Psychotic skincare

I just read this article from The Outline that's going around, and my eyes rolled back so far that I think they're permanently stuck back there. It is not wrong about some things? Sure. There's no such thing as perfect skin; women are disproportionately pressured to improve the condition of their skin; and skincare obsession can become an excuse for hyper-consumption and wealth display (I've actually written about that before). But other parts of the article are, to paraphrase, fucking psychotic--it's the typical backlash that you tend to get against typically feminine consumerism (or feminine pursuits in general). You know, where the misogyny is disguised as some sort of feminism. And I'm saying that as someone who fully acknowledges that there is A LOT of bullshit out there when it comes to beauty marketing.

Anyway, there were too many individual lines that had me groaning to quote them all here, but if one in particular stands out to you, please comment on it below. Or if you agree with some or all of the article--either way, I'd love to hear other people's thoughts! I'm still mulling it all over and sighing.

(Ok, just one. The whole "skin has survived forever, why are we doing stuff to it now?" is a lot like the old "women have been giving birth forever, why do they need hospitals now?" Groan.)

Thoughts on skincare, aging, and indulgence

A post shared by Lyn (brutally honest beauty) (@brutallyhonestbeauty) on Aug 24, 2017 at 9:52am PDT

A recent move from Michigan to Texas (which is my excuse for the prolonged hiatus here) has me thinking a lot of about skincare, beginning with how I need to adjust my usual routine to suit the new climate I'm now living in. Thinking about my goals and preferences when it comes to looking after my skin leads to all sorts of other tangential pondering about skincare in general. For instance, my skin has actually been quite good since I arrived at my new (temporary) home, and yet I'm still motivated to use all sorts of products and to try new things.

And what exactly constitutes "good skin" anyway? Or "good enough" (if such a thing exists)? For instance, I haven't been breaking out much, to the extent that I was a bit surprised to get my period, since I hadn't had my usual harbinger of cystic chin acne this month. So less acne = good, for me, ok. The texture of my skin has also been pretty nice: soft and smooth, pores aren't too enlarged. So I guess those are also things that matter to me for some reason.

On the other hand, I've been noticing lines more, whether or not they are more pronounced than they used to be or it's just because I don't have other issues to distract me from them. In a particularly ridiculous moment, I found myself browsing Instagram for closeups of faces of women younger than me to confirm that the wrinkles under my eyes weren't abnormal.

Skincare is obviously a hobby and a fascination for me, but I don't approach it without a generous amount of ambivalence. When you start looking at skincare products and reading about skincare routines, you realize that if you adhere strictly to much of the advice out there, you'll discover that there is apparently not a single person on the planet whose face doesn't have a flaw to fix. Whatever happened to "normal" skin? We're too oily or too dry--or both. Too much redness or dark spots. Pores are too big or too much acne. Too flaky or too shiny or not shiny ("dewey") enough. Too saggy or not soft enough. Too light or too dark. Too dull and not bright enough. Too many lines or too much puffiness. It's endless. It can be really hard to conclude that your skin is just fine.

Even our old gurus, like Paula Begoun for instance, who used to say that "not everyone needs a moisturizer," are going to try to sell us all moisturizers (and eye creams and essences . . . ). I'm not immune to this. When I was younger, I never used moisturizer, and my skin felt fine. Now I moisturize with different products a couple of times a day. Sure, skin often gets drier as we age, but do I really need all that? Or have I just got used to it? My mother almost never moisturizes, and her skin is neither dry nor oily. Again, remember "normal" skin?

But I have all these products, and they're fun to use (most of the time) so I use them. The pleasure we derive from our beauty routines isn't a bad thing. It's no more frivolous to have this as a hobby than to tinker with cars or knit or play video games. But it's a slippery slope from hobby into luxury and self-care. These are not always bad things either. Getting myself ready for work in the morning could be considered a form of self-care, because I get to sit quietly for 20 or 30 minutes and carry out my routine and start the day in a less stressed and more focused state of mind. But I think there's a difference between that and feeling like my problems can be alleviated with a little consumerism and that if I've had a rough time I deserve to treat myself to a new purchase. (I've written about self-care and consumerism before, and also see this Buzzfeed article about self-care and influencers.)

