Stuff You Should Know - How Makeup Works

Episode Date: March 17, 2016

Humans have been wearing makeup for a few thousand years now and yet, here in the US the chemicals used in them are still not understood and not really regulated. Delve into the history of makeup and the psychology and feminist theory around it. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

There's Jerry, and we wish all of you a happy International Women's Day. Yeah, I'm just up here putting on my concealer, a little mascara, create some smoky eyes. Very sexy. It's looking good, Chuck. Thank you. Looking good.

Mm-hmm. I wish I could unsee this. Pretty good. Yeah, did you know it's International Women's Day, did we? I did. Well, today we're over recording, not actually today when this releases. Right.

We're gonna miss it by a week or so. That's right. We're still gonna be celebrating it though. Right, exactly. Because we let it roll. And that way you say when you let a party go long. Oh, I never heard that. I just made it up.

I don't go to parties. I don't either, apparently, because I don't know what to say when you want it to keep going. So, Chuck, we are talking, friend, about makeup today. $60 billion cosmetic industry. Yeah, it's a 62.5, and that's up from $40 billion when this article that we're working off of

was originally written. Which surprises me. Molly Edmonds in 2007 or 2008, maybe, I think. Yeah, I mean, it surprises me in one way. One way it doesn't, because big industries usually grow. Yeah, but that's an enormous amount of growth. Yeah, but it seems like, and we'll get to this later, with some studies that makeup is among the millennials

is sort of falling out of fashion in some circles. Right. But we'll get to that. Okay. Cosmetics from the Greek, cosmetic technique of dresser ornament, or cosmos, meaning ornament. I thought cosmos meant the universe. K-O-S-M-O-S, I don't know.

That's Cosmo Kramer. Gotcha. That's the etymology. I had not heard that before. That was the Greeks, huh? That's what it says. The Greeks definitely did engage in ornamentation of their face through pigmentation.

Yeah. Cosmetics, but they weren't the first. Supposedly, as far back as we found it are the Egyptians. A Sumeria before that even, I think. Oh, is that right? Yeah, I saw that men and women wore lipstick and the Sumerian men and women did. So this is pre-Egyptian then,

because the Egyptians went back pretty far. Yeah. Well, I think there's some debate there about who was first, right? Apparently, we're debating right now. I think Sumer was pre-Egyptian. All right. I'm sure I'll get taken to task if I'm wrong.

No, not necessarily. I think you're probably right, but. At any rate. At least a few thousand years ago. There were people wearing lipstick and the Egyptians in particular were known for using coal, K-H-O-L. K-O-H-L.

That's right. And that is basically like using very dark eye shadow above and below the eye. So it's very think, what was the dude's name from Dead Calm, the killer? Billy Zane? Yeah, I think Billy Zane in The Mummy. Yeah, basically any movie

where they try to make white people look like Egyptians, which is a big thing now in the news. It says who? Whitewashing, casting, white people to play Egyptians. Like, you know, it's all over the place. Every one of these stupid movies about these big hundred million dollar movies about Egypt are starring like British dudes.

Well, I was on Snopes yesterday and I found that there was apparently a rumor that Cameron Diaz had been cast to play Maya Angelou in a biopic and apparently people bought that. Seriously, who saw that and was like, what? Yeah. And didn't automatically think,

well, that's a hoax or a joke. Well, there are some people upset that Zoe, who's it from, Avatar? Oh, the Zaldano? Yeah, Zaldano is being, cause she's playing Nina Simone and like they darkened her skin and there are some people that are outraged by that even.

Huh, it's interesting. Yeah. So back to Cole, it was specifically a mixture of copper and lead and ash and burnt almonds that would mix up and smear on their eyes. Yeah, and what's interesting is the, it was supposedly kept away the evil eye, right? That was the main reason they wore it

in addition to just looking awesome. Yeah, the stink eye. Yeah, just give me the stink eye. Doesn't matter, cause I'm wearing Cole. That's right. But it also and likely unbeknownst to the Egyptians at the time, it would have warded off bacteria

because of some of the ingredients specifically lead. Or killed you. Eventually, yeah. And then it also would have deflected the sunlight from the desert. Yeah, so you're all set. Which is why, you know, ball players will put tar under their eyes

to keep that reflection down. What if that's tar? Well, it's tar on the baseball bat. It can be whatever. I'm sure they don't use real tar. Right. My dad back in the day for church softball used to go out and get it from his car tire.

No. And put it under his eye. No. Yeah, I thought it was pretty tough. Wow, yeah, it is tough. Dirty. You know, church softball, the toughest sport. Ancient Greeks and Romans also painted their faces

from ground up stones and minerals. And things were pretty much like that until the middle ages when people said, you know, I don't want my face colored up. I want it white. Well, prior to that, prior to the middle, so early middle ages, the early medieval era, that women used hot tongs to curl their hair.

