We Want to Believe: Facial Mists
Welcome back to We Want to Believe: A Column About Beauty & Money. Our recent Clarisonic takedown resulted in one Instagram DM from someone who may or may not be associated with Clarisonic wanting to chat about our “experience,” which I think means we have officially arrived.
Meghan: Morning! I just spritzed in your honour. My face looks like the dew-dropped petal of a morning rose.
Audrey: Meghan. I have been using this product for a week and I still do not believe that it is real. I have never felt more like a character in a hacky near-future dystopia than when purchasing this $3/ounce water.
Meghan: THE GREAT BEAUTY SCHISM. It has occurred. Readers, today we are talking about face sprays. Audrey, had you ever heard of these sprays before I started extolling them?
Audrey: No, and as you know, it took multiple texts to convince me that they are a thing people pay actual money for, a spray bottle full of water and light scent to spray at your face for some reason. Explain again for the people why you enjoy these, please? I am really trying to be open-minded.
Meghan: Yes, okay, I will concede that it is possible the face mist signals the last hurdle on my rapid descent into consumerist madness, but I LOVE A FACE MIST. I first heard of them a couple of years ago as one of those products that French women swear by, and my gateway mist was the Heritage Rosewater Spray ($9), which I still keep in my fridge.
The idea behind the mist is that it is water, yes, but Audrey, it is so much MORE than water. (This is that moment in Love, Actually when Rowan Atkinson tries to sell the philandering Alan Rickman (RIP) on the decorative box.) The water is packed with minerals and antioxidants and some other things — aloe! Essential oils! Bitter orange flower extract that is definitely not made up! — and so it delivers a supercharged blast of moisture to your face. People also use them to set or refresh makeup and to soothe irritated skin. I use them as a little pick-me-up and to feel extra fancy. I keep one on me at all times. I have one in the fridge and one next to my bed. I bought one for every female in my family this Christmas. I think they make my skin look renewed and fresh. As I said, I am obsessed with a spray.
Did you notice…anything? Any benefits? At all?
Audrey: Okay, well, I used the Boots no7 Facial Hydrating Spray ($9.99). Here are the ingredients: Aqua (Water), Phenoxyethanol, Sodium PCA, Propylene Glycol, Methylparaben, Creatine, Citrullus Vulgaris (Watermelon) Fruit Extract, Sorbitol. So like, maybe creatine is supposed to do…something? But it felt exactly like someone was spraying me in the face with water, a feeling that I don’t really enjoy. Then the water sort of sat wetly on my face until I wiped it off in annoyance or let it dry, also in annoyance. It was like sweating, only scented. Maybe I should use a different scent. I would not have identified this as watermelon, but it wasn’t my favorite. It smelled like if you had unsuccessfully dodged the ladies with the perfume at the department store, and only been glancingly hit with some fragrance.
I made my husband try it because I thought I must be missing something, and he said it smells like lube, but not any lube I’ve ever used, so that’s troubling.
Also, okay, the lotion people are so militant about how water dries out your skin, which is the entire point of lotion, that it restores your hydration through oils and unguents. But somehow THIS water makes your skin more hydrated? Because of creatine? Or something? One of them has to be lying.
Meghan: See, the major problem with this column is that as soon as I go to research something I find about fifty different articles telling me I am a beauty moron who is a sheep to a billion dollar industry, which I know but I just don’t want to KNOW, you know?
Yes, you’re right: water dries out your skin. So, in theory, using a water mist that doesn’t have some kind of additional moisturizing ingredient would induce dryness. However, the ones that have essential oils or aloe or some other super hydrating ingredient can presumably help you add moisture back into your skin, if used judiciously (ie. not the way I use them). I think they are probably great for people who wear a lot of face makeup, like foundation, who need a little afternoon refresh; also for people who are easily irritated, or those with sensitive skin. For reference, I’m a patter — I spray and then pat pat pat my face to settle the spray into my skin. I think that makes me look dewy, although perhaps I do just look like a wet cat.
Audrey: No, you are always glowing like a fresh dewy rose, I just assumed it was your natural radiance.
Meghan: The more that I think about it, the more I understand that this would be your least favourite thing ever. You HATE feeling sweaty. I knew that about you! I knew it.
Audrey: This falls solidly into the category of Not for Me, Never for Me. I admit I don’t understand a lot about beauty. Once I was reading an article about “beauty hacks” for work and there was a description of how to DIY salt spray for your hair, and I seriously had to check and make sure it wasn’t a parody website because I was unaware that people PAY FOR SALT WATER SPRAY.
Oh, and one last complaint, while I’m at it? Fucking Walgreens, where I purchased my spray, stuck this un-removeable anti-theft sticky thing on the bottle. Literally the only way I can imagine someone liking this stuff is in the imaginative, deeply aesthetic moment of spritzing oneself from a pristine, clear bottle with futuristic magic water, and this ugly sticker ruins that experience entirely. Are that many people really shoplifting overpriced water? Maybe just stop carrying it if it’s that big of a problem.
Meghan: But then where would I buy my overpriced water mist?!
You make a really important point: it truly is the height of luxury, lightly misting yourself with expensive bottled water. That’s likely 98% of why I adore it so much. It is almost excruciatingly indulgent, like you should be on a yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean with Cate Blanchett in a headscarf, the two of you reclining and bemoaning the lack of wind, pausing only to spritz for relief. So. You know. Entirely ridiculous.
(Also, I own a bottle of that salt water hair spray. Real talk.)
Audrey: HA HA HA. HA HA. Okay. Well. I guess we’ve established that there are some spray-based areas of beauty we will never see eye-to-eye on.
Meghan: Save me your spray. I’m coming for it.
VERDICT:
Audrey: Not Worth It
Meghan: Worth It
Other sprays used in the making of this column:
Glossier Soothing Face Mist ($18)
La Roche-Posay Thermal Spring Water ($12.99)
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