Over the years, we have developed this mentality that the more expensive the product, the better the quality. Businesses and media have made us believe that we must pay higher if we want premium products. We automatically assume that if something doesn’t have a high price, it’s not worth having. This goes for all products, including makeup. Hence, the bigger the celebrity endorsing the makeup, the higher the price and the higher the price, the better the product. This is not always the case.
A lot of the times, companies simply bank on this mentality of consumers and sell products with the exact same formula as their cheaper counterparts at a much higher price. They do so to create a semblance of it being a ‘premium product’ or ‘premium quality’, whereas if you look at the ingredients of both the expensive and cheaper products, you would find they are almost the same.
Many companies own both high end brands as well as drug store brands. For example, L’Oreal owns the expensive brand Lancôme and the more affordable brands such as Maybelline New York and NYX. So even though NYX is an affordable brand, there is nothing wrong with its formula. So, is the cheaper makeup not as good as its more expensive counterparts? On the contrary, some users swear that its application and colors are a lot better than some of the more expensive brands. Many makeup artists and bloggers use drugstore brands to create their looks and show people that it is okay to be using affordable makeup products. There are special tutorials that use only cheaper brands of makeup to create dazzling looks to prove that they are just as good as the high end ones.
So the question arises, is cheap makeup good makeup? Not always. The users need to draw a line at the level of cheap. We need to use our common sense for this. Some makeup is so dirt cheap that it couldn’t possibly have authentic ingredients. So if you are getting a knock off of your favorite $30 lipstick for $2, then definitely some questionable chemicals are used in product. Using such products can result in severe skin problems and the money you save on buying this cheap makeup can go in hospital bills. Buyers must be careful of the no-name brands that some stores may be stocking. With brand names, you know for a fact that the formula would not be harmful in any way as they have a reputation to protect. With the absolute low range, name-less products, you don’t have this guarantee.
You need to do your research. You can buy cheap makeup of the better known brands, safely. Always match the labels before buying. Try and read the ingredients used in the cheaper product and compare it to a similar product of a more expensive brand. If you don’t find an ingredient in the list that sounds fishy, go ahead and buy it. The makeup industry caters to users from all socio-economic backgrounds. So we can safely find affordable options of almost all the makeup without them having any side effects.
