Let’s talk about something that happens to professional makeup artists with alarming regularity. A photographer, a production, a brand, or a celebrity requests our skills, time, and resources. In exchange, we’re not offered a fair rate, we’re not offered payment at all - we’re offered “exposure” as compensation.

If exposure paid the rent, I would have been living in a luxurious Manhattan penthouse decades ago.

Let’s Define Who We Are

We invest in training and building our first working kit. We build a resume, a portfolio, and a client base. We develop a reputation in the industry. Lawyers, doctors, and other trade workers do the same - they invest in training and the tools required to be paid for their services.
We’re no different.

Yet there’s an interesting disconnect: nobody debates whether someone is a “professional” lawyer or a “professional” doctor. You don’t become a lawyer or doctor by cosplaying one on social media. There’s only one path: education, apprenticeship, and enough experience to justify charging for your services.

But the profession of makeup artist is perceived differently.
Social media changed that.

Beauty influencers and content creators apply makeup to themselves on camera, while identifying as makeup artists without the training, investment, or working experience that qualify someone to charge for these services. They demonstrate makeup application on their own faces, making it look simple and accessible - something anyone can do. But applying makeup to yourself and applying it to paying clients with diverse face shapes, features, skin tones, and skin types requires a completely different skill set.

Reality Check: Becoming a member of the Makeup Artist profession requires significant financial investment, training, and work experience, so that applying makeup to paying clients can become a primary source of income. PERIOD.

When people without those qualifications use our professional title, it fundamentally weakens the industry’s understanding of what we do. They’ve framed makeup as entertainment or a hobby instead of a skilled trade. And that perception directly impacts our ability to demand fair compensation. Because if applying makeup looks that simple, why should you be paid?

Your Work Is Part of The Vision, And It Has Value

When someone asks you to work for free, they’re asking you to subsidize their project at your expense. They’re asking you to use your professional expertise to create a fundamental part of their final product.

Look at a feature article in a lifestyle magazine (print or online). The photographer and art director set the tone for the story. What’s in it? The model or celebrity’s face, skin, hair, and makeup. Our work is not an inconsequential decoration; it is part of the storytelling. The publication is paying for the creation of this image. And your work helped turn the concept into a reality. You deserve to be paid.

Look at a red carpet. The celebrity is the focus. The makeup is reported on and often emulated. Your contribution is not optional - you are part of the creative process. You deserve to be paid.

Look at a commercial, TV show, or film. Production has a storyboard that maps out a vision, including how the actor(s) look. Makeup isn’t an optional detail; it’s part of what the director and producer have envisioned and approved. You deserve to be paid.

When you’re contacted for a project and told makeup isn’t budgeted for, they’re probably lying. They wouldn’t be requesting your talent on their project if your contribution weren’t an important part of the finished product. They need you, while pretending your contribution is optional.

The Hypocrisy Is Built In

Here’s where the hypocrisy becomes infuriating: the people asking you to work for free are getting paid.

A photographer reaches out to book you for a shoot and says, “We have no budget for makeup, but you’ll get a credit and exposure.” Ask the same photographer if they’re shooting this for “credit and exposure”. Doubtful.

That photographer is charging the client. They’re making money. Yet you’re supposed to work for free?

A celebrity’s manager or publicist requests that you do their client’s makeup for a red-carpet event or press tour - for free. They frame it as though the “honor” of working on their famous client is compensation enough. But aren’t they paid by the celebrity for their work? Yet you’re supposed to work for free?

Ask a lawyer for 40 hours of legal work for free in exchange for “exposure”.
The answer will be NO, followed by a side-eye and an incredulous chuckle. No explanation needed. Professional services cost money. Skilled work requires compensation. And a lawyer, even one who only recently passed the bar exam, is paid as a law clerk while they build their career. They respect their investment and demand compensation for their work.

The person requesting your services is being paid. They’re disrespecting the investment you’ve made to be qualified for this work. Why do they assume you’ll work for free?

The Investment They Intentionally Ignore

A career as a professional makeup artist requires an investment of tens of thousands of dollars just to get started. That investment deserves respect. Your compensation isn’t greed - it’s honoring what you’ve already invested in yourself.

Once your career is in motion, a professional makeup artist is continuously reinvesting.

Products get used up, disposables end up in the trash, tools wear down, break, or become outdated. We as professionals are required to constantly replenish, replace, and update our kits. My two makeup kits, an SFX kit, brushes, tools, ancillary products, disposables, lighting, etc., are insured for $250,000.00 - because that’s what it would cost to replace what I’ve built over decades of work.

When someone asks you to work for free, they’re asking you to absorb the cost of your time, your talent, and your materials. They benefit while you work at a deficit. They’re asking you to disrespect the investment you’ve already made in becoming qualified to do this work.

This Has Become Systemic

This isn’t accidental. Photographers and producers didn’t “forget” to budget for makeup. They’ve coded our work in the spreadsheets as non-essential and less worthy of compensation.

A photographer charges thousands for a single shoot (sometimes tens of thousands). A director negotiates a contract with a substantial payout. But when that same group of creatives has to budget for makeup, suddenly there’s no more money. Suddenly, your contribution is considered optional or of little value.

It’s not because your work is less important. It’s because the industry refuses to categorize it for what it is - integral to creating the finished product. And the “exposure” argument is the industry’s longest-standing scam. They continue to use it because they’ve been getting away with it for far too long.

Typically, when the next paying gig comes up, they hire the person who refused to do the gig you did for free. That person has made it clear that their contribution is valuable. You took the risk, worked for free, hoping for a break, and then the artist who refused to be taken advantage of is rewarded.

It sucks, but that’s reality.

You’re Not Being Difficult, You’re Just Saying NO

This is the part most makeup artists don’t realize - you’re allowed to say no.
There are too many high-profile makeup educators who scare artists into accepting free work, claiming it’s the only way to build a career. Many of these trusted educators have an agenda - but I’ll discuss more about that in another article.

But even more than that, if others on the same project are being paid, you MUST say no to working for free.

Every time a professional accepts free work, knowing others are being compensated, you’re telling the industry that your contribution is worthless. You’re agreeing that your skills, your investment, and your years of experience don’t deserve proper compensation. And when you agree to that, it becomes impossible for every other professional makeup artist to request fair rates.

If they claim they can’t afford to pay you, politely turn them down and tell them you’d love to work with them - when they have a budget. That’s not shady, that’s business.

If they push back, call you difficult, or expect gratitude for offering you the “opportunity”, you know what you’re dealing with: someone who doesn’t respect your skill, doesn’t value your time, and isn’t worth working with.

To the New Professionals

If you’re early in your career and you’ve already said yes to free work (for exposure, for a credit, for the experience), I’m not here to make you feel bad about it. Starting out is hard. You’re building your portfolio, making connections, trying to prove yourself.

You deserve monetary compensation for your work. Not exposure. Not line credits. PAYMENT. Because accepting fair payment isn’t about greed, it’s about respecting the investment you’ve made to become qualified to do this job in the first place.

By insisting on being paid for your work, you’re telling the industry that you understand your own value. And that clarity protects this profession for everyone who comes after you.

#MyTwoCents

When a production company contacts a photographer, a director, or a set designer, they aren’t asked to work for free. Everyone knows: professional work requires payment.

Professional makeup artists deserve the same respect. We’ve spent years building our careers and honing our craft. We provide skills that are necessary, not optional.
The question isn’t about our value. We know our value. The question is: why do people (who know better) feel justified in disrespecting us and devaluing our contribution?

Kevin James Bennett is the publisher of In My Kit®. He is an Emmy Award-winning makeup artist, cosmetic developer, educator, and consumer advocate.
Learn more at www.kjbennett.com

Conglomerates Built Their Empire

For decades, the cosmetic industry operated like a fortress controlled by a handful of absolutely massive corporations. We’re talking about companies so big they don’t just own a few brands—they own entire portfolios of brands (makeup, skincare, haircare, fragrance, beauty tools).

