Fashion

What Makeup Products Should REALLY Be Called

by Tori Telfer

Oct. 4, 2014

Makeup companies are out of control when it comes to branding. Every time I turn around, they're making up words like “illuminizing,” dreaming up “edgy” names for blush like “Serial Killer Cheekbones,” and inventing tween dream mashups like Girl Scout Cookie-flavored Lip Smackers. Sometimes they try to convince us that wearing makeup is like frolicking through a 1950s candy store by choosing names like “Frosted Sugar Cookie” and “Mint Candy Apple” while insisting that every other product is “whipped.” Other times, they co-opt the language of the hardcore athlete and brand their mascaras with intimidating phrases like “Extreme Volume,” “24-Hour Staying Power,” and “Won't Quit Your Face— Ever.”

But blue eyeshadow isn't actually “Aquamarine Dreams High-Pigment Professional Glitter,” it's just powder that makes you look like you snuck into your mom's old-school makeup kit. Pink lipstick isn't actually “Secretly Kissable Magic Marker Gloss,” it's just a combination of waxes, fats, emollients, and pigment. I dream of a world where marketing is forced to tell it like it is — where McDonalds has to stop posting photos of “farm-fresh tomatoes” in their “dining area,” where Starbucks Frappuccinos are openly referred to as “melted coffee ice cream,” and where all these glittering, whipped, ultra-creamy, long-lasting makeup products are bashfully honest about the fact that they don't always deliver exactly what they promise.