Mary Jane asks…Have you published your report on mineral makeup and I just missed it? If so, how do I find it? If it is still in the works, when can we all learn more about this revolution in face products? Really looking forward to this one!

The Right Brain responds:

No, Mary Jane, you didn’t miss anything. We’ve been promising you a report on Mineral Makeup for over a year! All the research is done and we assigned our intern, Mid Brain, to turn the info into a PDF that we could email to our readers. Unfortunately, Mid Brain was not really up to the task, so all that research has just been sitting on the shelf. Until now. (By the way, don’t think Mid Brain is getting off the hook for letting us all down on this assignment. Stay tuned for more on Mid Brain’s punishment).

Rather than waiting until we can figure out the best way to publish the entire report, we decided that today we would just blog about one of the top rated brands in our study. But first, we’ll tell you about our rating scale.

Mineral makeup research

We surveyed 75 of the top mineral makeup and rated them on the following criteria:

Mineral Purity

Do they truly contain minerals only or are they diluted with other materials? We ranked all the brands on an A, B, C scale with A being the purest mineral quality.

Talc and Bismuth Free

While technically talc and bismuth are safe materials, many women are concerned about these chemicals and would prefer minerals cosmetics that are talc and bismuth free. To make the top of the top, mineral makeup brands had to be formulated without these ingredients.

Price

We found that brands claiming to contain pure minerals that ranged in price from about $0.30 per gram to over $8.00 per gram. That means you could be paying more than 25 times the price that you should be! Our top rated brands had to have high quality as well as affordability.

Which Mineral Makeup Brand is best?

In our research, a few rose to the top.  And today we’re featuring Mineral Hygenics as one of the best of the best. Here are our ratings:

Mineral Hygienics Mineral Makeup

(Score based on their Foundation)

Mineral Purity: A

Talc and Bismuth Free: Yes

Price: $1.60 per gram

The Beauty Brains bottom line

If you’re looking for a mineral makeup, this is a brand that we recommend based on our technical assessment. You can find it by clicking on any of the links in today’s post.

Has anyone tried Mineral Hygenics? Leave a comment for the rest of the Beauty Brains community and let us know, or just tell us about YOUR favorite brand.

Mid Brain reports:

Beautypress.com has an interesting article about trends in lipstick over the last 9 decades.  Apparently there’s a connection between socioeconomic conditions and the color and shape of women’s lips. The author tracks these trends starting with the 1920s and shows how lipsticks have been influenced by social conditions of the times. Very interesting stuff and it got us thinking how lipstick chemistry has changed over time.

Pigments of the past

Earliest references to lip color can be traced back about 5000 years to ancient Babylon. At that time women crushed semi-precious stones and smeared them on as lipstick. Ancient Egyptian women used iodine and bromine to give their lips a purple-red color. Cleopatra supposedly mixed crushed carmine beetles and ant’s eggs to create her lip look. Henna and fish scales (for shimmer) were other common ingredients were added over the centuries. In the 1500’s lipsticks made of beeswax and plant oils became popular in England. This basic concoction of natural waxes and plant oils remained the lipstick base of choice for the next several hundred years.

Current colors

The “modern” era of lipstick really began with the invention of the pushup stick 1915. Then, in the late 1940s, long lasting lip color was pioneered by Hazel Bishop. While today’s lipsticks still employ natural waxes (like beeswax and candellila) and natural oils (like castor oil), cosmetic chemists have a much wider range of ingredients to formulate with. New emollients, thickeners and pigments have resulted in lipsticks that are vastly superior in texture, spreadability, and color longevity compared to those from even a few decades ago.  With the addition of moisturizers and sunscreens lipsticks can not only color your lips but actually keep them soft, moist, and protected from the elements. And of course lets not forget advances in packaging which have helped create different product forms like lip glosses.  What’s the best lipstick of all time? The kind that you can buy right now!

