The problem with clean beauty

There's no accountability and even less clairty.

Clean Beauty is a $10 billion category the industry built on a term without universal definition. There is no regulatory body that governs it nor any clear standard that defines it. A brand can call its products clean, natural, non-toxic, or “free from” anything it likes without meeting any specific criteria anywhere in the world.

Sephora defined it themselves and applied it as a retail seal. They faced a class action lawsuit for doing so but it was thrown out, meaning there’s no end in sight for this accountability blindspot. Clean doesn’t describe what the product is or offer any meaningful insight into how it might help you. It’s a positioning statement against without substance. It’s a co-opting of the more legitimate Free From movement which started an important conversation about accountability in product formulation. Real questions about long-term safety grounded the push to ban parabens, phthalates, formaldehyde-releasing preservatives, and others. History has justified that skepticism. It led to accountability. It changed formulations. It was the result of consumers doing what they should—questioning the actions and motives of those who profit from convincing them to buy.

As usual, the beauty industry's response was to take that legitimate impulse and strip it of its specificity to sell it back as a vibe. Clean absorbed the Free From movement and established that Clean equals good and everything else equals Dirty. This affects your ability as a consumer to make informed decisions or even price comparisons. The industry baked this distortion into everything from R&D to marketing. 

Eventually the Clean movement added a new word to fear monger with—Chemicals. The Truth? Everything is a chemical. Atoms form bonds, molecules form matter, matter forms everything. Including you, including water. Every plant extract in every product marketed as natural including ours, is a chemical.

A chemical is any substance with a definite composition. By that definition, aloe vera is a chemical and so is arsenic. The origin of a substance—whether it grew in the ground or was synthesized in a lab—tells you almost nothing about whether it’s safe or effective. Some of the most harmful compounds on earth are entirely natural. Some of the most beneficial ingredients in modern skincare are synthetic. Brands rely on the scientific illiteracy of consumers to make statements for and against things on a whim. It’s about sales at a product level. There’s no greater good, only quarterly sales targets and shareholder expectations. 

Where does that leave a consumer who genuinely wants to make better choices? Somewhere more uncomfortable than a seal can take you. It requires taking a different kind of ownership of your role as a consumer than they’ve trained you for. It requires actually understanding what's in a product and why. It’s refusing to allow brand narrative and influencer relationships to influence you. 

MILO doesn't call itself Clean. Not because our formulations wouldn't qualify under the broad understanding of its meaning. We aren’t the brand who is going to abandon an ethical position to make ourselves more digestible to a market in desperate need of change. 

We don't use the label because accepting it would require pretending it means something. We selected every ingredient in the MILO Trio for a specific functional purpose related to the Six Fundamentals of Skin Health. That's a higher standard than Clean because it’s directly related to your experience, instead of your perception.