They dyed their hair. They used vegetable pigments to redden their faces. So there was makeup use in Europe prior to the middle ages where you did use pigments to colorize yourself, right? In much the same way that like the Romans and Greeks would have. Now were these tawdry women? No. Okay.

Average ordinary women. So later on it fell out of fashion unless you were like a prostitute. Right, and the reason why it fell out of fashion was because of income inequality. So if you were a woman who was among the poorer classes, you were a laborer and you likely had to labor out of doors and in doing so, you would gain a tan.

So a way to show that you were wealthy and of higher status was to accentuate your paleness. And they would use something called, oh man, what is it called? Cirrus. Yeah, Cirrus, which is vinegar and lead. Yeah, lead is gonna come up a lot in this. Yeah, apparently it still comes up sometimes,

we'll find out. And that's the kind of grease paint, the cosmetic whitener that women used for centuries actually when very pale skin was in. Yeah, and Elizabeth the first came along and she's like, look how pasty-wide I am. She's a perfect example of the Cirrus use. Yeah, and there's a misnomer that she was bald

by the time she was like 30. And that comes from the fact that she has a very large forehead in most of these portraits. Yeah, this says it was from the use of the lead that it made her hair fall out. I've heard that they plucked the hairline that far back on purpose. Well, there's a few theories.

One is that they plucked because they wore wigs and the wig would fit better. Another is that they just exaggerated it in paintings because a big forehead, a high forehead was supposedly tied to intelligence. So hot. No, it's smarts, which is hot. Gotcha, sure.

And then the other theory is that the lead made it creep back. So dumb. But she was not bald. So I've been fighting that fight for years. Have you been? The QE-1 wasn't bald. And finally here on International Women's Day,

you get to lay it down. This next part to me was super interesting for the dumb reason is that I didn't know a lot of these cosmetic companies were actually named for people. Yeah. Max Factor. Real guy.

Was Maximilian. Von Factor. Maximilian Factorowitz. Really? Yeah, and he shortened it to Max Factor for obvious reasons. But I'm such a dummy. I thought it meant like the maximum Max Factor

or something you could have. The Max Factor was a dude. Sure, yeah. Actually you'll find that a lot of cosmetics that you use today were founded by dudes. Estee Lauder was a lady. She was a lady and actually the founder of Maybelline was inspired by a sister.

Maybell, yeah. Pretty neat. Yeah, there's the modern idea of cosmetics and the modern use of cosmetics in that the idea that you have to or else you are making a statement or not a beautiful woman all comes about around the end of the 19th century, early 20th century and it really comes kicking in

in about 1920 thanks to the cinema and specifically Max Factor himself who originally provided wigs to the movies. Yeah, in previous to that, interestingly, the rise in makeup was tied to a couple of things. One, people getting their portrait, like their kind of singular portrait painted so they wanted to look good for it.

And then the fact that mirrors, we did a great podcast on mirrors, didn't we? Yes, many, many moons ago. It was surprisingly difficult. It was. The physics of a mirror is really mind bending. So eights and lead. The affordability of mirrors all of a sudden was a thing.

So those two things and then the movie industry comes along. Well, and photography too. Did you say photography? Well, portrait, portraitry, which could be, I guess, painting and photography, right? Yeah, so apparently, I guess you were just kind of figuring it out as you went along maybe

when you did your makeup for that one picture that was made of you. I guess. And then the movies came along and when the movies came along, obviously it went from stage to screen. Yeah, heavy makeup as a stage performer. Right, because people had to be able to see you

all the way in the back of the house. So, and you had to accentuate your facial expressions. But if you did that and did a close up, you looked like a clown. So they had to just basically reinvent makeup for the movies and Max Factor was one of these people who were working to do that. And he said, you know what?

Stars love this stuff. I've invented this grease paint that's a foundation that makes the skin look so even and beautiful that the starlets who wear it are wearing it not just for work, they're also wearing it out on the red carpet. Yeah. People are gonna go crazy for this

and Max Factor started to market it and looked around and figured out what else he could invent. And he came up with the eyeliner and lip gloss as well. Yeah, huge, huge breakthrough in makeup at tree. Right. A few years later, actually around the same time, 1915, T.L. Williams started mabling

after his sister Mabel, which we mentioned, because she came up with a way to make her eyelashes look better. She took petroleum jelly and coal dust and mashed it up together, painted it into her eyelashes and said, this stuff is a bear to get out, but look at these lashes. I can't see.

Maybe she's born with it. And around the same time in the 1920s, nail care really took a leap forward, courtesy in a weird way of Henry Ford. Yeah. In a roundabout way. He had a very famous slogan that people who bought his Model T could have it in any color they want

so long as they wanted black. Yeah. And the reason that he chose black was because black paint, the black lacquer paint that he used dried faster than any of the other pigments. So black is what he went with. Because he wanted to pump out cars. Right.

