Well, we’ve all been victims of misleading or plain false information. We’ve all been suckers for all those beautiful promises peddled by all those beauty merchants. So please, Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me, says beauty expert Paula Begoun who reveals the ugly truths behind tons of beauty myths which have been perpetuated through the years.
For instance, Paula gets under the skin and hands down some tenets from her beauty bible, which has gained quite a following. Heed these:
• You can clean your skin, but you can’t "deep-clean" it. You can’t get inside a pore and clean it out. And expensive water-soluble cleansers will not make your face any cleaner. Fact is, the handful of standard cleansing agents used in cleansers are the same across the cosmetics spectrum.
• Spending more does not mean better. An expensive soap is no better for the skin than an inexpensive bar soap. Spending less doesn’t hurt your skin, and spending more doesn’t necessarily help it.
• Even minimal sun exposure is damaging to the skin. If you are exposed to the sun, even for as little as a few minutes every day (like walking to your car, walking to the bus or sitting next to a window), that cumulative exposure over the years will wrinkle your skin. There’s no such thing as careful or safe sun exposure. No skincare product – except a sunscreen with a high SPF and UVA protecting ingredients – can change that. And a sunscreen or moisturizer that doesn’t contain an effective SPF15 will end up just burning your money away.
• A great number of skincare problems are caused by the skincare products used to prevent them. Overly emollient moisturizers can clog pores, temporary face-lift products can cause wrinkles because of the irritation they cause on the skin, and products designed to control oily skin often contain ingredients that can make skin oilier (oil-free products often contain pore-clogging ingredients that don’t sound like oils). Lots of skincare products from the most expensive lines contain irritating ingredients such as fragrance, alcohol, witch hazel, etc. All these can contribute to the very skin problems that you want to eliminate from your face – and your life.
• Dry skin doesn’t wrinkle any more or less than oily skin. Oily skin may look less wrinkled (it can have a smoother appearance), but wrinkles are caused by sun exposure, genetic inheritance, muscles sagging (due to gravity) or other facial trauma – but not because of dry skin. All the moisturizers in the world won’t remove a wrinkle on your face or prevent one, despite the amount of vitamins or plants they contain. Of course, moisturizers can temporarily, day to day, make dry skin look smoother. But stop using the miracle moisturizer and in a day or two, very unmiraculously, your skin will be back to normal.
• Your skin may become inflamed, dry, and blemished if you use too many scrubs, products that contain potentially irritating ingredients, or several AHA or BHA products, either at the same time or in combination with one another. For instance, the following combinations can hurt the skin: a granular cleanser used with a loofah, a washcloth used with an abrasive scrub, an AHA product used with a granular scrub, or an astringent that contains alcohol used with an AHA product.
• Exfoliating the skin does not regenerate skin or build collagen. It is good to exfoliate the skin, but exfoliation doesn’t create new skin or get rid of wrinkles. Exfoliation merely serves to smooth the skin and help moisturizers be better absorbed.
• Generally, the fewer products you use on your skin, the better. The more you use, the greater your chances of allergic reactions, cosmetic acne (from product buildup in the pores), and/or irritation.
• Be wary of skincare products that "smell" nice or have pretty colors. Coloring agents and fragrance may seem attractive, but they are problematic and unnecessary in skincare products. Ingredients that add fragrance to a product, even natural fragrances, are notorious for causing allergic reactions or skin sensitivities.
• Do not automatically buy skincare products based on your age. Many products on the market are supposedly designed for women who are 30, 40, or more than 50. Before you buy into these arbitrary divisions, ask yourself why the over-50 group always gets lumped together while women, aged 20 to 49, have skin that requires three or four categories. There are a lot of years between 50 and 90. But based on this logic, someone who is 40 shouldn’t be using the same products as someone who is 50, but someone who is 80 should be using the same products as someone who is 50. Categorizing products by decades is no more than a marketing ploy. The skin has different needs based on how dry, sun-damaged, oily, blemished, sensitive it is, all of which have little to do with age. Turning 40 or 50 does not mean you should assume that your skin is drying up and you should begin using gobs of emollient moisturizers or skin creams.
• Treat the skin you have today, not the skin you had last month, last week or yesterday. Pay attention to what your skin tells you it needs at any given time. Skin changes according to the season, the climate, your emotions, your menstrual cycle. Your skin changes, so should your skincare routine. This month, you might need an extra moisturizer during the day or an emollient nighttime moisturizer. Next month, you may need only a lightweight sunscreen during the day and no moisturizer at night.
• Teenagers are not the only ones who are prone to acne. Women in their 30s, 40s, and 50s can have acne just like teens. Not everyone who had acne in their teens will outgrow it. And having clear skin as a teenager is no guarantee you won’t have acne when you’re 40 or 50.
• Oily skin types rarely, if ever, require a moisturizer. Specialty products, such as oil-free moisturizers, are rarely, if ever, good for someone with oily skin because even if they may truly not contain oil, they include plenty of ingredients that don’t sound like oil but can make the skin feel oily (or like an oil slick) and clog pores. Oil-free moisturizers can only be good for someone with normal to slightly dry skin. If you don’t have dry skin, you don’t need a moisturizer.
• There are great skin-lightening products on the market that can have an impact on sun-damage spots. You can expect about 20 to 40 percent improvement is you use these products, combined with an effective sunscreen. But plants are not a source of skin-lightening properties; the ingredients to look for on the label are hydroquinone, kojic acid or kojic palmate.
• AHAs (alpha hydroxy acids) can smooth skin but they can’t stop wrinkling. A well-formulated AHA product (one with a 4 to 10 percent concentration of AHA with a pH of 3 to 4.5) can help encourage cell turnover (or remove built-up surface skin cells). But it can’t affect actual cell production. More, the FDA reports that cosmetics with AHAs are currently very popular despite many unanswered questions about their safety.
• Tretinoin, the active ingredient in Retin-A and Renova, can change abnormal cell growth back to some level of normalcy. Retinoids (such as tretinoin) can positively affect cell production. But all retinoids need to be prescribed by a physician – the over-the-counter vitamin A products cannot perform like Retin-A or Renova.
(Next week, a face-to-face encounter with brand-name cosmetics as Paula Begoun goes deeper than skin-deep.)