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Conspiracy theories are an understandably contentious matter lately, however in the event you’ll indulge me for only one second, I’d wish to introduce you to one among my very own: I’ve lengthy harbored a honest private perception that eye cream is pretend.

Not pretend within the sense that eye cream doesn’t exist. Tubs and tubes of the stuff line the cabinets of drugstore skin-care aisles and brightly lit department-store magnificence counters alike. Sephora’s web site boasts 190 eye-cream or eye-treatment choices; Ulta carries 192 lotions alone. In that sense, eye cream might be somewhat too actual. The fakeness that I’m speaking about is molecular. Eye lotions make a variety of guarantees: They’ll tighten. They’ll brighten. They’ll de-puff and de-wrinkle and banish darkish circles. They’ll accomplish this with science, or, extra particularly, with the chemical compounds that lots of them promote in huge print on their tiny packaging: retinol, vitamin C, caffeine, peptides, hyaluronic acid. They’ll additionally nearly at all times be notably dearer by quantity than an everyday facial moisturizer.

The drawback is that no eye cream I’ve ever used has appeared to do something greater than no matter different cream I used to be already placing on the remainder of my face. In my 20 years of grownup life, I’ve by no means truly purchased an eye fixed cream, however I’ve tried out innumerable variations of the stuff: samples pitched into procuring baggage and transport packing containers, free full-size merchandise that generally appeared to reach by the truckload at my door throughout my decade in vogue media, cast-offs swapped amongst associates and colleagues. I’ve used all of them as a result of, hey, I’ve them, and at worst, they’ll moisturize part of my face that tends to get dry when left to its personal gadgets. Maybe one among them will do one thing improbable and I’ll have been unsuitable all alongside.

I haven’t been unsuitable but. Instead, I’ve solely grown extra satisfied that eye cream is simply facial moisturizer in a smaller, dearer tub. So, is it?

The brief reply: “It depends,” says Perry Romanowski, a beauty chemist and a co-host of the podcast Beauty Brains, which delves into the science behind magnificence merchandise. That is, importantly, not a no. According to Romanowski, who spent 30 years within the magnificence trade and now creates instructional and coaching instruments for different beauty chemists, all moisturizers—for the face, physique, eyes, palms, wherever—have three foremost elements that do the lion’s share of the work. The first is a substance known as a humectant, akin to glycerin or hyaluronic acid, which attracts moisture to the pores and skin. The second is an occlusive, akin to petrolatum or shea butter, which prevents that moisture from evaporating again into the air. The third is an emollient, which helps give pores and skin a clean, delicate texture.

Within a selected line of merchandise, Romanowski advised me, formulations for various elements of the face or physique do are typically fairly much like each other, often with little tweaks made for shopper preferences. Because faces produce extra oil than the remainder of the physique, for example, the road’s facial product might need its occlusive content material diminished, or the components may simply be thinned out with water—super-thick face lotions could make folks unduly petrified of oiliness or breakouts. The similar goes for turning a facial moisturizer into an eye fixed cream: An present components could possibly be modified to please patrons preferring one thing extra occlusive however much less goopy. According to Romanowski, most corporations will at the least take away issues akin to fragrances, which may irritate the attention.

In some instances, nonetheless, my conspiracy concept seems to be absolutely justified. Romanowski stated that in his expertise, corporations will launch completely different merchandise with the very same formulations “as often as they can do it without anybody asking questions.” Formulating a completely new product from scratch requires costly security testing, Romanowski defined, and an excessive amount of ingredient variation throughout a product line means corporations have to purchase extra element chemical compounds in smaller, dearer portions. Keeping merchandise as comparable as potential saves cash: Once a components is established to be secure, corporations can largely keep away from further testing, and so they should purchase its elements in massive portions. The extra merchandise that may be marketed out of these overhead prices, the higher.

It’s onerous to place concrete figures on simply how a lot this sort of relabeling occurs. Kelly Dobos, one other impartial beauty chemist, advised me that in her expertise, rebranding a face product as an eye fixed cream with none modifications just isn’t that widespread, at the least partly as a result of many facial moisturizers at the moment available on the market do comprise eye irritants—not simply perfume but additionally sunscreen and exfoliating acids. The greatest eye lotions, Dobos stated, won’t solely be formulated particularly to be used close to the attention however are additionally prone to comprise greater concentrations of the elements that assist the ultrathin pores and skin round your eyes appeal to and retain moisture. On a shopper degree, distinguishing these sorts of concentrations is unattainable, and better concentrations don’t assure a greater product. Facial moisturizers with out irritants are completely secure to be used across the eye, and so they’ll seemingly yield indistinguishable outcomes.

The upshot of all of that is that even when eye merchandise are distinct from facial lotions, they’re distinct principally for what they don’t have in them, versus what they do. That’s at odds with how eye lotions are typically introduced to customers, with branding that closely emphasizes their particular elements. Vitamins and acids lend these merchandise an imprimatur of scientific progress, however one which’s not often nicely supported by their chemical composition, in line with Romanowski. “The stuff that you’re using today isn’t markedly different than something that was available 30 years ago,” he advised me. “All the new things coming out are really just marketing stories about the technologies that have existed forever.”

The consequence, Romanowski stated, is that the majority magnificence merchandise don’t differ all that a lot, and so they’re principally fairly cheap to make. In truth, corporations sometimes spend extra money on a product’s packaging than on making the product itself, Romanowski advised me. And the prices of packaging and manufacturing mixed pale compared to what corporations spend on branding and adverts. Eye cream prices quite a bit partly as a result of it’s very costly to steer an individual to purchase any specific magnificence product. But pricing, too, is a advertising and marketing tactic. “The different price is something that convinces consumers that it’s a different product,” Romanowski stated. After all, if an eye fixed cream is meant to be significantly cutting-edge or efficient or ingredient wealthy, it must be dearer.

People are delicate about their eyes, that are the a part of your physique almost certainly to betray disappointment or sleeplessness or, God forbid, age. Eyes are additionally significantly immune to surface-level change. Dark circles and crow’s ft are typically a results of your bone construction or genetics or the inexorable march of time as an alternative of issues that you may meaningfully management, with a cream or anything. So a lot advertising and marketing goes into eye merchandise exactly as a result of there’s not a lot there there. They’ll maintain your eye space moisturized, however they largely don’t (and might’t) work within the methods folks hope they could.

That lack of management is usually a profoundly unsettling prospect. Maybe the age you see within the mirror lies in stark distinction to the age in your head, or possibly you’d simply fairly not be prompted to ponder your individual mortality. And that, after all, is earlier than you even get to the sweetness requirements of all of it, which instruct us to take extraordinary measures to freeze ourselves in time or, if ageing gracefully, to turn out to be one thing of a dwelling semifreddo—frozen sufficient, however not uncannily so. Fears of high-quality traces appear solely to be spreading: Teenagers are not too younger to be marketed anti-aging skin-care merchandise, and so they’re shopping for them in droves.

No magnificence merchandise are purchased or bought purely on effectiveness. Romanowski advised me that he is aware of many beauty chemists who use eye cream, although they know what the science behind it says. My conspiracy concept about eye cream could be very arguably right, however I had failed to contemplate a bigger lesson of conspiracism: Truth isn’t the one factor that issues, and it won’t even be that compelling.