Reacting to Beauty: Cosmetic Allergy Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe allergic and irritant reactions to cosmetics, beginning with the swollen eyelids, stinging lips and red cheeks that arrived from nowhere, and the wrong answers that followed — eczema, heat rash, razor bumps, pregnancy skin. Writers describe the culprits as they were finally identified: home hair dye after twenty years, gel nails, lash glue and extensions, a lash lift, wig adhesive, henna, cologne and perfume, preservatives in wipes, nail polish, lip balm, a bindi, beard oil, and products sold as natural or gentle. There is the patch test itself and the long work of reading ingredient lists afterwards. Writers include men and women from their teens to their seventies, a makeup artist and a ward nurse, people in cancer treatment and a mother tracing her daughter's breakouts. Outcomes are honest: skin that settled within weeks, careful people who are still not clear, a lip blush that lumped months later, and a salon that skipped the patch test. Later chapters cover online allergy tests that wasted money, what label claims such as hypoallergenic do and do not mean, and the cost of rebuilding a routine from scratch.

Who it's for

For anyone with a rash nobody has explained, people newly diagnosed after a patch test, and beauty professionals whose own hands, or whose clients, are reacting.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 263 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.