Makeup Myths – Fact or Fiction

It’s time to start backing up those recommendations with cold, hard facts and debunking the myths that have lead you to miss out on some amazing things over the years. Old wives’ tales tend to be one of the biggest culprits here, but there tends to be some truth to a few of them, so we generally trust them all. Maybe it’s about time we start to work out what is good for us as individuals and stop being scared to try something because someone in the 1600s claimed that it turned their skin green! And no, that is not a good look, but the facts don’t lie, so lets explore them together and make sure we know our makeup facts versus our makeup fiction!

Let’s settle this quite simply; Sun creams, sun blocks and sunscreens – aside from staying out of the sun entirely – are the only products that offer you true protection from the sun, and even then you have to check the SPF is high and it has a five (or close to it) star rating before you think about braving the outside sun wearing it.

Sun cream is vitally important for blocking out the harmful UV rays the sun provides and even on a cloudy day it is necessary. It is said that an SPF factor 15 blocks out around 90% of the sun’s harmful rays, whereas SPF 30 is enough to block out 97%. You will never be 100% covered, even if you apply it all day which is why you can still burn or tan when wearing it, but it is still so important that you do.

Now, when it comes to your makeup and foundation, it may say it has SPF and offers protection from the sun, but the truth is you apply foundation a lot different to the way you would apply sun cream. With sun protection creams we tend to be more liberal, aiming for a big dollop to cover each area, happily reaching for more if we feel that we have missed a spot. With foundation, we don’t really do this. Okay so some people do this, but on a regular sunny day, can you honestly say that piling the foundation is your priority? The last thing you want is to feel caked under tonnes of makeup when a heatwave hits, so when you apply small amounts to your skin it isn’t really giving you the same coverage and protection as a sun cream would.

It is really important to remember as well that makeup and sunscreen hybrids are never going to do the best job at either thing they are supposed to do. So as far as a foundation goes, you may not end up with the texture and finish that you want if you find one with a high SPF, and as a sun cream it won’t do the job like an authentic sun cream would. Do your skin a huge favour keep it protected from those harmful UV rays before even thinking about makeup as a necessity.

If you are a regular wearer of makeup you know how it works on your skin and how your skin feels after you remove it. So this statement about makeup being bad for your skin is quite subjective. The purpose of makeup is to make you feel great about yourself, to help cover blemishes, highlight areas of definition and to create a statement about your own personality. It wouldn’t be fair if it caused lasting damage in the name of beauty, so makeup is formulated to keep things healthy and soft, even when wearing it for longer periods of time.

Back in the early 1900s, it was unfortunately a different story for a lot of makeup, where regulations didn’t exist and products were sometimes difficult to come by, especially during the war, leaving women to create their own eyeliners and rouges with homemade products. Even before this, ladies would wear lead-based paint to accentuate the paleness of their skin and a lot of makeup was very toxic, some even containing arsenic which did a lot more damage than just to the skin.

These days, makeup us carefully crafted with ingredients and formulas that are easily applied and removed and can even help the skin with its moisturising properties. We are very lucky! That being said, wearing makeup for a long time without removing it, or using products that are past their use by date or perhaps have started to change in texture can be very bad for your skin. Skin needs a chance to breathe and doesn’t work well with congealed makeup up being applied to it. So can makeup be bad for your skin? Yes, if not used properly.

This goes hand in had with the above point about makeup being bad for you, and how it needs to be removed each day for your skin to stay in good shape. Wearing makeup to bed can cause a whole world of problems that can take a lot of effort to fix so it just isn’t worth the risk.

For starters, you will never get those makeup stains out of your pillowcases no matter how hard you try, so that should be reason enough! But on a serious note, rubbing all that makeup deep into you skin from laying down on your pillow all night will start to cause irritation if the oils build up in your pores. This can leave your skin feeling itchy and dry in places and also look blotchy and red.

