I've been absolutely fascinated by the number of people posting their skin dying woes on social media following one customer's tweet to the Lush Twitter account.
If you didn't catch all the hoopla about the product from Lush Cosmetics (Razzle Dazzle bath oil) turning more than one shocked customer bright pink, you have missed out. At first glance, the images are, I have to admit, somewhat comical (c'mon, who else immediately thought of gum-chewing Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?) but this situation is not really all that amusing. Well, at least not for the customers in question.
Having worked in the bridal makeup industry for the last eight years, it resonates with me terribly that if the customer in question was a bride-to-be and had used the product the day before her wedding, this whole story would have taken on a whole different angle.
Now, I have spent many a morning scrubbing down a bride with baking soda to remove badly applied fake tan, but never have I had the "I've been dyed pink by a product" phone call.
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I read other articles around this mishap, and me being me, I had to do my research. Frankly, it made me realise that the power of marketing needs to be addressed. When a brand projects itself in a certain light, we believe them. Lush positions itself as an all-round natural cosmetics company: homemade, fresh and chemical and preservative free. However, my findings tell me that there is a huge amount of colourings within a lot of the products. Admittedly, the Razzle Dazzle was misused (it's a bath oil that should be diluted in water, not rubbed all over your body); regardless, there are no natural products in this world that would stain your skin for three whole days.
Colourings are chemicals which have been constructed in a lab to make a product look more appealing to us, but it seems as though this particular chemical component can have serious repercussions to our bodies, i.e if you use it wrong you risk dying yourself pink from head to toe.
The moral of this story is to be as aware of product lists on your cosmetic brands as you are with your food. Not everything is as natural as it makes itself out to be.
Then again, might this have triggered the invention of an all-over, even body tan? If it is, you heard it here first.
What would you do if you accidently dyed your whole body pink?