L’Oréal alone owns Maybelline, Urban Decay, NYX, Lancôme, Giorgio Armani Beauty, Yves Saint Laurent Beauty, and dozens more. Estée Lauder owns Estée Lauder, Clinique, MAC, Bobbi Brown, La Mer, Aveda, Smashbox, Too Faced, Origins, and on and on. LVMH—the luxury conglomerate that owns Louis Vuitton and Dior—also owns massive beauty portfolios including Dior, Givenchy, Fenty, and more. Even Coty, the company most people have never heard of, owns Kylie Cosmetics, Rimmel, Covergirl, Sally Hansen, and a bunch of other household names.

Each brand had its own positioning, its own customer base, its own identity (sort of). But they all fed into the same massive distribution machine owned by the parent company.

That distribution machine was the real power. These conglomerates owned relationships with every major retailer - department stores, specialty retailers like Sephora, Ulta, Blue Mercury, and Space NK. They controlled what got shelf space, what got promotion…what got seen.
Most don’t have manufacturing capability, although the global giants like L’Oréal and Coty do have some in-house production. Instead, they used their massive purchasing power with contract manufacturers to negotiate prices that indie brands couldn’t compete with. When you’re ordering millions of units across dozens of brands, you have leverage. You could negotiate prices with suppliers that indie brands couldn’t even dream of.

This system worked because retail was the only real battlefield. Whoever controlled shelf space controlled the market. And the conglomerates controlled most of it.

“If You Can’t Beat Them, Buy Them”

But conglomerates didn’t just maintain dominance through infrastructure. They did it through acquisition. When an indie beauty brand would suddenly take off, when some founder’s skincare line or new makeup product started gaining traction, the conglomerates had a simple response: buy them.

This became an inside joke in the industry. Estée Lauder Companies essentially made it their unofficial motto: “If you can’t beat them, buy them.”
When an indie brand appears to have solid momentum and its valuation is rising steadily, corporations come knocking with acquisition offers. Sometimes it was generous. Sometimes it was take-it-or-we’ll-muscle-you-out. Either way, the threat got neutralized. The brand either became part of the portfolio or disappeared.

It was actually a brilliant strategy. Why let a disruptive new brand steal a portion of your market share when you could simply acquire it, fold the brand into your portfolio, and control its growth? The acquisition strategy meant that successful indie brands had a very short window of independence. You’d either get acquired or you’d get out-marketed by corporate budgets.

This worked for more than three decades. It kept the conglomerates on top. It made them seem invincible. It meant that innovation and disruption in cosmetics were always, eventually, absorbed by corporations.

Then TikTok Shop changed everything.

The Disruption Nobody Saw Coming

TikTok Shop made it possible to build a multimillion-dollar indie beauty brand without needing to convince a Sephora buyer to stock your product. Suddenly, the entire system that gave conglomerates their power became irrelevant.

You didn’t need to develop retail relationships anymore. You didn’t need massive capital. You needed a product, praised by a popular beauty influencer, on a platform where millions of people could discover and buy it without ever leaving the app.

For the first time, an indie brand could build scale without being dependent on the conglomerate retail ecosystem. And more importantly, the acquisition strategy stopped working. Why would an indie founder sell their DTC brand to a conglomerate when they could grow it independently on TikTok Shop, keep the full margin, and maintain creative control? The leverage flipped.

Numbers Don’t Lie

NielsenIQ dropped its 2025 report, and the numbers were pretty wild.
Indie beauty grew 22.3% last year. The big players? 6.1%, actually down from 7.4% the year before. And that gap is only getting wider.

Fragrance is where you really see it happening. Indie fragrances jumped 46.3% while the conglomerate-owned houses grew just 11.4%. That’s not a small difference. Indie skincare, makeup, haircare, and fragrance are growing at double-digit rates, while legacy brands are barely hitting 5%.
Now, I don’t want to mislead you - the big conglomerates still own about 64% of the color cosmetic market and 60% of the skincare market, which sounds huge. But controlling the majority of sales doesn’t mean you’ve got the culture on your side anymore.

When you dig into where these sales are actually happening, the picture gets even clearer. Online beauty sales are growing 9x faster than in-store, and indie brands have figured out how to win there. Amazon has gained 7.3 points of market share since 2021.
But TikTok Shop? That’s the real game-changer. It’s now the fastest-growing beauty retailer NielsenIQ has ever tracked - with beauty representing nearly 80% of its U.S. sales.
Read that again - nearly 80% of TikTok Shop U.S. sales are cosmetic adjacent.

Here’s why TikTok Shop matters so much: you see a product in a TikTok video, you like it, and you can literally buy it in the same app without ever leaving. For indie brands, this is perfect. A beauty influencer demos your product, gives it a glowing review, and a consumer sees it and can buy it instantly without leaving the app. No retail relationships needed. No distributor in the middle. No corporate approval required.

For the big brands? They’re trapped. They can do social media marketing, sure. But they still have distributors and retail partners who control how their products reach stores. A conglomerate brand can’t cannibalize its Sephora sales by pushing too hard on TikTok Shop—that would upset its retail partners. They’re playing on both boards at once, which means they can’t go all-in on the channels where indie brands are winning.

The Constraint on Big Brands

Here’s what I find most interesting about this: conglomerates could compete with indies on DTC and TikTok Shop. They have the budget, the expertise, ALL the tools. But they can’t, because their retail partners - Sephora, Ulta, department stores - are too valuable to lose. Push too hard on TikTok Shop, and those retailers will retaliate. They’ll cut shelf space, stop promoting your brand, or drop it entirely.

Indies don’t have that problem. They have no retail relationships to protect, no retail partners to keep happy. They can put 100% of their energy into TikTok Shop and move at lightning speed. Conglomerates have to play it safe because they’re answerable to retailers and distributors.

Corporate cosmetics painted themselves into a corner. Their biggest advantage, retail control, has become their biggest constraint.

What People Actually Want From Brands Now

The market share numbers are one thing, but here’s the part that actually explains what’s happening: how people think about brands has genuinely shifted, and it’s not going back.

Beauty used to be about wanting something you couldn’t have. You bought Dior makeup because it was aspirational, expensive, and owning it meant you had status (genuine or perceived). You trusted Skinceuticals because it sounded scientific. The whole industry was built on prestige and slick marketing—the brand told you who you wanted to be, and you bought in.

But somewhere along the way, that stopped being enough for many people. Now, cosmetic consumers - and this cuts across every age group - want to know how a product will enrich their life or make it easier, and they want to know who’s actually behind the brand. They want authenticity. They want to feel like the person who created it actually uses it and believes in it. They want to support the founders of indie brands they’ve discovered and gotten to know on social platforms, rather than giving their money to faceless corporations that flood retail shelves with an endless sea of redundancy.

It’s about developing a parasocial relationship with the founder(s) and the influencers who promote them. It’s about joining that brand’s online community, not just buying more products. It’s a potent formula that is driving massive sales.

When you see an influencer test a skincare product on their actual face in their actual bathroom, that reads as real in a way a multi-million dollar ad campaign in a lifestyle magazine never will. When a founder jumps into the comments to respond to questions or concerns, it feels like they’re “friends” who really care. When an indie brand says, “we’re a small team solving a specific challenge brought to our attention by the community,” it hits differently than a corporate marketing machine pushing that their product is “trusted by dermatologists worldwide.” <insert yawn>

The big brands know this is happening, and some of them are trying to keep up by creating indie-looking marketing or investing in influencer partnerships. But here’s the thing: today’s educated consumer can smell the cosplay a mile away. They know when a brand is owned by a huge conglomerate, but “acting” indie. And for more and more people, that knowledge is what drives their purchasing decisions to legit indie brands.

The conglomerates built loyalty by making you aspire to something. The indie brands are building loyalty by making you feel something.

What This Means

For legacy brands: growth is stuck. Margins are still healthy, but that growth trajectory everyone’s been riding? Gone. Right now, money is flowing away from them.

The conglomerate response has been acquisition - buy the threat. But the problem is this: the moment you add corporate infrastructure to an indie brand, you kill what made it valuable. The founder leaves. The authenticity evaporates.

For indie founders: building a brand on a DTC sales model, selling exclusively through a social platform (and your website), could be incredibly lucrative, given the excellent margins. But can you cut through the noise on TikTok Shop and be seen?

For beauty consumers: you’re winning, for now. More choices, more (perceived) authentic voices, more products that might actually enrich your life. The tradeoff: some viral indie brands are waaaaaaaaay overhyped, and the line between actual authenticity and performative authenticity gets blurrier all the time.

#MyTwoCents

This shift is permanent.
We’re watching the power of a $650+ billion global beauty and personal care industry be redistributed, in real time. The “If you can’t beat them, buy them” strategy worked for thirty years, but not anymore.

What made conglomerates powerful—their scale, their retail relationships, their ability to eliminate threats—now works against them. It slows them down. It constrains them.

The brands that will actually thrive in the next five years are the ones that offer solutions and build authentic relationships with their customers. Conglomerates could win if they let acquired brands stay independent. Most won’t. They’ll optimize and integrate away the authenticity that made the acquisition valuable in the first place (looking right at you, Estee Lauder).

So yeah, the indie insurgency we’re witnessing through TikTok Shop? It’s not slowing down any time soon.

Kevin James Bennett is the publisher of In My Kit®. He is an Emmy Award-winning makeup artist, cosmetic developer, educator, and consumer advocate. Learn more at www.kjbennett.com

A few weeks ago, I was benchmarking some premium skincare for a development project, and something struck me: some brands spend years perfecting their most active formulations, then package them cheaply, which pretty much guarantees those actives will degrade before the consumer gets their money’s worth.

Example: You’re selling a $185-per-ounce Vitamin C serum in an inexpensive, generic amber glass dropper bottle that begins to oxidize and lose potency the moment it’s opened and exposed to air? And don’t get me started on the contamination issues with the dropper (pipette) being exposed to bacteria with every application, then put back in the bottle.

The thing that infuriates me most? It’s not accidental. It’s deliberate.

The Chemistry Aspect

If you work in product development, you already know this part. Retinoids (vitamin A derivatives), vitamin C, high-concentration peptides, antioxidant plant extracts, fermented complexes, enzymes—these ingredients don’t sit still. They’re active. Light-sensitive. Oxygen-reactive. Air-reactive. They degrade. They oxidize. They break down.

Most premium skincare relies on at least one of these actives, often a carefully calibrated cocktail of a few. And when you’re formulating with them, you’re not just mixing ingredients; you're making a commitment to stability. Your mindset should be, “This formula needs to remain potent and effective from the moment it leaves our facility to the moment a consumer uses the last drop.”
That should be the implicit promise to justify the premium price point.

So you put it in a dropper bottle? 😠
Every time you open a dropper bottle and remove the pipette (the glass dropper), you’re introducing air into the bottle, causing oxidation, and then returning that pipette to the bottle after it has come into contact with your skin (fingers, palm, face).
So you put it in an open-mouth jar? 😠
That jar of premium moisturizer on the bathroom shelf, which you open twice a day, is exposed to light and humidity. Then there’s the bacteria from your fingers scooping out the product, and environmental particles going straight into the open, exposed jar. So you end up with a product that’s actively degrading the first time you open it, and every single time you use it.

Why Brands Make This Choice

Look, I get the business side of this. Opaque UV-protective and airless containers are more expensive. But when you’re already positioned at a premium price point, more protective packaging choices should be the standard, not optional.
But those additional manufacturing dollars spent on better protective packaging reduce profit margins. And that’s where brands cut corners.

But there’s also the aesthetic disconnect, which I find amusing - well, annoying.
Since when has a generic glass dropper bottle or basic jar you can pick up through LotionCrafters or MakingCosmetics evoke feelings of a premium product experience? But brands are charging upwards of $200 for an active serum or moisturizer in a generic package that does very little to preserve the product's stability or efficacy.
Yes, I’m looking at you, Skinceuticals, and don’t get me started about the Dr. Sturm bullsh*t - a wildly over-priced $350 HA serum (one ounce) in a generic glass dropper bottle with a cheap white plastic top.

Then there’s the accountability angle.
A consumer starts using an expensive skincare product in compromised packaging and, within weeks, notices diminishing results. Most brands will deny accountability, even though they know their packaging wasn’t ideal for the formula.
They blame the consumer: maybe you didn’t store it correctly, maybe your skin type doesn’t respond to these actives, maybe it’s just not the right formula for you…
Blah, blah, blah. 🙄
The brand’s packaging choice never seems to enter the conversation. Which is convenient for them, but frustrating AF for those of us forking over lots of $$$ for an allegedly stable, premium formula.

What Actually Works

A bottle or jar made of opaque UV protective glass, an aluminum bottle or tube, airless pump bottles, jars, and tubes - these options are not only functional in preserving product efficacy but can also be decorated to look premium while protecting the formula inside. Yes, this packaging costs more, but it says: we care about the stability of our formula and the investment you’ve made in our product.

Allies of Skin get this right.
Sophisticated, highly active formulations at a premium price point. BUT… their highly active serums are packaged in beautifully decorated, mirror-finish, opaque glass bottles with pumps - not cheap dropper bottles. Even their daily moisturizer comes in a tube with an airless pump, because they decided the formula’s integrity matters more than saving $$$ by putting it in a generic glass jar with an open mouth.

It’s a business choice that says: We spent time making sure this formulation met our standards. We’re going to spend the additional manufacturing dollars to ensure it survives the journey to the consumer intact and remains efficacious to the last drop. That’s the proper way to position premium-priced active skincare.
Not “We know it looks basic because we spent all the money on what’s inside, not the packaging”, which is a cop-out and a bunch of marketing bullsh*t to justify better margins and higher profits.

Allies of Skin’s packaging tells us, “This formula will remain intact at full efficacy from first use to last, because we designed it correctly.” Premium brands, like Allies, understand that protective packaging isn’t an add-on. It’s part of the formulation promise. And they’re STILL profitable. They’re STILL successful. So, that argument about cost-cutting being necessary for margins? I’m not sure it holds up when you look at brands that refuse to make that trade-off.

The Thing About Formulation

Here’s what I keep coming back to: when you’re a product developer working with unstable actives, the packaging isn’t a separate or secondary consideration. It’s part of the process. You develop the formula, then package it in a component that keeps the ingredients protected and active.

A dropper bottle and an open jar are poor development choices for highly active premium skincare. They’re choices that accept ingredient degradation as acceptable collateral damage. That might be acceptable if you’re selling a product at a much lower price point. But when you’re asking someone to spend $200 on one ounce of La Mer moisturizing cream - in an open jar - the question becomes: are you choosing packaging for stability or for margins? Because at that price point, the ethical choice should be pretty clear.

#MyTwoCents

I think there’s a fundamental contradiction in premium skincare right now. Brands are charging top dollar for formulations with highly potent, but unstable actives, then using packaging that pretty much guarantees those actives will begin degrading as soon as the consumer opens them. And they’re not really talking about that trade-off.

If you’re formulating premium skincare with retinoids, vitamin C, certain peptides, or other highly active oxidative ingredients, you’ve elected to play a high-stakes efficacy and stability game. So commit to it. Spend a portion of your development dollars on protective containers, airless bottles, jars, or tubes. Own the decision to formulate premium products and charge top dollar for them by protecting them.

Or don’t, and be dishonest. Because right now, a lot of very expensive skincare is packaged poorly, and the brands don’t seem to care about the end user’s experience.

What are your thoughts? Let’s have a conversation in the comment section.

Kevin James Bennett is the publisher of In My Kit. He is an Emmy Award-winning makeup artist, cosmetic developer, educator, and consumer advocate.
Learn more at www.kjbennett.com

When you see “parfum” or “fragrance” on an ingredient list, have you been trained to run in the other direction?
Please stop running; you’ve probably been misinformed.
Organizations like the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and their “Skin Deep” Cosmetic Database have spent decades fear-mongering about synthetic fragrance while promoting “natural” alternatives. But here’s what they’re intentionally not telling you: for many, that lavender essential oil in your moisturizer is more likely to trigger a dermal reaction like contact dermatitis (redness, burning, stinging) or allergic contact dermatitis (itching, rash, blisters) than a synthetic fragrance.

There’s a reason for that silence. EWG isn’t an unbiased consumer advocacy group; it’s a lobbying organization whose donor base includes suppliers of organic and natural products that profit when you’re afraid of synthetic anything and reach for “natural” instead.

Let me walk you through what the research actually shows.

The Essential Oil Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About

Essential oils sound harmless; they’re from plants, after all. But lavender oil contains over 450 different chemicals, many of which are known allergens. When you use a product with lavender essential oil, you’re getting all of those compounds, whether your skin can handle them or not.

The scientific data is clear. There are nearly 80 essential oils that have been shown to cause contact or allergic dermatitis. 9 of the 80 showed patch test reactions in more than 2% of the test groups. Those 9 include tea tree, peppermint, sandalwood, and yes, lavender essential oils. Lavender reactions were so common that the American Contact Dermatitis Society (ACDS) added it to their core patch testing series.

Just to be clear, ACDS does not conduct small “study groups” like those used in a clinical trial for a new product. Instead, they focus on diagnostic patch testing, and their data comes from large-scale retrospective analyses of those clinical results.

But tea tree oil?!? 😲
It’s supposed to be therapeutic, antimicrobial….
Agreed, yet studies show it has caused more allergic contact dermatitis than most other essential oils, with up to 3.5% positive patch-test reactions in core study groups.

The Oxidation Factor

Here’s where things get really interesting. Two of the most common fragrance ingredients are limonene (a synthetic citrus scent) and linalool (a synthetic lavender scent). In their pure, synthetic forms, they rarely cause reactions. But when they’re blended with essential oils and exposed to air, they oxidize into hydroperoxides, which are potent allergens.

Limonene and linalool have been identified in up to 80% of OTC personal care products, and oxidation transforms these compounds into far more potent allergens than their non-oxidized forms. In a large UK study of over 4,700 dermatology patients, 5% showed positive reactions to oxidized limonene and 5.9% to oxidized linalool.

You know that “natural” lavender essential oil in your cleanser? They don’t bother telling you it’s probably blended with about 50% linalool, and every time you open that bottle, oxidation creates more allergens that could irritate and/or damage sensitive skin. Meanwhile, a product containing only pure synthetic linalool fragrance can be stabilized with antioxidants to prevent oxidation and significantly reduce the risk of a dermal reaction.

What “Clean🤬Beauty” Gets Wrong About Synthetic Fragrance

The unregulated, fear-mongering clean beauty movement loves to claim that synthetic fragrances are “toxic” or full of “harmful chemicals.” But they’re merging two very different issues, allergens and toxicity, for maximum dramatic effect.

I’m aware that some people are allergic to fragrance compounds, whether natural or synthetic. But allergies are individual responses, not an example of toxicity. Some synthetic ingredients are safe, stable, and effective, and can reduce the allergenic potential present in the natural fragrance compounds that the clean beauty folks praise.

When I formulate with synthetic fragrance, I can:

• Choose specific molecules that smell beautiful without including known allergens

• Control exact concentrations to minimize irritation risk

• Add stabilizers to prevent oxidation

• Ensure batch-to-batch consistency so your skin gets the same experience every time

With essential oils, I get none of that control.

The Airborne Allergy Risk

Here’s something that surprised me while I was researching this article: there’s been a significant uptick in airborne allergic contact dermatitis from essential oils used in aromatherapy. It’s being reported that more patients are developing eczema on exposed skin simply from aroma diffusers that either heat or nebulize essential oils into the atmosphere. And with the explosion of “natural” fragrance oil diffusers (Pura, Aera, AromaTech, etc.) being marketed so aggressively, cases of airborne contact dermatitis have been rising sharply.

The Marketing vs. The Money

Here’s where it gets interesting. The Environmental Working Group positions itself as a consumer protection organization, but it’s actually a lobbying group funded by organic and natural product companies. When EWG publishes its “recommendations based on scientific studies” (cough, cough), and they label synthetic fragrances as high-risk while giving essential oils a pass, they’re willfully deceiving (lying to) their followers, because they’re not following the CLINICAL science; they’re serving their donors’ financial interests with pseudo-science.

These organizations have built their empires on fear. They’ve convinced consumers that “chemical-free” is their ONLY safe possibility.
Realty Check: IT IS NOT.
Everything is made of chemicals, even WATER (H₂O). They want you to believe that “natural” means safe… but poison ivy is natural - is it safe? Arsenic is natural - is it safe? They’ve brainwashed and gaslighted people into believing that anything synthetic is automatically dangerous. It’s brilliant marketing for their donors’ products. But it’s not supported by clinical scientific data or dermatological evidence.

Meanwhile, “natural” essential oils, many of which are known irritants, can cause significant damage to a compromised skin barrier, especially in individuals with atopic dermatitis. The very people who need the gentlest, safest products are being lied to and steered toward ingredients with a high likelihood of HURTING THEM…
because it’s profitable for the organic and natural product industry.

What This Means for Your Routine

I’m not saying all essential oils are bad or that all synthetic fragrances are good. What I’m saying is that the narrative you’ve been sold is backwards.

If you have sensitive skin, reactive skin, or atopic dermatitis:

• Question any product that markets “natural fragrance” or essential oils as a selling point.

• If you prefer scented products over non-fragranced (which smell like their ingredients), well-formulated synthetic fragrances are generally a gentler choice.

• Pay attention to how long products have been sitting on the shelf after you opened them; oxidation makes natural fragrances more irritating over time.

#MyTwoCents

Organizations like EWG have done real damage by teaching people to fear the wrong things - not because they made an innocent mistake, but because their business model depends on it. When your donors are selling essential oils and organic ingredients, you have a financial incentive to demonize synthetic alternatives, regardless of what the science actually says.

As someone who formulates for sensitive skin, I can create gentler, more predictable, more skin-compatible products with synthetic fragrance than I ever could with essential oils. The data backs this up. The patch testing results back this up. The dermatology literature backs this up.

It’s time to stop letting lobbying groups disguised as consumer advocates override actual clinical science. Your skin’s health deserves better than a fear-based formulation that serves someone else’s bottom line.

Kevin James Bennett is the publisher of In My Kit®. He is an Emmy Award-winning makeup artist, cosmetic developer, educator, and consumer advocate.
Learn more at www.kjbennett.com

There’s a sentence sitting inside a recent Skin Inc. article discussing a brand founder’s “Considerations in Private Label” that should not have survived an editorial review. It was written by the publication’s managing editor, Kitty Lin, and it reads:

“...only to discover that many of the waxing products available contained mineral oil or talcum powder, both of which are known carcinogens.”

That claim is factually incorrect. Not edgy. Not provocative. Not a matter of ongoing scientific debate. Incorrect.
And the reason I’m alarmed - genuinely alarmed - is that Skin Inc. isn’t a wellness influencer’s Instagram page or a TikTok account. It’s a professional trade magazine. The estheticians and spa directors who read Skin Inc. trust it to provide accurate information they can carry into their treatment rooms and share with their clients. That trust has been violated. And printing this article without correction is a failure of professional journalism.

Right now, somewhere, a spa owner or esthetician who trusted this trade publication to fact-check properly could be passing misinformation to their clients. Or they’re quietly second-guessing all the products they’ve used safely for years.
That is the real-world cost of getting information wrong in print.
So let’s dive into it.

First of all, I’d like to clarify that I did not discover this article or its misinformation randomly. This article was featured in the Skin Inc. March newsletter. (see image below)
Think about it, Skin Inc., a trusted information resource to the spa industry, directed its subscribers to this article, which means they knowingly promoted misinformation. That’s NOT OK. 🤬

Mineral Oil Is Not a Known Carcinogen. Full Stop.

