The Psychology of Sephora

Guys, have you ever ventured into a Sephora store?  I have lived in NYC, but never actually went into one.  I was mostly prepared for the sheer volume and variety of products.  I would bet that their web site is the first to truly use all 16.7 million colors that modern computer monitors can display.  (Many lipstick colors looked basically the same to me, but the ladies inform me that subtle shade differences are really important.  Sorry, but I don't feel deprived that women have a better ability to discriminate colors in the red-orange spectrum.)

But the most amazing part for me was the product names.  They range from fun & funny to incredibly aspirational and emotional.   Guys need to take a graduate course on the psychology of this stuff.  You can't tell me that a product line called "Unconditional Love" isn't setting high expectations from shampoo!  The copy on the bottle uses phrases like "you see all people and all living things as beacons of light" and "you have unconditionally arrived realizing the love you sought was the love you already owned".  Oh.  My.  God.  It is like Barack Obama in a bottle.

The Sephora web site has a fingernail polish selector showing colors with more incredible names:

Finally, when the glitzy creams, shampoos, and makeup aren't enough to make the fairy tale real, one can settle for an Orgasm, Super Orgasm, or possibly the mystic Multiple Orgasm.  Men, take note:  there is something going on here that we don't understand.  However, a good start might be this gift for Valentine's Day that should, um, satisfy both parties: