Watch the cosmetic thieves

The cosmetic’s industry is a huge industry, especially in the United States.  You need to be on the lookout for thievery.  Watch the cosmetic thieves and your wallet to save your money!

Cosmetic Industry

The cosmetic industry is HUGE and I mean Gigantic!  In the U.S. alone, it is worth about $55 billion!  They stand to make a lot of money if you buy into everything they’re selling.  That’s why there are marketing companies out there to try to ‘sell’ to you.  They want you to believe that their product is what you need.

Thievery

We all know that marketing / advertising is what companies do.  They are in the business of making money.  What I have a problem with is the mis-leading information.  As a consumer, you have a right to know the truth.  I’m not saying the ads out there are lying – they can’t lie to you but they do mis-lead.  It’s the exact reason why I was fooled as a teenager into thinking I needed the next best product.  I needed to watch the cosmetic thieves!

I thought I needed that tingly face wash or that alcohol-based toner.  Because I had acne and those were for acne-prone skin, I expected it to work.  I also thought a very popular apricot exfoliator was the ‘it’ exfoliator because they advertised something that made it sound wonderful.  Plus, it was easily available and just happened to be advertised during time teenagers would be home from school and more likely to watch TV.

The problem, I learned later, was that the apricot exfoliator used the seed of the apricot – Ouch!  That’s not going to help anyone’s skin.  And, those toners that contained alcohol?  Well, that just dried out my skin causing more oil to be produced.  More oil equals more acne!

Even the Environmental Working Group discuss this in their 2016 article:  Imperfect protection.  It’s obviously a problem.  I fell for it at one time and I’m sure you have to.  Don’t beat yourself up about it – when you know better, you can do better.

Self-esteem killer

When those products didn’t work, it affected my self-esteem because I was too embarrassed to go out or I didn’t like the way I looked.  I thought nothing would help my acne or my oily skin.  While some teenagers will be lucky enough to have people around them that can help with their self-esteem, not everyone does.

I came from an immigrant family and my parents worked a lot.  Plus, they didn’t know the first thing about skin care to even help me figure out what I needed.  So, I went about it on my own – listening to the advertising campaigns that were targeted to my age group.  As I got older, my self-esteem didn’t improve because my skin didn’t improve.  Depression and anxiety will follow.

My quest

This is why I had always been on a quest to learn about skin care and to learn how to watch the cosmetic thieves.

Skin care isn’t that hard – you just have to understand your skin and know what it needs.  I didn’t know until much later that I didn’t need to exfoliate every day or that I should not be using the alcohol-based toners.  Exfoliating regularly, according to your skin type, is the key.  That doesn’t mean every day for most people.

Early on, I had no idea about skin care ingredients – I tried drug store (cheap products) and I tried department store (expensive products).  Even a very popular brand of cosmetics / skin care, one that was sold in the home at ‘at-home parties’, irritated my skin.  I couldn’t even wear the eye liner or mascara because it irritated my eyes – despite it being labeled as ‘for sensitive skin’!!!  It is OK for some people but it wasn’t for me.

This is when I vowed to learn about skin and provide ingredients that wouldn’t irritate.  I wanted to teach people about how to care for skin.  That’s all, nothing more than that.  So, I hope that you can feel like you can come here for skin advice.  If you find the information that will help you here, I’ve done what I set out to do!  So, watch the cosmetic thieves – because they’re out there!

Click here for more information about skin care ingredients and pore clogging ingredients.