Many of you know that one of my favourite past times is to wander through cosmetics departments just to hear the pitches the sales staff use to sell the very expensive cream and lotions and such.
I always preface with: I don't think the sales people are actually telling un-truths, even though these sales pitches are complete fiction, as they are trained to use these sales pitches. I blame the companies for over inflating their claims of the products and, of course, the marketing teams which create the "story" behind products.
A popular marketing method is to imply some level of medical results when substantiating such claims is impossible.
The method is in the language - and the most common terms I hear are "deeply penetrates" or "deeply cleans" or some other version of that.
You've Been Fooled By These Cosmetic Claims
It's the "deeply" that implies the product works in layer of the skin which will give a more profound result, but this is such a misleading load of nonsense because when it comes to skin "deeply" is a relative term.
Here are two versions I heard this week:
"The formula penetrates deeply into the layers of skin. . . "
. . .sounds very impressive but it omits very important information needed to determine if this actually has any benefit. All cosmetic ingredients can penetrate into the layers of the skin. That's the whole point of a cosmetic. When the molecules are small enough to pass through the stratum corneum the word "layers" is used simply to confound. The skin's layers are microscopic, which means a small molecule will penetrate literally hundreds of layers of skin and still only work superficially. If the product penetrated stratum levels that would be different.
"This cleanser cleans the skin very deeply . . . "
. . .so what qualifies deep? Cleansers only work on the very surface of the skin. When the word "deeply" is used the image created in that the cleanser can penetrate the pores and remove black heads. This is simply not the case with most cleansers (yes some can do this but they are usually medical grade formulas). Truth is if a cosmetic cleanser really penetrated the pore without proper buffers and such then the skin would actually bleed. While the cleanser is probably cleaning very thoroughly it is only working on the surface of the skin.
Before you spend your hard earned money on DNA-based skin care cosmetics, read this.
Here's the truth - the very definition of cosmetic means "topical" and "temporary" - over the counter cosmetics do not penetrate much beyond the very surface.
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