Sunday, June 15, 2014

Pinterest lies: Review of e.l.f. Studio Lip Exfoliator

Disclosure: This post contains no affiliate links.
So I'll start by pointing out that this is a perfectly fine, serviceable product. It's supposed to exfoliate your lips, and it more or less does. It's basically just chunky brown sugar suspended in a emollient/waxy base. Like gritty lip balm.

But I see this pin all the time and for some reason it drives me crazy.


It's the caption that gets me, and it's always the same. I need to straighten things out here: don't buy this to use overnight. What are you going to do with it overnight? It makes no sense. When you rub this stuff on your lips, it leaves behind a bunch of grains of sugar and some moisturizing stuff. You can massage it around some more to exfoliate better, but then you still have chunks on your face that you have to wipe off. I guess you could then leave the remaining balm behind overnight and that might do something, but that's the case with any lip balm. Personally, I like to add some extra moisturizer to my lips, because the sugary taste of this stuff makes me want to lick my lips, and that's not good for them.

I know, I'm being too picky. Anyway, it works okay. I still usually have some big flaky bits on my lips after I use it, but then I always do, no matter what I try to do about that. I find that a little olive oil or honey with brown sugar mixed into it works better as a lip exfoliator, because the pieces of sugar in the e.l.f. stick are pretty big and sparse so they're not as efficient for scrubbing. They're pretty rough, too. The advantage of this stick is that it's more portable and (slightly) less messy than a homemade concoction.

So it's fine. It's convenient and there's nothing wrong with it. I wouldn't buy it again, but for $3 it's pretty cheap and certainly a better option than some ridiculous fucking $25 lip scrub. But $3 worth of oil and sugar would go a lot further and work a bit better.

11 comments:

  1. Somehow I've never seen that pin but haha, that caption! The ELF lip scrub is fine. I don't use it overnight though because I haven't mastered the art of sleep exfoliation yet.

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    1. Thank god for Pinterest, or I would never have known that I was lacking in sleep exfoliation skillz.

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  2. People on Pinterest like that piss me off. I get that you like a product, but I'm tired of the whole sales pitch! Glad to know this bugs someone else too!

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    1. Yes, who exactly wrote that and what were they trying to accomplish? So weird.

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    2. A lot of companies hire people to sit at home and post about their products or even their own dumb site on forums, review sites or social networking sites. I reckon that's what that Pintrest posts was because what normal person talks/writes like that?

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  3. A few years ago I lived in a roach infested shit hole apartment where any and every food item had to be kept in the fridge and not even a crumb could be left laying around. So my first thought is "yes let me slather on some sugar particles on my lips and let them just chill there overnight so I can have roaches have a picnic on my face"

    And while the Lush lip scrubs aren't quite $25 they are more than I want to spend, so when I start to think 'hmmm they do sound good' I convince myself I can just go down the cake frosting aisle and have my pick of bountiful flavors, scoop some out toss in some sugar and ta da! fancy tasting edible lip scrub.

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    1. Rollercoaster of emotions here: OH HELL NO, and then, wow, that is a brilliant idea!

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  4. I think you are more frustrated by the confusing/inaccurate/whatever use of the word "overnight". Nothing about the way the caption is worded makes me think that they were implying that the product should be left on the lips overnight (maybe I'm biased because I know that is not how you use a lip scrub); what they meant is that after just one day (or use, that sorta thing) you will see a change, presumably an improvement, in your lips. It really just depends on the point of view used to read the statement. Which can happen anytime someone writes something that is then read by someone else!

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    1. You're right - except that better, clearer writing can decrease the likelihood of misunderstanding. It's not completely subjective. Anyway, it just seemed to pop up every time I opened up Pinterest, and it was driving me batty. I'm not a perfect communicator myself, of course!

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    2. I've always taken the word "overnight" used in this type of context to mean it works within a day or two or that it works immediately versus over time (generally speaking over a few weeks or months). I love this lip exfoliator though. Put on and wipe off.

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  5. I just started using this. I agree, it's okay. I would probably get better results if I used more consistently, but I always forget. Also, it feels abrasive as heck; forget sandpaper, it's like French kissing concrete. Or, like, what I imagine that would feel like ;)

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