The trend of clean beauty has grown in tandem with the rise in the global wellness industry’s awareness of global warming and animal rights, and has received exponentially increasing attention since the beginning of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Consumers have become more conscientious about their individual well-being and therefore prefer safe and non-toxic products.
However, there is no government definition for clean beauty yet; thus, this concept has been openly interpreted by non-dermatologist retailers, bloggers, and celebrities.
The increase in demand for safe and non-toxic products has expanded the boundaries of clean beauty, which is now associated with natural, organic, vegan, and eco-friendly products. Thus, the attributes of clean beauty have not been clearly defined; however, they can be categorised as follows: clean for the skin (safety), clean ethically (ethicality), and clean (sustainability).
Given the limited information presently available, it is difficult for manufacturers, retailers, and consumers to reach a consensus on a clear standard for selecting or labelling clean beauty products. This may cause confusion in the cosmetic market. To address this lack of clarity concerning the definition of clean beauty, it is necessary to narrow down its most important attributes.
As clean beauty is undefined, consumers find it difficult to identify clean products. Consumers are provided with vast information and services that tell them what they should consume. (Some) popular retailers, award their clean beauty logos to cosmetic products that fulfil their respective clean beauty standards. Studies show that consumers are highly dependent on brand names, logos, colours, packaging, or websites that provide information about the product in question'
Even though many consumers rely on logos provided by retailers or apps that analyse cosmetic ingredients to find products that meet their skin needs, these alone cannot represent the products’ overall clean beauty standards, since there is no definition for clean beauty. Hence, a standardised scoring method that considers the aspects of clean beauty—safety, ethicality, and sustainability—from the perspectives of the manufacturer, consumer, and retailer is needed.
Many of the ingredients that have been denounced by clean beauty evangelists seem to be selected haphazardly as companies attempt to “greenwash” their products to make them more attractive to conscientious shoppers. One firm updated its list of unacceptable ingredients, which lists over 400 compounds they felt were unfit for their line of premium body care. Their list of banned ingredients includes petrolatum, which dermatologists have consistently recommended to patients with skin barrier disruption owing to its non-allergenicity, superior qualities as a humectant and economical cost that makes it accessible to patients of all backgrounds.
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics advocates for consumers to avoid a multitude of ingredients including parabens, which the American Contact Dermatitis Society named 2019 nonallergen of the year. Parabens are some of the least allergenic preservatives available, with rates of contact sensitisation between 0.5% to 1.4%—rates that have been stable since the 1990s. (1) The Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) safe skin database warns consumers against exposure to chemical sunscreen ingredients though a recent editorial in JAMA (2) explains that although there is evidence of systemic absorption of sunscreen ingredients, we do not yet have data to link this systemic absorption with toxic or adverse effects, and that sunscreens remain critical in our defence against Keratinocytic skin cancers.
Although the natural skincare market has expanded, many recent studies have reported that natural products are likely to cause irritation, allergic contact dermatitis, or photosensitization. Consumers are now more educated about natural or organic products and their effects than they were previously. Thus, the need for clean beauty products to be natural or organic may decrease, eventually separating from clean beauty, as an individual cosmetic category. Therefore, one should look for a products’ skin safety more through various skin-safety claims, such as “hypoallergenic,”“dermatologist tested,” or “clinically proven.” Also, since clean beauty is described here by only nine attributes, it cannot be said conclusively that every element of clean beauty is included in such a description. Many cosmetic brands make philanthropic promises to protect society or the environment.
(1) Deza G, Giménez-Arnau AM. Allergic contact dermatitis in preservatives: current standing and future options. Curr Opin Allergy Clin Immunol. 2017;17(4):263-268.)
(2) Califf RM, Shinkai K. Filling in the evidence about sunscreen. JAMA. 2019;321(21):2077-2079. doi:10.1001/jama.2019.5528
Not my own work. Taken from:
Shim, J., Woo, J., Yeo, H., Kang, S., Kwon, B., Jung Lee, E., Oh, J., Jeong, E., Lim, J., & Gyoo Park, S. (2024). The Clean Beauty Trend Among Millennial and Generation Z Consumers: Assessing the Safety, Ethicality, and Sustainability Attributes of Cosmetic Products. SAGE Open, 14(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440241255430 (Original work published 2024)
as well as:
Rubin CB, Brod B. Natural Does Not Mean Safe—The Dirt on Clean Beauty Products. JAMA Dermatol. 2019;155(12):1344–1345. doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2019.2724
Comments