(Despite these advances, no product is perfect and you’ll still find that lipstick traces left on a glass or other places. Here’s a lipstick fun fact: According to a 1996 survey by Shisedo Cosmetics, Tokyo, 87% of American women admit to having left traces of lipstick in unwanted places!)

The Beauty Brains bottom line

Leave a comment and let the Beauty Brains community know if you’ve ever left a trace of lipstick in an “unwanted place.” (Trust me, your answer can’t be as embarrassing as Sarah Bellum’s!)

Sources:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/524929/lipstick_the_evolution_history_of_this.html?cat=69

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff/7728scit2.html

Sarah Bellum says:

It’s MY turn to play one of Mid Brain’s favorite games: Actual Cosmetic Ads from the Past!

It’s a Beauty Brains feature we haven’t done in a while: We find actual ads for beauty care products and post them for your amusement. I found this ad for Mary Quant Cosmetics, a line of products from the ’70s that’s gotta be dead by now. (You just don’t see much Quant these days.) Anyway, this particular ad is apparently a reference to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

In Quant’s version, however, there’s no snake in the garden. Just an obscene amount of mascara, eyeliner, blush, lipstick, and nail polish. And that’s just what Adam is wearing! We’re not sure how turning the “original man” into a tacky cross-dresser with bad fashion sense would make us want to buy Mary Quant’s products, but hey, it was the ’70s. Just make sure your nail polish matches your fruit and you’re good to go.

It’s time for another Beauty Science poll and this time we have a theme: Know Your Nails. (I was inspired by the Right Brain’s post last week on coconut oil and nails.) Three of these statements about nail science are true; one is a clever forgery. Can you guess which one is the fake? Scroll down on the right sidebar to cast your vote.

Which statement is FALSE?

1. Toe nails grow about 50% slower than finger nails.

2. Finger nails grow faster on longer fingers.

3. If you’re right handed, nails  grow faster on your right hand.

4. Thicker finger nails grow more slowly.

If you aren’t sure or think you know, leave a comment and get hints from the Beauty Brains community.

Kitten Devine’s question…I’ve read your post about coconut oil being able to penetrate the hair and strengthen it. Now, since I’m looking for both something moisturizing for my cuticles and something to strengthen my nails Ive started to apply coconut oil to my nails and cuticles (only since yesterday, so I can’t tell if it’s working yet) so I wondered if it works the same way on nails as it does on hair? Can it penetrate the nailplate? And is it even possible for any product/ingredient to penetrate the nails and actually strengthen and condition them?

The Right Brain’s reply:

Thanks for a very intriguing question, Kitten. So far, we’ve not been able to find a definitive answer in the scientific literature but we did uncover a couple of interesting tidbits in the Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists.

Nourishing nails

First, it is known that nails are more flexible when the water content is higher. And when you’re nails are more flexible they’re less likely to chip and break. But surprisingly, oil alone does not have much effect on nails. Researchers treated nails with mineral oil showed no increase in flexibility. But when they applied mineral oil to previously hydrated nails their flexibility was increased.  This finding suggests the oil itself is not strengthening the nail against breakage, but that the oil can lock in water.

Another experiment showed that an oil and water mixture (specifically a phospholipid-water preparation for those of you keeping score at home) did boost nail flexibility. The researchers theorized that oily material that can bind and seal water in the nails are helpful in improving flexibility (and therefore, strength.)

Second, the same article also pointed out that some materials can penetrate the nail but there was no indication that penetration and strengthening were connected.

The Beauty Brains bottom line

Oil can help keep nails moisturized and keep them strong by making them more flexible so they’re less likely to chip and break. But it appears that using lotion should be better than oil alone, unless you’re hydrating your nails first and then using oil to seal in the moisture.

Source:

J. Cosmet. Sci., 50, 363-385 (November/December 1999) Structural  characteristics  and permeability  properties of the human nail: A review GOURI V. GUPCHUP and JOEL L. ZATZ, College  of Pharmacy, Rutgers  University

What do YOU think? What’s your favorite nail treatment? Leave a comment and share your favorite nail treatment with the rest of the Beauty Brains community.