Not the kind that involves indigestion, this one is about certain things I’ve been seeing in the beauty world. These are my four biggest ones right now.
False eyelashes in mascara ads
Yeah, it’s standard practice, but have you ever seen a mascara ad where the model isn’t wearing falsies? Doesn’t it make you wonder if the companies aren’t even confident enough about their own product, to have the lashes “enhanced”? No wonder we’re forever looking for the perfect mascara – because we’re comparing against that.
Extreme photoshopping
This has been the year of extreme photoshopping, don’t you think? From Demi Moore’s missing hip on the cover of W, to Kelly Clarkson looking waaayy slimmer than normal on SELF magazine (I loved how the editor explained that “covers aren’t supposed to look realistic”).
The size of sunblocks
Isn’t it funny that the one skincare product that we need copious amounts of when applying, tend to come in the smallest bottle?
Nanotechnology
This is my biggest gripe – so bear with me.
I was flipping through the newspaper one day, a couple of weeks ago, when I saw an ad for a beauty brand that had the word “Nano” in it.
Do you know what the word means?
The word nano normally refers to nanotechnology, and according to the American National Nanotechnology Initiative, it is …
“… the understanding and control of matter at dimensions between approximately 1 and 100 nanometers, where unique phenomena enable novel applications. Encompassing nanoscale science, engineering, and technology, nanotechnology involves imaging, measuring, modeling, and manipulating matter at this length scale.
A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. A sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick; a single gold atom is about a third of a nanometer in diameter. Dimensions between approximately 1 and 100 nanometers are known as the nanoscale. Unusual physical, chemical, and biological properties can emerge in materials at the nanoscale. These properties may differ in important ways from the properties of bulk materials and single atoms or molecules.”
Put simply, nanotechnology deals with the ideas of splitting atoms and particles to sizes that are jaw-droppingly tiny! A nanometer, to a meter – is like a marble to planet earth.
I won’t go into details on the history of nanotechnology, but needless to say, it has revolutionised just about everything – from car paints, to refrigerator systems – making things lighter, stronger and more durable. And of course, the way our beauty products work. In fact, the global market for nanotechnologies is now estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually [source].
For cosmetics companies that utilise nanotechnology, it helps make frangrances more long-lasting, skincare ingredients able to penetrate better, and more effective sunblocks. In fact, titanium dioxide and zinc oxide become translucent when they become nanoparticles (which helps us, no more pasty white faces!) [source].
But because it is also an expensive technology, I think that for some brands, it’s the case of simply using the term to sound “technologically advanced”. So the word is just thrown around, turned into names, etc.
There you go – I feel better now.