And he was doing a really good job pumping out cars. So to separate their companies from his, other guys started to look at how to come up with colors. Because colors were in demand. People did want colors. They just didn't have any options. Yeah. So they started investing in the research

for new kinds of colors of fast drying lacquer paints. And it actually ended up saying they came up with some breakthroughs. And some people said, you know what? Forget the cars. Let's put this on fingernails. Yeah, let's paint fingernails with this nitrocellulose in all kinds of colors.

A rainbow of colors. Have you ever seen yellow fingernails? Well, you're about to. Ooh. Yellow? Not yellowed yellow. That ED makes a huge difference. Well, no.

I thought yellow fingernails would look kind of too cool. They look kicky and like a swatch commercial, you know? Oh, OK. Then Mr. Charles Revson. Sound familiar? Revlon. I guess Revson didn't sound as good. Through Ellis Island or something.

He co-founded it with somebody else. Oh, OK. Juan Cheney. Juan Cheney. He made nail polish super famous in the US by combining matching nail polish to lipstick and putting a personality on it. Like if you're a saucy lady, you might like this combo.

Yeah, it's actually a very well-known advertising campaign called Fire and Ice. And on these Fire and Ice ads, there would be a little questionnaire at the bottom of the ad, like, does gypsy music make you cry? Or are you the type of woman who would die her hair without your husband's consent? You better be.

And if you answered yes, Ellis, then yeah, you need this type of lipstick with the matching nail polish. You know, it was a big deal. But Revlon was not the only game in town with lipstick, and it actually kicked off the lipstick wars. The famous lipstick wars. Yeah, there was another. The 1950s.

There was a company called Hazel Bishop. And Hazel Bishop was an actual chemist who was making lipstick for women. And she had some good stuff. She came up with what's called indelible lipstick. I think it had been around, but she really, like, made some good formulations of indelible, AKA smudge-proof lipstick.

Yeah, I mean, you could do a little kissy face and not have it look cruddy. Sure. And so Bishop and Revlon are going at it back and forth. Cody, which had that very famous fragrance in the 70s. Who? Cody, C-O-T-Y. Oh, yeah.

They came into the mix, too. And their big role that they played was they told Play-Tex, which had apparently a trademark on the word living, that Revlon had a lipstick line called Living Lipstick. Play-Tex suit them, and Revlon had to abandon their entire line of this type of indelible lipstick.

The whole thing ended, though, with Revlon coming out on top, because Revlon decided to sink a pretty decent amount of money into advertising on this new TV show called the $64,000 question. Big show. Charles Revson thought this movie or this show was going to be crap, apparently, his word.

And it turned out to be just the hottest thing on TV. And Revlon was the only sponsor. And that ultimately ended the lipstick wars of the 1950s. So it was Hazel. I thought it was a single gunshot to the head of Hazel Bishop. Which isn't funny at all. But it didn't happen. Somehow it was.

And then, of course, Estee Lauder comes along with her husband, Joseph Lauder. And they were great. She specifically was a great marketer. She was the first person to go set up shop in department stores and say, here, have some stuff for free. People went, what? Yeah, go use this stuff.

What? And that's how I'll get you hooked on my clinic line. This first one's on me. Rest around you. Yeah. And that's, you know, you go to any department store today and wander through the cosmetics. Oh, yeah, they'll give you whatever you want for free.

Yeah, you can walk out there looking like Bozo the Clown, if you want. So Estee Lauder's big thing was skin care, right? Like, skin? Sure. I mean, a lot of other stuff, too, but yeah. And so by the 1950s, 1960s, the cosmetics industry was established.

Yeah. It wasn't going anywhere. Big money. It was going to do nothing but build up and up and up, right? And the thing is is by about this time, the ingredients had all been kind of established. And so nowadays, if you look at makeup, you're going to see basically the same stuff.

We'll talk about all that right after this break. How about that? Sounds great. On the podcast pay dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's vapor, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass,

host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips, with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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Oh, man. Oh, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app,

or Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So Chuck, if you take a tube of lipstick, and you crack it off, and you take another tube of lipstick from another company, and crack it off, and then throw it through a mass spectrometer,

you're gonna find the same stuff in there, in both of them, basically. Yeah, in most cosmetics, it's largely the same ingredients. Who wrote this? Molly Edmonds, our former colleague. Original co-host of Stuff Mom Never Told You? That's right.

Molly, if you're listening, she's not listening. Hello. Foundation is usually got some, a moisturizing base with some oil and water, or wax. You're gonna have a filler that's gonna make things smooth on your face. Then you're gonna have some pigment, like iron oxide, and that's gonna, you wanna match your skin tone.

So that's why they have all different varieties of pigment of moisturizing base. Right, that's with foundation, right? And then they'll add some other stuff here there, like if you have dry skin, you might find some jojoba oil in the mass spectrometer analysis readout printout. Sure.

And then, so eyeliners, they're also. And guy liner. Sure, which is the same thing, it's just used by different people, right? Yeah. Yeah, like the Hollywood vampires, they use guy liner. Yes. Eyeliners have, they consist of something called

film formers and thickeners, right? Yes. And then pigments in addition to that. So the film formers, the actual makeup itself, that contains the pigment, again, usually some sort of iron oxide, right? Yeah. Those come up a lot.

