Don’t Be A Stranger – Camu-Camu White Essence

If you got the pun-tastic title of this post, you have a “thoreau” understanding of my terrible existential pun and we need to be best friends. But who needs relationships anyway when you’re eternally basking in your cosmic aloneness?

In case you can’t tell from the tone of this post, it’s Renee returning after a long period of absence. By absence I mean laziness and sinking into existential despair over the meaning of life and why does my skin continue to do what I don’t want until one day it will slip off my skeleton?

But on to a more cheerful subject which is my LA visit recently, where I ONLY managed to blow $150 on cosmetics. This AB stuff has gotten exponentially expensive over the years wtf.

Behold my acquisition, to soothe my angst. YES I partially got it because of the name, but it doesn’t contain any real pieces of Camus

Camu-Camu White Essence by DHC

What’s camu-camu white essence, then, if not a cure-all for being and nothingness? According to the interwebs it comes from camu camu shrub which bears a fruit whose peel has a high vitamin C content.

If you look at the ingredients, the full name is “myrciaria dubia seed extract” so the extract is from the SEED which doesn’t contain as much Vitamin C as the peel. Siiiiigh. The shrub is from South America, with Japan inexplicably being the highest purchaser of the crop. Not sure what they usually make from it, besides this serum which I’d never heard of before.

The prices are all over the place. I bought this for $29 at Takashima in Arcadia. There’s an Ebay listing for $15 and an Amazon listing for $58.98. 

The reviews are also all over the place. I quickly googled this white essence on my phone while in the Takashima aisle being stalked by pale-faced overly-cut-eyelided coral-lipped mainland Asian salesgirls (seriously wtf is up with all that stalking? I’m not stealing your shit, see my $$$ REAL shoes?) One review was glowing as the top result from Google. Of course being lazy and impatient, I went with that.

The results? MEH. MEHHHHH. It’s glorified serum. It’s innocuous but I didn’t see a huge difference in skin tone or freckle lightening. My freckles DID lighten significantly from my microneedling session, but definitely not from this totally unexciting $29 product. At least I can use the empty container (like my soul) as a housing for other stuff when I travel. It’s quite a handy container (like my flesh prison of a body.)

Pros: good lightweight packaging

Cons: doesn’t do a damn thing, expensive