Building Beauty
"Spackling" and "Priming" Your Face?
Cosmetics Borrow Construction Terms

I was channel-surfing the other evening and stopped on a cosmetics program airing on the QVC shopping network.

I am not the type of guy who wears make-up or enjoys watching television sales-women talk about the benefits of one kind of cosmetic line over another or really cares one iota about make-up. Period.

The reason I stopped on this particular show was because I heard the program's host utter a single word as I was clicking through.

Spackle.

Spackle is a construction term for patching plaster. I've spackled a number of times. As I said, I don't normally watch QVC, but my interest was piqued. Was Bob Vila or Norm Abraham doing a show on the shopping network, I wondered to myself. That's why I paused to watch.

But, there was no Bob and there was no Norm. There were just women talking about cosmetics and discussing the finer points of "spackling" their faces.

Who spackles their face on purpose? I've accidentally done it while patching a plaster ceiling, but the mix I was applying was kind of drippy and I cleaned off the goo as quickly as possible. I would never have smeared it over my entire face and left it there all day on purpose. The stuff dries rock hard.

At that moment in my bewilderment, my wife came into the room and clued me in to this cosmetic quagmire.

The manufacturer of this particular line of cosmetics uses traditional construction terms for describing some of its products. They also use the word "primer," my wife informed me.

"Primer" is what good painters first apply to a surface before actually painting. It helps the subsequent topcoats adhere better.

Hearing about these other uses for the words "spackle" and "primer," made me contemplate if there were other construction terms that had been appropriated by the beauty industry.

I've heard that spas use "mud" for facials. "Mud" is often synonymous for what you use when you are "spackling."

And at the end of the day, when the "spackle" needs to come off, I'm sure the cosmetic companies sell some kind of "sandblasting" or "jackhammer" product to do "abatement" on all that dried "spackle" goo.

I wonder if some under-garment manufacturer is using the term "rebar" or "underlayment" for control-top pantyhose or those body-shaping garments that were called girdles once upon a time?

I guess if you're going bald and want hair plugs, the process could be called "shingling."

Tanning salons could promote their spray tans as "hot dipped galvanizing" in which they use "penetrating stains" to give you a nice bronze "patina."

Tattoo parlors might want to offer "face-nailing" rather than piercings. It sounds more macho.

Certain cosmetic surgery augmentations could be renamed "balloon framing" or if it happened to involve repairing damage to an existing enhancement, "ballast replacement" could be appropriate.

And then there's the term "bushhogging."

The common definition of that word is to clear land by using a very rugged mower that is pulled behind a tractor.

However, I could easily see the term being borrowed by the beauty industry for describing other... uses. You can insert your own joke here.

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I knew it couldn't be true, that Google couldn't play nice with my Google Search Results. Last week I was at 1970. This week I nose dived down to 1130. Just out of curiosity I did the exact same phrase search on Yahoo and registered 2660. Go Yahoo!