The eye cream myth
On the small product category that I, after twenty years of dutiful use, have stopped buying — and what I use instead, which is nothing.
The eye cream is the longest-running product on the modern skincare shelf. I started using one when I was twenty-three, on the recommendation of a saleswoman in a department store who told me that the skin around the eyes was thinner and required a specially formulated product. I have used one every day, morning and evening, for about twenty years since.
Eighteen months ago I stopped. I had read, in a small article by a research dermatologist, that eye creams as a product category have very little scientific justification — that the active ingredients in them are, almost without exception, the same active ingredients in regular moisturisers, just at lower concentrations and in smaller quantities, sold at a higher price per millilitre. The dermatologist's recommendation was to apply your regular moisturiser around the eyes, gently, and to skip the dedicated eye cream entirely.
What happened over the next year
Nothing. The skin around my eyes is no different than it was when I was using the eye cream. The small fine lines that had been there are still there, no better, no worse. The puffiness that I had attributed to the success of the eye cream is, it turns out, just as well managed by the cold gua sha stone in the morning. The dark circles, which the eye cream had never really addressed, are still about as visible as they were.
I had been using an eye cream for twenty years for no demonstrable benefit. The cumulative cost of those twenty years — perhaps eighty euros a year, perhaps more — adds up to a sum I am slightly embarrassed to calculate.
What I do now
Apply my regular moisturiser around the eyes, very gently, with the ring finger. The ring finger is the weakest of the fingers and naturally applies less pressure than the others, which is what you want around the thin skin of the eye area. I press the cream in rather than rubbing. The application takes about ten seconds.
That is the entire eye care routine. There is no separate product. There is no specific time of day. The same moisturiser that goes on the face goes around the eyes, with slightly more care, and the eyes have not noticed the difference.
On the larger skepticism this taught me
Some skincare categories are, on closer examination, more marketing than chemistry. The eye cream is one of them. The neck cream is, mostly, another — though the case for paying specific attention to the neck is real, the case for a separately formulated product is not. The lip mask is, mostly, just a balm.
I am not saying the industry is bad. I am saying that the categories the industry sells do not always map onto things the skin actually needs, and that an evening spent reading the ingredient lists of the products on your shelf can save you a great deal of money and not, as far as I have been able to tell, cost you any skin quality at all.