Beauty
Lab Muffin:
Bringing the Beauty Of Science to
the World of Beauty Blogging
D
oes reading beauty packaging
leave you with tons of questions
that flashy PR campaigns can’t
answer? If so, you’re not alone.
Michelle of the beauty and science blog, Lab
Muffin, was in the exact same boat. The only
difference being that she has the scientific
background to help.
After realizing that there were plenty of
people as curious about their beauty products
as she was, Michelle started digging deep
with the launch of Lab Muffin. Her posts,
which cover a wide variety of topics, take
a deep look at the science of beauty with a
smart yet straightforward approach that her
readers have come to love. After looking to
her study of heat protectants for our article
on pg. 44, we knew we wanted to share her
story with you.
I’d love to get my readers a little
background on your career and
education. Could you give us a little
background on what you studied and how
that relates to the cosmetics industry?
I did a PhD in medicinal chemistry, which has a lot
of overlap with skincare - how skincare actives work is
really just applied pharmacology.
Have you always been interested in
the personal care industry or was it an
interest that developed later? When did
you start to notice that science based
information on beauty products was
lacking in the blog world? How did that
transition into the launch of Lab Muffin?
I was researching make-up and skincare to buy with
my meagre student budget during my PhD, and I came
across a lot of pseudoscientific information on the in-
ternet. Being a science nerd, I had to keep investigat-
ing, and I didn’t really get any good answers until I hit
peer-reviewed articles. I figured that there must’ve been
a lot of other people who had similar questions but
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