Yeah. Which is funny because I think that that's also what they used originally, like back in the day in Egypt. So we've come a long way chemistry-wise, but we're still using the same raw materials in a lot of cases. Yeah, these minerals. Yeah.

And then you also have the thickener, which basically keeps that eyeliner on your eye and not just going off to the side. Yeah, and the same is basically true for eyeshadow. It's going to have that base ingredient, maybe talc or a cowlin clay. Cowlin? Cow-like shallot.

Yeah. But with a K instead of an SH. Cowlin clay. And then a binder, of course, made out of zinc or magnesium, some sort of derivative of magnesium. Mascara, I mean, basically, we're not going to go through all these. Oh, no.

It's all basically the same stuff. Yeah, so you have a pigment. You have something that creates the base of the whole thing, whether it's some sort of wax or powder or cream. And then you have some sort of binder that keeps the thing in place and makes it difficult to come off. And with mascara in particular, it's very famous for having a waterproof version.

Yeah, so you cry at your wedding and you don't look like a scary prom night girl. Sure, right. So with mascara being waterproof, apparently, as long as it doesn't have water in it, it's likely going to be waterproof. Yeah. Because that'd be terribly ironic if it included water

as an ingredient. Yeah, but apparently those are really tough for to get off, so you don't want to wear a lot. Yeah, and you want to take them off, though, or else your lashes will fall out, supposedly. Well, you want to conjecture it. You want to take off your makeup every night, they say, for quality skin.

That's what Stevie Nicks said her secret was. I've heard that. I think I said that before on this very show. I've been sure, too. Which is weird. So well, let's talk makeup safety, Chuck. That's actually a step in makeup safety. Yeah, this is a huge deal right now,

because the standards for makeup safety have not changed since 1938. No, and in 1938, the Food and Drug Administration was created. And when it was created, the cosmetics industry apparently did a really good job of lobbying the government to say, hey, hey, hey. Imagine that. Go regulate the food and the drugs.

Sure, we'll fall under your cute little umbrella, but just stay out of our business. We're going to self-regulate. And since, seriously, guys, it's 2016. Since 1938, the laws governing the regulation of cosmetics have not effectively changed in any real way, shape, or form. Yes, but that could be changing very soon. This article from just this week here in March 2016,

there is the Personal Care Product Safety Act up Bill S1014 introduced last April and is awaiting hearings introduced by Diane Feinstein of California and Susan Collins of Maine. It's a bipartisan bill basically saying, hey, in Europe, in the EU, they've banned 1,300 chemicals from personal care products for a real good reason. And we have only banned 11. And something is wrong there.

Band 8, I think, in restricted 3. Yeah, I think they're all technically on the ban list now. And so we're using these same chemicals that are banned in the EU because they're not banned here. And the reason they're not banned is there's a huge distinction between Europe and the United States as far as chemicals are concerned. In Europe, the approach is a chemical is potentially harmful

until it's proven otherwise. And they treat them like that. And when they find out, they investigate these things. And when they find out that they are harmful, then they ban them. In the United States, a chemical is determined to be not harmful until it's proven otherwise. And it's exceedingly difficult to prove that something is actually harmful.

Like we've been talking about things like parabens and phthalates for a very long time now, many, many years. And public sentiment blows up. And the science behind it blows up. And everyone says, well, you can't point to a parabens and say conclusively that it caused that tumor, despite the fact that when you dig around in that tumor, you're going to find parabens.

Or you can't say that parabens are harmful to kids, even though you can find parabens in placenta, because it crossed over into the placenta, which means that it's being transferred from mother to child. Yes, you can't conclusively say that parabens cause cancer. But the evidence in support of that idea is so abundant that we really should be regulating these things, still not.

Yeah, there's a woman named Jessica Assop who's been battling this. She's on a crusade for the past 10 years to get more oversight. And she basically, I mean, the name of this article is the average woman puts 515 synthetic chemicals on her body every day without knowing. And 60% of that is absorbed into the body.

People make a big deal these days about what you eat. And people don't think a lot about what they put on their skin, the largest organ, and that gets into your body as well. Apparently there's a 2007 study. I didn't see who it was affiliated with, but a biochemist studied cosmetics and found that women absorb just under five pounds of chemicals a year through their cosmetics.

Unbelievable. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And the stuff in the United States is basically unregulated. Well, yeah, and her contention is, which is correct, is basically we're all guinea pigs. What you do in the US is you can use these cosmetics until something bad happens, and then they take a look at it, and they're responsible for self-reporting this stuff.

