare as a result of the pandemic, there are certainly a number of reasons both men and women are looking closely at their faces. And it’s not just the fluorescent lighting.