Okay, I’m really worked up and off on a rant here. I am just so tired of dermatologists and other physicians and their skin care lines, well at least most of them. Between Perricone, Brandt, Wexler, Murad, Pinnell, and on and on, their combined lack of medical ethics, by just about any standard (except for physicians who want in on the potential sales from creating their own skin care lines) is the height of distorting what a doctor should be providing to their patients. The claims for these “doctor-designed” lines are equal to or go beyond the most deceptive level of cosmetic advertising. These hoards of products are not better for your skin, they are not medical, and most of their claims are offensive.

Perhaps at the height of this lunacy is Dr. Dennis Gross and his namesake “MD” skin care line. What caught my attention recently and started me on writing this blog was the claim on his web site for a body product. Are you ready for this? It states: “Developed by Dr. Dennis Gross as an at-home, safe and effective way to solve every skincare concern that you may have on your body.” Seriously, I want to scream. Actually, I did scream when I read that. I mean come on, give me a break! On so many levels that claim is just an out and out lie. I can think of dozens of skin concerns the product attached to this claim would have no effect on and might even make it worse. Yet lots of consumers will believe this product is one-stop shopping for anything they dislike about their body skin, and Dr. Gross will be laughing all the way to the bank.

I have no idea how many women suck up this kind of chicanery, but it makes me choke. And what makes matters even more confusing is that Dr. Gross has a handful of products that are brilliant formulations with genuine benefits for your skin. It’s a quandary because by no means would I encourage any consumer to embrace this line fully, but there are indeed some great products (even though the claims mostly go beyond the realm of possibility). What’s most discouraging is that as these lines continue to do well and dupe consumers into believing “doctor knows best” when it comes to skin care, we’ll see more physicians jumping on the cosmeceutical bandwagon, with guns blazing, trying to capture your attention…at a high price, of course.

Recently, a Beautypedia subscriber wrote in to inquire about a discrepancy she found between the bottle and the box of Bare Escentuals’ bareVitamins Skin Rev-er Upper, a BHA product that she had purchased because it earned a Paula’s Pick. Her email chronicled her struggle with the company to understand how the bottle and the packaging could be different, and how was she to know which was accurate? Ultimately, Bare Escentuals’ Customer Service couldn’t explain it either, and only told her that, “as a consumer she was supposed to know that what is written on the bottle is always the correct ingredient list.” Her plight caught our attention, not only because we need to keep Beautypedia as accurate as possible, but also because if this were the case, this product’s real ingredient list (which includes arnica, St. John’s Wort and witch hazel) poses serious problems for skin, and it would need to lose its Paula’s Pick status, ASAP!

So I headed out to investigate at a nearby Ulta. When I came upon the Bare Escentuals’ display, I found the small-sized bottle of the Skin Rev-er Upper product that comes with the intro kit, I couldn’t find it on the kit’s box, at least not before the salesperson approached me, so I asked him where I could find the ingredient list. He simply said “Glycolic acid is the active ingredient.” I had to laugh to myself, because that not only didn’t answer my question, but it’s inaccurate: Salicylic Acid (BHA) is the “active” ingredient, not glycolic acid (AHA). I didn’t correct him, however; instead I told him that I wanted to see the whole ingredient list for myself, and he located a full-size box of Skin Rev-er Upper, which I opened to find that the list on the bottle and the accompanying box were indeed dissimilar, in all the problematic ways that had been outlined in the reader’s e-mail. I showed the salesperson the discrepancy, and he looked appropriately confounded, saying “My, that is strange…” I said, perhaps a little antagonistically, “What about customers who might be allergic to one of those omitted ingredients?” He didn’t answer my pointed question (and I don’t blame him), instead he handed me off to a Bare Escentuals’ Regional Sales Rep who just so happened that the in the store while I was there. I couldn’t believe my luck – it looked like I might get some answers after all!

She came over to me swiftly, and spent a long time looking at the box and bottle, and then finally, looked up and could offer no explanation. She said that there had been no reformulation, and had no clue why the discrepancy existed, but thanked me for pointing this out, said that she’d take the matter up with the appropriate people, and seemed to generally want me out of her hair. To my surprise, she didn’t take my name or number to follow up, she didn’t discuss the matter further, she didn’t even try to sell me anything; instead, she just started to back away. But before she got too far, I took that opportunity to share with her our subscriber’s experience of calling the company about this same discrepancy (though I could not disclose that she was a Beautypedia subscriber or that I work for Paula and Beautypedia), and so I explained that when my “aunt” inquired, she wasn’t met with any thanks at all, only ridicule for not knowing that what’s printed on the bottle is always correct, no matter what other packaging indicates. I swear she turned eight shades of red – her face reflecting anger, embarrassment and more than a little discomfort at being held accountable for her company’s products and behavior. At that moment, I really felt like I was advocating for our readers and for everything that Beautypedia strives to do, even if I didn’t get any real answers. And, by the way, the Bare Escentuals product in question is no longer rated a Paula’s Pick.

I was struck by an ad I saw in a magazine for Clinique. The copy asserted their products were tested on thousands of people and if even one of them has an allergic reaction they would reformulate the product. I don’t doubt Clinique’s advertisement, assuming a gigantic company the size of Lauder (Clinique is owned by Lauder) could easily get caught up on something like that. So is it true? Have thousands of people never had an allergic reaction to a Clinique product after or before it launches? It can’t possibly be true. Everyone can be allergic to something. That’s a fact; just think of how many people you know who are allergic to bees, pollen, dust, dogs, cats, sesame seeds, shellfish, milk, wheat, lanolin, peanuts, and on and on and on and on.

Taking this into account in light of Clinique’s claim that they reformulate even if one person had an allergic reaction, there would be a strong likelihood that someone else or many people would be allergic to the new ingredient change when they retested the product. In other words, Clinique would be continually going back to the drawing board, forever trying to create a product that absolutely no one has an allergic reaction to—a feat that simply isn’t possible.

Though I am extremely skeptical of Clinique’s claim (and that is truly an understatement), giving them the benefit of doubt, how could this claim be true so it could be boldly states in a magazine ad? I couldn’t get an answer from Clinique as to what kind of testing they used to support this boast so let me postulate a few theories:

Most cosmetic testing for allergic reactions is done by an occlusive patch test on some part of the body other than the face. After three days to six weeks of putting the ingredient or product on, say, the forearm, they uncover it and see if a histamine reaction was elicited. While that kind of information can be helpful, not all parts of the body react the same way to the same substance. Facial skin reacts very differently than skin on the arm does. So the arm doing well with this patch test doesn’t tell you how the face would’ve done under the same conditions.

Let’s take it a step further and assume Clinique did the test on thousands of faces and no one had an allergic reaction (again that’s really stretching, but without proof one way or the other, we’re working on their claim as true premise) does that translate to better products for your skin? Not in the least. It would be nice if a formula was free of producing histamines but an allergic reaction isn’t the only reaction you need to be concerned about. What about ingredients that cause skin damaging irritation? And at the other end of the spectrum what about ingredients that offer no benefit at all. An allergy test would be completely meaningless for those important concerns.

An allergic reaction is only a small part of a cosmetic’s impact on your skin. Irritation from fragrant plant extracts (which Clinique occasionally uses), synthetic fragrance, highly alkaline ingredients, preservatives, alcohol, and harsh abrasives would seriously damage skin and that has nothing to do with allergies. And what about skin care routines that don’t offer sun protection? Again, no allergic reaction, but you would be exposing your skin to a risk of skin cancer and a 100% guarantee of premature aging and wrinkles.

Beneath cosmetic claims lurks curves and turns you have to watch out for. Think twice and then a third time before you absorb and accept the information cosmetics companies want you to believe. More often than not, they are fraught with half-truths, misleading information, and, surprising amount of time they’re little more than out-and-out lies.

