Why a New Edition
As is true with every edition of the books I’ve written on the cosmetics industry starting
in 1984 with Blue Eyeshadow Should Be Illegal and then Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter
Without Me, and Don’t Go Shopping for Hair Care Products Without Me, much has changed
in the world of makeup and skin. Serious research has increased exponentially on all
fronts—from antioxidants, anti-irritants, cell-communicating ingredients, skin-identical
ingredients, aquaporins, MMPs, sun protection, and on and on. We know more about
why skin wrinkles, how skin heals, what the effects of hormones are on skin function, and
how to treat blackheads and acne, not to mention having a better understanding of how
sun and oxygen destroy skin.
Cosmetic dermatology and plastic surgery procedures have greatly improved, though
the array of options has become more extensive and the risks or benefits more difficult
to evaluate. As I compiled the research and began rewriting this book, I was amazed at
how far the cosmetics world has advanced as well as dismayed at how much has remained
the same. Regrettably, there are still infinite misleading claims, poor formulations, the
all-natural farce, the abundance of skin-care myths, and the never-ending fiction that
expensive means better.
It was an amazing process to assemble all this information. At first I thought it was go-
ing to be a fairly simple update. It turns out that almost 60% of this book was completely
rewritten and reorganized. I hope you find it helpful as you try to decipher and decode the
complicated world of beauty. I know it can be done, but it isn’t easy. What is certain is that
the story must start with information supported by peer-reviewed, published studies—and
that’s what you’ll find in this book.
All Over the World
Over the past several years I have done media interviews and speaking engagements
to women’s groups around the world. I have done presentations for thousands of women
from places as far-flung as Jakarta, Indonesia; Seoul, Korea; Stockholm, Sweden; Mexico
City, Mexico; Singapore; Sydney and Melbourne, Australia; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and
almost every major city in the United States.
From Toronto to Dallas, and everyplace in between, no matter where I’ve gone, I’ve never
had to change my topic of discussion. I don’t even have to do extra research, because the
cosmetics industry is so universally crazy. Everywhere I go, the advertisements are so entirelydeceptive and the claims so utterly bogus that women ask me the same questions. They
want to know why a product they bought didn’t work. Why didn’t their wrinkles go away?
Why didn’t their scar fade? Why didn’t their skin discolorations change? Why are they still
breaking out or just starting to break out? Why do they still have dry, flaky skin after buying
so many products promising to make things better? What is the best skin-care ingredient?
Do I know about a recent product launched with some miracle ingredient currently being
advertised or in an infomercial? I get the exact same questions all over the world.
What almost always happens during my presentation is I see a look of understanding
come over women’s faces as they grasp how they have been duped time and time again by
the cosmetics industry. There isn’t a part of the world where the cosmetics industry works
any differently, or where the products are any better (not in India, Japan, or even France),
or the claims are any less far-fetched. What women everywhere want is to take the best
care of their skin, and what most women fall into is the trap of believing the falsehoods
propagated by a vast part of the cosmetics industry.
Let Me Introduce Myself... I am the author and publisher of several best-selling books on the cosmetics industry.
My first was Blue Eyeshadow Should Be Illegal, published in 1984 (which was revised four
times); then came Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me (currently in its seventh
edition); and Don’t Go Shopping for Hair Care Products Without Me (there have been three
editions of that book). Over the years I have been a syndicated columnist with Knight
Ridder News Tribune Service, a consultant to other cosmetics companies, and a consultant
to dermatologists.
My research and writing have been based strictly on my earnest desire to get beyond the
hype and chicanery of the cosmetics industry and to disseminate straightforward informa-
tion that a consumer can really use to look and feel more beautiful.
My expertise and background, like that of any other consumer reporter who covers a
range of topics, is based on extensive research in the subject area. What makes my situation
unique is that I also have over 25 years of personal experience from working as a profes-
sional makeup artist and aesthetician and from selling makeup and skin-care products at
department stores, salons, and my own stores, developing my own line of products, and
helping other cosmetics companies develop new products.