Cosmetic-grade white mineral oil — listed on ingredient labels as Mineral Oil, and regulated under USP and NF monographs — is classified by the FDA as Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) for direct food applications under 21 CFR 172.878, and is fully approved for cosmetic and pharmaceutical use. It is used in food, drugs, and cosmetics across the U.S., EU, Canada, Japan, and virtually every other major regulatory market on earth. It is an ingredient in pharmaceutical-grade skin protectants, laxatives, and pediatric formulations.

There is an IARC classification that applies to certain mineral oils — but context is everything. IARC Group 1 ("known human carcinogen”) applies to untreated and mildly treated mineral oils used in industrial metalworking fluids and occupational settings, where workers experience chronic, direct skin exposure to impure, unrefined product. That classification is based on evidence of scrotal and skin cancers in industrial workers — not cosmetic users, not waxing clients, not anyone in a treatment room.

Cosmetic-grade white mineral oil is a different material. The refining process that produces it - removing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and other impurities to meet pharmacopoeia purity standards - creates a substance that no regulatory authority classifies as a carcinogen for cosmetic use. Not the FDA. Not the EU’s Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety. Not IARC. Not Health Canada.

Conflating industrial mineral oil with cosmetic-grade white mineral oil because they share a name is the kind of error you’d expect from a random wellness blog optimized for clicks. It is not what you expect, or should accept, from the leading trade publication for professional estheticians.

The Talc Conversation Is Complicated. That’s Exactly Why Precision Matters.

Talc deserves more careful handling precisely because the science is genuinely evolving — and sloppy language obscures the real story rather than telling it.

In July 2024, the International Agency for Research on Cancer reclassified talc (not containing asbestos) from Group 2B — “possibly carcinogenic” — to Group 2A — “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
That is a meaningful development. It reflects limited human evidence for ovarian cancer risk and sufficient animal study data, and it is driving real regulatory action: the EU’s Committee for Risk Assessment classified talc as a Category 1B carcinogen in September 2024, separate from the asbestos contamination question, and the EU is moving toward a 2027 ban on talc in cosmetics. These are consequential developments that professionals absolutely need to know about.

But here is what IARC Group 2A means: probably carcinogenic, with limited human evidence. It is the same classification as that of red meat, aloe vera extract, and the herbicide glyphosate.
It is not a Group 1 “known carcinogen”, which requires strong, consistent, replicated human evidence.
That distinction is not a technicality — it is the difference between a serious precautionary concern and a settled verdict. Remember, the same “probably” classification applies to red meat.
I’m not trying to be dramatic, but Skin Inc. calling these ingredients “known carcinogens” is no different than the Nation's Restaurant News (NRN), known for comprehensive coverage of the food industry, calling red meat a “known carcinogen”. Words mean things, especially in professional education.

When you replace a nuanced, important story with an inaccurate label, you don’t protect people — you frighten them. And frightened, ill-informed clients are harder to help, not easier.

Furthermore, the FDA has not banned talc in cosmetics. It proposed a rule in December 2024 that would require standardized asbestos testing for talc-containing cosmetics. This rule was subsequently withdrawn under political pressure by that idiot RFK Jr. in November 2025, not due to scientific reassessment. The FDA’s own 2024 testing of 50 talc-containing cosmetic samples found no asbestos. The agency has stated it will issue a new proposed rule, though no timeline has been announced.

A trade publication covering this space has a genuine, important story to tell about talc - the EU’s trajectory, about supply chain contamination risk, about what brand reformulation timelines should look like. Telling these stories requires precision. Dropping a bomb like “known carcinogen” doesn’t inform professionals. It adds more noise to an industry already drowning in unfounded ingredient hysteria.

This Is What Happens When Fear Culture Infiltrates the Trade

Special interest groups and lobbyists like EWG have built enormously powerful platforms on ingredient fear-mongering to promote their donors’ agendas and hurt their donors’ competitors. They found a formula that works: take a complex scientific classification, strip out every qualifier, cherry-pick phrases, add words like “toxic”, “carcinogen,“” endocrine disruptor,” and let anxiety do the rest.
Drama drives engagement. It has very little to do with helping people understand actual risk.

That vocabulary has now saturated wellness media so completely that it bleeds into professional coverage without anyone stopping to ask if the information is factual.
I don’t know whether Kitty Lin was leaning into information gleaned from the EWG misinformation ecosystem when she wrote this piece. What I know is that Skin Inc.’s editorial process should have caught this mistake before it went to print. The fact that it made it to print and then was FEATURED is a failure of the institution.

The trade press is supposed to be where professionals come to escape the noise, where the information has been fact-checked, contextualized, and held to a standard that respects the intelligence and professional responsibility of the people reading it. When it stops doing that job, the consequences aren’t abstract. They show up in treatment rooms, in client conversations, in purchasing decisions made on bad information.

The Professionals Reading This Deserved Better

I keep coming back to the estheticians. The spa directors. The waxing specialists who opened Skin Inc. read that sentence and had no reason to question it because it came from their trusted trade magazine. They are good at their jobs, care deeply about their clients, and do exactly what professionals are supposed to do - stay current, read the trades, and bring that information to work.

Unfortunately, they were handed information that wasn’t true.

That’s what upsets me most about this. Not the regulatory nuance. Not the classification terminology. The fact that real professionals were misled by a source they had every reason to trust, and real clients are now on the receiving end of that misinformation.
A clear, explicit correction from Skin Inc. is not optional. It’s owed.

#MyTwoCents

Cosmetic-grade mineral oil is not a carcinogen - not by any scientific or regulatory standard, anywhere, period. Calling it one in a professional trade publication is not an editorial choice; it’s a factual error with real consequences for the professionals who read it and pass the misinformation to their clients.
Talc deserves more serious, accurate coverage, and genuinely important information is evolving all the time. I published an article about it earlier this week.
The accurate version of the current talc story is complicated and nuanced. Labeling an ingredient as “carcinogenic” without proper citation is fear-mongering.

Our industry is already fighting a losing battle against the flood of ingredient misinformation from special-interest groups and consumer media. The trade press is supposed to be the place where we get it right. Skin Inc. got this one wrong, and the people sitting in treatment rooms right now are paying the price. That’s not okay and shouldn’t be allowed to stand without correction. PERIOD.

Kevin James Bennett is the publisher of In My Kit®. He is an Emmy Award-winning makeup artist, cosmetic developer, educator, and consumer advocate. Learn more at www.kjbennett.com

1. Venture capitalists (VCs) invest in high-growth, early-stage startups, usually taking minority stakes. They focus on long-term growth.

2. Private equity (PE) investors target mature, established companies, often buying a controlling interest (50-100%) to improve operations and profitability. PE firms focus on short-term optimization and a quick exit.

Before you sign anything, let’s have a conversation your accountant won’t have with you, but I will.
Raising capital can be transformative. It can also be the beginning of the end - not because the money was bad, but because the relationship was. Here’s what you need to know before that wire transfer lands at your bank.

More Money = More Problems

Let’s start with the obvious thing nobody wants to say out loud: you don’t need as much money as they’re offering.

Private equity and venture capital firms operate at scale. Their business model depends on deploying substantial capital and generating returns that justify their investment. That means they’re often incentivized to write bigger checks than your business actually needs because bigger checks create bigger ownership stakes, bigger oversight roles, and more pressure on you to grow faster to give them back their money - with interest.

The Rule:
Only take what you can deploy strategically to actually scale your business. Capital you can’t put to work efficiently becomes dead weight — or worse, pressure to spend unwisely just to look like you’re growing. Overfunding a brand in the beauty space is a well-worn path to inflated overhead, misaligned retail expansion, and a Founder/CEO who spends more time in investor calls than in product development.

Ask yourself: What specific initiatives will this capital fund? What does success look like in 18 months? Can you articulate a clear, credible use-of-funds story?

If your answer is “we’ll figure it out,” you’re not ready to take the money.

