Amanda Hughes Loves the Beauty Brains

By Venus Zine Staff
Published: July 20th, 2010 | 10:50am

There are beauty products that claim to do just about everything: plump your lips, straighten your hair, grow your eyelashes, and even firm your butt. But how can you know what works and what doesn’t without wasting a ton of cash through trial-and-error? Sure, you can take the manufacturer's word for it, or spend hours reading through customer reviews on Sephora and Drugstore.com, but both of these methods get unpredictable results (think of all the times a product worked wonders for a friend but did nothing for you).

The only real way to know which cosmetics will work for you is to understand what goes into them. That’s where the Beauty Brains blog comes in! The site is run by a team of science-minded, critical-thinking ladies who help readers get to know a product by comparing what it claims to do with its list of ingredients. So your gloss says it’ll plump your lips 300 percent? By breaking down the stuff in the gloss, the Beauty Brains can tell you if your newly plushy pout is the result of specially formulated skin irritants or just really good moisturizers (and whether you should just save a bunch of dough and switch to Chapstick!). And the product breakdowns are written accessibly enough to appeal to everyone—from chemistry geek to cosmetic aficionado.

Tons of beauty myths are debunked on this site: whether your acne treatment stops working after a while, if conditioners can t otally restructure your hair, if shaving causes unwanted body hair to grow back thicker, if sulfate shampoos will make your tresses brittle. Most of the blog posts are in response to reader questions about specific products, but all the posts are helpful because some ingredients are found in tons of different cosmetics.

Honestly, learning the truth behind some pieces of cosmetic folklore can be tough—I’ll admit, ditching my salon brand conditioner for its drugstore twin was an ego-buster—but the Beauty Brains always have the science to back up their analysis. Even better, by teaching you which ingredients make your favorite products magic, they give you the freedom to be flexible with brand names, prices, and formulas while virtually guaranteeing you won’t have a beauty disaster.

The best part of the site, though, is that it empowers you to be an informed consumer. The Beauty Brains are all about keeping you from getting scammed. Next time a product claims to have a “patent-pending formula” that will change your life for $20 an ounce, you can head right to the Beauty Brains for the straight story. I do all the time.

Amanda Hughes is a Venus Zine intern.