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 information 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 makeup 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!