At first, my quest was personal. I had suffered with acne for many years. I visited countless dermatologists, tried hundreds of skin-care products in all price ranges, and still I had acne. How could that be? Sometimes one product worked a little, but not as well as I hoped and never for very long. And there were always side effects. Most products made my skin so red and irritated I thought it was going to fall off. Slowly but surely, I worked my way through the confusion and began to recognize some fundamental problems with the cosmetics industry and prescription skin-care products. I realized that the cosmetics industry's information was little more than marketing mumbo jumbo. In the area of prescription skin-care products, there was little if any research or information about how irritation or even sun damage affected skin. For years I earned my living as a makeup artist. Occasionally, I would work at department-store makeup counters. But each new job for a cosmetics line resulted in problems. Inevitably, the line representative would want me to tell a customer that a toner could close pores or a moisturizer could get rid of wrinkles. I knew that wasn't true. (If a toner could close pores, everyone who used toners would have poreless skin, and if moisturizers could get rid of wrinkles, no one would have wrinkles.) My view on the cosmetics industry and my refusal to perpetuate falsities resulted in regular appearances on KIRO-TV, a local TV station in Seattle. I also received some national and international TV and print exposure. I left KIRO in 1986 after finishing my first book, Blue Eyeshadow Should Be Illegal. This was an expos? of the cosmetics industry revealing everything they didn't (and still don't) want you to know. After I wrote Blue Eyeshadow, I received thousands of letters from women asking, now that they knew how crazy the cosmetics industry was, what should they buy or what did I think of this product or that? An overview of the cosmetics industry was helpful but they wanted me to name names and be specific. That's when I wrote the first edition of Don't Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me. Since then, the demand to know what works and what doesn't has grown, mostly because there are always new products on the market. The Here and Now I didn't know it at the time, but between department store lines, infomercials, multilevel direct marketing lines, home shopping network lines, drugstore cosmetics companies, and the endless parade of new product launches, my job was only beginning. Today, to keep up with the industry, I continually review new products in my newsletter, Beautypedia.com, and there have now been seven editions of Don't Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me; the most recent is over 1,400 pages. Combating the endless parade of useless and bizarre information can be maddening. But it's my job and, thankfully, it has been far more rewarding than I ever expected.
Paula Begoun
