Porefessional Pearl Primer
I never "got" the Benefit craze. And I don't mean the products, but the whole vibe of the brand. When Benefit hit in popularity, I was working for Lush Soaps, and a good portion of my time was spent at Lush kiosks set inside of Macy's stores. My hub was smashed between a Benefit Bar and an Origins kiosk. Origins would always get me to stop. The smell of ginger would draw me in like a crack fiend and I'd have to stop what I was doing, and use everything. The manager of that location was also a Reiki practitioner and I'd throw her a little cash to heal one of my aches and pains when I had some free time. (For the record, I believe I can walk because of that lady... but that's another story.) The Origins kiosk was my jam. High end but unassuming. Didn't seem to beg for attention. And then there was the Benefit Brow Bar which struck me as the polar opposite. I didn't fit in with the vibe there. Not at all. First of all, I don't stand in ridiculous lines for ANYTHING. I don't care if it's a free product or a line to get into a Bruno Mars concert. Seriously, I won't do it. I'll just quietly go home. It's a leftover 'thing' from my Russian grandmother telling me that she 'didn't leave communist Russia to have to stand in lines in America'. She was a middle-class, hard working... snob. If she couldn't pull it off a shelf herself, she wanted nothing to do with it. Every time I stop at Starbucks to this day, I hear her now long dead voice imaginarily emanating from the back seat of the car- "Krystynka... what hell es dis shyet? Dun't stand for the line. Go xxxxome!" Benefit was always insanely busy and it rubbed me so much in the wrong way, I never stopped to check out anything there. From a distance, the women who seemed to be honing the 1950's vibe in their attire, hair, and makeup were hawking beauty chotchkies and I noticed (at this location) not ONE of them had decent skin. Enter stereotype number two against Benefit for me. (That, and there was always this overly loud, extremely large in every way, red-headed woman there that would practically scream at you when she spoke. Lisa. I never wanted to stop because Lisa was ALWAYS THERE. She was scary. Stereotype three.) Why am I telling you this? We all have stereotypes. Reasons we might not be as excited to try a brand or a product... this is my reason I never, and I mean never... ever... buy Benefit products. To this day, I have STILL never stopped at a Benefit counter. Now, I'm not shaming ANYONE. But I've got great skin. If you don't- that's totally ok. But A. You aren't going to tell me how to keep mine great and B. I'm going to assume you use your own products... right? It's natural to fear that maybe your products contributed to your terrible skin? But please tell me about this age fighting-wonder cream you're selling today. Nonetheless, personal growth is a big thing for me and I often put myself in check by calling myself out on ridiculous reasons I don't want to try things. I tell myself to "get over it" and just try it. So, because of that- I really wanted to love the Benefit Porefessional Pearl Primer. I really did. I wanted to be able to say to myself- "Ah, ha! Now I get the craze. All these years, you've been so wrong... and now you have this AMAZING product to show you why you sucked so bad for over a decade." I really wanted to be wrong, but... I.fucking.hated.it. So, I get this little sample in the mail and I'm like great- a "pore blurring primer" that has a soft radiance to it for a "natural glow". Mkay. I need this. Not because I have giant pores, and not because I'm going to layer a ton of makeup on my face, but because I've been going out and about in the summer without any makeup on- and I wanted something to mattify my t-zone and not make me look like I've been baked from bisque. I thought- yep. This is going to be it. To be fair- I did try it bare-skinned, and I also tried it with makeup. First, there is nothing miraculous claimed here by this product. I can tell you right away- yes. It does what it says it does. Mostly. But that wasn't enough for me to not hate it for other reasons. Here's why:
Applying this all over a freshly cleaned and moisturized face, IMMEDIATELY I noted that it "must have dimethicone in it". The tell-tale dry powder feel of dimethicone INSTANTLY makes my skin feel like I was just unearthed from a sarcophagus in ancient Egypt. I do NOT need to feel dry. Yes. This is a great thing if you're oily. Go now, stand in line, and deal with Lisa to get your Benefit Porefessional Pearl Primer. But if you're not...please don't hurt your skin like I did. Without makeup on, the Porefessional did blur and mattify. There wasn't a glimmer of dew to be seen on my face whatsoever. But pearly finish? Nope. Not in the least. So is there radiance that comes from your skin by way of pearl powdery finish after the dimethicone is done sucking the oil and life from your face? Nope. False. Just matte, powdery, and dry. It feels porcelain smooth, but not pearly at all. With makeup on, I noticed that oh yes, makeup sticks to this shit in the worst of ways. My face felt cakey and the pore-reducing benefits seem to have been reduced further once makeup is on. In fact, the area of my face between my nose and cheeks seemed to cake up terribly- and then separate, causing what looked like giant pores on first glance. But it wasn't. Think of a freshly baked cake. You take it out of the oven, and you don't let it cool. You start to frost it. The cake cracks, the frosting melts, and you're left with these caverns of death in what SHOULD be a smoothly finished piece of heaven. THIS is what happened with my face while using this with makeup. Giant holes in my makeup- and I couldn't blend them away. If I rubbed, immediately, everything came off. Looking closer, it seemed that the primer was kind of sucking up everything on my face. It doesn't absorb into the skin, it sits on top. So the makeup is then on top of that, and while your skin produces sebum and tries to breathe, this crap is stopping it from doing so. Looking at the ingredients, I now know why. There isn't just dimethicone in this stuff- there's dimethicone, dimethicone/vinyl dimethicone crosspolymer, dimethicone crosspolymer, and a litany of other things that should be in paint, not makeup. No, I'm not a purist by any means. But I'm really not down with slathering my face with ANYTHING that has the word vinyl in it. What is that? EWG.org claims this is put into cosmetics to increase viscosity of a product. It has minimal hazard risks, but non-hazardous doesn't mean "healthy" to use, does it? Dimethicone is widely used in cosmetics and considered acceptable. But I hate it. That telltale feeling you get when ANYTHING with dimethicone touches your skin: Instant dryness, with a plastic-powdery feeling. On my skin, it feels like DEATH. Considered a "low to moderate" risk in cosmetics, dimethicone is associated with possible non-reproductive organ toxicity. More HERE. Then, there's ingredient #2: Cyclopentasiloxane. Again, not a purist here, but another type of silicone. This one is also a 3 on the EWG scale and it's carting potential for bioaccumulation and neurotoxicity. HERE
So the top three ingredients are all some kind of silicone. Got it. Yeah... I'm just not feeling it. Literally, can't STAND the feeling of it. If you've ever caulked an aquarium or the gap around a bathtub and been unfortunate enough to get that shit on your fingers, you will never forget the powdery feeling I'm talking about here. Why the hell would you want that on your face? And it seems that I'm not the only one that feels this way either. Looking through the reviews on Sephora.com- users either hated it or loved it. The haters all seemed to either complain about the way makeup stuck, caked, or blended; didn't like the powdery dry feeling; or didn't see a pearl finish. All the same things I hated too. All in all, the brand still gives me Lisa-esque heeby jeebies, and I'll still be walking past the Benefit counter- opting to not stand in line. Grandma's voice wins again.