I use my reporting background to continually and extensively research the cosmetics
industry. I base all my comments on comprehensive interviews with dermatologists, oncolo-
gists, cosmetics chemists, and cosmetic ingredient manufacturers, and on information I’ve
gleaned from both medical and science journals as well as cosmetics industry magazines. I
am constantly reviewing scientific abstracts and studies. I do not capriciously or abruptly
make any conclusions. Everything I report is supported by studies and information from
experts in the field, and I document my sources throughout this book. Naturally, there are
many who disagree with my assertions, and I do the best I can to present other points of
view whenever possible. However, I assure you that more often than not a great number of
people in the industry agree with my conclusions, even if they can’t state so publicly.A Personal Quest
In many ways I’m surprised that reviewing, researching, investigating, and questioning
the cosmetics industry is what I still do for a living. When I started out as a makeup artist
back in 1978 it was never my intent to end up writing as a consumer advocate about the
cosmetics industry, much less to develop my own product line.
At first my mission was personal. I had suffered with acne for many years. By the ago of
18 I had been to over a dozen dermatologists. I tried hundreds of skin-care products from
both inexpensive and expensive cosmetics lines and still I had acne. How could that be?
How could all the stuff I diligently applied to my skin—which salesperson after salesperson
and doctor after doctor assured me would work—not work? Sometimes one routine worked
a little, but not as well as I had hoped and not for very long. And there were always side
effects. Most products made my skin so red and irritated I thought it was going to fall off.
Slowly but surely I worked my way through the confusion, and after much research and
lots more frustration I began to recognize some fundamental problems with the informa-
tion provided and the products sold by the cosmetics industry. (I’ll never forget the day I
learned what was really in the Clinique 3-Step system! Their toner at the time contained
acetone, the soap was just soap with yellow coloring, and their yellow moisturizer was waxy
thickening ingredients and lanolin.) I also found that many of the same difficulties and
frustrations were present in the field of dermatology.
Aside from my skin-care struggles as a teenager, in 1978 I got my first job as a freelance
makeup artist in Washington, D.C. Depending on the time of year, when the freelance
makeup business was slow I supplemented my income with work at department-store make-
up counters. But each new job for a different cosmetics line resulted in me being fired.
My first dismissal came after an argument with the line representative of a
department-store cosmetics company where I was working. The representative wanted me
to say that a toner could close pores and a moisturizer could heal, when I knew that wasn’t
true. (If a toner could close pores, everyone who used toners would have flawless, poreless
skin, and if moisturizers could heal skin, no one would have a pimple or a wrinkle or a
scar.) That job lasted about two months.
Several months later, at another department store and for a different cosmetics company,
I was involved in a conflict with several of the cosmetics saleswomen working at the other
counters. If a customer wanted a particular type of product and I didn’t think the product
from the line I was selling was right, or if my line didn’t offer one, I would walk her over to
another counter that I knew had the right product and sell it to her. That caused a nuclear
meltdown. I was told to stay behind my counter and not touch another product from any
line other than the one I was assigned! (When I recommended that the woman could walk
over to the other counter herself, I got in trouble with the sales representatives from my
line.) How ludicrous! A product I wanted to recommend, five feet away from me, was out
of reach because it wasn’t from the counter I was standing behind. That’s not my idea of
customer service!A Personal Beauty Miracle
My career truly began or at least became possible in November 1976 when the United
States Food and Drug Administration required all cosmetics to have complete ingredient
listings on their labels in descending order (largest percentage first, smallest percentage
last). The FDA also standardized the way ingredients needed to be listed to minimize the
confusion that would surely arise if various synonyms or trade names for chemical names
were used (Sources: www.fda.gov; and Contact Dermatitis, April 2006, pages 94–97). While
there are certainly products that fail to follow the regulation by using ingredient names that
either hide the real nature of the ingredient or make it sound more natural than it really is,
that now happens much less often.
To grasp how significant this regulation was, it took till 1995 for Australia to be the
next country to mandate ingredient listings on cosmetics, then Europe in 2000, and finally
Canada—are you ready for this—in 2008 (but they have until 2010 to comply). In other
words, until fairly recently a product being sold in the U.S. would have ingredient listings
while in the rest of the world the exact same product would have no ingredient listing.
