Dear Drugstore Cosmetics Companies:

Dear Drugstore Cosmetics Companies:

If by any chance you happen upon this blog, I hope you'll take a moment to read this letter.

As an avid drugstore cosmetics consumer, I'd like to take a moment to remind you (although I'm sure you're already quite aware) that many of your wonderful products arrive at drugstores without safety seals. While I understand the added cost of affixing safety seals on many of your products (which can't be cheap), I'm wondering if you have also calculated the cost of how many products in your displays must be thrown away due to over-enthusiastic women who feel the urge to open up a tube of lip gloss, lipstick, etc. and swipe it on their hand, lips, etc. to see the true color of your beautiful products. While I have a very limited perspective when it comes to "damaged" products I see at drugstores, I can tell you that in my limited perspective, I often see upwards of 25% of the inventory of a given display in a "tampered state" on any given journey to my local drugstores. And I know that I cannot be alone in this observation.

While it is A-OK to forgo safety seals on department store and high-end makeup (because there are testers available and when we make a purchase at a department store the inventory is kept safely behind the counter) it is essential to affix safety seals on drugstore makeup, even if you do graciously provide us with testers within your displays. For the most part, testers in drugstores have no policing or monitoring. Therefore, they are usually messy and uninviting. In which case, the over-enthusiastic women who feel the need to test your products on their bodies will forgo said testers and open up new product--new product that could have been mine had I not had the keen eye to observe that the product had already been used.

I know I am not alone in developing this "sixth sense" when it comes to evaluating whether or not a product I plan to purchase at the drugstore has already been tampered with. There are "tells" which involve inspecting stickers (does the stick look like it has already been peeled back?) and in the case of lipstick, I can open it, roll up the tube and closely inspect it to see if the texture of the surface looks like it has already graced a person's hand or lips. It's sad that we women have had to develop this skill of evaluation, because drugstore products should always be clean and untouched. And this COULD be the case if you would add a plastic safety seal to each and every product you offer to us.

And while I'm at it: If you do place a safety seal on your lipsticks, please ensure that you also include a see-through window on said lipstick tube. We consumers need to see the actual lipstick shade in order to determine whether or not the color might work for us. We have all been burned by the color (sometimes this is a sticker, sometimes it is a piece of plastic) that is placed on the end of some lipstick tubes that is supposedly the exact shade of the actual lipstick. This color very rarely is an exact match. If you can't make the actual lipstick color visible to us, it's the equivalent of selecting a shade of lipstick in a pitch-black room. A 100% gamble.

I want to commend the companies that already place safety seals on their products (and there are many of you out there) but I have to say that many of the most obvious products that warrant safety seals (liquid foundations, lipsticks and lip glosses seem to be the main culprits) do not have them.

Make no mistake, I am writing this letter from a place of love. If you take even a moment to look around Nouveau Cheap, you will see that I have a very deep passion for drugstore makeup. With very few exceptions, drugstore makeup is all that I use on any given day. So that's why I'm writing this letter. Let your products be even MORE available to us! Take away the fear and disappointment we experience when the only shade of lipstick remaining in your lovely display has clearly been used and thus, cannot be purchased by us--the women who really, really want to buy your products.

Sincerely,
The Recessionista

PS: And please, please, please could you also add a safety seal to your eye-makeup-remover bottles? It has always confounded me as to why such products, which need to be of the UTMOST hygienic purity, do not have so much as a plastic ring around their openings! Thank you in advance. :)