Product Review⎮ Benefit Cosmetics: They’re Real! Big Sexy Eye Kit

Most people don’t have a middleman when it comes to makeup products, but luckily enough, I’m constantly graced with beauty hand-me-downs from my maternal relatives. Recently I was gifted Benefit Cosmetics’ They’re Real! BIG Sexy Eye Kit, which is essentially an eyeshadow palette with three paired eyeshadow duos, a rounded sponge, and a mirror built into the bulky kit.

The three eyeshadow duos are composed of neutral shades, each with grandeur names:

• Beyond nude: champagne and cappuccino
• Naughty neutral: soft pink and rosy brown
• Bombshell brown: taupe and sable brown

The colors are gorgeous. Within each duo is a satin shade and a soft matte shade, perfectly paired together. If you’re not completely sold on one of the duos, have no fear! Benefit Cosmetics sells all the duos separately at $24 per palette. The singular duo palette also comes in additional colors that the trio doesn’t have. However, buying the three colors together in this palette is the best option, as a $72 value is yours for only $36.

Product Review⎮Peter Thomas Roth Acne-Clear Invisible Dots

My mom was casually browsing Sephora’s website—her only mistake of the day; she can never casually browse any website that sells a product without making her wallet cry out in sweet, sweet agony—when she turned her laptop screen toward me to reveal a particular acne product to her acne-prone daughter.

I can’t pin-point when it started, only its worsening growth over the years. I’ve tried all of the face washes on the market; Neutrogena, Aveeno, Burt’s Bees, La Roche-Posay, Cetaphil, and more. The summer before my senior year of high school I had cried to a dermatologist, afraid that every spider bite would transform into a pimple, and every acne scar would be a badge of shame. Though I was prescribed a topical lotion and an adapalene gel at the time, neither did anything to stop new pimples from forming, lessen existing ones, and heal acne scars. But my mom was hopeful; she kept ordering new products every few months and encouraged me to return to past ones—secretly we’re both masochists, hell-bent on either humiliating our bank statements or our skin. Then she decided to try one more product, and while I was hesitant to try it, having been fed up with putting my skin through sustained changes, we finally found something that worked.

The Peter Thomas Roth Acne-Clear Invisible Dots are sold in two sizes; essentially a large or small deal, where the large pack contains 72 dots (also recognizable as circular adhesive patches) and the small pack contains 24 dots. The pack of 72 dots contains 6 sheets with 12 dots per sheet, and is contained in a light blue tin. The pack of 24 dots lacks the convenient storage tin, and only contains 2 sheets with 12 dots.