Garnier Pure Sauna Self-Heating Mask Review

Hello there,

Yes, it is in fact a Sunday, but let's go ahead with the Face Mask Friday thing. Because it's catchier than Face Mask Sunday right? And I'm all about the alliteration. I should make that a theme too, "All About Alliterations" and start posting up cool alliterations. Except no one will read it. Moving on, my apologies for making this two days late. I was preparing for an interview and dragged to Oxford Street with my mother only to spend three hours in Marks and Spencer wondering what my life had come to.

The mocking, sorry reviewing, of today's product is based around Ganier's Self-Heating mask. All jokes aside, I will refrain from mocking, and try to 'tell it as it is' - after all how many other ways are there of telling 'it'? Go on, give us a ball park figure politicians (like they'd be reading this blog, I mean look at their pores).

I picked up the face mask at Boots, mostly because it was £0.85 for two 6ml sachets which was the cheapest face mask I had brought yet. Considering this was produced from quite a known brand it seemed like excellent value for money. For all you animal lovers, unlike The Body Shop or Superdrug Tea Tree products it had no guarantee against animal testing. It also looked highly professional and because I could never in the next three years afford to go to the spa I very much liked the sauna aspect. Now to make my room steamy and get someone with a Russian accent doing my face mask. At least that's how I imagine spas work.

Before I spread this face mask onto my face the smell hit me. It smelt like a Garnier face wash I had tried out a couple of years ago. It isn't a bad smell, more of a raw but fresh cosmetics smell. However I am concerned that what if all the Garnier products have the same signature smell? Let me just give you a piece of advice if you're starting a cosmetics company: if you want your products to have the same notable smell, do not make it smell like Garnier's face mask. I want the products that I apply to my body smelling nice, hence why I spend a fortune at The Body Shop. Nevertheless I applied to concoction to my face, and surprisingly enough as I massaged it around my face I could actually feel it heating up my skin. I then removed it after five minutes (despite the packaging saying three minutes). It hadn't hardened or anything but was still in it's liquid form.

My skin felt drier after the ordeal and two days later and my skin no longer felt fresh like it did on the day of the face mask despite a promise for skin to feel purified "for up to 7 days". Luckily it also didn't feel as dry either. I guess you can't get it all huh?

It'll be a 1.5/5.

Marks deducted for the smell, how the effect wore off, the dryness, and how there wasn't as much of an effect as I thought there would be. It didn't make my face as clearer as some of the other products I've tried but good affordability and definitely for those with oily skin.

Anyway that is all the juice I can give you on face masks this week. Next week I'll try out the Honey and Oat Scrub Mask from The Body Shop. I've been wanting to try this out for a long time but the £10 price tag attached to it scared the poor student inside me. I happened be in a luck and met a lovely lovely lady from a store in London who gave me free samples of two face masks so I could figure out whether I liked them or not.

I'll mix it up a little next week and try to post about something that is not about face masks, as well as continuing with Face Mask Fridays (yes, really, it will be on a Friday this time, Sunday shall be used as God intended it to, for rest, video games and eating fatty food without regrets).

À bientôt.  

Body Shop's Seaweed Ionic Clay Mask Review

Salut,

Well look at that, Face Mask Fridays is so a thing. I mean if you've done something twice it's a thing isn't it? At least that's how it works in my world. Which is probably why I consider myself an expert at yoga from having been to ten lessons or so in the space of a year.

Moving on from my lack of yoga skills, I was browsing in my local branch of The Body Shop this week (they're having a sale so it's only understandable why I was won over). Then I saw the sachet version of Body Shop's Seaweed Ionic Clay Mask on the counter. The original pot packaging looks something like this:

The pot is £12 for 100ml and my sachet was £1.50 for 6ml. I know, The Body Shop wins again for its brilliant affordability factor. Okay yes go on all you Body Shop fanatics, throw a rant at me about how this is because The Body Shop goes out of its way to avoid animal testing but may I just point out that my Tea Tree face peel from Superdrugs (refer to last weeks post) was more than a third cheaper and for more product too, as well as the fact that it stated at the back that it did not test this product on animals. 

The question is, was this face mask worth it? I applied the clay like mixture onto my face, so well done Body Shop for really sticking to the title there. The face mask smelt lovely, really fresh and clean which made it bearable to sit around improving my yoga until I realized my face was so stiff I could only mumble. It was time to see the results. I washed off the stiff bits of mask and in that aspect Superdrug's Tea Tree mask was more fun because I could easily peel it off. Well life is not fair, so I continued in my struggle to remove the concoction from my face.

Now the result was pretty non-existent. In all fairness this face pack is for oily skin which I do not have but it seemed like a bit of a fluff product to me. Body Shop describes it to "draw out impurities" be "clarifying" and "refreshing". Refreshing it was. I really enjoyed how fresh my face felt but it still left my blackheads as they were and my skin looked a little clearer. But that could have just been a bit of the clay mixture left over. 

I'll give it a 2/5. Lovely smell, felt fresh after but made no difference to me really, could have achieved the same by washing my face in cool water and I would have saved myself a good bit of money too. 

That's all on Face Mask Fridays.

À bientôt.  

Is marriage a form of prostitution?

So today I want to talk about marriage.

Not high on my set of goals in life, but then again being a 19 year old university student miserably failing her French modules probably really affects my opinion.

Nevertheless, it's a matter that's been on my mind since a cousin of mine recently got engaged, the feminist lecture I sat in on last month and then hearing the phrase "marriage is a form of prostitution". So let me get out my thoughts on this wonderful blog of mine and avoid learning French conjugation eh?

The definition of prostitution according to oxforddictionaries.com is "the unworthy or corrupt use of one's talents for personal or financial gain". It can apply to marriage in many ways, for example if you have no sustainable income of your own, maybe your husband is just a tool used for financial forms and your relationship consists of using your talents as a housewife, or cook to keep your husband happy and have access to his funds. But in my opinion it's all about mental respect. If your husband/wife respects you and treats you as their equal there isn't anything "unworthy or corrupt" about your talents. And surely you aren't gaining anything out of it either because marriage should not be about financial gains but it can often come down to it.

I'm confusing myself a little here. What I'm saying is that a form of prostitution in marriage can only exist if you allow yourself to be unequal to your partner regardless of if you're male or female. To a certain point I agree with this statement, because everywhere around me all I see is marriage as a dead end without and escape route. People are stuck in it because of financial reasons, or because of emotional ones (i.e. children). I guess I just have to see more successful marriages built on love that seems to last (that last bit made my insides cringe a little), on mutual agreements and respect.

Maybe after thinking about this I'm not all opposed to marriage. Marriages shouldn't have a hierarchy but that often tends to be the case and sadly it often seems to work out. I guess a marriage is really what you make of it. I am the quietly stubborn kind of person who wouldn't be satisfied if I didn't get the respect I deserved and be infuriated if I wasn't an equal in any sort of personal relationship. So if marriage really is a "form of prostitution" it isn't for me and all those other individuals who have the same views as me.

Just some thoughts from a hesitant borderline feminist. Feel free to agree/disagree in the comments section (if I've got one!)

À bientôt.