I try not to judge people who collect things, whether they're Funko dolls or exfoliants. But outside of those people who have the disposable income to collect one of every enticing skincare product, there's definitely some worrying overconsumption happening. Again, I'm not immune or exempt from this--I am quite aware of how much perishable shit I own, because I had to pack it up and move it with me across the country (THREE backups of PC 2% BHA liquid? Really, bitch?). If you follow skincare enthusiasts (or collectors, as you could call them) on Instagram, however, you're likely to be confronted with #shelfies of dozens of products and to see their morning and evening routines consisting of 5-8 products each, which change significantly every day. Again, they're obviously having fun, but seeing that over and over can create the impression that a "proper" skincare routine requires a lot of purchasing.

There are also, of course, the trendy and exorbitantly-priced products and brands that tend to appear regularly in these photos alongside glowing reviews. I've found, nevertheless, that there's little correlation between effectiveness and price when it comes to skincare. Some expensive things are great, and some are terrible. Some cheap things are great, and some are terrible. But the self-care, "treat yourself" mentality suggests that you're doing it better if you buy something luxurious (i.e. pricey) than merely something that's effective and pleasant to use, but cheap. In reality, you can have beautiful, well-cared-for skin (according to whatever definition you choose) even if you only own a handful of affordable products. Say sunscreen, moisturizer, and a serum in the morning, and cleanser, exfoliant, and moisturizer in the evening. Or less. Maybe you don't need to moisturize!

Returning again to that definition of good skin, it's a tricky concept. Most skincare products seem designed to do one of two things: to make skin "clearer" (less red, smoother, smaller pores, fewer pimples) or to reverse/prevent aging (again with the pores, fewer lines, tighter skin, fewer dark spots, etc.). Obviously there is significant overlap between these categories. But I wonder, did you ever notice someone's pores before you got interested in skincare? Did you ever notice your own pores? All faces have pores of varying sizes! Try looking at images of beautiful celebrities that aren't airbrushed to death and allow yourself to feel some relief that porelessness is not an achievable (or desirable!) goal.

Natalie Portman, Hollywood Reporter, May 2015

Saffron Burrows in Mozart in the Jungle

Anti-aging rhetoric is even more insidious and polarizing. (Allure magazine recently made the choice to cut it out.) A lot of the things we try to "fix" with skincare are things that happen naturally and inevitably to our skin as we age. And there are a lot of factors that affect them other than which or how many skincare products you use: genetics, skin type, time spent in the sun, environment, stress, and so on. What's wrong with looking your age anyway? Part of the problem is that it's hard to know exactly what "looking your age" means, because we are now used to seeing celebrities in their 70s who look younger than Audrey Hepburn did when she died at 63, because of all the subtle (or not-so-subtle) clinical procedures they've had done. And increasing use of sunscreen, probably. There's also the gendered/sexist aspect of anti-aging pressure, which tells us that men look better with a few wrinkles and women don't. Women don't get to be rugged. So when I slather on the sunscreen every day, there's a part of me that feels shitty for buying into all of that (I could pretend I'm doing it solely to prevent skin cancer, but let's be real--plus that doesn't explain the rest of my skincare hoard).

So all this rambling thought leaves me wondering why exactly I enjoy playing around with skincare products as much as I do when the whole concept can be so fraught. I have to admit to myself that vanity is a part of it, but I don't think that explains it all, because if I really just wanted to look better, surely I'd learn to style my fucking hair already.

I've narrowed it down to two other things: science and control. I like that skincare is a kind of experiment I can perform on myself. I like learning about all the many ingredients out there and what they can and can't and might do. I'm a researcher by profession and by nature. I especially like debunking the bullshit claims that brands and their devotees make--that's really what got me interested in all of it in the first place (see, again, Paula Begoun).

But another motivation that's been increasingly evident for me is the desire to try to exert control over some aspect of my life. That's something most of us need, and if, like me, you've been on the academic (or any!) job market during in the last decade, you might feel it more than others. I can't control what I will be doing or where I will be living or how I will be living a year or even 6 months from now, most of the time, but maybe I can control what happens to my face. (Maybe I can't. But it's somehow gratifying to try.) This is different from my interest in makeup, which I see as more of a low-stakes, low-energy creative outlet.

