This Is What Your Lippy Looks Like Under A Microscope

Reddit gets a bad name, but every so often it becomes the feeding ground for positive, intelligent debate. Case in point, today’s exploration of lipsticks and glosses at a microscopic level. One mum, armed with a microscope and an enviable beauty bag, decided to investigate how her favourite products held up under close inspection. The result is fascinating and has garnered over a hundred comments. The mum in question, Amy Oyler, smeared the lip paints on slides, dialled up her microscope and revealed the chemical breakdown of specific shades, how the light reflected and refracted off of certain crystals and the density of certain colours. Here’s how her favourites held up…

Tarte Lipsurgence Lipstick in Decadence

Even at a microscopic level, the texture of this mauve product is soft and silken. Spot the gold fragments, which lift the lipstick and make it reflective.

Benefit’s Dandelion Lip Gloss

See those crystals? That’s what gives the shimmery nude colour its reflective properties.

Maybelline Lipstick in Very Cherry

As you can see by the streaky surface of this lipstick, it’s made with oil so it has a creamy feel.

Wet N Wild’s Liquid Catsuit in Berry Recognize

While this liquid lipstick appears as a matte berry shade, it’s actually made up of tiny, invisible-to-the-naked-eye bubbles.

Tarte’s Lipsurgence Lipstick in Adored

There’s a variety of finely ground pigments within the oils and wax, like blue, green, red, yellow and pink, which work together to give it it’s coral shade.

Laura Gellar Lasting Love Lip Stain in Pinot Noir

While we’d assume a lip stain, with its endless staying power, would have a denser composition, this purplish shade is actually splashed with minutiae crystals that react and bond to your lips.

Tarte Lip Pain in Tartiest

There’s so much colour variation in this lip paint even though the final effect is a nude hue.

MUA Shimmer Lipstick In Rose Gold

Don’t be put off by the texture and colour of these red and brown flakes because these small splashes of colour give this lipstick it’s sparkly shade.

Tarte Lipsurgence Lip Gloss

At pout-level, this seems like a clear, shimmery gloss but up-close and under a microscope, a sea of pink, blue, green and violet fine fragments is revealed.

*Credit: Thescientificmom.com *

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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.