65 to 18 in 4 days

[anotheranon]

Degrees, that is. It was springlike Thursday, but far below what's "normal" for this area today. Shearling booties rule. Just sayin'.

Still, I felt compelled to go out into this today, for a trip to the vitamin shop and one of my periodic and usually futile trips to see if there's anything on the drugstore shelves that approximates the somewhat swanky skincare stuff (say that 5 times real fast) I unfortunately got used to in the past few years.

Can someone please tell me why I do this to myself? I always hope I'll find something that works on the cheap, and with rare exceptions (Queen Helene's Cocoa Butter body lotion, mmm!) I find myself looking at row after commercial row of snake oil :P

All I was looking for was a facial moisturizer that 1) doesn't have gunk that will make me break out and 2) isn't perfumed to within an inch of it's (shelf) life. Came up empty - neither place had the one product recommended by CosmeticsCop that looked like what I was after, and the one tube that looked somewhat promising was expensive enough that I figured it would ultimately be more sensible to spend an extra $10 and spring for my pricey fave, because I know it works and doesn't stink :P

Got back without freezing to death (thinsulate gloves + New Rock boots also rule) and am now considering how I want to spend the rest of the day.

Comments

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

You definitely need to check out the Cosmetics Cop site (see link in original post). The author of the site comes out with a new version of her book "Don't Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me" every couple of years with reviews of the latest cosmetics and cosmetic ingredients. It's less technical and geared more towards consumers, but you may still find some interesting info.

My one opinion in favor of the pricier lines is that I find they DO tend to be more concentrated, so they last longer - I admit bias, but this is especially true of MAC (http://www.maccosmetics.com) - they don't skimp on the pigment so the color in the tube is what goes on your face so you're not re-applying your [insert makeup here] 3 times a day. </fangirl>

I will definitely check out lemelenge.com when I have a few moments to spend with it.

[nminusone.livejournal.com]

I'll check out that book. I like reading about what's out there, function wise, even though the stuff that I buy isn't for cosmetic purposes, but rather pharmacological ones.

It is nice to know there's someone out there looking out for the consumer! That I think is the one area where the supplement industry has an edge, in that there are *lots* of sources of fairly solid info, once you somehow dodge the hucksters of course.

I do believe that the better brands are, well, better, but I think they're kinda screwed by the marketplace. There are plenty of markets where you just can't sell a cheap product no matter how good it is. I hate that mentality because it hoses those of us who want good deals, or who want to set up a business offering good deals. I suppose I will do some math, though. If I get a minute I will try to work out the markup on some of the better cosmetics (which others have mentined) things and post it. At a wild guess I suspect they're priced at 50-100x the cost of materials, but that's just a wild guess.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

It is nice to know there's someone out there looking out for the consumer! That I think is the one area where the supplement industry has an edge, in that there are *lots* of sources of fairly solid info, once you somehow dodge the hucksters of course.

I can't speak to the supplement industry, but I know that even though the cosmetic industry is governed by the FDA, they have some wiggle room with the truth because they aren't selling their products as a medicine, which requires purpose and side effects to be spelled out fairly clearly.

I'm especially amused by shampoos that claim to "revive" dull hair - hair is dead! You can make it look better, but you can't REVIVE it!