I am a lipstick junkie. I love the way my lips look with lipstick on. You will rarely ever see me without lipstick. I particularly love red lipstick. Red is just so classic, both retro and elegant at the same time. But I can’t wear red lipstick. Actually, I struggle with just about any lipstick color! Without exception all lipsticks eventually bleed on me, traveling straight into the lines around my mouth. This was even a problem for me when I was younger but it is even worse now.

My own matte lipsticks were the best ones for me on the market, they stayed on and held back from bleeding into lines longer then anything else I ever tested. Not that there were that many options to test. Regrettably, the direction lipsticks have taken over the past several years has been for the worse as far as my lips are concerned. Consumers want to buy lip glosses and lipsticks that are slippery, greasy, shiny swaths of color. In fact most lipsticks are little more the lip glosses in stick form. True creamy lipsticks bleed fast enough but glossy, slippery lipsticks are as fast as lightening into lines around the mouth. The term “matte” on lipsticks is mostly meaningless; they are almost always creamy or glossy, not matte in the least.

But with one fantastic new lipstick, all of that has changed. I am now in love with Estee Lauder’s Double Wear Stay in Place Lipstick ($22). It goes on creamy and slippery (which scared me at first) but it dried into place and didn’t move, not a millimeter. The lines around my mouth were lipstick free and the lipstick stayed on for what seemed like all day.

I bought and used the rose and coral color which were perfect. And then I went back and decided to try the red, which was a gorgeous true shade of red with a slight blue undertone. I put it on and the color was perfect, dramatic and so completely Vogue from the ‘50s. Then I waited. I checked my magnifying mirror every few minutes, then on the hour, and then finally, after about 6 or 7 hours it seemed obvious that this wasn’t going to bleed! Shangri-La for my lips!

Because I am a reviewer at heart and not one to share personal anecdotal information very often let me say that not everyone is going to appreciate how matte this is and if you put a lip gloss on top you lose the benefit of the matte finish and the feathering will ensue. But for those women whose lipstick spreads all over their face shortly after application this is one you simply must try.

Just when I thought I’ve heard it all something else comes along that reinforces how absolutely insane and moronic the cosmetics industry is. Actually, let me take that back, something else comes along that reinforces how utterly insane and moronic the cosmetics industry thinks consumers are.

Laboratoires Serobiologiques, owned by Cognis, is a cosmetic ingredient manufacturer. In order to supply cosmetic companies with their insatiable appetite for new ingredients with interesting stories to dazzle consumers with, these “labs” manipulate scientifically ludicrous associations to turn anti-aging fantasy into fact.

According to their press release they have created a dopamine-stimulating ingredient called Euphoryl Omega-3 LS 9846. Their logic is that by stimulating dopamine synthesis, you increase blood circulation in the skin and that enhances the complexion. Forget the fact that lots of things can stimulate blood circulation and that blood circulation is hardly the key to any skin care issue, but then they aren’t really talking about facts, they are selling an ingredient.

But that’s only the beginning. Here’s the real story they want you to swallow (well they want the cosmetics company’s marketing department to swallow so they concoct a formula with their ingredient you will swallow, I mean, buy).

Because dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with sensations of pleasure and exhilaration it will make your face happy. I’m not exaggerating. They said it themselves: “Based on a combination of natural ingredients which help generate positive emotions, Euphoryl Omega 3 is a pure happiness concentrate that lights up the skin’s complexion and enhances skin feeling of comfort and wellbeing.”

Forget kissing or touching, all you have to do is apply a skin care product and start smiling.

“It aims at revealing the resplendent skin of a woman in full bloom and is therefore ideal for the formulation of ‘happy cosmetic’ ranges.”

What’s next, Prozac eye creams? And what the hell is a woman in full bloom? A nice way to say an old broad? Or a woman who’s fertile?

