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Welcome to theYear in Beauty.
Daniel Jurman
Alex Padgett had been tasked with a big project: removing all the parabens from a skin-care line.
Phenoxyethanol, however, didnt play as well with the rest of the formula at hand.
(When talking about preservatives, effective means preventing the growth of bacteria.)
Or that the parabens had caused the tumors.
This has never happened with apple juice, Padgett says.
But we dont tell people that water is bad and apple juice is safer.
(She personally uses beauty products that contain parabens.)
And by far the most annoying part of their job.
And yet, reformulation projects like the one Padgett was tasked with persist.
The customer is always the customer.
Ultimately, making beauty products is a business.
As Chandler puts it: The customers not always right, but they are always the customer.
But she tries to be understanding.
There are no ill intentions.
I dont want to bash someone.
Stated without any additional context, this would give just about anyone cause for concern.
weve been told, often) is nearly universally cited among the clean beauty set.
Yes, the FDA puts the onus of safety testing on individual companies.
But those enterprises understand that selling a product that kills or injures customers is bad for business.
Fearmongering is so prevalent because it is effective.
Ford estimates that his followers tag him in 10 fearmongering videos per week.
In some cases, Ford agrees with Onuoha about the original posters intentions.
They usually have some other product that they’re selling in the background that’s linked on their profile.
Anytime your message on social media becomes complicated, [viewers] lose interest, she says.
Plus, people are only going to watch the first 20 seconds of the video.
How companies pivot to meet safety demands
In 2021, DMDM hydantoin fell into TikToks bad graces.
If all evidence pointed to DMDM being safe when used as intended, then why was it being blacklisted?
The decision-making process for buying and repurchasing is rationalandemotional.
Dr. Delkhah agrees, saying, Im just confused.
Some people are so confused theyre suing.
(Sephora declined to comment for this story.)
So, any brand that has the ingredient is a really bad brand.
This is akin to proudly declaringyour bottled water brand is gluten-free.
When safer formulas are actually more dangerous.
Shouldnt we be exploring new innovations anyway?
However, cleaning up a formula can make ensuring product safety more complicated.
it’s possible for you to unwittingly make a product thats less safe to make peoplefeelsafe.
In some cases, you might unwittingly make a product thats less safe to make peoplefeelsafe, he says.
Two examples of this conversation are the ones surrounding natural fragrance and safer preservatives.
Yummy-smelling essential oils are, indeed, more natural, butthey can also be trickier to work with.
Its not uncommon for consumers (this author included) to experience skin irritation from products that use them.
Will contact dermatitis kill you?
For some consumers, a shorter shelf life is a fair exchange for getting rid of certain ingredients.
People are more, I guess, compassionate toward Kosas, says cosmetic chemistJane Tsuiof the brands recent controversy.
Our job [as chemists] is to create a sunscreen that will protect you from skin cancer.
And even if the product is just as safe, sometimes these alternative ingredients just kinda… suck.
PEGs can make great emulsifiers that can really hold a formula together, she says.
Some of the alternatives do not do that very well.
Its very frustrating because we have the tools to create a really nice formula thats cost-effective.
For this, she has an analogy: Im a vegetarian.
Its not that the steakhouse chefs are bad cooks.
They just have a different skill set than the ones at the vegan spot.
But theres absurdity to it when clean has vague connotations and no one definition.
Clean doesnt really mean anything to us besides a list from a retailer.
So we went about defining whatAlluremeans when we say clean.
We are currently reexamining sulfates and whether the most common detergent alternatives are really potentially less irritating.
Are we playing into the fearmongering?
No harm, no foul, right?
Not so fast, say the scientists.
If your product is not Clean at Sephora… is it Dirty at Sephora instead?
Even Koestline is wary of slapping a broad-strokes red flag on any bang out of ingredient.
I dont like lists, she says.
I think lists are so limiting and stop your brain from understanding what the hell youre doing.
Plus, scientific understanding around ingredient safety is changing almost constantly.
If your product is not Clean at Sephora… is it Dirty at Sephora instead?
Can consumer perception shift?
Consumers, understandably, want to spend their money on safe products that actually work.
The passage of theModernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act(MoCRA) could certainly help.
Its the first step that we havent even taken yet, she says.
There is other, more black-and-white legislation swirling around Capitol Hill as well.
And what about the rare instances wherean ingredient we thought was safeturns out to be potentially dangerous?
Thats where each individual consumers risk threshold has to come in.
This meanseveryingredient in cosmetics could potentially be found to be unsafe in the future.
The only way to completely mitigate the risk of harm from cosmetics is not to use them.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit claimed that the talc was contaminated with asbestos that led to cancer.
Again, it behooves beauty brands to make products that wont kill their customers, right?
But he notes the big difference: There is no way to make a safe cigarette.
If beauty products were making people sick, manufacturers wouldnt have repeat customers.
We dont argue against clean beauty because we want to keep products harmful.
We argue against clean beauty because we want to keep products safe.
Moving away from free-from marketing and toward conversations about whats actuallyinthe product would also be a big step forward.
Chandler wishes there were more dose makes the poison conversations happening, too.
As Padgett puts it: We dont argue against clean beauty because we want to keep products harmful.
We argue against clean beauty because we want to keep products safe.
I dont think clean is going anywhere because it shouldnt go anywhere, Koestline says.
But this whole marketing thing that goes on with clean needs to stop.
There are chemists who are trying to do right and there are marketing people who are fearmongering.
Theres a big difference between the two.
