The huge number of things we are told about skin care
and other beauty concerns is nothing less than astounding.
That's why, when you begin thinking in terms of reality,
facts, and balanced information, it is important to ignore
the baseless, unfounded claims that are constantly bandied
about in the guise of serious information. You may have
run into the following terms and sales pitches for myriad
skin-care and makeup products. These come-ons entice purchasers,
even though they are vague or illogical.
"Antiaging"
Ah, if only it were true. Thousands of skin-care products
make promises about removing wrinkles or preventing the
skin from aging. They contain a hodgepodge of ingredients
and formulations. There is no consistent pattern among
any of them. Yet they all claim to stop aging, and still
no one stops getting wrinkles or sheds a wrinkle. There
are great products that can make skin look better, but
none of us have lost a wrinkle from any of the skin-care
products we purchased.
"Soothing botanicals"
Botanicals is simply another name for plants, such as
herbs and flowers, or plant extracts in the form of oils
or juices. Is any of that soothing? There are definitely
some soothing botanicals, such as green tea, kola extract,
willowherb, bisabolol, licorice root (glycyrrhetinic acid),
and burdock root to name a few. But there are also a great
many natural ingredients, from lemons to strawberries,
lavender oil, and jojoba, that can be problematic for
lots of skin types, either as irritants or because they
can clog pores. I can't tell you the number of products
I've found that make claims about being good for sensitive
skin, even though they contain a host of these irritating
ingredients.
"Superficial lines"
Watch out for the word "superficial"; it is
a powerful tool when used in cosmetics advertising. "Superficial
lines" really refer to the temporary, transient lines
caused by dryness, not sun damage (sun-damaged wrinkles
are hardly superficial). Most products could make elaborate
claims about smoothing superficial wrinkles and they would
not be lying to you. Superficial wrinkles go away when
you put on any moisturizer, and that is wonderful. But—and
I repeat, but—superficial wrinkles are not the ones you
are worried about. Permanent wrinkles, like laugh lines,
furrows between the eyes and on the forehead, and expression
lines, are not eliminated by a moisturizer unless it contains
irritants that temporarily swell the skin. The word "superficial"
is misleading because it doesn't really refer to the lines
and wrinkles women are most concerned about.
"Just for your ultra-delicate eye area"
The advertiser may want you to use the eye cream only
around your eyes, which means you have to buy a face lotion
separately, yet the ingredients of these products are
rarely different enough to warrant the extra expense and
rarely have any special formulary function specific to
the eye area. There is no reason an eye cream can't be
used on the face or the face lotion can't be used around
the eyes. The only time a special eye cream would be necessary
is when the skin around the eyes is different from the
skin on the rest of the face, which may require a more
or less emollient moisturizer, but that's a different
issue from the need for an eye cream.
"Visible lift with proven results"
The study mentioned in this ad doesn't say what the improvement
was based on. A comparison to another product? To one
side of the face that was stripped bare with alcohol?
It also doesn't comment on who made the assessment about
the improvement. If it was the company's own appraisal,
they clearly had reason to notice that the skin looked
better. Claims like these are meaningless, but sound great.
"Nighttime repair"
The suggestion here is that somehow a cream can help increase
cell reproduction and undo skin damage. You can do some
impressive things with a moisturizer and create smoother,
healthier-looking skin, but it is all temporary. Stop
using it and things will go back to the way they were.
If you could change the way cells reproduce, no one would
have wrinkles or sun damage, and no one would get skin
cancer.
"So advanced, it's patented"
Patent law just means that the company was able to show
a formula or ingredient was in some way unique. It can
also establish that an existing ingredient or formula
has a unique use. None of that has anything to do with
efficacy. A company could patent a terrible formula or
a good formula; an erroneous or verifiable claim; as long
as it's unique—that's all a patent means. The patent is
simply about who can use or sell the formula or ingredient,
or who can make a specific public claim about the use
of a formula or ingredient. Most major cosmetics companies
own thousands of patents, but that doesn't tell you anything
about how advanced or mediocre those patents are.
"Penetrates deeply into the layers of the
skin"
"Penetrates" is another very impressive, though
imprecise, word. Almost any cosmetic ingredient, if its
molecules are small enough, will penetrate the skin, but
the molecules of many cosmetic ingredients are too large
to penetrate the skin. When cosmetic ingredients are able
to penetrate the skin, the word "layers" is
frequently added to confound you. Layers of skin are so
microscopically small they are negligible. A cream can
penetrate many layers of skin and still not have traveled
anywhere.
"Deep cleansing"
This term has always baffled me. How deep is deep? Sounds
like a dentist cleaning out a cavity in your teeth. I
can vividly hear the sound of a drill trying to get into
your pores! If a product could clean deeply—I mean really
deeply—you would be bleeding, but no one would ever have
blackheads because you would eliminate them through "deep
cleansing." In this case, "deep cleansing"
probably means "thorough cleansing;" well, that's
fine. But cosmetics companies encourage the belief that
deep-cleansing products can get into a pore and eject
a blackhead. There are ways to dissolve the stuff that
is inside a blackhead, but "deep cleansing"
won't do it.