Of course the ingredient isn’t really Euphoryl Omega-3 LS 9846, that’s the marketing name, it is just a mix of sacha inchi oil (Plukenetia volubilis) “native to the Amazon rainforest” (it couldn’t possibly come from Kansas or Illinois) and pink pepper (Schinus terebinthifolius) extract. The latter is what stimulates the skin, but pepper is irritating and not in a good (or should I say happy?) way.

My hairstylist and I got into a long discussion (okay, argument) again when I was in last week. It’s okay, I didn’t really want to read another fashion magazine and she is a wonderful, compassionate, sweet woman who likes challenging me. She earnestly wanted to let me know what she learned from the Kerastase training class she recently attended. I know I couldn’t convince her that most of what she learned was rubbish. As expected, she did what she always does when we have these discussions: smile at me with warmth and utter skepticism all at the same time while I explain what the Kerastase trainer said didn’t make sense because it was so far from the facts about hair physiology. Over the years, despite my showing her studies and research she still doesn’t want to believe me. Sigh. Although I didn’t get anywhere with my stylist, I’d like to go over the facts with you one more time just to get it off my chest:

Expensive absolutely doesn’t mean better in the world of hair care. There is no reason to ever spend more then $10 on a hair care product. (The only exception would be for an unusual special needs product like one for psoriasis or an exceptionally gentle formula that’s fragrance-free), If you do spend more than $10, I’m talking about only doing so for really huge containers.

Drugstore products are not watered down or used for cleaning floors. I’m so tired of this one! Salon products are not better formulated, they don’t use better grade of ingredients, or have fewer surfactants (cleansing agents) or wax-type ingredients than drugstore lines. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, just the opposite can be true. It takes only a quick review of the ingredient list to determine the truth about this one. Surfactants are uniform throughout the industry. The same is true for conditioning and thickening agents. In the long run, what a product contains depends on the individual product not the price. I have yet to find an ingredient manufacturer or cosmetic chemist to show me research or evidence proving otherwise. In the case of Kerastase, they’re owned by L’Oreal. L’Oreal offers some outstanding hair-care products at the drugstore, including many whose ingredient lists are nearly identical to those in the Kerastase line. Do you really think they’re using inferior, cheap ingredients in their namesake line and only saving the good stuff for their salon brands? And if that was the case, as a consumer, why would you respect them?

Other than formulations what hair care products have in common regardless of price is that the claims on the label are almost always utter nonsense. Don’t take them seriously.

You can’t repair hair. There are no hair-care products that can repair, fix, correct, restructure, reform, change, reconstruct, restore, rebuild, or alter damaged hair. Hair is dead (I will remind you of that fact frequently), so it cannot be repaired or permanently reverted back to normal in any way. You can no more mend a hair strand than you can regenerate a dead leaf, soften a rock, or repair a fallen tree.

(Try to) Stop damaging your hair! Repeated blow drying, brushing (especially wet hair, which is more easily damaged then dry hair), styling, chemical processing (okay that you don’t have to stop but reconsider radical hair color-change, I’ll talk more about that in a minute), and sun exposure degrades hair, and the damage cannot be mended or undone. High heat is particularly damaging, but it is also happens to be the best way to get unruly, frizzy, thick hair under control.

Unfortunately, there are no hair-care products that can truly protect hair from heat damage. Hairstyling tools can get as hot as 350 to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, transferring about 200 degrees Fahrenheit to the hair (the boiling point of water is 212 degrees Fahrenheit). You cannot prevent that kind of heat from causing some harm to hair. Could you imagine protecting skin from that kind of heat with a hair-care product? If you can’t do it for skin, you can’t do it for hair. Silicone in hair care products can help a little, but mostly they just make hair feel healthy and silky.

Speaking of silicone, it is not bad or dangerous for hair, quite the contrary, it’s brilliant for hair and different forms show up in over 80% of all hair care products in all price ranges!
I cannot tell you how many times I run into the silicones-are-evil claim from hair-care brands and when my team and I check the ingredient lists, sure enough, there’s one or more forma of silicone in the products. It’s a classic example of hair-care double talk and trying to sell products based on what they don’t contain even when they do, in fact, contain the very ingredients the company alleges are terrible for your hair.

