HAIR&BEAUTY: Stay away from beauty cons
Slimming belts are one of those fads that do not work. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
- Clever wording that sounds like a promise is how they get around it.
- When products are marketed as rare, precious ancient remedies from far-flung islands and mountains, they cost a lot.
- This is especially true of hair oils, and especially now that natural hair has taken over.
- A gadget-filled spa can be very intimidating and overpriced. Many of these gadgets are only there to help businesses charge more.
You can save yourself a lot of headaches, money and time if you become a smart consumer of beauty products and services. The beauty industry is evolving faster every day. Interesting products and services have come up and are being marketed in clever ways. From placenta extracts to vampire facials, you need to know what works for real and what does not.
Anti-ageing, stretchmark and cellulite creams: None of these creams have ever actually worked. If they did, they would be classified as drugs because for them to work, the structure of the skin would have to change. Instead, the Food and Drug Administration of America advises manufacturers not to make any false claims. Clever wording that sounds like a promise is how they get around it. “Improves the appearance of cellulite” does not mean that it removes and cures cellulite.
Fancy, exotic sounding hair oils: When products are marketed as rare, precious ancient remedies from far-flung islands and mountains, they cost a lot. This is especially true of hair oils, and especially now that natural hair has taken over. Oils such as Moroccan Argan oil do not possess any magical qualities as has now been proven. The high cost is actually because of the labour intensive extraction process it undergoes, and not because of any intrinsic benefits to the hair.
Zone-specific products: Creams and serums designed for the “delicate eye area” and “throat creams that contain lipids” are terms that make women pay good money for ordinary moisturisers packaged in tiny containers. There is often no difference in the ingredient list of this category of products from other moisturisers used on the rest of the face and body.
Unhelpful gadgets used to create expensive treatments: A gadget-filled spa can be very intimidating and overpriced. Often designed to create the illusion of a medical facility with equipment, many of these gadgets are only there to help businesses charge more. They are sold online, from China, and use vague and non-specific terms to describe what they do not do. For example, “Ultrasound cavitation machine process uses high frequency sound waves to break down cellulite and dissolve fat cells”.
