Beauty Bible

I like to be informed. Being the nerd that I am, I have to resort to reading about beauty in a book! The thing is, I don't trust most people because either they are selling a product and thus are biased or they are parroting back what a salesperson told them and therefore are ignorantly biased. I have to do my own research to try and find out for myself. For some reason I trust the published word over word-of-mouth.

I found a book at our library called "The Beauty Bible." Since I don't have it on me right now, I looked it up at Amazon and I think I found the right one. The author is most likely Paula Begoun. I've found a few helpful things that I'd like to share with those who are interested. It's a huge book and I've only skimmed it, but here are a few things I remember:

Serums:
Apparently more talk than walk. Advertisers use the word "serum" to sell the stuff because it makes it sound good. She wasn't too clear on whether or not it really was a helpful product or not though. It just sounded like perhaps it's not as great as it's hyped up to be. I'll have to find out more about this.

Toners:
A good thing. Need to read more on this; just thought it would be good to know what stuff I use is actually worth using! (Even if I don't really know why...yet).

Eye Creams:
A lot are a scam. People sell a tiny bottle for lots of money (the Arbonne eye cream does contain less than the regular face moisturizer and yet is the same price). Read the ingredients because, according to her, they have the same ingredients as any regular face moisturizer. I checked the Arbonne products the best I could (the lists are mega-long and all the words are totally foreign to me!). The eye cream is similar, but did appear quite different from the moisturizer. Perhaps now-a-days they really can add stuff to help with dark lines and puffiness that makes it better then a regular face cream (the book may be a bit outdated). The author, though, is of the opinion that around the eyes doesn't need anything different than what you would use on the rest of your face. Those of you who are more involved with experimenting with this stuff may have a different opinion. I'd love to hear it!

Warning!
The major problem with eye creams that the author pointed out made so much sense to me. They don't have an SPF!! That means that while you try to cover up and heal wrinkles and such, you are actually creating more wrinkles in the long run by leaving the most sensitive part of your face vulnerable to sunrays. I just make sure to put my face moisturizer (that has an SPF) over the eye cream...do you think that defeats the purpose of the eye cream??

The author explains that sun probably causes most of the damage to our faces and the best way to stay as wrinkle-free as possible is to wear at least an SPF of 15. Arbonne's Anti-aging moisturizer has SPF 8, the Not-So-Basic moisturizer has none, but the foundations appear to all be SPF 15.

That concludes this beauty update. Stay tuned for future broadcasts and be sure to contribute your own tried and true opinions so we can all become more educated.