Right, but they don't have to self-report it. That's one of the big distinctions of Feinstein's and Collins' bill is that it would require the FDA, or that it would require cosmetic companies to report incidents of death, disfigurement, or hospitalization. So right now, you could put on some lipstick and end up in the hospital, and the Revlon could come

and look into it and find, oh, god, it's because of this lipstick. They don't have to say a word about it legally, and nothing happens to them, because the FDA doesn't have any kind of teeth in this industry. Well, just a couple of weeks ago, Johnson and Johnson was ordered to pay $72 million in damages for the death of a woman from ovarian cancer that

was caused by using talc and baby powder. So what the proposed bill would do, a few things. One, it's going to require companies to report any adverse health effects within 15 days, and then they would review five risky product ingredients per year and ban them based on the findings. And this year, up for review, it would be diazolinodinolurea, preservative found in lip balm,

deodorant, may release formaldehyde, lead acetate. It's in hair dyes, linked to neurological problems. Formaldehyde, methylene glycol, carcinogen, and hair straighteners, including Brazilian blowouts, it said. Which is a problem for me. Propylparaben, a cosmetics preservative. And finally, quaternium 15, it's another preservative. And my wife, to new listeners may not know this,

my wife, Emily, has her own natural body product company. And she has been up against this since she started, because the FDA doesn't regulate using words like all-natural or organic. So she has competitors out there selling soap and lotion that says all-natural. And she's always saying, look at the ingredients on this. Like, you can't even pronounce half of them.

So she's having to self-educate customers like on a daily basis on what all-natural really means. Like, don't even use fragrance oils. This is really all-natural. So she's been up against it for years. So this is something like that's very close to her heart. Oh, sure. And you can go to loveyourmama.com.

There it is. If you want to support Mama Bed the Money. With all-natural ingredients. Yeah, you were just sitting there like, wait for it. Yeah, wait for it. But it is a big deal in our family, because we don't. You know, I think I went off on fragrances and maybe the smell podcast.

No, we did one on perfumes. Oh, yeah, perfumes. That was a good one, too. And it's just, we don't use any of that stuff anymore. And it really stands out now. Like, if I smell a t-shirt that's been washed and tied, it stinks to me. Yeah, yeah, I know it to me.

Like, you know, it just smells fake, synthetic. But most people love that. We'll squirt a little Febreze on the clothes. Sure. But you get used to it, I guess. And if you stand away from it for a while when you're exposed to it again, it does seem clawing, for sure.

But here's the deal, though, with small businesses, they sort of have mixed reactions to this bill. Because on the one hand, it would help them out, because the big corporate giants that use all the synthetic chemicals will have to be under the pressure to, like, you know, they don't even have to say where they make this stuff now. But small businesses, it might hurt them,

because they're going to have to comply with all this stuff, which takes a lot of time and resources, and a.k.a. money. So it's sort of a double-edged sword. Is that what they call it? Yeah. But, I mean, the thing is, what the Collins Feinstein bill reflects is taking the onus of cosmetic safety from the individual user onto the manufacturer, which

is the reverse of what it is now, you know what I mean? Like right now, cosmetic safety tips include don't stab yourself in the eye with a mascara wand, because it might allow bacteria to seep into your cornea, and you'll lose your eye or something like that. Rather than don't use this mascara, because it contains known carcinogens that we know are now carcinogens, because FDA finally

got around to actually studying chemicals to find out whether they're harmful or not. Yeah, we should do a show on whether cancer is a manmade disease. There's a lot of speculation now. Some people think that, like, there did not used to be cancer. And it's all because of stuff we've created, and even if you don't believe that, at the very least,

we have ramped it up. Yes. Yeah, I definitely would agree with that. I don't know enough about it to say either way, and I'd love to get schooled from both sides. So yeah, let's do that. Is it time for another break? I think it is time for a break.

Man, we're pretty worked up about this whole FDA thing. I know. All right, we're going to come back and talk a little bit about the psychology of wearing makeup, which is pretty interesting. Chut, and if you are into natural stuff, all natural ingredients, that kind of thing, there's actually lines of makeup, too,

that you can look into that don't contain a lot of like added stuff. Yes. So like, it's called mineral makeup for the most part, which is just like naturally occurring minerals that are ground up. And there you go, no fragrances, that kind of stuff. And they're supposedly better for you.

They don't last as well apparently, but that's, you know, it's like, do you want the chemistry or do you want the- Shelf life. Right. So that's another thing Emily battles is shelf life. Oh yeah, I'm sure that's something to deal with. And she doesn't make cosmetics either, to be fair.

You know, soap and lotion and stuff like that. The yardstick of civilization. Doesn't count as a cosmetic though. Some states are taking it in their own hands, notably California, of course. They passed in 2005 the Safe Cosmetics Act, which requires manufacturers to disclose ingredients that are on a watch list as being dangerous.

Yeah, yeah, they do that with not just cosmetics with if you could buy a frying pan and it'll be like, this frying pan contains something that we're not going to say that is known to cause cancer in humans. It's like, what, which part? Like a Teflon pan or whatever. Boy man, I got good cookware for Christmas.

