I have to admit – sometimes I buy products just because of the packaging. Benefit Cosmetic’s gets me every time because I think their packaging is genius. Who wouldn’t want to buy a set of products called How to Look Best at Everything, or Primping with the Stars? It’s all so clever and cute that I find myself pulled to the Benefit section at Sephora and Shoppers Drug Mart.
The one thing I am always buying is mascara. I honestly think I have tried them all. Ultimately my goal is for my lashes to be as long and curled as possible without wearing fakes. I’m also that girl who has a mascara for a year instead of 2-3 months like the experts say the shelf life should be.
When I saw Benefit’s They’re Real! Mascara I of course laughed to myself because the first thing I thought of was, well you know what women are usually judging if they are real or not. The packaging had all kinds of research results on it too which you don’t usually find on mascara so I was intrigued.
I splurged the $29 for the mascara and gave it a try at home. The first try didn’t go super well because I am the worst for cleaning my lashes. I always have second day mascara, and because I didn’t want to wait to try this one I had a bit of a disaster on my hands. This mascara loves clean lashes, so if there is anything on your lashes already then you are just looking for a mess. Because it separates and lengthens the bristles are very concentrated, so I just ended up making a lumpy mess. Fast forward to 20 minutes later after trying again with clean lashes and my life was changed – this mascara was amazing! It separated my lashes like I had never seen. It was like I had lashes where I didn’t know I had lashes! The more coats I put on the longer and more separated my lashes became.
I think the only set back I found with the application is that it didn’t make my lashes as thick as I wanted. I actually paired another mascara on top to add some volume, and then used the Benefit mascara again to get rid of any clumps.
For second day use you really need to have totally clean lashes for this stuff to work, so I either go through the trouble of actually removing my eye makeup from yesterday (this happens from time to time), or I skip a day with it. Wow does this stuff stay on! You really need a good makeup remover to take it off your lashes because it’s not going anywhere otherwise.
It only comes in jet-black which works for me, and the brush allows you to go vertical or horizontal because of how the bristles are designed which is nice.
As for the research results I mentioned, Benefit claims that in a consumer panel survey, the following results were reported:
– 94% saw dramatic length and volume
– 90% saw base-to-tip curl
– 94% saw visible lift
-100% saw long-wearing results
I think I could agree with all of these results except for the curl part. Sometimes I saw some curl, and sometimes I couldn’t get it. I think it depends on how skilled you are with the brush.
As I mentioned before normally I have a mascara for about a year because I have so many, but because I use this one so much it really only lasts me about 3 months. For me that’s a bit of a splurge since I’m not used to spending that much on mascara that often, but when I don’t have it my lashes seem a little depressed. And I don’t want to see anything on my face looking depressed.
Photo #1 courtesy of www.benefitcosmetics.com, photo #2 courtesy of www.sephora.ca