Values Alignment Is Not a Soft Skill, It’s a Survival Skill.

Here’s where founders get burned the most, and it’s almost never talked about in funding announcements: Does the investor’s values align with your brand’s DNA and planned evolution?

Investors are not a monolith. Some genuinely want to build great brands. They understand the beauty industry, they respect creative vision, and they know that rushing a product into mass retail before it’s ready can permanently damage a brand’s equity. These investors exist. They are wonderful. They are also a minority.

The majority of institutional investors — particularly in PE — are primarily interested in a return on their investment within a defined window, usually three to seven years.
They are not there to fall in love with your packaging or to protect your brand story. They are there to grow revenue, maximize EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization), and position the business for a sale or IPO. PERIOD.

That’s not a character flaw. It’s their job. But it may not align with your brand vision.

Before you take a single dollar, do your homework.

• Look at their portfolio.

• Talk to founders they’ve backed before - not the ones on their website, the ones they don’t use in their marketing.

• Ask what happened when growth targets weren’t met.

• Ask what the conversation looked like when a founder wanted to slow down a project to ensure they launch a high-quality, stable product.

• Ask if they’ve ever pushed a brand into a channel or retail partnership the founder was uncomfortable with.

The answers to those questions will tell you everything.

Treat It Like a Marriage, Not a Mortgage.

Here’s the analogy I keep coming back to: taking on an investor is less like a business loan and more like getting married. You don’t just get the money - you get a relationship that comes with opinions, expectations, and often complications that require compromise.

And just like a marriage, the early courtship is when everyone is on their best behavior. The investor is attentive, enthusiastic, and full of big promises about what they can bring to the table beyond capital — distribution relationships, operational expertise, and marketing support. Some of it is real. Some of it is theater.

The question isn’t how they treat you when things are going well. It’s how they treat you when a launch underperforms, when a key retailer pulls back, or when the market shifts and your growth trajectory takes an unexpected detour. Structure your relationship accordingly.

Get the hard conversations in writing before the deal closes:

• What happens if growth targets aren’t met?

• Who has approval authority over key hires, product decisions, and retail partners?

• What does the exit process look like, and who drives it?

These aren’t adversarial questions — they’re professional ones. Any investor worth working with will respect you more for asking them.

And do not - I cannot stress this enough - do not treat the capital injection as a finish line. It’s a starting line. The relationship begins the moment the wire transfer clears, and it requires the same intentionality, communication, and mutual respect as any long-term partnership.

Exits…

This is the part that nobody talks about at the funding celebration dinner, and it’s maybe the most important thing I’ll say here.

The beauty industry has a complicated relationship with investors. There’s a pervasive narrative that selling a stake in your brand to a VC or PE represents capitulation. That if you really believed in what you built and were serious about its growth, you wouldn’t “sell out”. That a founder with integrity would never invite some conglomerate to absorb their creation.

That narrative is unfair, and frankly, unrealistic.

Some of the most influential brands in beauty history were founded, built, funded by investors, scaled, and sold. An exit isn’t a surrender. It’s a chapter closing.

What matters is that you built something real. Something with integrity. Something that genuinely served your customer, pushed the industry forward, or changed the conversation in your category. If what you built wasn’t worthwhile, you wouldn’t have attracted investors or a buyer.
The measure of what you built is based on the quality and values you baked into the brand before stepping into an investment or sale negotiation.

You can be proud of what you built, no matter how you end your participation.

#MyTwoCents

Founders who navigate investor relationships successfully are the ones who go in with clear eyes, ask hard questions, and hold on to their values even when pressure to meet quarterly sales goals builds.

Capital is a tool, not a lottery ticket. Only take what you can deploy. Only partner with people whose definition of “success” is similar to yours. Treat the investor relationship with the same respect and intentionality you’d give any long-term business partnership — because that’s exactly what it is.

And if the chapter closes? Hold your head up. The work was real. The impact was real. That doesn’t disappear when the brand does.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and discuss in the comments below.

Kevin James Bennett is the publisher of In My Kit®. He is an Emmy Award-winning makeup artist, cosmetic developer, industry expert, and educator.
Learn more at www.kjbennett.com

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: we’re raising entire generations of consumers who idolize and doggedly defend their parasocial relationships with social media beauty influencers who don’t know they exist and don’t really care about them - EXCEPT their monetary value.

Honestly? It’s both the best and worst thing to happen to the beauty industry in decades.

Let’s start with the good, because there IS good here (just not a lot)

Gen Z and Gen Alpha are, hands down, the most ingredient-literate consumers we’ve ever seen. When a sixteen-year-old casually drops “I’m looking for something with centella asiatica for barrier repair” at Sephora, that’s next level. The democratization of skincare education through influencers has done more to advance consumer sophistication than decades of dermatologist PSAs ever could. These kids understand pH levels. They understand the mechanical functions of ingredients such as alpha- and beta-hydroxy acids, niacinamide, and ceramides. They’re asking questions their parents never thought to ask.

And the accessibility piece matters too. Influencers have made beauty feel achievable for people who never see themselves in traditional advertising. When you watch someone with your skin type, your beauty concerns, and your budget work through products in real time, that’s genuinely valuable. The cosmetic industry has spent decades pretending that its marketing targets the majority of cosmetic consumers. Social media beauty influencers pointed out the problem with that perspective and changed it.

But here’s where the good ends, I sigh (heavily), and get angry…

Parasocial relationships in the beauty community have created a trust problem, and nowhere is this clearer than in the disclosure disaster we’re living through.

FTC rules aren’t ambiguous: if you’re paid, gifted, or have any material connection to a brand, you are required, BY LAW, to disclose it clearly.

And yet we get #gifted buried fourteen hashtags deep in a description box, sponsorship icons that flash on screen for half a second, and affiliate links mentioned in passing while an influencer spends eight minutes calling a serum “life-changing” (even though the serum they reviewed last week was ALSO “life-changing”).
For adults, this bullsh*t is annoying. For young viewers who genuinely believe this person is their friend, it’s a betrayal they don’t realize is happening.

Let’s name names…

…because you know I’m not afraid to, and because this didn’t happen in a vacuum. Greedy, dishonest people like Jaclyn Hill and James Charles wrote the playbook, building empires on YouTube and Instagram, while their audiences couldn’t distinguish genuine product recommendations from paid product placements. Now, a second generation of beauty influencers on a different social platform (TikTok) are emulating the same dishonesty. Mikayla Nogueira, Glamzilla: same blurred lines, same parasocial intimacy weaponized to make sponsorships feel like friendly advice. The faces change, the tactics get more sophisticated, but the fundamental lack of authenticity and ethics persists.

The research confirms what we already suspect: young consumers are significantly less likely to recognize sponsored content when disclosures are inadequate and more likely to purchase based on recommendations they believe are organic. These failures aren’t accidents. They work. And they work best on the youngest, most trusting viewers.

Beyond disclosure, there’s the consumption pattern itself. Teenagers building ten-step routines they don’t need because their favorite creator uses ten steps. Kids with healthy skin are developing anxiety about “problems” they never thought of until TikTok told them to worry about them. The routine becomes a parasocial ritual—you’re not buying a serum or concealer, you’re participating in a shared experience with someone you admire. That’s psychologically sticky in ways that should concern everyone.

And let’s not blame only dishonest influencers; the cosmetic industry is highly complicit as well. Some brands actively request murky disclosures or none at all because they convert better. What’s even more disturbing to a product developer like myself? Brands begin product development with “what will look best on camera” rather than “how does this product enrich a consumer’s life.” I’ve sat in meetings where packaging was chosen entirely based on flat-lay aesthetics. Our focus, as an industry, has drifted, and it’s worth being honest about who’s getting hurt.

#MyTwoCents

These parasocial relationships aren’t going away anytime soon, nor should they entirely.
But we’d benefit from teaching young consumers that you can enjoy someone’s content and still maintain critical distance (yes, I’m pushing critical thinking - AGAIN). Younger consumers need to understand that their favorite influencer can be engaging, entertaining, and informative, while also being financially motivated to engage in dishonest practices that don’t align with FTC rules.