Oh yeah. Yeah. All clad. Oh yeah, all clad's the way to go. It's good stuff. I pulled all my Christmas money. Yep, smart. Threw in a little and it makes a huge difference

in like how much I enjoy cooking. Yeah, and I mean like you can very easily say all clad's too expensive. No, all clad is an investment. Yeah. If you take care of your all clad stuff, you're gonna have it for the rest of your life rather than having to buy new ones every few years.

Agreed. All clad. Ooh, maybe they'll send us something. So we promised before the break to talk about the psychology of makeup. Which break? This is the one we did. Okay.

And I think it's super interesting when you look at like beauty and the ideal of physical beauty and where that comes from. And how it changes too. And how it changes what it means. You look at Elizabeth the first and you're like, yeah. Ooh, you think? Yeah, high forehead and like.

Oh, love it man, she's a hot mama. No white tan? I'm not, it's a. Well hey, I'm sure someone out there is like, you're crazy. Yeah. Elizabeth the first was hot. But that's another very big point too.

Is there a universal ideal beauty? Well, scientists have looked at it. And one thing they've come up with that's been pretty universally accepted is that symmetry is a very important thing. Sure. I saw a special one time on PBS when they took supposedly the most beautiful people in the world

and split them down the middle and measured them out. And they are usually pretty symmetrical. I saw one site that suggested that faces follow the golden ratio, like perfectly beautiful symmetrical faces follow that golden ratio. Oh really? Supposedly pops up in nature all the time. Interesting.

We should do one on the golden ratio. Totally. Okay. So here's the deal though. Growing up we did episodes on male and female puberty. Little boys and little girls have kind of similar faces until they reach puberty. And then that's when things start happening

to distinguish us. In general, a guy's nose will be bigger, more prominent brow and forehead. Woman might have plumper lips and higher cheekbones. And this is how we change, generally speaking, into men and women. Right. So one of the theories behind why women wear makeup

is because they're trying to hyper accentuate their naturally distinguishing features that make them. They're feminine traits. Right, exactly. So like making the eyes bigger, accentuating the eyes with like eye shadow and eyeliner and mascara. Making the lashes longer.

Plumping the lips, right? Which supposedly I've always heard, and I found it elsewhere in another House of Forks article about lipstick itself, that there's a theory that that emulates a vagina. That like applying lips and lipstick and lip gloss and all that emulates a vagina. So there's like a psychology behind that as well.

And the whole point is here is the idea behind makeup then is a woman showing off her fitness for mating to men, basically. Which makes sense, evolutionarily speaking. That's the predominant theory behind makeup. That's right. Which I mean, if you go talk to Max Factor, they're probably not gonna say that.

It's all about beauty. But ultimately, it's supposedly, it's intending to set off certain evolutionary cues in men who are seeking a mate. Right. A youthful appearance again is usually looked at as more attractive, probably because reproductive, you're able to reproduce as a younger person easily. That's right.

Or more easily. So allegedly. Second way feminism comes along in the 60s and 70s. And that's when women were like, you know what, take your bra off, grow that armpit hair out and quit painting your face so other men, so men think you look good. Right.

Like fix yourself with makeup. The second way feminism. And it was very much hip to the idea of what was really behind makeup. That theory that it's all about attracting or sexualizing yourself in order for men to find you more attractive. And they were saying, forget that.

Forget men. Stop wearing makeup, sister. Yeah, you look good as yourself. We gotta do one on feminism too. Oh, totally. And the thing is, it didn't take off like as sensible as that idea was and timely as it was, you know?

It didn't take off like a rocket. Cause a lot of women were like, yeah, let's get, mm, no, I don't want to do that. I want to wear makeup. Well, yeah. And a lot of women are like, you know, feminism is about me having a choice. That's third way to do what I want to do.

Yeah. Right. Yeah, which is like. I want to wear makeup. It's art to me. It, like the way I look. Right. It's, I like applying it and I'm not doing it for a man.

I like making myself look this way. There's also, there's a similar school of thought is like, yeah, I'm wearing lipstick to drive men crazy. And that gives me power. Sure. That's in and of itself a type of feminism as well. So the idea that a woman should have a choice whether she wears makeup or not

and not be viewed as being a harlot. Yeah. Or as being a turncoat to her gender is, is I think the basis of like this third way of feminism that it's like, yeah, wear makeup if you want. Don't wear it if you don't want, but. Yeah. Don't, don't force your beliefs on, on other people.

Those are, there's a special place in hell for women who wear makeup. Right. And then of course, younger girls, like when should you start wearing makeup? Like, well, this is a, this is a, to me, an entirely separate conversation. Oh, absolutely.

