(~5 minutes to read)
When US President Calvin Coolidge died, writer and satirist Dorothy Parker’s reaction was reported to be, “How can they tell?”
Which has nothing to do with the subject of this article, other than the “how can they tell” sentiment.
Mrs. H., in common with millions of women around the globe, has what seems like a couple of roomfuls of creams and oils and lotions and potions that promise this, that and the other improvement in appearance, tone, texture, colour or condition. One might be tempted to say that the average person’s age and size-of-collection of such substances are directly proportional, but firstly, it would be a brave person that says that, and secondly, I suspect that if it’s true at all (and I’m not saying it is, love of my life), it’s only up to a certain age, beyond which the person concludes that either the claims and promises are baseless and outrageous, or else the time they spend on mitigating life’s ravaging of the body could be better spent enjoying the remainder of their time in said body.
But enough of my talking to Mrs. H. through this column. Let me get to the topic—those meaningless and ridiculous claims that the makers of various products make.
“3x more radiant skin” is the claim on the container of one preparation in Mrs. H.’s collection. Having spent 30+ years in IT, where things needed to be quantifiable, and because of my underlying personality, I need to understand that claim. In order for it to be valid, someone, somewhere must have set baselines for unradiant and radiant skin. What are they? The pallor of a cadaver and the healthiness of a thriving young baby respectively? Perhaps they’re somewhere in between— the skin of an average indoor-loving twenty-three-year-old female living with a partial sea view in northern England, versus the skin of an average outdoor-loving twenty-three-year-old female living near the ocean in sunnier climes, maybe.
What is the unit of measurement for skin radiance? (Radians? No; that’s already taken. Lumens of radiated light?) And is the increase from one unit to two units of radiance linear, exponential or logarithmic?
Only when those questions are answered does the “3x more radiant skin” claim become at least somewhat meaningful to me. What about you? What quantifiable improvement would you expect after slathering this stuff on your bodywork?
Perhaps the product achieves its claim by straightening out one’s wrinkles. Not shrinking them, you understand, but flattening them, thereby exposing three times as much skin to admiring onlookers.
Then again, the stuff might dissolve your clothing. If this is the case, then the manufacturers may have calculated that the average person of a certain age has two thirds of their body’s surface area covered in clothing. When the product dissolves every stitch of your clothing, you’re now showing three times as much skin as previously.
But just as you can prove anything with statistics, you can prove anything in a scientific study given the right choice of parameters. And I have to presume that the manufacturers do indeed have results of scientific/clinical studies.
Otherwise, how can they tell?
Another item in Mrs. H.’s arsenal claims to remove all types of face, lip and eye makeup. I’ll try to resist the temptation to unfairly misunderstand the claim by wondering where all these faceless and lipless people are. Instead, I’ll wonder out loud how exhaustive their testing was for them to claim “all types of…” Did they try theatre makeup? What about 18th century makeup? What about permanent marker that kids sometimes use as facial makeup? And while the product may remove all types, does it remove all trace of all types from one’s face, lips and/or eyes?
Another product claims to be made from 100% virgin… coconut oil. If your mind wanders into the same murky waters that mine does when you read that, you’ll know what my problem is. “How can they tell” whether or not a coconut is a virgin?
But casting murky waters aside for a moment, (sounds like something Moses might do…) what difference does it make to the average coconut-oil-based skincare product user if aforementioned oil is from a first pressing of the coconut?
How can they tell?
Let’s now leave Mrs. H.’s oil storage depot and move to the housecleaning products stash. We might have to abandon the “how can they tell” motif for this.
“Removes 100% of dirt.*”
I knew that the asterisk would yield information about the qualification of that claim. When I’d finally located it at the bottom of the back of the bottle, in three-point type, I discovered that tests had been done on “tough kitchen and bathroom dirt”, and that the tests achieved “complete soil removal”.
Once again, my personality type demands definition; precision. What is “tough”? What determines which side of the “tough” threshold a given piece of dirt falls? And are dirt and soil synonymous, or is soil a subset of dirt?
How can they tell? (Yay! I kept the motif!)
“2x more grease fighting power*”
Let’s start with the lack of punctuation. Without the hyphen between “grease” and “fighting”, the manufacturers seem to be alerting us to some freedom-fighting group of long-haired, motorcycle-riding greasers pitting their might against the faceless suits of government (who presumably use the face remover mentioned above). But if we assume that the manufacturers meant “grease-fighting”, and we reach for the magnifying glass in order to locate the endnote indicated by the asterisk, we discover that this is merely a comparison with the manufacturer’s unconcentrated version of the product.
Instead of “how can they tell”, we’re now being marketed to with statements of the bleedin’ obvious.
Speaking of which… “24% more*” More than what? Did they actually fill the bottle to the top? Read the asterisked endnote and it turns out that the justification for this claim is that the 950ml bottle has 24% more in it than the 765ml bottle does. I’ve not done the math, but I’m prepared to believe them: it was in the small print, which is always truthful.
Once again, we’re being marketed to with the bleedin’ obvious.
Ah well. At least there’s still some truth in advertising.