The most useless cosmetics review ever

You know what this blog is missing? Close-ups of my eyeballs. Don’t worry, I noticed the glaring absence of eyeball photography too, and it’s high time I did something about it. 

So, Internets, feast your eyes on these…eyes…

(Hold on, there’s a reason behind this.) 

After I collected all of my empties to send to Terracycle for recycling last week, I realized that I needed new mascara. Now, if you have ever seen me, you know that I’m not a huge makeup person, mostly out of sheer laziness and ineptitude, but one thing I do wear every day is mascara.  EVERY. DAY. 

I wear mascara every day because I strongly believe that without it, my eyes just sort of merge into the rest of my face and I immediately look:

a) Twelve

b) Exhausted, or

c) Twelve AND exhausted, which is extra rough because why is a twelve-year old so tired? Some serious shit has to be going down in a twelve-year old’s life to be looking so busted already. This worries people.

Besides, modern day societal norms have taught me nothing if not the fact that women must emphasize their eyes. Eyes must have definition. So, obedient plebe that I am, I wear mascara every day.

Prior to The Great Terracycle purge I usually wore an Almay mascara, not particularly sure which one, but I liked it because it was mild, rated low on the EWG scale and the tube was white, which, I don’t know. It pleased me somehow. 

Then. THEN I realized that while Almay says they don’t test on animals, they are owned by Revlon, which does. 

And I mean, we can argue about animal-testing for medical reasons, but I think you’d have to be a real dick to argue for animal testing of cosmetics or household products. There is just absolutely no reason to be subjecting animals to confinement and cruelty in the pursuit of longer lashes, brighter blush or shinier floors. I would rather look like a busted twelve year old, if those are my options.

So when I found out that Almay was owned by Revlon, this unsettled me, and I Terracycle-recycled the mascara (which was probably six months old anyway), and I went searching for a more animal friendly alternative. I solicited opinions on the Sweet Madeleine Facebook page and someone suggested Arbonne, and someone else suggested Pacifica.  I am currently trying to find a place online to order one or both of these because this small town of mine doesn’t carry them, but in the meantime I was rocking around looking like an exhausted pre-teen so I had to find a drugstore fix.

After intense googling and Cosmetics Database-ing I settled on this 

 

Wow. I was impressed by how businesslike this thing looked. And flawless? Decision made. I packed Olive up and we ventured forth into the world – sans mascara. 

The only issue was that  bareMinerals was nowhere to be found, (UGH why is my life so hard?) so, in the aisles of a Shoppers Drug Mart while Olive tore apart several cosmetics displays, I took to my phone to frantically cross-reference virtually every drugstore brand out there to find one with good reviews, a sub-3 Cosmetics Database rating, and a cruelty-free status. The only one I was able to come up in my haphazard googling that satisfied all of these requirements was this hot little number:

Granted, the name’s not as stupendous, but the tube is hot pink and with Olive trying to eat nail polish, a decision had to be made. 

I also realized, as I sat down to write this useless review, that all of that googling was not wasted because I happened across a lot of other beauty product reviews, specifically for mascara. And what I learned from these ladies, was that closeups of eyeballs were a MUST for mascara reviews. Apparently no one wants to see the rest of your face, they want the GOODS! Get to the point!

So, I figured I would join the party. Here are my eyeballs, sans mascara, doing my best death-stare (this is SERIOUS):

and after, SO EXCITED that I have mascara on.

First of all, the most important thing to note is that I used a colour-picker tool to exactly match the font colour of the before/after text to my eye colour, and it came out as a muddy green, which confounded me because I always thought my eyes were grey-blue. So I had to take a few moments to let that sink in, change my drivers licence, ask Adam what colour my eyes are, yell at Adam for not knowing what colour my eyes are, etc. 

Second, never take close-ups of your eyeballs with a good camera. Who knew my eyes were so veiny and bloodshot? Who knew I had one eyelash that grew at a weird slant? Who knew I needed to pluck above my eyebrows, too? Why has no one told me these things? After uploading these photos I have realized that clearly, finding a decent mascara is the least of my problems.

Third, and most relevant to this post (or maybe not) is the review, so here it is: It’s mascara. It’s…black? I don’t know, it made me look like I have eyelashes where I didn’t before. It didn’t, like, burn me or anything, so that’s a bonus. 

I guess I’m not that much of a discerning makeup pro because I don’t really know what else to say about this. I really like it, it did what it was supposed to do and I feel whole again.

What else? The wand was…useful. In applying the mascara, I mean. OH! It smudged slightly after a few hours. But I was also rubbing my face a whole lot while sighing and clenching my teeth, because Olive kept falling to the floor in dramatic tears at the slightest provocation, so I mean…we can probably chalk that up to user error.

Bottom line? Please do some research and support companies that don’t test on animals. And make sure you’re not inadvertently testing noxious chemicals on you by checking your makeup at CosmeticsDatabase.com.

Here’s another picture, you know, just in case you want to pin this incredibly helpful review. 

You’re welcome.