Opinion | Brad Pitt’s new genderless skin-care line is highway robbery to all genders

A recent CNN headline: “Brad Pitt launches genderless skincare line.”

The actor and Sexiest Man Alive alum is catapulting into the lucrative celebrity beauty market. His new venture is called Le Domaine Skincare.

It should be called Le Bank Loan.

That’s what you’ll need to finance his skin-care regimen.

This is the world we inhabit. Every cosmetics product has a luxury segment with prices so insane you fall out of your chair and then need an Alex Rodriguez “Blur Stick” to conceal the facial contusions.

You think grocery prices are bananas? Mr. Pitt is now hawking “The Serum,” an “anti-aging” moisturizer that contains “GSM10” and “ProGR3.”

I have no clue what those are, or if they can de-wrinkle your face to where it was back when Jean Chrétien was putting protesters in a chokehold. All I know is one ounce of Pitt’s “Serum” costs $385 (U.S.).

This isn’t your mother’s Oil of Olay.

“It is also formulated with hydrating and soothing grape water,” reads the description. OK, but couldn’t I save $383 by splashing my face with Welch’s?

Pitt’s new line also includes “The Cream,” at $320. This one allegedly “moisturises (sic) perfectly the skin, nourishes it intensely and protects it for a suppler and smoother skin and a rested-looking face.” Right. Until the Visa bill arrives and you’re sashaying around town with ghastly sticker-shock face.

The media made much of Pitt’s “genderless” pitch. Please. The only reason Le Domaine is “genderless” is because it needs to target any and every sap who can afford it. Our farmers should try this: “Attention, we are now selling genderless turnips for $95 a pop.”

Do all moisturizers not moisturize? I don’t get it.

When I take a shower, I remove my glasses, which renders me legally blind. I should be bathing with a guide dog and white cane. I can’t see jacksquat as I lumber around the tub in the steamy deluge, arms outstretched like Frankenstein’s monster as blurry shadows on the tile look like intruder silhouettes or bad memories from junior high geometry textbooks.

Hello? Is someone else in the bathroom? Or is that a convex polygon?

Now, don’t tell my wife, but I just grab the closest bottle for every stage of bodily cleansing. I have washed my hair with oatmeal foot scrub and scrubbed my feet with her pricey lavender conditioner. I once used her specially formulated shampoo for blond hair on my private parts.

I was a bit worried about what might happen. Nothing happened.

Beauty products are like vodka: there’s no real brand difference.

But, somehow, the merchants of luxury beauty are keen to hoodwink the perpetually vain with exorbitant prices and lofty captions that read like sci-fi.

While researching this column on Friday, I stumbled upon a company called La Prairie Switzerland. It sells a “Platinum Rare Luxury Ritual.” Quote: “The peaks of Switzerland that push earthly boundaries to reach for the stars above inspired La Prairie to look to the cosmos and its gift of platinum. The Science of Haute-Rejuvenation is the culmination of this query, suspending time and its effect on the youthful appearance of the face …”

Does this product contain actual platinum? I would be reluctant to smear a ductile transition metal under my eyes. But this is where luxury beauty now aspires. The goal is to promise a Fountain of Youth in a pricey bottle with mystical and cosmic sweet nothings: “This anti-crow’s-feet tonic, inspired by the moons of Jupiter, will reverse the circadian clock while fortifying atomic collagen and giving your retinas a lustrous sheen.”

In an interview with Vogue this week, Pitt said he was inspired by Goop, the lifestyle brand of his ex, Gwyneth Paltrow. The timing was ironic.

As Pitt was doing PR for his $385 serum, Paltrow released a blog post in which she is jumping in the air in a bikini in advance of her 50th birthday on Tuesday. She wrote: “And while I do what I can to strive for good health and longevity, to stave off weakening muscles and receding bone, I have a mantra I insert into those reckless thoughts that try to derail me: I accept. I accept the marks and the loosening skin, the wrinkles. I accept my body and let go of the need to be perfect, look perfect, defy gravity, defy logic, defy humanity. I accept my humanity.”

She almost made me weep into my Lubriderm.

Aging gracefully is a lost art. The pressure to look young is rapidly aging us. That “Platinum Rare Luxury Ritual” I mentioned, do you know how much it costs? Don’t fall out of your chair: $5,100.

Brad Pitt’s new genderless skin-care line is highway robbery to all genders.

Time can’t be exfoliated. You will never look like Pitt by buying what he’s selling. A healthy lifestyle is the key to inner and outer beauty.

I was picking my pear tree the other evening — don’t ask — and a woman jogged by and sweetly asked if she could have one. One? I gave her an entire bag. There is only so much pear bread a dad can make. I’m terrible at guessing ages. But this woman was maybe in her early 60s?

She was breathtaking. She glowed. She was also a living lesson.

You don’t need to blow three months’ salary on lotions and potions.

Looking good, I’m sorry Brad Pitt, is never skin deep.

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