Animal cruelty seems like a very early 2000’s sort of issue, something that I’m sure the majority of people would deem as just being: wrong. But if you take a quick look into the beauty industry, there’s a glaring issue that still stands with major corporations and their continued use of animal testing. 

You, like me literally about five minutes ago, might think that most makeup brands that you use in your everyday life have evolved to be completely animal cruelty free. Because why, now in this day and age of 2021, would companies still be testing their products on animals, right? But the receipts are in. If you do even the quickest Google search you can easily find out that so many still test their products on animals.

The interesting reason why they do so, however, is in order to sell their products to China. In China, it is required by law for all cosmetic or beauty companies to test their products on animals before they are admitted to be sold anywhere in the country. Due to the importance of the country on these companies’ sales, in order to gain access for their products in the Chinese market, they end up adhering to testing standards despite the known cruelty that is involved with the process. The problem with this adherence is not only that these animals are being harmed, but that many of these brands continue to advertise themselves as “cruelty-free” because they do not conduct testing on their products that they sell in the United States. So even though some of these brands may advertise as being completely animal safe, their involvement in selling products to China knowingly enables third-party testing on animals. You might think that the purchasing of these brands’ products in the U.S. does not mean that you are effectively engaging in animal tested products, but in the end you’re still throwing your money towards companies that permit the testing and active harm of animals. 

The thing that really got me thinking about animal cruelty as a whole was this recent short film, Save Ralph, made by Spencer Susser and Taika Waititi, who got the help of Ricky Gervais and Zac Efron, in support of the Humane Society International. The short film is a total of pretty close to like four minutes long, and it gives you a sort of first hand look into what animal testing really is in a pretty digestible way, with the animation style being pretty reminiscent of Wes Anderson movies like Fantastic Mr. Fox, if you’ve seen it (and if not then on an unrelated note please go take a look it’s one of my favorite movies ever lol). 

When people hear about animal cruelty and testing, I feel like no one ever really actually thinks about the process and what brands do to their animals. Essentially, some of the most common animals used are bunnies, and the companies do skin or eye irritation tests on them in order to ensure their products’ safety for humans. This process obviously greatly harms these animals and usually ends up in the animals’ death after several trials. The short film is really wonderful and really highlights the issue in order to get the message across in the best way possible. Here’s the short film:

And now I’ll get into a list of companies that still use the practice of animal testing to this day, and some alternatives you could look into instead of supporting these brands. 

Loser Brands That Still Use Animal Testing 😐

1. Benefit Cosmetics
2. Nars
3. Clinique
4. Estée Lauder
5. Make Up For Ever
6. Maybelline
7. OPI
8. Bobbi Brown
9. MAC Cosmetics
10. Chanel
11. Sephora Collection

Animal Safe Alternatives !

1. Pacifica (definitely a cult favorite among vegan beauty fans)
2. Colourpop (affordable, has lots of vibrant eyeshadow palettes, and they do a lot of collabs with popular culture like Animal Crossing and Disney’s Lizzie McGuire !)
3. NYX
4. Tarte Cosmetics
5. Wetnwild
6. bareMinerals
7. Burt’s Bees (some of the best chapstick, see also: EcoLips Mongo Kiss if you’re looking for a new chapstick brand to try)
8. e.l.f. (also a really affordable & quality brand)
9. Milk Makeup (100% vegan and nice aesthetic)
10. Smashbox (really nice quality and known for being cruelty-free but the price is a little $$$ if you know what I mean)
11. Too Faced
12. Urban Decay
13. Supergoop!
14. Marc Jacobs Beauty

And with that, I hope you all make sure that the next time you run out of some makeup or beauty products you’ll take a minute to maybe go for the vegan or animal-cruelty free option. It’s important to support these brands so that other companies will want to follow in their footsteps and stop supporting brands that continuously involve themselves in hurting animals and other areas of our environment. And it also looks like a nice majority of the vegan and/or cruelty-free are nicely affordable and still high quality so bam this should be an easy choice for pretty much everyone ever in the future (!!) so yeah…maybe just do it….yeah.