The Truth on Cosmetics…?
Nov 9th, 2010 by tiffrennick
So for my EOSC 312 class we had to watch a bunch of different videos including Ted Talks and a mini-series called “The Story of Stuff.” The latter really caught my attention, and one of the videos is my specific focus today (which will coincide with deceptive marketing).
Basically what the video says is that the majority of cosmetic and beauty products we use today contain a lot of ingredients that are toxic, and a lot of ingredients that havn’t even been tested. This video really impacted me because as we saw in marketing class, we use so many products and services throughout the day. I was just thinking of a list of products that could have potential toxic things in them that I use – deodorant, shampoo, makeup, etc.
This topic is heavily related to marketing, as many of these companies that use toxic chemicals in their products don’t really let the consumer know about it. Of course these ingredients are listed, but does the everyday consumer really know what ‘propylparaben’ is? Currently there are guidelines to protect consumers from misleading (or omitting important information) product labels, but in lieu of this information I think there needs to be more. It cannot be presumed that people will actually know what toxins they are putting there body through, so it up to the companies to either tell consumers in simple language what is in their products or stop using these toxins all together.
A useful website on this topic: http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com
This website has a lot of information on different cosmetics and their ingredients, and how these ingredients can affect those who use them.
“The best thing is to look natural, but it takes makeup to look natural” – Calvin Klein