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Saturday, May 20, 2017

How much stuff is actually in a lip gloss or liquid lipstick tube?

In case you're not already familiar, I wanted to give you all a link to a video by Beauty News from their series The Makeup Breakup, where they destroy makeup products to see how much stuff is in there. (Some people are horrified by the "waste," which doesn't bother me. If you buy a product in order to use it on your face, or in order to let it sit in your drawer until it expires, or in order to crack it open and look at what makes it tick--what difference does it make? I try to use things up that I have in order to avoid buying more, but once the money's spent, it's spent, regardless of how it's used. The waste has already been created. I think The Makeup Breakup is a totally noble makeup sacrifice, myself. Plus they seem to try to save things so they can use them if possible, anyway.)

I'm linking here to a specific video in which they empty out some tubes of Colourpop lip glosses and liquid lipsticks. The sizes are fairly standard, but since I'm not used to seeing the product outside of the tube, it really struck me how little is actually in one of those things. I mean it's still 50+ applications or whatever, so you probably wouldn't be able to use more product before it went bad. Nevertheless, it's a good illustration to me that when you are buying makeup, you are not paying for the value of the product itself--instead you're paying for all the peripherals like advertising and displays and packaging, etc. There's no way that those few milliliters of a $30 lipgloss have ten times the value of a few milliliters of $3 gloss.

(This, you might say, is also an argument against Beauty News' criticisms of products like the Guerlain Meteorites for being made of just "cheap" ingredients like corn starch and mica. Well, yeah. There are limited ingredients out there for cosmetics manufacturers to choose from and brands at all price points tend to use the same basic things. The Meteorites are an extreme case, perhaps, but you are absolutely paying for the pretty packaging, the fact that the powder has been formed into a bunch of little balls, and--above all--the prestige. You're not paying for some kind of magical, unique, fairy dust. I assume most of us know that.)

2 comments:

  1. > You're not paying for some kind of magical, unique, fairy dust.

    EXCUSE ME WHAT

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If you've got the fairy dust hook up, please share!

      Delete