All Eyes On Her

One of the most frustrating skincare myths (according to my very naturally-biased views) is that Cetaphil is a wonder cleanser. Every beauty magazine and schticky dermatologist seems to endorse this crap, claiming it’s one of the gentlest things out there. I call BS on you, Beauty Industry!

This stuff is chock full of filler ingredients that are irritating and drying. I’m sick of hearing people claim how great it is, and I’m frustrated when friends and acquaintances approach me for skincare advice after using Cetaphil and seeing less than wondrous results.

It’s true that soap-free, creamy or milky, non-foaming cleansers are often better for your skin than harsh sudsing ones which strip your natural moisture. But there are creamy, milky formulations that don’t contain a bunch of junk guaranteed to stress out your skin, and there’s something for every price range. It’d take up an entire blog post just to list them all!

Just take a look at the ingredients in the standard, “gentle” version of Cetaphil:

Ingredients: Water, Cetyl Alcohol, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Stearyl Alcohol, Methylparaben, Propylparaben, Butylparaben

Let’s examine, shall we?

1. Water: Filler — probably most of the content here — means it has the potential to spoil more easily, and that they haven’t actually bothered to put anything beneficial into the bulk of it. (But at least it’s gentle!)
2. Cetyl Alcohol: Filler, slip agent that makes skin and hair feel moisturized and lubricated, but which actually dries skin and hair out over time.
3. Propylene Glycol: A petrochemical derived from unrefined oil, which is used in many antifreeze solutions. Known to cause extreme irritation to skin and eye tissues.
4. Sodium Lauryl Sulfate: An extremely strong vegetable-derived surfactant that’s not just a known skin irritant, but is in fact the benchmark used to measure how irritating other compounds are. It’s so strong it’s used to clean up grease in auto mechanic shops, and there are also concerns about its potentially estrogenic effects when absorbed into the body.
5. Stearyl Alcohol: A compound similar to cetyl alcohol — i.e. a “slip” agent that actually dries out skin over time.
6. Parabens: A whole trifecta of potentially unhealthy preservatives! The debate as to whether parabens are truly unsafe is still going on, and I myself am still on the fence — but the fact remains that this is a heavier-than-usual dose of several of them, and they wouldn’t even be necessary if this formulation weren’t mostly water anyway.