Product Review: Neutrogena Healthy Volume Mascara

I'm lucky enough to be blessed with long eyelashes, but cursed to have to hide them behind glasses. Thus, it's necessary for me to wear eye makeup in order for my eyes to even be noticed. And I especially need mascara to look awake.

I have tried so many mascaras I've lost count. In junior high I started out with the cheap drugstore brands: Maybelline, Cover Girl. Those tended to clump and smudge. In high school I coveted samples of Clinique and Estee Lauder mascaras that came in the complimentary gift bags that came with minimum purchases of $35. Those didn't seem to be as messy as the cheap drugstore mascaras, but they didn't live up to their promises to separate lashes with no clumping, either. For what they cost for the full-size versions, they weren't worth the money.

As an adult, I more or less gave up. I tried a number of "higher end" drugstore brands like Max Factor and L'Oreal; one fashion magazine interview with a Hollywood makeup artist actually convinced me to give the inexpensive Maybelline another try; turns out that makeup artist was more of a con artist. I finally settled on a L'Oreal mascara that wasn't so bad as long as you scraped tons and tons of excess mascara off the brush before applying it.

And then I tried the Neutrogena Healthy Volume Mascara. Normally I don't think of Neutrogena for makeup; I tend to think of Neutrogena as being a slightly dated brand (remember those transparent orange bars of facial soap we used as teenagers?) known more for skin care than cosmetics. When BzzAgent sent me a tube of Neutrogena Healthy Volume Mascara as part of a Neutrogena BzzKit that included eyeshadow, concealer, eyeliner, and mascara, I was more than happy to try them all out. For once, I wasn't spending a ton of my own money to experiment with a cosmetic product that might or might not work out. I have a huge drawer full of unused cosmetics; things I bought that just didn't work out for some reason. At least if the Neutrogena products didn't pan out, I wouldn't be out any money. And all of the products were fine, but the mascara was more than fine. It was, finally, the perfect mascara that I'd been searching for.

The .21 ounce tube is pretty standard sized and the brushed aluminum look of the tube is a nice change from some of the cheaper looking plastic containers. According to Neutrogena, Healthy Volume mascara doesn't clump, smudge, or flake, and unbelievably, they're telling the truth. The mascara goes on smooth as satin, and my lashes were perfectly separated. My lashes didn't all clump together, Tammy Faye style, and there were no mascara particles clinging to the lashes. I don't know what it was, but I could tell the difference immediately when I started applying it. It was so smooth and easy to work with. For the first time ever, I didn't have to work on my eyelashes after applying mascara. I didn't have to use eye makeup remover to take it off and start all over. When dry, my lashes actually looked pretty natural and not like they were coated in tons of mascara.

If you're like me and you've spent hundreds of dollars over the years trying out makeup that ended up being a waste of money, all in hopes of finding a product that lived up to its advertising, it won't kill you to cough up another $8 and try one more. This one I think you won't be disappointed in.