I started taking beauty really seriously sometime in late 2016, and started writing about beauty in 2017(?).
Over the years, I’ve tried countless beauty products and learnt a lot of things the hard way, and one day I thought it would be a good idea to pencil down the lessons I’ve picked up and some important pointers I wanted to share with fellow beauty junkies and newbie alike.
Take note that these are just my personal thoughts – feel free to disagree if you’ve experienced otherwise or have a different opinion!
I believe that the great part about being in a beauty community is sharing your personal experience and learning from one another (:
Don’t take award rankings or best-selling charts too seriously
I know a lot of us buy products because it is said to be some award winner or best-selling product in drugstores, but here’s the tea: they’re not as reliable as you think they are.
I’m not saying they’re necessarily fake, but some of them are judged by ‘industry professionals’ who are just as human as you and me. They are prone to personal biases/preferences and may even carry their own agenda when recommending products, so how can you be so sure that their ratings are 100% objective?
Best-sellers are also poor indicators of how good a product is. Some products fly off the shelves because they’re cheap, always on sale, or simply hyped up for some reason – they aren’t necessarily the best one out there.
This also brings me to my next point, which is that…
Holy grails don’t always work for everyone
I learned this the hard way when I first started out on my beauty journey, particularly with my skincare. People were always raving about products and that made me really excited to try them out, only to discover that they made my skin mad, LOL.
Holy grails work well for most people, but not everyone. No one’s skin condition or skin concerns can possibly be the same – you could be highly allergic to fragrances but the majority of the population is not, which is why you’ll never find success with that sleeping mask that smells amazing.
In addition, environmental factors like weather and pollution vary from country to country. When I first used K-beauty products, I found that their BB creams were incredibly oily. My Korea tour guide told me that it was because Korea had dry winters and many Korean ladies would suffer from dry skin, which oilier BB creams worked well on. These wouldn’t work too well on me, a combi-oily skin gal sweating buckets 365 days in Singapore.
The important thing is to find your personal holy grails – products that work well for you simply because they fit your skin, not someone else’s skin. I know it’s easier said than done, but that’s precisely why the journey to formulating a perfect skincare routine is long and arduous. I’m almost 4 years in and I still haven’t perfected my routine, so that shows as much.
Exercise discretion when reading beauty reviews
I know I’m being ironic here, but hear me out on this one.
By now it is no surprise that a lot of paid reviews are out there in the market, and while most of them maintain a fair amount of integrity, I maintain that it’s better to have some amount of skepticism about how well the products fare. Some brands are very strict about what kind of reviews are allowed to be published, or the extent to which poor product performance be discussed, so…
Should I then take non-paid reviews seriously? I believe they’re possibly more sincere and truthful, but as I’ve talked in the above section, no product works the same for everyone. A toner could work wonders on someone’s skin within 2 days, whereas it takes 2 months for you because no one’s skin is identical. I would hate for you to miss out on a good product simply because someone said it’s no good, or that you buy something to try because a famous blogger said it worked for her.
That being said, beauty reviews can still be very useful – if you know how to pick out the important points of each review. For example, if a blogger says that the product contains fragrances and you know your skin hates it, then you can easily skip out on it; if a blogger says she hates the thick texture that gave her acne, and you’re worried about clogged pores as well, you can focus your energy on another product with a thinner texture. Read carefully into what makes or breaks the product in each review before deciding whether it’s for you.
Price =/= quality
I’m never convinced that expensive beauty products are necessarily better than budget drugstore options. This is especially after working in the beauty industry for a while + being hooked on cheap K-beauty products lol.
The ingredients in your products really don’t cost as much as you think they do. A huge portion of the markup goes to marketing – after all, someone has to pay for employing that famous brand ambassador, sending PR kits, and doing beautiful photoshoots.
Luxury beauty products are sometimes pretty disappointing, especially when you consider that you could be paying a fraction of the price on something else that works just as well, if not better. I simply can’t justify paying $100 for, say, a Christian Louboutin lipstick, when my Etude lippies cost 1/5 the price and are just as gorgeous.
Study ingredient lists thoroughly
I’m tired of skincare brands advertising their ‘natural ingredients’ and ‘chemical-free’ products. There’s no such thing as chemical-free skincare because technically everything is a chemical, and natural ingredients aren’t necessarily better for your skin either, FYI.
The next time you’re looking at a serum claiming that calendula extract is its hero ingredient, take a look at the ingredient list and see where it’s ranked among other ingredients. Ingredient lists will list ingredients from the highest to the lowest proportion, so if you see that calendula is ranked at the bottom of the list while alcohol is somewhere up there with water, my advice is to drop this, pronto: you really don’t want to use more alcohol than calendula extract on your skin.
Other than looking at proportions, take note of ingredients that are possibly comedogenic, irritating, or inflammatory. It’ll take me many other posts to talk about this in detail, but generally stay away from fragrances and most alcohols.
Don’t beat yourself up over your lack of clear skin
I know most of us fantasise having clear skin that shines for days with no zit in sight, but here’s something I’ve hypothesised: there is no such thing as 100% clear skin.
A lot of celebrities you see on TV, particularly K-celebs, have skin that looks flawless and dewy. The truth? Many of them go for facials that not all of us can afford, and most of them look so perfect thanks to superior makeup skills.
I learnt that in K-beauty, it’s common practice to use concealers to dot away every single blemish rather than use a high-coverage foundation to cover everything, which is why we’re sometimes duped into believing that the flawless skin is natural. Most of us barely have the time to eat breakfast, needless say dot every single zit and sunspot on our faces for hours every morning!
Don’t be too hard on yourself if your skin is not as perfect – instead, focus on keeping your skin healthy. Find products, habits and diets that prevent skin inflammations or irritations, and I promise you that this is more than enough to give you better skin days ahead.
I hope this article has been useful reading, whether you are just starting out on your beauty journey or despairing at having gone through multiple holy grails that didn’t work.
The beauty industry is much easier to navigate around when you see through a lot of the hype. Just give yourself some time and space to explore it!
Leave a Reply