Clearly there was something the cosmetics industry didn’t want consumers to know! But it
gave me a mission and a job. I wanted to know and understand what was in the products I
was using and eventually I came to share what I had learned in my books and online.
There is a caveat to all this. As wonderful as this worldwide ingredient regulation is, the
downside is that it is almost impossible for a consumer to decipher the ingredients on a
label. The words are incomprehensible. They are either too technical or multisyllabic, or the
plant extracts, which are supposed to be in Latin for botanical accuracy, are in a language
no one knows. Though even if you knew the Latin name of the plant that wouldn’t neces-
sarily be helpful because each part of the plant has its own properties. Stem, leaf, flower,
and roots may be more or less beneficial for skin. Even vitamin C as an ingredient has many
derivatives that can show up on a cosmetic ingredient list, such as ascorbic acid, ascorbyl
glucoside, L-ascorbic acid, ascorbyl palmitate, sodium ascorbate, potassium ascorbate,
calcium ascorbate, tetra-isopalmitoyl ascorbic acid, and tetrahexyldecyl ascorbate, to name
a few, each having its own benefits, stability profile, and potency.
Cosmetics companies love to showcase the way the part or form of some plant, mineral,
or vitamin their products contain is the best. Vitamin C is one of those ingredients that
has often been at the front of this marketing ploy. You may have heard of Ester-C, which
contains mainly calcium ascorbate, but also a small amount of other vitamin C metabolites.
Supposedly this makes Ester C more bioavailable than other forms of vitamin C. This in-
formation only comes from the company selling Ester C and there is no published research
showing this to have any merit. On the other hand, there has been research showing Ester
C to have no preferred benefit over other forms of vitamin C.
The Best Ingredients for Skin?
The question women and reporters worldwide always ask me is: Which ingredient or
ingredients are the best for skin? The good news is the same as the bad news, because there
isn’t just one or even a few—there are hundreds of brilliant ingredients for skin. While thatmeans there are great options to choose from, it also makes the selection process exceedingly
difficult. Everyone wants a magic bullet, and the world of cosmetics has nothing even vaguely
resembling a single-ingredient miracle. A cosmetics company may showcase an ingredient
and make it sound sensational, but the truth is there are lots and lots of sensational ingre-
dients. The next time a salesperson, infomercial, or advertisement wants to convince you
of some miracle ingredient, ignore it, they are lying through their teeth.
A cosmetics chemist has access to thousands of ingredients that can go into a formula,
and trying to translate them all into a format a consumer can understand is impossible.
In the cosmetic ingredient dictionary on my web site at www.cosmetics-cop.com I have
included over 3,000 ingredients, yet that is only the tip of a rather big and continually
growing ingredient database. I spend endless time analyzing what the research says about
the formulations and contents of each product I consider.
Struggling with the Cosmetics Industry
My final department-store cosmetics-counter job ended when I just couldn’t take listen-
ing to the distortions and exaggerated claims anymore and decided to go out on my own.
I opened my own makeup stores in 1981. I didn’t sell blue eyeshadow, wrinkle creams, or
toners that claimed to close pores. Along the way, I hooked up with a business partner who
was at first thrilled with my ideas and concept, mainly because of the media attention my
rather controversial stores attracted.
My stores were generating a lot of attention from the press, and in 1982 I was asked to
make regular appearances on a local TV station in Seattle, KIRO-TV. I also started receiving
national and international TV and print exposure.
Eventually my ideas and concepts no longer pleased my partner. The department-store
counters were crowded with women buying blue eyeshadow, wrinkle creams, and toners,
so why shouldn’t we sell them too? After all, if you saw women throwing away their money
on those sorts of products, at prices ranging from $25 to $250 an ounce for items that cost
75 cents to $4 to produce, you wouldn’t want a partner like me either. I sold my shares
back to her in 1984 and stayed at KIRO-TV for the next two years. I learned a lot about
investigative reporting and writing during my time at KIRO-TV in Seattle.