Wearing eye makeup to bed is definitely a big no no, and really something to think about consciously every single night if you wear a lot of eyeliner and mascara. Sleeping in any makeup around the eyes is just asking for trouble and inviting infection into those sparklers, and not to mention how tired and worn it can make the skin look around the eye area after time. The oils in eye makeup and especially mascara can be very constricting when it dries in place and plays a big part in reducing the amount of moisture that can get through to the deeper layers of skin causing lines and early signs of wrinkles. I don’t know about you, but premature wrinkles are the last thing I would want.

As well as being bad for the skin around your eyes, mascara can be really damaging to eyelashes if it isn’t removed daily. The fantastic product that gives you longer looking and volumized lashes can also be restrictive on how much movement they have and when you sleep and move around your pillow through the night, you could be twisting and pulling your eyelashes in all kinds of directions. This can lead to them breaking or falling out before they are due to, so the best thing for them is a proper cleanse in the evening followed by a dose of an eyelash serum to keep them nourished and healthy while you catch those.

It isn’t just food you have to look out for in terms of expiry dates unfortunately, makeup and cosmetics also have a maximum timescale for use before they go bad. Now, this can get a little bit gross, so if you weren’t aware of how bad it is to use old and expired makeup, then read on and prepare to check your own kit for signs of makeup that is well past its use by date.

The main difference between cosmetics and food is that food has an actual date on it to indicate how long it is before it goes bad and giving you an idea of how long you have to consume it; makeup works on a different system, offering a number of months from the time of opening it. Sure, even sealed completely, it probably won’t last a lifetime, but as long as that lid and seal is perfectly intact, you shouldn’t need to start counting your months straight away.

The expiry is indicated on most makeup and cosmetic products by a little symbol of an open jar with a number inside or next to it, if you ever wondered what that meant. So as soon as it is open, start counting down those months. The things is with this system is that it is still a guide and there are other factors that can cause makeup to go bad before those precious months are up and that’s where you need to look out for where and how you are keeping your makeup.

Hot temperatures and bright sunlight will all contribute to how long your makeup stays good, so keep it in cooler and darker environments to get the best out of it. On top of this is how often you clean your brushes and beauty blenders, especially when you use them to transfer makeup to your skin. If you think about how many times your brush acts as a go between from your eyeshadow palette to you skin, it might make you think about cleaning them more regularly. All the dead skin – even though it’s microscopic – gets transferred to your makeup, leaving a breeding ground for bacteria to grow which then gets transferred to your eyes. If it has been a while since you gave those brushes a good scrub, it may be time to think about new ones as well as some new makeup too.

In this day and age it is so normal to see women enhancing their faces cosmetically, that is doesn’t seem so much of a taboo anymore. Procedures have changed drastically; prices have become more realistic and trained cosmeticians are more easily accessible. So, if you want a little Botox here and a little plumper there, as long as you know what you’re fully letting your body in for, you should do what is right for you.

But what about those of you who don’t necessarily want to go for an extreme or invasive enhancement? Perhaps it’s a bit to scary, or maybe costs too much, either way, there has to be a different option to get the look you were hoping for. Well, in terms of your lips, there is definitely a way to achieve a plumped-up look without the pain of lip fillers.

Lip plumping balms are the answer here, and it is possible to achieve “bee-stung” lips with only a couple of applications. The lips themselves are very sensitive areas of the face and the outer layers really soak in whatever product you put on them, and this is why they can become damaged quite easily. So if you want to affect them in a positive way, then a limp plumping balm could do just the trick for you. Okay, so it doesn’t last a lifetime, but enough for a special night out will do the trick, especially if it means not having to go down the filler route.

Finish off the new plumped up look with some bright lipstick, with a slightly overlined edge and you are good to go. Lip plumping balms are becoming more and more popular for temporary enhancements and when it also give yours lips a tingly feeling and a softer feel, its easy to see why.

There are many makeup myths that people still believe in, even when the world of cosmetics is advancing so much day by day, the only way to be really sure on what is fact and what is fiction is do to plenty of research on the products and methods you are interested in and try them out for yourselves instead of listening to those old wives’ tales! You may uncover a whole world of makeup that you wished you’d learnt about earlier.