The beauty industry: Under the microscope
With harmful ingredients and lack of FDA regulation - what are you putting on your skin?
Published in A Magazine, Fall 2019. Photo by Element5 Digital on UnSplash.
Cassie Keegan is a junior psychology and pre-med major and a fashion, beauty and fitness model in the Cleveland area. She modeled false lashes for a company in April 2019 that worked fine and looked great in photos. However, when she purchased the lashes to use on her own after the shoot, they didn’t look anything like the ones she wore at the photo shoot. The glue from the false lashes damaged her real ones and pulled some of them out.
“It was the same exact thing they were marketing, the same exact thing in the commercials, but it was just completely different,” she said.
Ad culture in the beauty industry is often misleading and purposely compelling to get consumers to buy products that they think they need. Think of phrases like, “makes dark circles disappear,” “dermatologist tested,” “anti-aging” and “natural.” However, the products don’t always work the way they’re advertised to, leading to customer confusion and frustration about wasting money and not knowing what products they should and shouldn’t be using.
According to Business Insider, the beauty industry is worth $532 billion and is predicted to continue growing.
Despite the size of the industry, there are no laws that require cosmetic products and ingredients, other than color additives, to have FDA approval before they go on the market, according to the FDA.
The lack of regulation is upsetting to many people and has led to the creation of initiatives that work to educate and advocate for clean beauty products, like Beauty Counter.
According to Beauty Counter, a company that advocates for better and safer regulation in the beauty industry, the United States hasn’t passed a law governing the cosmetics industry since 1938 and has only banned or restricted 30 ingredients from being used in beauty products overall. On the other hand, the European Union has banned or restricted 1,400 ingredients from beauty products.
A few years ago, Keegan was using a morning face wash by Neutrogena that was supposed to do great things for her skin. About 24 hours after she first applied it, she broke out in an awful rash. As far as she knew, she wasn’t allergic to anything in the face wash. When she had first started modeling, her agency made her go get an allergy test done. Now she has a list of the ingredients she has to stay away from that she takes with her when she shops.
“I do look at ingredients now, but I feel like I wouldn’t pay this close attention if I wasn’t modeling,” she said.
BeautyCounter has their own line of highly-regulated beauty products made only with clean and safe ingredients. Such as their Countersun Mineral Sunscreen Lotion, which was an Allure Best of Beauty winner in 2018.
Melissa Coia is a local BeautyCounter consultant and has been working for the company for two and a half years.
“Because the U.S. doesn’t regulate the beauty industry as much as it should, there are a lot of ingredients used in everyday products that have a direct effect on hormones, infertility and everything in your body,” Coia said. “Everything you use on your skin seeps in. It’s your body’s largest organ.”
Kristin Garner is also a local BeautyCounter consultant and has been working for the company for five years. Garner got involved with BeautyCounter when she learned that if she were to get pregnant, she could no longer use the beauty products she had been using because they had retinol in them.
According to Business Insider, retinol has been found to be irritating to the skin, increase sensitivity to UV rays and alter the production and division of skin cells. However, there is an alternative to retinol called bakuchiol, a plant extract that has the same benefits of retinol but without the side effects.
“It made me question, ‘Well if I’m pregnant and I can’t use it, then do I want to use this even if I’m not pregnant? What’s it doing to my skin and insides?’” Garner said. “I also have Crohn's disease. So having an autoimmune disease, I try to eat healthy and exercise, so why wouldn’t I want to put safer, cleaner products on my skin too?”
According to beauty magazine Allure, “Bakuchiol functions similar to a retinol, increasing cell turnover thereby stimulating collagen production and diminishing signs of aging such as fine lines, wrinkles, skin laxity and overall photodamage.”
Editor of beauty site Toronto Beauty Reviews, Maddie Monroe has been reviewing beauty products for six years now and focuses on the efficacy of the product, its production, advertising and marketing. Monroe works to ensure the products she recommends to her readers work well, don’t contain harmful ingredients and have a diverse ad campaign.
“I also like to prioritize local products, small businesses and cruelty-free or sustainable brands,” Monroe said. “I feel a great sense of responsibility when reviewing products since there are literally millions of products out there.”
Harmful ingredients and lack of regulation in the beauty industry is a monumental issue; but the way products are advertised can also be problematic.
According to the Huffington Post, women spend billions of dollars every year on beauty products to enhance their appearance. However, most of our culture’s common beauty procedures were virtually nonexistent a century ago and “many of our expectations of feminine beauty were shaped in large part by modern advertisers.”
Monroe said that not all companies are trying to communicate that consumers need certain products to fix, enhance or solve a problem and many companies, especially in the past few years, are developing marketing strategies that communicates beauty products as additions to an already beautiful person.
“But ultimately, the goal of marketing is to get a return on investment. You put out an ad so people buy your product,” Monroe said. “Sometimes this positive spin isn’t as well-meaning as we’d hope. It’s almost insidious, how some companies create a false sense of empowerment in their customers in order to make money. ‘Only the most badass woman can pull off this product.’”
Monroe thinks that sometimes this misleading ad culture is all about money. But even if a company makes a product that works exactly as advertised, they can’t be sure the consumer will use it properly. And even if a consumer applies a product exactly as directed, they can’t be sure that it will work as advertised with their specific body chemistry.
“It’s really up to consumers to do their research before buying and supporting brands that are ethical and high quality to increase their chances of a product working as designed and to support brands that don’t manipulate consumers through ads,” Monroe said.
Beauty blogs and customer reviews are a good way for consumers to get an idea of what products have worked for others before they spend money on a product that may not be worth it. However, there are also ways to get active in the beauty industry and advocate for better regulations.
“If someone is reading this and they’re thinking, ‘Wow this is something I’m really passionate about and want to learn more about,’ whether it’s BeautyCouner or not, just reaching out to someone like us where we can give them more info or lead them in the direction of advocacy,” Garner said. “That’s one of our biggest things is education, advocacy and spreading this mission to get safer products into the hands of everyone.”