Anyway, if you've managed to follow my stream of consciousness here, I'd love to hear your perspective. Do you even give a shit about skincare? (I don't assume that everyone who reads here does.) Why or why not? Are your feelings conflicted at all, like mine clearly are? If so, what is it that bothers you the most about the marketing and conversation and media that surrounds skincare? If you're 100% into the whole skincare thing, what is it about it that fascinates you?

To reference an outdated meme, [my] fave is problematic.

(I'm also open to suggestions for adjusting routines to hotter and/or dryer climates. Ahem.)

Heads Up: The Hourglass Travel Size Ambient Lighting Powders are bullshit

I noticed the other day that Sephora had added travel sizes of all of Hourglass's Ambient Lighting Powders to the selection, which seems, on the surface, like a good option if you have been considering trying one of them but not sure how much you'd like it. Previously they had Dim Light in this size, but not the others. They're $22, less than half the price of the full-size powder ($46).

But check this out: the full size contains 10 g/0.35 oz. of product and the travel size contains 1.4 g/0.049 oz.! So you get about 15% of the product for almost half the price? In other words, the regular powder is $131 per ounce and the mini is $449 per ounce. Um, no fucking thanks. I get that sometimes the price per ounce/gram isn't that important factor to consider if it's a bottle of nail polish or a lipstick that you think you'll never finish, but these are supposed to be everyday face powders that you presumably would use up and replace. It's worse than their holiday palette.

Just in case you ever doubted that the cost of the product itself makes up much less of the price than the cost of the packaging (not to mention arbitrary profit margins).

I noticed how tiny these things were a couple of weeks ago, but this post I saw while browsing the Makeup Rehab subreddit today inspired me to write about it.

(I've tried the ALPs from samples I got from So Choix, where you get five samples for $15. I wonder if that would come out to 1.4 g between the five, but I don't really have a way to weight and calculate that. I'd say I get at least a dozen uses per sample.)

MAC says their VIBE TRIBE collection has "absolutely no connection to nor was it inspired by the Native American cultures"

It's just inspired by music festivals.

I mean, a collection inspired by native art in collaboration with native artists and models and/or with some proceeds going toward an appropriate cause could be cool. But don't treat your customers like they're idiots. It has fucking "tribe" right there in the name. There's a product called "Arrowhead." Come on.

In case you're wondering what the big fuss about Lime Crime is (from Racked)

Here's a thorough (and fascinating) explanation. So much drama!

The article also has some good information about how the beauty industry works, such as that mainstream and even prestige companies do not manufacture many of their products in house; rather, various brands order products from the same few factories and put their own labels on them (more on that here).

Jezebel is hysterical about Instagram makeup (again)

Yes, I use the term "hysterical" deliberately, because the combination of disdain and faux-naive pearl clutching in this article on Millihelen is presented as self-righteous feminism. Unrealistic beauty standards as a product of the patriarchy are a real, shitty thing: true. But no one is forcing you to use five different foundations to prepare your face for Instagram. No one is forcing you to use Instagram at all. This is some serious hyperbole:

"[...] it is assumed that, if you are under 40 years old and don’t take overwhelmingly flattering selfies, you are less of a woman. It is a terrifying assumption, one that is getting more terrifying all the time."

Come on. This is just another iteration of Jezebel's tired mocking of people who wear extreme makeup and post it on social media, disguised as social commentary or investigative journalism. "One student was so giggly and excited about the prospect of glitter, she set the women’s movement back a solid century." That is a real quotation. 

I'm sure that if they are called on it, the editors, as usual, will be all over the comments section claiming that this is satire and that the readers just don't get it. After all, the writer is a comedian. Bored now.

HELP! I'm covered in chemicals! (Politicians working with EWG to introduce bill increasing FDA oversight of "personal care products")

I don't think this is a bad idea, as such. I'm a fascist commie Canadian who thinks the government should get more involved in everything, clearly. I just wish it were backed by decent science, not by Environmental Working Group's food-babe-style scare tactics. The association with the EWG (a lobby group - sorry "nonprofit consumer health advocacy group" started by personal injury lawyers) just taints the whole fucking thing for me. Did you know that women put 168 chemicals on their bodies everyday *cough*mostareprobablysafe*cough*? Are they counting water?

You can find a good critique of the EWG's "scientific" methods here, which doesn't really even address their hysteria. (Here's another critique with good links from something called the Yummy Mommy Club? But a useful article, anyway.)

