This caked-on choice makes me so gloomy

DO YOU ever become tired of too much stuff? Wanting mascara, I went to Boots as usual, but walked away emptyhanded. There were so many mascaras, all promising different miracles, that I lost interest and gave up.

I spend little on cosmetics…but then, I’m from that generation which remembers mascara in only one form: a little block with a brush.

The technique could be summed up as ‘spit–rub-daub’ — and honestly, it did us just fine. Eyeliner was the same. I can only remember there being one type of lipstick, instead of the myriad ones on display these days — a multi-coloured arsenal of magic bullets. Who needs them all?

My gorgeous mother used Ponds cream and Crème Puff and I can remember the subtle fragrances — like the Evening In Paris scent which seemed the height of sophistication to a little girl in the Fifties, those easily pleased days when bath cubes were an exciting present.

Yes, they were simpler times, and I refuse to believe the human spirit was stunted by having fewer products to choose from. We weren’t endlessly browbeaten by manufacturers telling seductive lies about wrinkles, but made do and were grateful.

Forgive this sudden upsurge of nostalgia. I was ‘triggered’ by damn mascara!

But it’s a melancholy truth that many young women today seem to want nothing more than to achieve big brows, silly troutpouts, heavily ‘contoured’ faces, glowering eye-make up and tumbling hair — exactly like every reality TV wannabe. Their world of choice has turned them into identikit Stepford chicks.

Believe me, I’m not antichoice. How could I be, when I remember the empty shelves of Russia and Romania? Yet when I think of all the resources that go into making yet more shampoos and shower gels — all in plastic bottles, all doing the same job — I feel gloomy.

We don’t need it all — and it’s the greedy assumption that we

that stunts the soul.

Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.