You see, two things can be true at the same time!

How do we address this? We need to stop treating inadequate disclosure as a minor compliance issue. When influencers obscure their brand relationships, they’re lying to an audience that skews young, trusting, and financially unsophisticated. Even though the FTC is FINALLY taking enforcement seriously, social platforms could do more. And brands knowingly participating in these arrangements deserve to be exposed and face consequences.

What are your thoughts on these parasocial relationships and how they exploit younger consumers? Leave a comment and let’s have a conversation.

Walk into any Sephora or Ulta nowadays, and you’ll spot a seismic shift: a lot of the same straight guys who thought wearing makeup was “gay” are casually browsing the concealer wall, testing foundation shades on their jawlines, debating the merits of different setting powders. 😳

The men’s grooming market has exploded, but we’re not just talking about moisturizers and eye creams anymore. We’re talking about actual color cosmetics - tinted moisturizers, concealers, color correctors, bronzers, the works. What was once the domain of LGBTQ+ men doing get-ready-with-me makeup tutorials and product reviews has become remarkably mainstream among heterosexual men.

The irony: Many of these same straight guys spent years mocking the brave LGBTQ+ guys who normalized this shift in acceptance of men wearing makeup.

From Ridicule to Routine

The transformation has been stark. The same men who once left brutal comments on YouTube makeup tutorials—mocking “boys wearing more makeup than our girlfriends,” are now stashing a tube of concealer in their work bags. The guys who made James Charles and other young male beauty creators the target of endless jokes now casually pat translucent powder on their T-zones before client meetings.

High-definition cameras on Zoom calls revealed every flaw. Instagram close-ups became unavoidable. The pandemic normalized skincare routines, which naturally evolved into color cosmetics. Suddenly, “just looking polished” became a career advantage, not vanity.

But the infrastructure for this acceptance was built by the exact people who faced the most ridicule. Young men who filmed tutorials in their bedrooms, who weathered death threats and slurs, who insisted that makeup had no gender—they’re the reason guys can now walk into Ulta without batting an eyelash.

The Industry Responds

Companies caught on years ago, though it’s taken time for mainstream acceptance to catch up. Tom Ford launched a men’s beauty line in 2013, featuring a bronzing gel and concealer. Chanel followed in 2018 with Boy de Chanel, becoming the first major luxury brand to create a dedicated men’s makeup line. UK brand War Paint launched the same year, eventually opening what they claimed was the world’s first men’s makeup store on London’s Carnaby Street in 2021.

The War Paint marketing carefully avoids anything too “feminine”—it’s all about “looking sharp” and “professional confidence.” The packaging comes in matte black compacts and navy tubes. The formulas are often identical to those of products marketed to women, just rebranded with a masculine energy.

The guys now casually using concealer before dates or bronzer before presentations weren’t the pioneers—they were the beneficiaries. The young creators who faced ridicule, harassment, and even death threats did the heavy lifting.
What these brands won’t mention is that their market exists because a generation of young LGBTQ+ creators absorbed the mockery, kept posting, and slowly, persistently changed the culture.
Those “boys in makeup” who were called every slur in the book made it safe for the “bros” to bronze up before happy hour. They normalized the idea that makeup has no gender, that self-care isn’t weakness, and that wanting to look your best is just practical.

#MyTwoCents

And here’s the uncomfortable truth: most of these new makeup-wearing heterosexual men have never acknowledged the debt. No apologies to the creators they mocked. No recognition of who paved the way. Just a quiet pivot from ridicule to routine, as if they’d always been on board.

Maybe acknowledging that the freedom to grab a concealer without shame came at someone else’s expense? Then again, maturity and self-awareness aren’t exactly predominant “bro” characteristics. But hey, at least their skin looks great on Zoom calls now. 🙄

Another year, another chance to look at where our industry has headed. As we settle into 2026, I wanted to break down the trends that defined 2025 - trust me, it was quite a year. 😳

The Age of Plastic Perfection

This year, we saw a massive push towards procedures that create unnaturally symmetrical and “plastic-looking” faces across ALL age groups - even more than the wave of Kardashian clones (beauty influencers) that dominated social platforms between 2015-2020.

We’ve reached a time where twenty-year-olds are demanding that dermatologists and plastic surgeons perform preventive procedures typically reserved for folks over 40, while their grandmothers are coming out of doctors’ offices and clinics looking like their sisters.

Here’s what’s wild: we (the cosmetic industry) have convinced entire generations that human variation is not aesthetically pleasing, but a problem that needs fixing. And “the work” being done is so seamless that you can’t immediately tell what procedures a person has had done - but you know something looks “different”, unnatural, like you’re talking to an AI-driven figure.

Progress, right? 🙄

Therapy in a Bottle

This year, the cosmetic industry marketed feelings, hardcore. Fragrance collections promised to manipulate your emotional state on demand. Want to feel a particular kind of way? There are now hundreds of new cosmetic and fragrance products promising specific effects on your mental state and how others perceive you.

One particular color cosmetic brand, Fel (pronounced “feel”), wasn’t going to be left out of the surge and introduced a lip/cheek product called “Kissylips™️” that they claim:

• Contains a proprietary fel-good complex™ - which supports holistic well-being.

• Kissylips provides benefits to boost the body’s natural supply of “feel-good” endorphins and oxytocin.

• “Our proprietary ingredients have been shown to increase overall feelings of well-being for a holistic experience beyond just cosmetic.”

WTF is this marketing bullsh*t about?
Are they suggesting that cosmetics should be used to control our emotional state? Apparently, experiencing emotions naturally isn’t enough; we need a lip and cheek tint to really connect with our inner feelings. 🙄

I get it, cosmetics can be potent self-esteem boosters…but it appears that cosmetics are now aggressively marketing themselves as a mental health adjacent industry. Cosmetics and fragrance are being marketed with carefully worded promises (to avoid legal exposure) to help you process and manage your emotional trauma.

Sorry, folks, even though that stupidly expensive bottle of Baccarat Rouge 540 or Creed Aventus will make you smell great, it’s not going to manage your depression or anxiety.

AI Takes Over Skincare

Artificial intelligence is now analyzing your skin from a selfie and telling you what’s wrong with it. L’Oréal’s BioPrint lab goes even further—it calculates your skin’s biological age and predicts problems you’ll have in the future.

Let that sink in: cosmetic marketers are promoting technology designed to tell you about flaws that don’t even exist yet. We’ve turned aging into a shell game where you’re constantly losing. And people are paying for this.

The “Natural” Contradiction

Here’s where things get really interesting. Everyone wants “natural”, “clean” ingredients, but they want completely unnatural results.
Injectable treatments using your own blood and fat are preferable to Botox and fillers now because the blood and fat come from your body and count as “natural”. The industry is even normalizing using fat from cadavers on folks so obsessed with their looks that they refuse to gain “fat” weight that can be harvested for these procedures.

Think about it:
Injecting yourself with dead people’s tissue is apparently part of the cosmetic industry’s “natural” wellness movement now.

Meet the Anti-Aging Parents

A new demographic has emerged: Gen X and Gen Y (millennial) parents obsessed with looking younger who push the same concerns onto their kids. These parents (moms AND dads) are obsessed with aging, and receive regular longevity treatments (dermatology and plastic surgery). They actively encourage their children to follow the same path at alarmingly young ages.

This demographic is instilling an overwhelming level of intergenerational beauty anxiety in kids during childhood. These kids will eventually need serious therapy, but in the meantime, they can use a therapist-founded skincare regimen. 🙄

Men Join the Beauty Anxiety Club

One of the biggest shifts this year? We convinced men that cosmetic procedures aren’t vanity—they’re a career strategy. Politicians and tech executives are getting facial work done and calling it professional optimization.

The messaging is smart: it’s not insecurity, it’s strategic planning. And it’s working, even though some of these same guys argue against other people (women) having control over their own bodies. The double standard is remarkable.

