Lotions, Potions and Optical Physics (Part 1)

Every so often, the fashion mags publish guides to "updating" your look, targeted at those women who figured out their own ideal hem length, hairstyle and makeup colors sometime in their mid-twenties and haven't bothered to deviate from the routine since. That's so going to be me one day, though I rather doubt I'll care, since I don't think there's very much in my look or routine that's a response to the moment. Fortunately, I've probably got a decade or so before it becomes any sort of problem that I'll need to feel compelled to ignore.

In the meantime, I do have a system and static set of products that works well for me. It did take some amount of time and energy to get it all right, but the fact that it takes so little effort to maintain makes the earlier investment well worthwhile. Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed that everything I buy doesn't all get discontinued at once.

First, though, some background. At some point in my early 20s, I decided it would be good for my Celtic complexion if I figured out some of the technical details about how sunscreens work. So, I did a bit of research into that question, and eventually gave myself a fair overview of cosmetic chemistry generally. I did manage to learn to choose a sunscreen, as well as a lot of little things that helped make shopping in the cosmetics department feel like less of a shot in the dark.

How could this not be intimidating?

Let me emphasize the caveats here: a) my interest and level of exploration of these particular technical issues begin and end at the "informed consumer" level, and b) I'm not a cosmetic chemist - I'm not any sort of chemist, despite what's suggested by my shelf of college textbooks - a cosmetologist, or even a makeup hound, and I've had no professional exposure to the cosmetics industry.

That said, when friends or family catch me reading seemingly-inscrutable labels and ask for general, non-expert knowledge or advice, this is what I generally tell them:

1. There is (almost) nothing new under the sun. Cosmetic chemistry is a pretty stable field, and it's very uncommon for a new ingredient or formulation to evolve that does something utterly different from anything else that's already on the market. This isn't to say that, for example, every moisturizer, or whatever, is the same - there are good formulations and bad ones - but almost every one of the dozens of new offerings that's put on the shelf every year is just a new combination of things that have been around for a long time, or of new things which are functionally indistinguishable from the old ones. The entire industry marketing structure is dependent on nobody knowing this.
   


2. Notwithstanding the above, everything changes all the time. The fact that Neutrogena made a great full-spectrum sunscreen last summer says nothing about the rest of their product line, nor even about what you'll find when you go sunscreen shopping for your Hawaii vacation in January.
   


3. Natural is not so good. In addition to the usual greenwashing troubles: a) Lots of "natural" stuff (plant extracts being the biggest offenders) act primarily as irritants to the skin. There are companies that market their products with catchphrases like, "If you wouldn't eat it, why would you put it on your skin?" All sorts of ignorance lie behind a question like that, not the least of which being that there are lots of things fine to eat (grapefruit?) that do most skin far more harm than good. b) If a cosmetic product were actually plant-derived and preservative-free, you would have to keep it in the refrigerator. c) Is a particular chemical compound derived from a "natural" source better (or worse, or different in any way) than the same compound derived from a "synthetic" source? It depends, but usually not. From a chemical engineering standpoint (so I do feel technically qualified to comment on this part) the manufacturing processes and final products (including impurities) will be nearly identical, with a few very specific exceptions.
   


4. Nothing is good for everybody. It's pretty well known by now that, within the world of cosmetics marketing, "hypo-allergenic," "non-irritating," "for sensitive skin," and "non-comedogenic" don't have actual fixed definitions, and thus can't be clinically proved. Certain ingredients are more likely to cause problems for a larger number of people than others, but there's no ingredient that's guaranteed to cause no problems for anybody at all. That's annoying, because it means that all you can do is hold to basic guidelines, experiment with products and keep a close eye on how your skin responds to specific inputs.|
   
   
5. In general, price is an even less reliable indicator of quality in cosmetics than it is for most types of goods.

Ok, to avoid making this very, very long, I'll break here, and tell you about my routine particulars later.