Updated: I don't deal with the bullshit of consumer brands and
prefer pro brands!!!As a Z-List beauty blogger for 7 years I have seen the changes in the beauty blogging field. Many have gained great followings and brand collaborations due to their creativity to use several unnecessary products of makeup. They have become “artists” and “experts” in their field. Sometimes, many have become experts in other fields (without any qualifications) thanks to their growing channel on YouTube.
Let me disclose first, I am not saying every video potato YouTuber is claiming to be some great guru. There are several who are level-headed and have a realistic view on beauty and who are actually experts in their field. Second, I am not saying I am some great makeup artist. No, I am far from. I am just a Q-tip, a makeup applicator. My views are just an opinion formed by the lunacy of people getting a big head and the brands allowing beauty to be defined by looking like some silicone doll!
Cosmetic Ingredients
There has been a buzz about how many brands have the same ingredients as many others and how one brand is just price gouging the public thanks to the celebrity involved with the line.
I have no doubt about the price gouging. Let’s face it, the profit margin of a product pays the CEO and the board of directors. It also pays the licensing fee to use the name of the celebrity or designer name. Think about Pierre Cardin.
But when it comes to the ingredients are they the same?
Yes and no!
Let’s use a food analogy. The basic recipe for a shortbread cookie is 1 part sugar, 2 parts butter, 3 parts flour. This recipe is the basis for EVERY shortbread cookie and it becomes the variation for any cookie recipe. Every great baker will tell you, the quality of the ingredients used will change the flavor. If you have a cow in your backyard and you can churn your own butter, your cookie will definitely taste better than your neighbor’s who used a mass produced stick of butter. Yet, your ingredients are the same.
Same goes for any cosmetic “recipe”. There are the basic ingredients and they will be listed like any other of the hundred cosmetic brands with the similar product. You know from buying many of those products, the same ingredient listing does not create the same end result. The products will feel different. Maybe the cheaper brand feels better on your skin. Or maybe you like to feel pampered and prefer the high priced one. Whichever one you choose, the ingredients, though they have the same name, are not created equally. Every cosmetic chemist will tell you it depends on the quality of the ingredient. By quality, it means the purity of the ingredient. With the purity comes the difference in the price and the name of a major company whose scientists created the processing of that ingredient. Most of us will never know the name behind those cosmetic ingredients but for those who do like cosmetic chemists, like good quality butter, the difference is visible.
With the name and the purity, the price will play a major factor. First dibs on these ingredients definitely will go to the big name international cosmetic brands than some small one. Big brands have major buying power which actually brings the price down and may cost less than some mediocre quality one. They also may have exclusivity to the ingredient for years.
The Latest and Greatest Ingredients
You know cosmetic brands want you to buy the latest and newest ingredients, but are they really great or are they there for aesthetic purposes?
I don't doubt some ingredients have changed cosmetics for the better. Pigments have become much more colorful and clear thanks to synthetic mica. Mica created by the same brands which create most of those high quality cosmetic ingredients. These brands do have a patent on how they created the pigment. This may be the reason why you hear a cosmetic brand tout their product as a "patented process".
Then you have a product which contains every single new ingredient on the planet. Brands and beauty gurus make it sound like it will change your face into some extraterrestrial beauty. Some goddess which every man, woman, and child will bow down to.
As mentioned, there is a basic recipe to EVERY cosmetic product and like a basic cookie recipe, what you add like chocolate chips gives it a variation. Same with beauty products. Just because the newest oil was added to the new 21st century cream, it doesn't mean it is doing anything. In fact, it may be costing you more since the oil is just there for show!
For aesthetics or not, many times a formula could be made more cheaply than the luxurious image the product portrays. If you ask a cosmetic chemist, you will find some brands want to find ways in reducing their cost for creating a product.
Who is the Expert?
You are! Okay, really you should ask a cosmetic chemist if you really have questions about ingredients in a beauty product but YOU are the expert. You have the biggest beauty instrument called intuition. If you feel the product is not working for you, don't use it. Even if every beauty guru tells you that $300 jar of water, oils, and air could change your life (like $300 poorer); and YOU FEEL NO DIFFERENT. What is the use of being the individual human you are if you can't listen to your own intuition? Why give in to the hive mind of beauty?
Then again, why listen to me? I am just a q-tip!!!