But does, you know, does it sexualize a young girl by wearing makeup too young? And just physically speaking, if this stuff is dangerous in a carcinogenic, carcinogenic way. Right. Like what does it do to the skin of like a 12 year old? Yeah. And not to pick on phthalates, although they definitely,

definitely deserve to be picked on along with parabens. If you look at the medical literature about whether they're potentially harmful or not, they seem to have the most toxicity in pregnant women and in younger people. Well, there you have it. So yes, if you are using makeup as a younger girl, then you potentially are being exposed to things like endocrine disruptors that could be even more harmful

because your body's still developing. So they're going to have more of an effect on you. Yeah. So yeah, there's a, there's a number of reasons to say, maybe wait. Men. But hey, that's your choice. Yeah.

Agreed. Unless your parents say no. Yeah. It's a whole other issue, isn't it? I can't wait to face all those things. So let's talk about men and make up a little bit. Well, there's a couple of different categories of men with makeup, men wearing makeup.

You and I had a TV show. Oh man, I wore so much makeup. I didn't wear any makeup. I know, and Chuck, I wish I could go back and it just been like, I'm a Chuck. And here's the deal. I didn't, I didn't not wear makeup because I thought it was girly or anything.

I didn't wear makeup because I sweat like a beast. Our stage was hot as Hades. And the thing is, you look totally fine, even in HD. I've seen you. I appreciate it. But makeup doesn't, you know, I remember our makeup artist being like, well, this will help with the sweat. And I'm like, you don't understand.

You had a hand fan, do you remember? Oh yeah. They had it like right, right. And when I take it, somebody put, yeah, Fanny, that's right in Chuck's hand. Yeah, makeup won't, there are some scenes though where I look, I remember you used to stop and be like, guys, like look at Chuck.

He's got sweat pouring down his head. Like we can't shoot. I remember that too. But you were right. There are some scenes where I look very glossy, but there are many scenes where you look orange. So I just didn't like it. I didn't like the, I didn't want the chemicals on my face.

I didn't like the way it stung my eyes because I sweat. And it just was like, no. It wasn't fun to take off at the end of the day. No. So anyway, that's my makeup story. My friend, I'm not gonna say his name, you know him. He was a personal driver for Bert Reynolds on a movie here in Atlanta.

Oh yeah. And I was like, what does Bert Reynolds look like without his makeup? He went, what do you mean? He was like, he puts it on in his room. Oh yeah. That morning. So you don't know what Bert Reynolds looks like

without makeup. Right. And it was caked on. Right. And Bert Reynolds and Tim Kazerinsky are actually the same person. The other aspect of men in makeup is whether or not men, well, A, if they should have any say

in whether or not women wear makeup, but whether or not men like it. Men have long tried to have a say in whether women wore makeup. And a lot of it, sadly, is like bullying. Yeah, or accusations of fraud. Or witchcraft sorcery. 1770, British parliament had a law

that said if you wear makeup, it was akin to witchcraft. They said basically, you have a false face. So you can get an annulment, gentlemen, once you wake up after your wedding night and your wife doesn't have makeup on, and you're frightened by her appearance, you can get an annulment because she tricked you

with thinking that she was pretty with all her makeup. That's exactly right. Unbelievable. Yeah. And who was it, the poet Marshall? Yeah. Roman poet Marshall. He wrote to a woman apparently who wore makeup

and said, you are but a composition of lies. No man can say, I love you, for you are not what he loves and no one loves what you are. What a mean poem to write. Yeah. It's like, just shut up, keep it to yourself. You have preference for a lady who doesn't wear makeup.

Fine. Yeah. You know, it's like, it's like today on the internet. Yeah. Where somebody's like, I don't like that TV show. They, these guys have to hear about it. Yeah. It's like, no, just move along.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of makeup, but I don't care, like it's your choice. Emily doesn't wear makeup because she's lazy. I'm sure she'll love that. No, she'll be the first one to admit it. Okay. Every now and then she'll doll herself up a very little bit. When I'm coming over?

Yeah. She's like, Josh is coming. Let me get out the smoky eyes. I know it drives him crazy when you wear it, Chuck. But when she does, it's always like, well, you look like a different version of my wife. Sure. I'm not like, ooh,

but also just like the way she looks normally, you know? Yeah. There's definitely something to be said about how a woman looks without makeup. I think that you mean worse much makeup, does she? No, not much at all. She frequently goes without it too. Yeah.

And I understand that there's like, that's not to ignore just a whole group of women out there around the world who are like, no, you wear makeup. Yeah, you put your face on. Exactly. Yeah. That's frequently what it's called. And they just can't imagine not wearing makeup.

Yeah. Fine, bully for you. Do what you wanna do. It does seem like there's a big conversation that you can start up anytime if you want, especially on slate where, you know, are those women selling out the feminist movement still or that kind of thing?

But yeah, I tend to agree with the idea of choice. Yeah, there's a big movement now among some of the celebrity women that's like, now I wanna be in the cover of this magazine without makeup. Like I wanna show my true self because I'm tired of this. Ideal that we've created in culture, in pop culture, that we have to look a certain way.

And one of the things that, I hate a lot of things about the internet, but I think one of my things I hate worst is, look how ugly these celebrities look when they're grocery shopping. Right. Look at this lady without her makeup on. Right.

