Ten Reasons Why You Should Not Buy Benetint by Benefit Cosmetics

1. The packaging on this rose-tinted lip and cheek stain is wildly impractical. It resembles a bulky, glass nail polish bottle, complete with a plastic lid and nylon-bristled brush applicator. The danger of the glass is obvious, as the Benetint will surely shatter into a million pieces the first time you, your cat, or your significant other knocks it off the bathroom counter, leaving you with a hot mess of glass shards and red splatters to clean up.

2. The plastic lid, although it seems so innocent in comparison to the glass bottle, can also cause problems for the consumer. If the bottle isn't capped tightly and the bottle happens to not be stored in an upright position, the Benetint will leak its durable red stain all over your purse or make-up bag. Even worse, if the Benetint is capped too tightly, the plastic lid will crack into two pieces, ruining the sealing mechanism. This renders your Benetint almost completely useless, as you will never be able to travel with it and the threat of accidental spillage will be ever-present.

3. Let me now address the preposterousness of the tiny brush your Benetint will offer you as an applicator. While it seems to make logical sense to use a brush to apply a lip product, brushes do not work adequately to apply a stain that is made for lips and cheeks. Indeed, there is no other stain on the market that comes with a lip brush applicator: Vincent Longo's Lip and Cheek Gel Stain comes with a wand applicator, as does TheBalm's Stainiac. Another good alternative to the lip brush would be the roller ball applicator, popularized by Lorac's Sheer Wash (also for lips and cheeks), which gets major thumbs up for preventing spills and leaks. But no, sadly, Benetint is not equipped with these magical, modern day trappings of convenience.

4. I'll now attempt to get past Benetint's numerous packaging missteps and discuss the actual product. Benetint contains rose water. It might sound romantic, but the reality of this can be less than swoon-worthy if the consumer has any outdoor sensitivities. While working as a make-up artist, I have had numerous complaints about Benetint itching or burning the lips and cheeks of women who had no known allergy to roses.

5. Upon further investigation, I found that Benetint contains the preservative Quarternium-15, a known irritant of skin and eyes. On a more serious note, Quarternium-15 breaks down into formaldehyde, a carcinogen.

6. If you don't have perfect skin now, you definitely won't have perfect skin after applying Benetint to your cheeks. Any dry, flaking skin will soak up the stain in an instant, making the product impossible to dilute and blend. This results in splotchy, uneven blush that is too bright in color. Any blemishes that you might have will also be amplified in redness once Benetint comes into the picture.

7. You can't fake perfect skin with foundation and concealer and then apply Benetint, either. The product simply does not blend well over other make-up. It streaks over foundation, causing a mottled look. It even reacts badly to being blended over certain moisturizers, particularly those with a low percentage of oil.

8. Sorry, but Benetint doesn't yield great results on lips, either. If your lips are a little chapped, the stain acts as the exact opposite of a balm and emphasizes every bit of dryness and in turn, dries your lips out more. If your lips are not still in their teenage years, Benetint also manages to stain every last line and crease a deeper red than the rest of the lips. If you're a smoker who suffers from lines around the lips, Benetint will bleed into those lines.

9. Benetint will not give you long-lasting, rosy colored lips and cheeks. The color lasts a few hours on moisture-prepped lips and cheeks before it fades away to obscurity. It does, of course, last longer on non-moisturized lips and cheeks, but you would look splotchy, dry, and ridiculous having applied it that way, and then be desperate to scrub it off your face.

10. Finally, because Benefit Cosmetics does not sell products that are non-comedogenic, Benetint may cause clogged pores and acne. Why take that chance on an inferior product that comes in inferior packaging?