I think that a lot of people just wander around on hearsay about what is and isn’t allowed by the Food and Drug Administration in the US. And to be fair, they’re a seriously understaffed government body that sometimes overregulates because they just can’t track who was doing what when the inevitable turnover happens in an agency that overburdened. Still, they do make plenty publically available, although all in long, boring, legal terms.

So let’s start with the basics: the FDA defines cosmetics as ” (1) articles intended to be rubbed, poured, sprinkled, or sprayed on, introduced into, or otherwise applied to the human body or any part thereof for cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness, or altering the appearance, and (2) articles intended for use as a component of any such articles; except that such term shall not include soap.”¹

((Painting: Governors of the Wine Merchant’s Guild by Ferdinand Bol))

For those who shorted out at the word articles, here’s the paraphrase:  Soap is not a cosmetic. But anything else you put on your body that either cleanse you, beautifies you, makes you prettier or alters your appearance (because the feds don’t like acknowledging uglifying products), then guess what? It’s a cosmetic. If you’ve got something that multitasks by combing your hair and then spreading hair dye in it, that’s a cosmetic too. Except soap. Soap isn’t a cosmetic, it’s a social requirement.

So if you go outside and rub mud on yourself in a rainstorm, the FDA will want to regulate that if you try to bottle the mud and sell it.

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1. Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act Chapter 2 [↩]