Questions to Ask Guys About Girl Products
A guessing game for parties, road trips or group chats: ask the guys in the room to explain what women's beauty and hair products actually do. These 20 questions work best when nobody is allowed to look anything up.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Without guessing the obvious, what do you think primer is for and when do you put it on?
Why ask it
Almost everyone knows the word and almost nobody knows the order, so this is the easiest laugh in the set. The tell is whether he places it before or after foundation.
What is the actual difference between foundation and concealer?
Why ask it
Most answers land on one being thicker, which is close enough to be interesting. The gap that produces the fun is coverage area versus targeted spots.
What do you think setting spray does, and what happens if you skip it?
Why ask it
This one splits the room between people who think it is perfume and people who have watched someone get ready. The wrong answers reveal who has been paying attention in the bathroom mirror.
Explain what toner is supposed to do to your face.
Why ask it
Toner is the product most often bought and least often understood, even by people who own it. Expect answers involving car engines or printers, which is the point.
What is the difference between a serum and a moisturizer, and which goes on first?
Why ask it
The ordering question is where confident guessers get caught out. Anyone who gets thinnest to thickest right has almost certainly been coached.
Why would someone use a face oil if they already have oily skin?
Why ask it
This sounds like a trick question and produces genuinely creative reasoning. It is a good one for the person in the group who insists they know skincare.
How do you think dry shampoo works, and where on the head does it go?
Why ask it
The name does most of the misleading here, and answers range from powder to magic. Anyone who says the roots has been in a shared bathroom.
What is the point of a hair mask compared with conditioner?
Why ask it
Conditioner is universally understood and masks are not, so this shows where the knowledge stops. Duration on the hair is the detail almost everyone misses.
What does heat protectant actually do, and what happens without it?
Why ask it
Most guesses invent a physical shield, which is amusingly close to the marketing and not quite the mechanism. It also surfaces whether he knows how hot a straightener gets.
Straightener, curling iron, wand: what is the difference between them?
Why ask it
Naming three similar tools forces a real distinction rather than a general shrug. Confusing the wand and the iron is the most common answer and the funniest to correct.
Why would someone need both a hair tie and a claw clip?
Why ask it
This gets at the idea that hair tools solve different problems rather than being interchangeable. Watch for the answer that they are the same thing in different shapes.
What is a diffuser attachment on a hair dryer for?
Why ask it
This one usually stumps even people who are doing well, since the attachment looks like a kitchen tool. Curly hair is the answer and hardly anyone gets there.
What is the difference between a chemical exfoliant and a scrub?
Why ask it
The word chemical does a lot of work here and often produces alarm. It is a good test of who has absorbed any skincare content in the last few years.
How do you think nail polish remover gets the polish off?
Why ask it
Everyone has smelled it and almost nobody knows what acetone is doing. The answers tend toward paint stripping, which is closer than they think.
What does a lash curler do, and would you be willing to hold one near your eye?
Why ask it
The tool looks alarming, so this question gets a physical reaction rather than just a guess. The second half is where the honesty comes out.
What is the difference between a cleansing balm and a face wash?
Why ask it
Double cleansing is a whole routine that most men have never heard described. Answers usually assume soap is soap, which sets up the explanation.
Why is there a separate product for taking off waterproof mascara?
Why ask it
The answer is sitting in the word waterproof, since water-based cleanser will not shift it and oil will, and almost nobody reasons their way there. It also gets at how long taking a face off at the end of a night actually takes.
What does SPF in a moisturizer do that a separate sunscreen does not?
Why ask it
This one has a genuinely useful answer buried in it, so the group tends to argue about it. It is a nice pivot from silly to actually informative.
Guess the price of a full-size bottle of decent shampoo, then of a lipstick.
Why ask it
Price guessing produces the biggest reactions of any question here, in both directions. The size of the miss says more about what he has never had to buy than about the products.
Name every step you think a full skincare routine involves, in order.
Why ask it
Save this for last, because it turns everything learned in the previous questions into one confident, wrong list. Whoever gets furthest without help should be asked how they know.
Running This as a Game
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to Run It
No Phones
The entire game collapses the moment someone searches for an answer. Collect phones or make looking anything up an automatic loss for the round.
Score by Confidence
Award a point for a correct answer and two for a wildly confident wrong one. It rewards the people who commit to a guess instead of hedging, which is where the laughs are.
Have the Products Out
Put the actual bottles on the table and let people pick them up. Reading the label out loud and still getting it wrong is funnier than answering in the abstract.
Give the Real Answer Each Time
Explain what the product actually does before moving on. Otherwise it stops being a game about learning something and turns into twenty rounds of the same joke.
Keeping It Fun Rather Than Pointed
- Let the guys ask you the reverse round, on tools, engines, sports or whatever they know and you do not
- Aim the laugh at the answer, never at the person giving it
- Skip anything that turns into a comment on how someone looks
- Drop a question if a specific person is clearly the target of it
- Do not use the game to make a point about how much time or money getting ready takes, that conversation works better on its own