As a beauty editor, friends will often text or forward me links to products getting a lot of buzz (“Can u get this for me?!”), but nothing could prepare me for the wave of fear and confusion for when a longtime cult fave, St. Ives Apricot Scrub, got hit with some seriously bad press.
ICYMI: Last month, plaintiffs Kaylee Browning and Sarah Basile filed a $5 million class action lawsuit against Unilever, the makers of cult beauty product St. Ives Apricot Scrub. The crime? That St. Ives’s scrub is so harsh, it leads to “long-term skin damage…[its] jagged edges…cause micro-tears in the skin when used in a scrub. While this damage may not be immediately noticeable to the naked eye, it nonetheless leads to acne, infection and wrinkles. Simply put, St. Ives is not fit to be sold as a facial scrub.”
The kicker: “The product is completely worthless.” Uf!
The blog posts, tweets, and Facebook shares were off the charts. Within days, it felt like one of the most popular products became one of the most maligned. I imagined people across the country tossing their scrubs like day-old milk.
I’m not a product formulator, dermatologist, or lawyer. I’m the Teen Vogue beauty and health director, and more importantly, perhaps in this case, someone who has used this product since I was 12. My best friend’s sister had it in their shared bathroom, next to the stack of water-warped Sassy magazines and colored eye pencils. (I think the formula is even gentler than it was back then, but the gist is the same — think poppy seeds, suspended in thick hand cream.) As a longtime St. Ives user, I can tell you that I have not suffered facial acne, infection, or wrinkles from using this product. I have chucked several other big-name exfoliators in the trash because they were way too harsh for my skin. (Again, my skin. Not everyone’s.)
Browning and Basile’s other major accusation? St. Ives Apricot Scrub is not dermatologist recommended, as it claims to be. There may be some truth in that: Some derms don’t recommend it, but as someone who writes about skin care for a living, I can tell you that if you ask five different derms the same question, you’ll get five different answers. My guess is that Unilever — the same company that owns mega beauty brands like Dove, Tresemmé, and Dermalogica — did its due diligence and had a few dermatologists vet the stuff.
All that said, I’m not here to say who will be proven right in court. But what I am dead clear on is that this isn’t a case to be tried on social media. Seeing how quickly people believe something is bad for them — just because a couple of girls claimed it was — was pretty scary. (Most of the online outrage, I’d say, is completely worthless.) If you don’t like the product, try a gentler scrub! Unless you got carried off to the ER for a microtear, get back on the horse and head to CVS or, if you’re feeling fancy, Sephora. Not the courtroom. Tell them I sent you!