Marketing Through Denial

My favorite trend: products marketed by pretending they’re not really what they are. “Not mascara” mascara. “Not fragrance” fragrance. They’re essentially lying to consumers about what they’re buying, and consumers are OK with it. 😳

It’s clever marketing, but in a somewhat disturbing manner.

#MyTwoCents

So what did 2025 prove? That there’s basically no limit to what people will buy in pursuit of algorithmic perfection. People are letting AI judge their faces, buying products marketed as emotional support, and getting procedures—all of which are called “self-care.”

The business model is simple:

1. Identify and promote a major anxiety people share about their appearance, or create a new problem.

2. Sell them an expensive solution with a “proprietary” complex or ingredient.

3. Market it with trending wellness language.

4. Sponsor a bunch of beauty influencers to promote it on socials.

5. Watch the money roll in.

Looking ahead to 2026? We’ll probably find new body parts for people to obsess over, develop more invasive ways to diagnose “problems,” and come up with fresh ways to profit from the gap between how people look and how the cosmetic industry tells them they should look.

At the end of the day, the current cosmetic industry is in the business of selling dissatisfaction. And business has never been better - so don’t hold your breath for it to change.

The author has spent over four decades in the cosmetic industry and has witnessed the same ideas repackaged with new terminology at least a dozen times. 🥱

Remember when buying a new fragrance was an event? You'd spend hours at the department or specialty store counter, testing different scents on fragrance blotter strips, on your wrist, maybe even leaving with a few samples to test IRL before committing to a full bottle.

We went from buying a few carefully chosen quality pieces of clothing each season…to filling our closets with cheaply made, trendy fashion that falls apart after a few washes. And it appears that the fragrance industry is having its own fast fashion moment. And honestly? It's a mess.

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Let's discuss the skincare industry's most overused get-out-of-jail-free card: "purging." Scroll through beauty forums on Reddit or Instagram and TikTok videos, and you'll see it everywhere – people defending a skin reaction to a new product by claiming their skin is just "purging toxins" or "it’s going to get worse before it gets better."
However, here's what the actual science tells us: most of the time, what people identify as “purging” is actually skin irritation caused by a poorly formulated product.

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Bold Claims That Raised Our Eyebrows

Image Skincare has caused a lot of raised eyebrows with its latest launch, Vol.U.Lift, which they boldly position as "the first and only GLP-1 Skin Rebound Complex intentionally formulated to combat the specific facial changes caused by rapid weight loss." The company claims their topical treatment can address what's commonly known as "Ozempic face" – the deflated, sunken appearance (facial wasting, also known as facial lipoatrophy) which is often caused by rapid weight loss from GLP-1 medications like semaglutide.

Wait a Minute…I Smell Bullsh*t. 🤨

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Finding the perfect foundation or concealer used to be like dating, falling in love, and getting married. You'd try different brands and formulas until you found one you liked enough to share with your friends and family. And when you found “the one,” you were committed.

But TikTok Shop has turned cosmetic shopping into a series of one-night stands. Swipe up, add to cart, check out, get your dopamine hit, and scroll to the next influencer suggesting (selling) something. No commitment, no relationship building, just instant gratification - followed by buyer's remorse when you realize that the viral serum concealer pushed by dozens of beauty influencers doesn’t cover your dark circles and accentuates fine lines around your eyes, making you look 10 years older.

You’re confused because, “It looked so smooth and brightening in the video…”
(FILTERS sweetie).

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The wellness community has weaponized buzzwords like "natural" and "organic" to try to convince us that the wonders of modern science and technology in cosmetics are poison. Never mind that poison ivy is natural and arsenic is organic. 🤨

Now we’re seeing the wellness community on social media promoting "traditional remedies" and "artisanal skincare,” which appear to include slathering rendered cow fat (beef tallow) on your face.
Why?
Because beauty influencers needed a constant flow of outrageous, clickbait content, and apparently, decades of scientific dermatological research mean nothing when you’re trying to create the latest viral video on TikTok. 🙄

Unpopular FACT: viral videos don’t override clinical scientific data.

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Social media has completely transformed how beauty professionals connect with clients and grow their businesses. From Instagram transformations to TikTok tutorials, platforms have become essential tools for stylists, estheticians, makeup artists, and salon owners. But like any powerful tool, social media marketing comes with both incredible opportunities and real challenges.

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What if the current people being promoted on social media as beauty product "experts" are actually just a fresh batch of monetised influencers, but this group has impressive medical credentials?

Picture this:
You're thinking of buying a new skincare product, but you want to see some “expert” reviews before you place your order.

You find a review by Dr. InstaTok (fake name), a board-certified plastic surgeon with nearly 1 million followers, and a feed overflowing with aesthetically inspirational before-and-after images of his patients.
You also find a review by Dr. Factsmatter (fake name), a working product formulator with a PhD in cosmetic chemistry who spent five years developing the “breakthrough” ingredient featured in the product you want to buy. However, Dr. Potter has only 200 followers and posts mostly scientific data.

Guess whose review most people are more likely to trust? 🤨

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What is “Clean Beauty”?

The term "clean beauty" exists in a regulatory vacuum because the FDA and FTC have decided they have better things to do than create guidelines to define the term. This has emboldened cosmetic marketers to manipulate the term to elevate their products, while utilizing ingredient fear-mongering to deter you from their competitors’ products.

The lack of FDA and FTC regulation means brands can market their cosmetic products as "clean", using any tactics they want, including dishonesty and disinformation…with no repercussions.
Many use the Environmental Working Group's "ingredient fear-mongering" and cherry-picked pseudoscience approach (more about EWG’s bullsh*t here).
Science? Clinical data? How charmingly old-fashioned. Why rely on boring scientific evidence when you can craft your own definition based on the latest TikTok trend or whatever your marketing team dreamed up during their last brainstorming session?

Essentially, “Clean Beauty” has become a very dirty business, so let’s look at it from all sides.

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In Video 1, Caroline introduces me, and we review my background and the life experiences that led me to where I am today.
In Video 2, we dig a bit deeper into the cosmetic industry, and I share some of my favorite products.

These videos live on Caroline’s Instagram and TikTok accounts, but I wanted to preserve them here (in case they get deleted). I hope you enjoy the ride (I definitely did) and feel free to ask any questions in the comment section below.

In this video clip, she explains the difference between an influencer and an EXPERT - simply and honestly.

Thank you, Sonia 👏👏👏💙

Which is why…
In the 21st century, if you cannot match the skin tone of ANYONE sitting in your makeup chair, you are not ready to market yourself as a professional makeup artist.
This is non-negotiable, and no excuses are acceptable.

FACT:
Every profession has its fundamental principles, and if you have not mastered these BASIC principles, you are not prepared to pursue that profession and charge for your services. PERIOD.

This is no different for professional makeup artists.
One of the most critical aspects of makeup artistry is a comprehensive understanding of COLOR THEORY. Once you have a solid understanding of color theory and enough practice under your belt, you should be able to match any skin tone and perform any color correction.
Learning and mastering fundamental makeup theories and techniques is NOT optional if you want to pursue a career as a PROFESSIONAL makeup artist.

Can a beauty influencer or content creator ALSO be a professional makeup artist?
Of course, if they’ve successfully completed fundamental makeup training and can perform all essential tasks expected of a makeup artist. Correctly color-matching foundation is a baseline requirement. BASELINE.

Profound (and slightly snarky) Observation:

Many social media beauty influencers and content creators claim to be a current or former makeup artist… yet they can’t match their own foundation correctly.
If you can’t perform the most basic makeup theories and techniques on yourself, you were never a professional makeup artist and need to stop marketing yourself that way.
I’m not hating the influencer hustle - create your content and get your coins. But there needs to be TRUTH in advertising. If you’re asking followers to trust your input and recommendations as a ‘professional’, you need to meet the minimum requirements of that profession.

Serious Question:
How do you feel about people claiming a profession (any profession) without a working knowledge of its fundamental theories and techniques?

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