L'Oreal's FTC settlement for deceptive advertising of the Youth Code/Génefique lines (from Truth in Advertising)

I hope we all assume that most skincare advertising claims are bullshit of some kind or another, but I guess this goes beyond slippery, confusing marketing language into actual deception. A jar of goop that can manipulate your genes? I seriously hope not. Or if so, I would like to rub the gene for being able to do math on my face or find some lotion that will kill my hereditary anxiety.

Oh, and L'Oreal doesn't have to pay a cent as the result of this settlement, despite having made well over a billion dollars from selling this crap.

You're sciencing wrong: Sunscreen does not cause cancer (from I Fucking Love Science)

You might have seen an article going around Facebook and other places claiming that a recent major study has shown that wearing sunscreen can give you cancer. You might have been thinking, "Oh shit." Calm yourself. I had a moment of apprehension myself, before I took a closer look. (Or you might have been thinking from the beginning, "That's bullshit," in which case, yes, very good, you're very smart and special.)

This post from I Fucking Love Science (brilliant blog name, obviously) debunks the scaremongering anti-sunscreen bullshit. There's lots of good stuff in there, but this is one of the most important parts, I think:

"The claim that more people who use sunscreen develop melanoma is based on a study that tracked sun exposure and sunscreen use in nearly 1500 people over a span of two years. The results did show that those who used sunscreen were more likely to develop melanoma, but there was a massive caveat left out of RF’s article. The median sun protection factor (SPF) was 6 (the CDC recommends SPF 15 or higher) and those who used sunscreen the most spent considerably more time in the sun than those who rarely use sunscreen.
RF’s implication that sunscreen is causing the melanoma is dead wrong; the paper itself states “sunscreen use, by permitting more time sunbathing, is associated with melanoma occurrence,” particularly when using sunscreen with a low SPF that isn’t as protective." 

Correlation is not causation and all that. People wore low SPF sunscreen, felt like that meant they could sunbathe longer, and ended up with melanoma. The sunscreen did not cause the melanoma. Sigh. It's a typical misreading of what some scientific study actually says.

Yes, you need Vitamin D. You can get that from the sun. You can also get it in your diet. If you want to get it from the sun, you don't need to spend a ton of time baking to get what you need. The epidemiologist in this article says that pale people (like me) only need a few minutes of sun exposure a day, tan/medium skin tones could use 15-20 minutes, and people with dark skin tones need quite a bit more, maybe 6 times as much as the pale people (6 x "a few" = 18 to 24 minutes?). It all depends on how much clothing you're wearing, what time of day it is, etc. Still, that does not mean never wear sunscreen. I mean, if you don't want to, it's your call. Not everyone has the same risk for skin cancer, and not everyone cares about their skin showing the ominous "signs of aging", and that's cool. But don't avoid sunscreen because you think it's cancerous. Personally, I always wear it on my face and neck, because if I'm going to be pasty anyway, I might as well try to avoid skin damage. But I don't wear it on other parts of my body on a regular basis - only when I'm going to be in the sun for more than 20 minutes at a time. I'll get my Vitamin D walking to the market or whatever.

Anyway, you're all smart people and you didn't need me to tell you all this, but sometimes it's nice to have a link like this IFLS one to paste into the comments of your annoying cousin's Facebook status about how he's been right all along not to wear sunscreen because all the rest of you are going to get cancer and he's not, see? SHEEPLE.

Why BB Cream is Bullshit (from Beauty and the Bullshit)

Yay, Rowena is back and blogging. One of my very favorite blogs. Here she explains why labeling products as BB creams (or CC or whatever) is marketing bullshit.

Hate-reading skincare quackery

Anyone want to join me? I hate to drive traffic to this person's blog, but please, I need someone to hold my hand through this one. It's about how there's this one superhero renegade doctor who has discovered the truth (by citing studies from the 1950s) about how polyunsaturated fats are the "real" cause of aging. Rather than sun damage or, you know, age. So the list includes all vegetable oils, except coconut oil and extra virgin olive oil, basically, as well as fish oil. If you want to avoid wrinkles, according to this theory, you have to stop eating fish, avocados, seeds and nuts, etc.

This information is not coming from some marginal "natural" website, but from an apparently well-established beauty blogger, who was a former beauty editor of Elle Canada.

