Ranting about Beauty Products that Suck

I don’t really know where I got the idea that I should settle on products that I love and am loyal to.  Maybe it’s some marketing ploy or maybe I just made it up.  I guess I do have my faves but I love trying new products.  One of these days I’ll do a post about my faves because if I love them, anyone can love them. Let’s be real… I’m no beauty queen, no makeup artist, truly, no expert. Just a girl who loves a bold lip.

Anyway, as I was touching up my hair color and browsing new makeup products online I got thinking and thus, this post (ahem, rant) was born.

Can we talk about lip products?

There are so many of these lip products out there that everyone praises but then you start digging in and there are 16 steps to get it to actually look nice. Ummmmm… hard no.  I am JUST coming around to the idea of a primer and only with the idea that I might consider looking after my lips similar to how I look after my skin so I’ll cope with an extra layer of product to do that.

And by coming around I mean I’m thinking of purchasing a lip primer someday. I haven’t actually taken the idea anywhere.

But this 16 step process of exfoliating, moisturizing, priming, and god knows what else every time I want to put makeup on is just not going to happen. I bought this gorgeous NARS liquid lipstick. Applied it and loved the color like I’ve never loved a color before.  But I swear I barely had the lid back on and it was everywhere. It bled off my lips so there were no clean lines, it was on my teeth, my skin, anything I ate or drank. I don’t even think I had to take a drink… somehow I just looked at the water bottle and BAM lipstick stain.

I went back to Sephora to ask what I was missing, totally prepared to be sold a NARS primer or something, but basically the answer was… nothing.  I could try a liner, the girl told me or even a little setting powder on top but not too much because that just make it chalky.  So… that makes this color basically useless.  I don’t know who out there is buying a $30 lip product that’s only good for selfies but it’s not me. My lip color better put in the hours right there with me.

I just think that for a product to be worth high praise it should stand on its own, at least for the most part.  There are reasonable expectations like maybe a touch of primer or a setting spray.  Even I can handle some general good practices like that.  But if it’s going to be a highly specialized application process, a whole line of specialized products, and graduating from makeup artist school with honors… well then to me that’s not a great product.

… and skin products.

What the f*ck is up with these “water sprays” and “jade rollers” and another 16 step process to put make up on? Again… I was late to the party with face primer.

But even if I was late to the party on face primer, I’m not sold on rolling a rock around my face.

Oh and yes – me being late to the party on makeup trends is going to be a repeating pattern.

Anyway… I wear foundation for two reasons. I started wearing it, like most of us, as a teenager with acne to hide.  Nowadays I wear it because I love a bold lip and a bold lip looks kind of odd when your lips are fab AF but your skin is just kind of naked.

So needless to say I do not want something complicated.  It’s kind of on my list to experiment with just a little BB cream or something like that. The simpler the better.

Okay so those are the primary products I wear but I’m sure I’ll be back soon with more beauty rants.

❤ What are your beauty pet peeves?

“Trends” that sell you Junk can F*ck Off Anytime

The Beauty Industry as a whole has a very profitable interest in convincing everyone that beauty is super complicated and that it requires a lot of different, consumable products that will keep you coming in for refills freakin’ constantly.

Truth be told – there’s a lot of misleading crap out there designed to get you to buy and to help you justify purchase decisions as necessary when they’re not.

Next week we’re going to talk about taking back control of how you engage with the industry but this week I want to focus on saying no to junk.

I’m talking about reinvented products like make up applicators or brushes, skin care tools that do the same thing as the ones you already own, and my personal fave – things that do nothing OR that do what you already do with your hands.

Let’s look at Jade Rollers, for example. Not only did these things seemingly come out of nowhere, but a lot of them appeared with huge price tags. They have Jade or some similarily valued material as a “roller” on a handle so you can massage your face with it. They allegedly have benefits such as improved circulation, reducing under eye puffy-ness and helping products absorb better into your skin.

It all sounds awesome and you can see how it makes sense if you squint at it long enough.

Here’s the thing they aren’t talking about though: You don’t need a Jade Roller to massage your face. You have…uhh, hands. Take any cleaner or moisturizer you like and spend a few extra minutes massaging it into your skin. All the Jade Roller really does is force you to take the extra time to focus on massaging your cheeks and skin. However, it’s not a necessary component in the equation of facial massage for improved circulation and all the benefits that come it.

This is what I mean when I talk about beauty trends that sell you junk. They market a product as if the product is required to achieve certain results when in reality it’s not the key to said results at all. Beauty bloggers, and beauty companies that claim they’re here to improve your beauty results could of just told you the secret was in good circulation and that facial massage would help improve your results. Then they could of offered you tools to make massaging your skin easier or to vary your routine but they didn’t. They just claimed you had to have the jade roller.

Ugh.

I hope I can keep up with the junky trends just to bring the #realbabebeauty squad real talk and get passed all the crap we’re told we need in order to be beautiful.

The other example I like is make up brushes. Someone is always reinventing the wheel in this department and claiming that their brush, which may or may not look a lot like every brush that came before it, has magically better results.

Save your money because that’s a lie. Find a way you like for putting make up on your face – make up brush, sponges, those buffer-brush things, and then ignore all the reinvented wheels. Let ’em roll on by.

Take yourself somewhere beautiful with all the money you did’n’t let the beauty industry suck out of your wallet.