Like, it's just awful, man. Or there was this movement called the hashtag no makeup selfies. Yeah. I went around Twitter recently, last year maybe, I think, and they raised something like 10, 12 million dollars for cancer research. That's great.

It's general cancer research. Sure, that is great. But it was like daring. Yeah. It was like, it was a daring bold move to release a photo of yourself. Right. Publicly without wearing makeup,

which still suggests that it is basically a social expectation, a social requirement. Yeah. People expect you generally to wear makeup then to not wear it is like a bold act that one's willing to sacrifice oneself for in the name of generating money for cancer research. Yeah, and all in the name in general

of submitting to the whims of what a man finds attractive. Yeah. That's kind of at the base of it all. Yeah, but again, I don't think you can discount the idea that women themselves find, frequently find themselves more attractive when they have makeup on. Yeah.

You know, and there's no reason to discount that. Oh, man. All right, let's take the wasps nests off of our arms. No, I thought this is very fair. I thought it was pretty. Our old trusty saying to each their own. Yeah, which we frequently adopt and then abandon depending on the topic.

That's exactly right. If you want to know more about makeup, you can go to, I don't know, a department store. Did you know the stuff in department stores are called prestige cosmetics? No. That's what they're called. What do you mean, just the stuff they sell?

Yeah, like the good stuff. They don't call it like high-end or they call it prestige cosmetics. Yeah, man, it is expensive. Oh, we didn't talk. Did you see some of the weird stuff that they put in, in cosmetics? Yeah, you want to run through them real quick?

There's just a couple that stuck out to me like roadkill. All right, fill me in. So tallow, like you render animal fat and you come up with tallow and tallow is used in a lot of different moisturizer, shampoos, that kind of stuff. And apparently it is legal to source your animal fat from everything from zoos to roadkill.

And this stuff ends up in cosmetics. Weird. It is a little weird. Here's one. The TNS Recovery Complex by Skin Medica. Infant for Skin. This is one of Oprah's favorite things. And I looked into it because it's a big anti-aging product

and I thought, they're not using infant for skin. And they aren't in a way. What they did was 20 years ago, they used cells from a single for skin grown in a lab that they still use that same thing now. But people act like they're like taking for skin and grinding it up. And Oprah's like, look under your chairs.

There's a for skin under there. This one sounds kind of gross at first, but then when you look into it, it's awesome. Snail ooze. So snail ooze, they use in moisturizers. And I imagine prestige moisturizers because it contains glycolic acid in the lastin. And the reason that it contains it is because the snail

needs to heal its own cuts and bruises and stuff like that. And apparently it works in human skin as well. Pretty cool stuff. Is that a Lynn? Yeah, I mean, if you're a vegan, you're probably not using a lot of these products because everything from lanolin to crushed beetles go into a lot of cosmetics.

Right. And so vegans are like, I don't want animals in my products. Well, lanolin is squeezings from sheep's wool. So technically, you're fine. And don't tell a vegan that. I won't. The wool industry is very... Oh, I see.

Hotly, gotcha. Debated. Got it. You got anything else? No. If you want to know more about makeup, go type that in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And since I said search bar,

it's time for Listen to Your Makeup. This one, I'm going to call... Using us to teach English in China. Oh, I like this one. And we're even going to play a little bit of this because it's so awesome. Hey guys, I've been listening to stuff you should know for several years now.

I used to listen to them every night before bed. That's very relaxing. And in recent months, I've been playing them for educational purposes. I teach at an international school in Shanghai, China. And your podcasts have helped me to teach English to my high school students. Recently, we had an assignment where the students

had to create their own stuff you should know podcast. And many of them loved the project so much, they did an excellent job. Feel free to listen to some of these. You have inspired my Chinese students not only to listen to the show, but also to speak more English inside and outside the classroom.

I'm so impressed with their language improvement. Thank you for that. And thank you for making my job so enjoyable and rewarding. That is so awesome. And warmest regards, that's from Jason. And let's play a little snippet of these Chinese students doing stuff you should know. This episode is brought to you by only 16RMB

for two big fried chicken wings, canned grand-part chicken. Welcome to the stuff you should know from HowStuffWork.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, Cynthia and Mona here, a couple of stuff writers at HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, how is your winter holiday since yet?

My winter holiday, you know, because of the Spring Festival, I was wondering between different relatives for greeting. That's really boring, boring and boring. And the most serious problem is, once the holiday is end, my weight must add about 1.5 kg.

But I know you're one wrongly with your father, right? Don't worry about that too much. That is awesome. Jason's doing God's work, OKA, using stuff you should know to teach things. It's just, it's cute, even though they're not little kids. It's just cute to hear these Chinese students

doing the stuff you should know. I think it's awesome. Yep, so hello to Jason's class out there in Shanghai, you said, right? Yeah. Yep, thanks for listening, and keep up the good work. And if you want to get in touch with us,

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