One of my favorite parts is when someone asks in the comments about whether or not her guru has published any peer-reviewed studies. The author responds:

Haha no. Scientific journals are mainly funded by pharmaceutical companies and food industries. Their financial interests result in a lot of bias and fraud, and they exert heavy influence over what gets published.  [. . .]  [Y]our choices would either be to a) change your position i.e. “go along to get along”, and get the prestige/money/published papers/top positions or b) go out on your own, as he has done with his own books and newsletters. Most people in this world obviously choose a).

Fascinating. Any scientists out there who would like to share their experiences with choosing between lying about omega-3s or being kicked out of science? Sounds like an exciting story. I'd like to hear about the techniques that Big Fish Oil uses to pressure you to compromise your integrity.

Another quotation from the author's comments:

From Ray Peat’s [the guru in question] coconut oil article: Many people have asked me to write something on coconut oil. I thought I might write a small book on it, but I realize that there are no suitable channels for distributing such a book–if the seed-oil industry can eliminate major corporate food products that have used coconut oil for a hundred years, they certainly have the power to prevent dealers from selling a book that would affect their market more seriously.

Wow, Big Canola even controls the publishing industry! How deep does it go? Do you think the Illuminati are involved somehow? "I’m genuinely curious how you think I could harm myself from not eating PUFA oils? Because Canada’s Food Guide says saturated fats are bad for you? It must be true then! (haha)" OMG, they control the Canadian government too! (Also from the comments.)

If you really want your head to explode, look at this list of people whose research supposedly supports the theory of her guru, which includes such figures as Charles Darwin, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, William Blake, Ivan Pavlov, Peter Kropotkin, Baruch Spinoza, and Ivan Illich. I don't even . . . is it just a list of names that she thinks sounds impressive?

Okay, I'll stop now before I have a stroke. But it bothers me because there are so many people in the comments convinced now that they've been damaging their faces by eating salad.

Guest post from Savannah Scorpion: "Pigmented" is a Bullshit Marketing Term

Hello!

I am Savannah Scorpion, beauty junkie and retail drone. I guest post periodically to give y'all an insider perspective on expensive beauty bullshit. It's been a few months since I've posted, chiefly because I have been doing some job-hunting. One of the fun things about working in retail is that I've gone thorough a more rigorous hiring process than most politicians--for significantly less money.

I'm here to talk about a word that I see bandied about a lot in the beauty industry:

Pigmented.

One of the biggest trends that I have noticed is how beauty companies talk about pigmentation. More expensive brands love to talk about how intensely/richly/sensuously pigmented their products are--as if mass brands have low quality pigments.

Let's break through the bullshit.

I went to an amazing money pit called art school. Pigment is discussed in every visual arts class. Pigments are the material used to make colors. However, your pigments are pretty useless if you don't have fillers, binders, oils, waxes and other detritus, so that you can apply the pigment to whatever surface you are working on.

Art students do not use the most pigmented paints and pencils right off the bat, because using such products is a waste of money when you are learning basic techniques. The more pigmented products are more difficult to work with, and are meant to be used by artists who have developed their own style.

The came concept can be applied to cosmetics--with a major exception:

Expensive products do not always have the best pigments. NYX Cosmetics and Wet N Wild carry some very pigmented products [Ed. Note: Also, remember this?]. Some Urban Decay eyeliners are patchy as fuck, and in my opinion, Zero, their basic black pencil, is some mediocre smeary bullshit.

Pros will use any product that works--and I've seen many a makeup kit filled with products from Maybelline, Wet N Wild, and Revlon. Now, artists will also use brands with a reputation for their intense pigments, such as MAC, NARS, and MUFE. Keep in mind:

They are pros. Makeup artists have years of experience and if they are working on a film, TV show, or theatrical production, they aren't paying for their products out of pocket.

And:

Super-pigmented products are finicky as hell to work with. I recently purchased a mini kit of Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Lip Tars (Anime/NSFW/Black Dahlia/Ophelia), and while I definitely enjoy them, there's a definite learning curve to applying the lip colors, and if you don't put a primer underneath, they can smear all over the place. I also purchased a NARS blush (Exhibit A, from the Guy Bourdin collection), which is a very bright deep coral-red, that can go from "70's disco goddess" to "clown" if you over-apply even the tiniest bit. I spent plenty of time as a youngster working with sheer blushes from mass brands before I worked with more intensely pigmented blushes.

