Everything You Need to Know About Clean Beauty

The concept of clean beauty is similar to that of gender—arbitrary, socially constructed, and kind of bullshit. I know, that was a very loaded statement, Danielle! Ease us into it, won’t you? Fine. Let’s get down to business.

What is clean beauty?

By definition, clean beauty refers to products made without ingredients shown or suspected to harm human health and/or the environment.

Other, similar but slightly different buzzwords include green, organic, nontoxic, sustainable, all-natural, chemical-free. Here’s a quick guide to this sort of rhetoric.

Okay. So obviously these are things we want, right?

I mean, yeah. All those things sound great. But here’s the issue: there are zero regulations, set definitions, or industry-wide standards when it comes to using these claims. Not one!

You can call any beauty product clean, because you get to decide what clean means—and you don’t have to tell anyone how you define it!

Wait, what? How did this happen?

It’s actually pretty simple. People are concerned about health and the environment and have become increasingly so over the last however many years. Think: the wellness movement—the term wasn’t even in our vernacular a decade ago. It’s now the cornerstone of the entire health industry.

And think about, buying “clean” products feels good—you’re taking care of yourself and your world! How thoughtful.

Marketers noticed this societal shift and, like good marketers should, wanted to act on it. Lucky for them, U.S. cosmetic safety laws have been virtually unchanged since they were created in the 1930s, and none of those laws set any industry-wide standard for clean and/or natural beauty claims.

And so, more and more marketers started using this kind of language to describe their products—totally unregulated use. Here’s a quick guide to this sort of rhetoric:

How are they getting away with this?

Mainly by spreading misinformation. Or maybe not outright misinformation, but at the very least misleading. Let me explain:

The clean beauty movement is largely fueled by dividing ingredients into two groups: clean (or non-toxic, natural, etc.) and dirty (toxic, chemical, etc.).

But here’s the dealio: you can’t just say an ingredient is good or bad without considering how it’s used.

Let’s use lions as an example. Stick with me here.

Lions are very dangerous. Yes? Yes. So we all agree that lions are hazardous. But that doesn’t mean lions are automatically risky.

If you go to the zoo, where lions are caged and physically cannot touch you, there’s no risk. That’s because you are not directly exposed to the lions.

On the flip side, if you’re theoretically roaming around Africa and run into some lions, there’s a whole lot of risk. The lions are just as hazardous as before, the difference is the exposure. In this case, the direct exposure to the lions is what makes it risky.

The issue with clean beauty is that we tend to rule out ingredients and products based on the hazards without considering the exposure. We don’t consider the overall risk of the situation. You still go swimming even though there’s a chance of drowning, right? And eat food even though there’s a chance of choking, and drive a car even though there’s a chance of crashing, and so on.

With this sort of logic, every single ingredient can be considered hazardous—there’s always the potential of risk, just like anything else in life.

That’s super misleading and confusing!

Yeah, it is. And there’s more, unfortunately. Some products labeled as “free from" an ingredient, when that specific ingredient wouldn’t be found in such a product anyway. It’s like saying that water is free of gluten—no shit, Sherlock.

I don’t necessarily think all of this is done with bad intentions. Is some of this fueled exclusively by the desire for money at all costs? Yeah, probably. But it’s also just how this sort of stuff works.

Brands know that people like easy decisions without any sort of doubt. So they just skirt scientific nuance (which most consumers don’t really want to know anyway) and just promise peace of mind by only using ingredients they’ve deemed clean.

A lot of cosmetic scientists recognize and acknowledge that this is a wholly unscientific trend, but the market is kind of forcing them into this—brands can’t push back on popular demand if they want to stay relevant. Thus, a whole lot of scare tactics, greenwashing, and misinformation.

Okay. I’m stressed.

I know, so let’s talk about the upside of this trend. Consumers are getting somewhat smarter—I mean we clearly care about what is being put in our products. So we’re seeing just that across the industry: brands are making a concerted effort to better their products and really consider what ingredients they use and how. Which is good!

And, of course, not all brands are using pseudoscience to fuel sales—a lot of brands (especially, I’ve found, newer ones) try to be super transparent about all of this.

This is a lot to digest. Anything else?

But of course. I know this is overwhelming. Please don’t think this means clean products are bad. This doesn’t have to change any of your current beauty habits—I’m not making any sort of statement about clean beauty here.

What I am doing is explaining what clean means and why it might not always be what it seems. What you do with this information is up to you, but at the very least, you’re already a more conscious consumer just by getting this far in the article. Congratulations!

As the NBC public service announcements say, “the more you know!”