June 2003
Dear Paula,
I am a beauty consultant with a national cosmetics company and have been in the industry for 15 years, skin care being my utmost concern. I tend to agree with you in most cases and have enjoyed your books. However, on the subject of eye cream I disagree wholeheartedly. You condone eye cream only if the skin around the eye is different from the rest of the skin. The skin around the eye is ALWAYS different from the rest of your skin--you can feel it and tell it is different. It is thinner, the pores are smaller, and it doesn't have oil glands. How many people get pimples under their eyes? That is the reason the eye area can tolerate and needs more oil than other areas of your skin. I have at times used the moisturizer I use on the rest of my face on my eye area, and notice a huge difference when I use a separate eye cream. I know I am not alone in this either. Furthermore, I would never tell someone to purchase an eye cream just because it would make me more money. In fact, I previously didn't like the eye cream our company had, and therefore never recommended it. Now they have different eye creams available and one of them is really good, so I do recommend it and hear nothing but great feedback. I really think you're off base on this one!

Kim, via email

Dear Kim,
I personally can't feel a difference between the skin under my eye and on my face. Aside from my own anecdotal experience, the differences you mention, oil glands and pore size, would only be true for those women who have active oil glands or open pores on their face. If they don't they would have similar skin texture issues under their eyes. In essence, the skin around your eyes is not drastically different from that on your face and definitely not different enough that it would in any way substantially affect skin care. Thickness or thinness of skin does not alter skin-care needs. Plus, there are plenty of women who get milia (a form of clogged pores also known as whiteheads) around the eye area and who do occasionally get blemishes, something that thick, oily moisturizers or too-emollient concealers can cause.

You are assuming that the difference between eye creams and face creams is their oil content, and I have not seen that to be the case (a quick glance at the ingredient label will show that to be true). Often the only difference between eye creams and face products are the waxes put in eye products to make them thicker; and for daytime, most eye creams don't contain sunscreen. None of that is helpful for skin.

In terms of skin care, what's needed is to provide the skin with ingredients that resemble the skin's own structure, along with skin protection (sunscreens) and antioxidants (all of those factors can affect wrinkling). These needs don't differ from the eyes to the cheeks, or even the chin. What does differ is how emollient the product is (the amount of lipids it contains), and where you put it depends on how dry the areas on your face are.

Without knowing what products you are talking about, I assume that the product you were using on your face wasn?t emollient enough for the skin around your eyes, and that is completely understandable. However, if you were using a well-formulated and emollient face product, using it around the eyes would also have been great.