Tradeoff between morality and profits: Marking dominates the beauty products industry
Yes, it’s an astonishing fact, but it’s true ——the skincare products you are using might make your skin even worse. According to my own experience and previous research, many companies in beauty industry are operating in an unhealthy and immoral way.
The common fact is that skincare and cosmetic industry allocates large portion of their budget on marking. However, many of the companies solely pay attention to their marketing strategies and doing Under current legislation, the ingredients of beauty products can have negative effects to human’s skin. One may doubt if the regulator, such as FDA, will prohibit the use of harmful ingredients to skincare products. But according to Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act), FDA only regulates if the ingredient is poisonous, i.e. seriously “harmful” to human.
Due to such a loosen regulation, many companies legitimately promote their products by using immoral ways: they hire film stars to make advertisements, showing their vivid image on the advertisement and making people buy their products for their wrong assumption from the advertisement; however, what really important to customer, is unimportant to those companies. For example, LA MER, a high end product of Estee Lauder, are said to be “dramatically effective for skin”. This product is sold at an extraordinary high price. In their advertisement, they use a story of Aviation Doctor who burned his skin and “magically” use Algae Extract with other combination to recover his burned skin. This advertisement is persuasive since people believe the authority of a doctor, and their elaborately advertising videos make the product attractive. However, according to the report of an ingredient of the product, it used microcrystalline wax to fill out the tiny wrinkle and makes the skin looks “smooth” (like the floor after waxed) for a short period. More immorally, it used multiple extract that prove to be Irritating to skin.
Even though this is a small part of the beauty industry, but it refelcts the current problem for the industry. The skincare companies solely focus on improve their business only by marketing strategies, and ignores the moral part.
Data from: CosDNA.com