Sun is damaging for hair causing hair to degrade and hair color to fade. Unfortunately there are no hair-care products that can protect hair from sun damage. The FDA does not allow hair-care products to have a Sun Protection Factor (SPF) rating because there is no reliable or consistent way to keep the necessary protective ingredients (which can be kept on and do protect skin) attached to the hair shaft (Source: www.fda.gov). Rinsing, styling, and brushing hair removes or degrades sunscreen ingredients so the protection is either nonexistent or short-lived. The only sure-fire way to protect your hair from sun damage is to wear a hat! Until there is a way to keep these ingredients on the hair and assign an SPF rating for hair-care products, the claims about sun protection are fraudulent and completely unreliable.

Pricy specialty treatment conditioners in salons are a complete waste of money. There are no special or unique ingredients in these products! They are just conditioners; compare the ingredients and you’ll see! Stop getting sucked into adding to your salon bill by getting one of these “treatments”.

When a model’s hair looks beautiful in an ad or on television, it is never simply because of the products being advertised! And notice that products in all price ranges are advertised the exact same way! And when you leave the salon your hair looks beautiful because of your stylist, not the products you decided to buy while you were there.

There is no such thing as an all-natural hair-care product. Even ingredients derived from natural sources such as coconut, palm trees, silk, wheat, milk, or soy do not retain their “natural” composition once they are processed and altered to be a cleansing or conditioning agent. Natural ingredients, particularly vitamins, minerals, and plant extracts, cannot clean hair, cling to hair, or perform any function of conditioning or styling. Plus, because hair is not alive these ingredients can’t function the same as they can on skin. The ingredients that hold hair in place or make hair so you can get a comb through it or make it feel repaired, and on and on are anything but natural. And beyond that, plenty of natural ingredients turn out to be problematic for the hair and scalp, while there are lots of synthetic ingredients you do not want to go without.

Changing hair color from dark to light is always damaging and no matter what you do it will always end up feeling like straw and looking frizzy. It takes a lot of effort and styling to make it look healthy, but once you wash it, it’s right back where it was.

Salon hair dyes are not better formulated then drugstore versions. What it takes to dye hair, the chemistry and ingredients are the same regardless of the name on the product or the claims. One is not better for hair then the other. There are horror stories from both the salon and the drugstore sides of the color world (I’ve experienced a few myself). What a great hairstylist can do is custom-blend a color for you, but it still doesn’t mean your hair will end up being the exact color you want.

Perms or hair dyes claiming they don’t contain ammonia are NOT gentler on the hair. Ingredients that work the same way (meaning damaging) are used instead they just don’t have the same odor ammonia does!

Hair-care advertisements may be alluring and interesting, but they are ads, not documentaries. Just because the ads are sensual doesn’t mean the products featured in the ads are, and it doesn’t mean they’ll make you more sensual. Accept seductive ads for what they are—seductive ads, not reliable sources of facts.

There are many reasons why women can suffer through hair loss but anywhere between 20% and 50% of women are affected by “male pattern baldness” they just lose their hair differently (diffuse lost versus front to back or from the center out). The only proven way to deal with this is minoxidil (aka Rogaine, but available generically for less money). The other products claiming they stop loss are NOT telling the truth and many of these “systems” actually contain minoxidil!

Never use a curling iron on wet or damp hair. The heat from a curling iron can easily exceed the boiling point of water. The water content inside the hair shaft can actually boil if you apply a hot curling iron to it, and cause serious breakage and damage in that spot.

Wet or damp hair is more vulnerable to losing its shape. It is best to blow your hair all the way dry and not leave any wetness, not even a little. Unless partial natural movement is what you are after, blow the entire head completely dry in order to keep the style in for as long as possible.

Avoid backcombing or teasing hair. It is damaging, plain and simple, and there is no way around this one.