I left the TV station toward the end of 1985 after finishing my first book, Blue Eye-
shadow Should Be Illegal. I decided to self-publish after receiving several rejection letters
from major publishing companies telling me that, although they liked my manuscript, I
wasn’t a celebrity or a model, and no one would be interested in my point of view. I dis-
agreed. I believed lots of women (OK, not all of them!) were tired of hearing useless, and
at times incorrect, information from models and celebrities who were born beautiful and
knew which makeup artists, photographers, and managers to hire, but very little about the
cosmetics they promoted.
I was right, and I sold several hundred thousand copies of my first book (after several
appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show)! And what happened was wonderful. Women were
thanking me for opening their eyes to the reality of what did and didn’t work in the world
of skin care and makeup—the perfect response. Yet despite all I had written, I still receivedthousands of letters from women asking me, now that they knew how crazy the cosmetics
industry was, what they should buy or what I thought of the product they were using or
thinking of using. It was one thing to have an overview of the facts, but quite another to
have specific information about a specific product. How could anyone tell if the formulation
of a product was effective? How would a person know whether the marketing claims were
valid? How could someone find out if a company’s assertion about their impressive studies
backing up their miracle skin-care product were true? That’s when I wrote Don’t Go to the
Cosmetics Counter Without Me, which is now in its seventh edition. I’ve sold over 2 million
copies of this book worldwide and it is now online, in an expanded, continually updated
review database, at www.Beautypedia.com.
Meanwhile, the demand to know what works and what doesn’t has grown, mainly be-
cause the industry has grown. As is true in all the books I write, what I also want to do is
to separate cosmetics fact from cosmetics fiction and reality from myth, because the fiction
and myths spread by the cosmetics industry are nothing less than startling and frustrating.
Compared to the information provided by the cosmetics industry, Mother Goose stories
sound like the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Perhaps the most difficult part of my job is keeping a straight face when I hear the crazy
things cosmetics salespeople tell consumers. Combating this endless parade of useless and
bizarre information can be maddening. But it’s my job and, thankfully, it has been far more
rewarding than I ever expected.
You need this book because it will help you save money—lots of money!—and help you
take the best possible care of your skin. Depending on how you spend money on cosmet-
ics, it can add up to a savings of thousands of dollars. And it may literally save your skin
if you happen to be using products that are poorly formulated or just plain bad for skin.
The bottom line is simple: Wasting money on products that don’t work or don’t live up to
their claims isn’t pretty.
Cosmetics Chemistry—An Art and a Science
Every step of the way I am in awe of how beautifully most cosmetics work. Where
would we be without the brilliant work of the cosmetics chemists who make the exquisite
products we use? Because of their astonishing skill we have moisturizers that take care of
dry skin and aid in making skin healthier and more resilient. There are products that re-
ally can fight wrinkles and help improve their appearance in some fairly significant ways.
Cosmetics chemists have created mascaras that can build thick, lush lashes without flaking
or smearing, and foundations that even out skin tone, making it look flawless. We have
sunscreens that protect skin from sunburn as well as from wrinkles and the potential for
skin cancer. There is an endless array of sensuous lipsticks that add relatively long-lasting
color and definition to the mouth. Not to mention blushes that softly accent cheekbones
and eyeshadows that define eyes, and, well, the list is endless.
I want to thank all the cosmetics chemists everywhere who strive to produce better and
better products that continue to make the beauty industry so incredibly beautiful. I also
want to ask cosmetics chemists to do the best they can, whenever they can, to combat theinsane marketing departments they have to work with! After interviewing and talking to
hundreds of cosmetics chemists over the years, I know most of you don’t believe even a
fraction of what the advertisements, salespeople, infomercial hucksters, or editorials in
fashion magazines say about the products you create. Your work is rooted in science, not
hyperbole. I also know this is a risky business. After all, creating products that no one buys
is not going to get anyone a promotion, and the marketing department knows all too well
what women love to hear, no matter how ridiculous it may sound. But try anyway, just to
bring a bit of fresh air into an otherwise very cloudy business.
