Hello all!  So while I’m writing this on Monday night, it should go out to all of you riding on the tail of a comet, sailing to your mom and dads house, and landing right onto your childhood twin bed the day before Thanksgiving (for you Americans; for the rest of you, happy Wednesday/Thursday!)

Today’s Test It Out! is indeed a true test: A test of my faith in humanity.  A test of my beauty belief system.  A test of my patience.  And mostly, a test of my more expensive products’ worth.

Let’s get the basics down.  What you are about to witness is what happened when I put Shea Moisture’s Daily Hydration Milk Mask on my face.  You’ll notice it isn’t linked.  I’ll link to where you can buy it at the end, if you’re so inclined (Spoiler Alert: You won’t be).

I picked it up at Target, I think, but that isn’t what’s relevant.  What’s relevant is that it’s a moisturizing mask, and I figured that, even though the obvious thing to do in winter is to just use a richer daily moisturizer, maybe this could give me an even bigger boost.   Also, I’ve used other moisturizing masks, but they were sheet masks, and I hate sheet masks.  When it comes to moisturizing, there’s pretty low risk for a very high gain, and I’ve had really good luck with other Shea Moisture products, so I coughed up the $11 and got to it.

First things first: The texture of it is quite thick and a bit stiff, almost like toothpaste.

It spreads pretty easily though, and you can see that it’s shiny and has, you know, oil in it.  “100% Virgin Coconut Oil,” according to words on the front the label, but we’ll get to the more important back label in a minute, because I highly suspect that coconut oil accounts for less than, like, 5% of the total ingredients.

To really get a feel for how it spreads, here:

I should note here that the back says to apply a “generous amount” (honestly, they all say that, because then you run out faster and have to buy more; put on as much or as little as you want).  It’s sticky/tacky the longer it sits (this is important later).

It doesn’t smell like anything; it smells like coconut, for sure, but not as much as, say, Palmer’s Coconut Lotion or the actual coconut oil I use to make bath products.  It’s a whiff of it, but that’s it.

So, 20 minutes is awhile, eh?  I went back into the bathroom to do other getting-ready things, and as I did so, something weird began to happen.

My face started to burn.

Now, it started as just a typical “this shit is drying” kind of burn.  And that, of course, was irritating not only physically but mentally, as it’s supposed to be a moisturizing mask.  So I rolled my eyes, a bit disappointed, but also figured I’d take it off early – but in, like, five more minutes when I finished what I’d started.

I could not wait five minutes.

As I was putting lotion on my legs, the burning got worse and worse.  It was absolutely horrific, like I’d gotten a “sitting in the sun with no sunblock for three hours” sort of burn in the span of five minutes.  My eyes actually started to water.  I abandoned my other leg, unlotioned and still begging for attention (it was the right one, she still hasn’t forgiven me and I haven’t been quite right since), and ran back to photo set up to see exactly what was happening.  I did not expect this.

Don’t worry – I’m not peeling, the white stuff is the remainder of the mask, which had completely dried at this point and created, like, a total thin layer on my face. But, yes, my face had turned bright red, and the burning was getting worse, and so of course I wet a wash cloth and took it off.  (This was a bit nerve-wracking because I wasn’t sure if patting my face with a wash cloth would make it worse, but I also wanted to be thorough in getting this shit off, so I had to take the risk.)  It immediately felt a bit better, but I was hand-to-God figuring out if I was having an allergic reaction, it stung so terribly.

This was not the “After” of my dreams.

In the first photo, you can actually see the quarter of an inch thick line along my hairline where the product stopped – a line of my face untouched by the product.  My neck, also, is a different color than my face.

I should state here that the burning didn’t immediately stop after I took off the product.  It definitely felt a bit better, but my face felt incredibly hot (again, like a bad sunburn) for at least an hour after; the redness stayed for two.  It didn’t hurt worse when I touched my face – it was just under the skin that felt hot and the surface burned.  Also, I was super fucking pissed, so there’s that.

I slowly realized this was not actually an allergic reaction (thank God; my local emergency room typically has a wait time of four hours, so I would’ve just died in the lobby anyway), and was just a reaction to the product itself.  And, naturally, I googled to see if it was just a Me Problem or an Everyone Problem, and . . .

So, here’s a thing to I want to make sure I point out: When I shot the photos and gifs for this, I had actually used this once before.  It was drying, and I didn’t like it – but it didn’t do this.  I figured I’d use it again (a couple of weeks later), shoot it, give it a meh review, and move on with my life.  But, turns out that this asshole is causing a lot of people grief.

Next, we move on to the ingredients, and I certainly feel dumb reading them.