If you are new to makeup, I would not recommend spending a lot of money buying expensive "pigmented" products. Practice with more accessible drugstore products.

If you feel ready to start experimenting with products that have higher pigmentation ratios, invest in quality brushes, and use a very light hand.

Why I write so much about e.l.f. here

Simple answer: because they are cheap as fuck and so they fit my theme well.

It's not because I think e.l.f. is the best/most ethical company ever or that their products are consistently flawless. It's certainly not because I have some kind of stake in promoting them. I regularly write negative reviews of e.l.f. (see here, here, and here).

Rather, it's because I've seen pretty extreme claims made about e.l.f. in magazines, blogs, other websites, etc. that fall at either end of the spectrum. On the one hand, there are people that claim everything e.l.f. makes is cheap, worthless crap. These people seem to have tried one or two of e.l.f.'s shittier products and dismissed the whole line. There are definitely some major duds in there, but critics of e.l.f. are usually more venomous about it than they would be about other similarly inexpensive brands, like Wet N Wild.

Then there are people who claim that there is absolutely no difference between e.l.f. makeup and more expensive products. They declare that e.l.f. products are Exact Dupes, often without demonstrating that any actual comparison has been carried out.

Personally, I'm interested in teasing out when there might be a qualitative difference between an e.l.f. product and something more expensive, or when e.l.f. products do or do not hold up well on their own. It's possible to get e.l.f. cheaper than just about any other brand, and so it gives me lots of inexpensive blog fodder as someone who does not receive press samples and is not independently wealthy. In generally I like to try to identify misinformation and misconceptions when I can, and it seems like e.l.f. attracts a lot of those.

So that's my story. If you're really interested in why some cosmetic products cost so much more than others, I recommend revisiting this post and this one and this one and this one (see #1). Hint: for the most part, it's not because the product itself is better quality.

Has xoVain become Pinterest? (i.e. a cesspool of DIY bullshit that either won't work or will end badly)

Here's a good recipe for an eye infection. I mean, okay, do it once in an emergency, and then throw the fucking tube away. When the author gets called out in the comments, she claims that that is what she meant, but in the article itself, she says you can keep using the mascara for a few more weeks by doing this. MAKE UP YOUR MIND.

Guest post from Savannah Scorpion: Why I'm Perfectly Okay With Nail Polish (And Other Cosmetic) Dupes

Oh snap! Two guest posts in a week?

I'm sure y'all have heard about the recent XoVain post about nail polish dupes. I'm sure y'all rolled your eyes at it, too. I will confess to being a daily peruser of XoVain, but mostly due to Alle's, Faz's, and Kelly's posts. I think it's verrrry interesting that Vain's best writers are the ones who are not based out of the New York offices, and do not contribute to Vain as their primary occupation.

Unlike Rio, I am not a tri-continental expat who lives in Paris and wrote a master's thesis about nail polish. I am a deeply indebted art school grad currently living in the Midwest with my cat. I am not any sort of cosmetics expert, but I do have a greater understanding abut how cosmetics are made and marketed than most of the XoVain staff, and when I write, I use coherent subject/verb agreement and syntax (unlike Annie).  

 [oh snap]

Here are a few things that Rio failed to mention in her post:

1. Mass and luxury cosmetics brands are frequently owned by the same company.

I am the proud owner of a YSL Beauty Touche Éclat pen. I am also the proud owner of a Maybelline Dream Lumi Touche pen. I use both of these products regularly. I have a unique use for both of these products: I keep Touche Éclat at home, and the Dream Lumi pen in my "going to see my boyfriend" bag. I'd rather have his cat play with the 6-dollar brightening concealer, instead of the 40 dollar brightening concealer*.

The best part about my buying two similar products at wildly different price points is that some oligarch at The L'Oreal Group (parent company to both Maybelline and YSL Beauty) makes even more money.

xoVain says nail polish dupes are plagiarism

I mean, I already knew that it was the worst of the beauty websites, but come on. The comments are so much more informed and insightful than the article itself.