Water, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter*†, Glyceryl Stearate, Glycerin (Vegetable), Glyceryl Stearate Citrate, Stearic Acid, Cetearyl Alcohol, Glyceryl Caprylate, Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Fruit Juice, Polyquaternium-7, Tocopherol, Panthenol, Cocos Nuciefera (Coconut) Oil, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice, Camellia Sinensis (Green Tea) Leaf Extract, Chamomilla Recutita (Matricaria) Flower Extract, Acacia Senegal Gum Extract, Cola Acuminata Seed (Kola Nut) Extra, Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Fruit Extract, Glycyrrhiza Glabra (Licorice) Rhizome/Root, Cucumis Sativus (Cucumber) Fruit Extract, Equisetum Arvense (Horsetail) Extractt, Bisabolol, Glyceryl Undecylenate, Sodium Benzoate, Fragrance (Essential Oil Blend) *Certified Organic Ingredient †Fair Trade Ingredient

Do you see what I see?  I see a form of the word “glycerine” approximately 7 times.  Glyca-this and glyce-that.  Here’s a great tip for you, and if you never listen to anything I say again, listen to this:

BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN USING SHIT WITH GLYCERINE IN IT ON YOUR FACE.

Now, listen.  I know I’m not a chemist.  Maybe these “glyc” words mean something totally different.  Maybe.  But all I know is, forms of glycerine, in certain situations, can dry! out! your! face!  In a tricky way, really – basically, their job is to seal in moisture, which can be great in some situations or in certain formulas.  But – if you don’t have any moisture to seal in, they’re drawing the moisture you have away from your face.  Sucking the life out of you. No, no, no.  And this stuff, that actually has the word “Moisturizing” in the name, has at least a few forms of a product known to possibly dry out your skin in it.  It’s tricky, because as a product that has a sheen to it, or a somewhat oily texture, it’s used to trick you into thinking it’s always moisturizing, when really it’s just there to enhance and protect what you already have.  I’m going to go into this more when I do a mega lip-gloss round-up in a few weeks (yes, that’s happening, I already photographed it), but yeah.  Be careful with it.  I can get by with some, though I usually avoid it all together, but my dumb self didn’t check the label.

Looking again at the list, there’s also a form of alcohol.  Don’t put alcohol on your face either (mostly, I guess if it works for you then do you).  Also some acids, which, again, can serve a large variety of purposes, but basically reading this label made me smack myself in the head I felt so stupid.

I have a couple of theories about it, though – about why it started out just sort of tingly and then almost murdered me.

The first is the simple idea that, when I first used it, it wasn’t nearly as dry outside.  So, you know, my skin starting out drier the second time around meant that the effect of it sapping the rest of the moisture was more strongly felt.  The other theory I have is just that, as a products sits on a shelf (or in your bathroom), sometimes the ingredients separate and/or become more concentrated; that means that by the time you use it, you’re getting an extra big hit of whatever is drying, and the good stuff is all in a separate part of the bottle, or the drying parts have become stronger, like the Hulk.

What I really don’t get is that they literally could have just put a 99% pure coconut oil thing on the shelf, with maybe a dash of an oil, and been done with it.  Or, you know, I could have just slapped a bunch of coconut oil on my face.  Ugh.

So I should say how I recovered from this.  First off, my skin was texturally different.  For sure.  It still is.  My cheeks are still totally dry, though I never peeled and, as I said, the redness went away within an hour or two.  I actually washed my face with a cleansing oil (one you’ll hear about in another post in a few weeks) to ensure the rest of the product was gone, gone, gone.  I wanted to use a cleansing oil as opposed to a soap because, again, soap is going to have some drying agents (though usually not enough to make a difference on a daily or even twice-daily regimen – just enough to keep you from getting oily).

I didn’t do 95% of my usual routine, because if you’ll remember, it involves some products with salicylic acid and, well, other acids and chemicals that could add to the harsh effects.  Instead, I just put on the creamiest-yet-lightest moisturizer I had, along with a bit of primer and the rest of my foundation-free routine.  Oh, and that was well after the redness had dissipated – I wasn’t going to put shit on my face until it seemed healed.  Anyway, within a few hours, I was almost completely back to normal, looks-wise.

 

As I said, it still isn’t like it was.  My face is a bit more sensitive, and I’m lathering on all of my expensive moisturizers in the next few days.  With the reviews being bad on every major retailer’s website – including their own – I really hope Shea Moisture pulls this product soon.  A creamy, thick, permeating moisturizing mask should’ve been an easy product to create, but this one was a complete mess.  Avoid.

That was a bummer, so I’m actually going to take a minute to wish you a happy, loving Thanksgiving with all of your favorite foods and people.  Travel safe, and I hope, right at this moment, you’re reveling in being a Back Home Baller.

Lol, I’ve watched that ten thousand times and I still cry-laugh.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, BACK HOME BALLERS!!!