One point that I haven't seen in the comments is the fact that a lot of cheap dupes actually existed before Chanel or whatever other bajillion-dollar beauty company decided that they were going to release and promote that shade. That's the case with the Chanel dupe I posted about, as well as the Cult Nails one. It's not ripping off Cult Nails (an indie designer), because I bought the F21 version in July, months before Cult Nails started selling theirs. It's not that the bigger/more expensive company copied the smaller one either, in most cases, as the author tries to argue in the comments. Wet N Wild was not being ripped off by Chanel. It's just fucking teal duochrome nail polish. Someone has already made it. There are limited possibilities. (I know that sometimes indie designers and sellers do get ripped off. That's really not what this is about.)

It's snobbery masquerading as ethics.

"Cosmetic Marketing and BFF Style" from Reluctant Femme

This is a great post about the weirdly fierce loyalty some companies inspire in people. Seriously, have you ever visited the Facebook page of a cosmetics company? Especially a sort of "cult" one, like The Balm or Zoya or something.* Fans of the company will leap to its defense in response to any criticism. "Well, if you think that, then you aren't a REAL FAN of this makeup company that is trying to get you to buy things, anyway." Shit like that. Well, not quite like that. But it's somehow creepy and it always baffles me. Why should I be loyal to a company if their products or service disappoint me?  The products and services are the things that the company give me. That's their side of the relationship. Do these people really think they have a special friendship with corporations? That they love them back? It benefits them if you think that, but most companies don't care about your feelings, just your money. Just understand and accept that and you'll be happier. Be pleasantly surprised if they behave ethically or compassionately. And make friends with actual people.

*Don't get me started on the weirdness of companies whose PR or social media people give their fans cutesy nicknames in the style of Gaga's little monsters. Shudder.

Do pores open and close with water temperature changes? (from Beautiful With Brains)

No.

OH REALLY BZZAGENT?

Ha. I have been reviewing things for BzzAgent since July 2012. And now they tell me to, "Please refrain from submitting profanity."

Well, BzzAgent Robot, I guess that will be the end of our blogging relationship then.

(I will still let you know how that lotion ends up working.)

Cut & Blow has terrible/nonexistent customer service and you shouldn't shop there

I'm fucking pissed. Just be prepared and skip this one if that's not your jam. But I do advise against patronizing this company, so I hope this information is useful to someone. I don't want anyone getting screwed over.

A while ago, I posted about a new Essie collection that was for sale from Cut & Blow, one of the millions of new flash sale sites out there. I noted that I had never purchased from them, so caveat emptor. I should have said CAVEAT FUCKING EMPTOR, I guess. Recently, I decided to buy something from the site, but I had a simple question I wanted answered before placing my order. I had a little credit in my account from when I signed up, and I wanted to know how to apply it to my order. That's some basic fucking information for a company that offers credits. There was a tab under my account info that displayed how much credit I had. No expiry date, and no information about how to claim it. That made me realize that they have almost NO FUCKING INFORMATION whatsoever on their website. So annoying. Like what kind of business doesn't at least have a Help or FAQ section? Or, hmmm, a FUCKING CONTACT PAGE?

Yeah, I'm irritated. If you skip around the site for a while, you'll find a tiny email address on the "About Us" page. It's the same address from which they send you promotional emails, by the way. I emailed that address with my question on Sept. 25. When I got no response a few days later, I tweeted at them. Nothing. Their Twitter account hasn't been updated since August. On Sept. 30 I emailed them again. As of today, I've still heard nothing from them (10 days since I first contacted them).

Here's what has really infuriated me. Today, as I started to write this post, I went back to the website to make sure for the 1352 time that I had looked absolutely everywhere and not missed any magical source of information. And guess what? My credit is fucking gone! There is is, right at the top of the page: "My Credit: $0.00," when there was a balance there only a day or two ago. They still have a link encouraging me to invite people and get credit, and no information at all about credit expiring, ever. That's some shady shit! Did they read my emails and delete my credit? OR WHAT? I have no idea, because they will not communicate with me.

I'm just going to go ahead and not recommend that you buy anything from this company. At this point, I'd be worried about ordering something and it not showing up, or there being some other problem with my order, and there's just a complete lack of customer support. I hope that if you ordered something from them in the past, you didn't have any problems. But if you did, please comment here to let everyone know!

I'm going to link to them right now, so that maybe they can see that they're getting negative feedback, since they clearly don't pay attention to anything else. But I'm going to remove any other links to them from my site.