How Jenny McCarthy Turned a Personal Health Journey Into Formless Beauty

0:00Hey guys, welcome back to Skin Anarchy. I am so thrilled to be hosting our guest today. She is such an icon. She started her career in the 90s as a legendary Playboy cover star and then she went on to host MTV Singled Out and also joined the panel of The View. She's built such a remarkable career. She's an accomplished author, an actress, an advocate and also an entrepreneur with her own beauty brand. So without further ado, please welcome Jenny McCarthy. Welcome, Jenny. I'm so honored to host you. It's such a pleasure to have you on the show. I am too. Thank you so much. I love being here. No, I love that you're here.

0:36I can't wait to talk all about your brand. I'm a huge fan, by the way. But I want to really start with what got you interested in the beauty industry. I know you have this amazing career, but like becoming a founder and going into entrepreneurship, what was the spark that made you want to go this direction? You know, there wasn't necessarily a goal in mind at all and throughout my career saying, you know, someday I'm going to start my beauty brand. It literally came out of a desperate need for health. My health, especially as we get older, especially as we go through paramenopause and menopause, we notice a lot more of our underlying conditions either get worse or we decide to throw on a few.

1:12They're like a la carte as we get older. I'm like, oh, I'll take a little bit more of this autoimmune, this problem, new rashes. So things started happening to me that I realized, okay, I've got to make a choice here. And that choice is I can follow a path of prevention or I can be chasing a path looking for cures. So I took health in my own hands and cleaned up my own life. I stopped drinking. I don't eat sugar. I eat organic. I eat as clean as possible, all because I've got multiple issues, such as, and maybe people can relate, I have an MTH of our gene mutation. What that means is basically I have a hard time kind of detoxing exposures, chemicals, toxins.

1:53They tend to play around my system, and I see that in my blood work. They just don't want to go anywhere unless I really put forth the effort and be mindful about what I'm putting in me, along with things like celiac disease, I have candida, I have leaky gut, I've got some autoimmune arthritic conditions. So there was a lot, and it was a lot for someone in their 40s. So I decided to go researching for super uber clean brands. And I was kind of shocked when I first started this company. It's a little bit more trend right now where people are taking notice to clean. But a while ago, it was still kind of you know, you might be able to find them only on Environmental Working Group, EWG.

2:34And now people kind of use that term a little bit too loosely for my comfort. There's no regulations in terms of the word clean. Who's monitoring that? And that's the problem I had. I was like, wait a minute, these people like go to Sephora and there's a clean section. But when you actually do the research underneath those ingredients, you go, wait a minute, that isn't clean. How can a phthalate be considered clean or formaldehyde or things like that? So I, out of my own desperate need, I said, I'm going to start my own company. And I'm not one of those people who have millions of dollars at all to start my own company.

3:09I didn't even go to a bunch of investors. I had myself and a buddy of mine that I said, let's start with three lip glosses, super clean. And I just want to see if people care about it as much as me. And so we started Formless with just three glosses. And now, what is it, five years, it's gone by. We've expanded the line to now have skincare, mascara, which I would love to, because we have enough time to get into those products, what I love about them, but I don't want to be too verbose. So you'll have to tell me. No, no, I love it. First of all, I love that you actually went on this journey for yourself because that's so meaningful.

3:45And, you know, being a physician myself, I've seen a lot of people have this, we all go through these frustrations, right? Where it's like the medical system is not set up to give us preventative options. It's just not. Allopathic medicine is all about, oh, something's broken. Okay, cool. We'll start fixing it now. You know, it's like that. And so if we keep going down that road, we're never going to come to this realization that, you know what, health is dynamic. It's always changing. And if I don't do something personally and take that into my own hands in some ways, we're never going to reach the solution.

4:18I'm a huge advocate for that as well. I don't love that you have to deal with, you know, so many things going on with your health. But I love that you had that in you to say, I need to figure this out. Because many people don't do that. Or when they do, it's too late, unfortunately. So that's huge. And, you know, the thing is, I'm in this business where I pound myself with makeup. And I'm a lover of it. I love it. I just don't want to die for it. Yeah. So I'm like, I know enough about it, about being in this industry for 30 years. And I just decided to partner up with my own makeup artist. so she has that keen eye for performance because this is what happened when I would look into organic or clean things might be clean but they didn't perform well so I was like well let me see if I can combine those two worlds because we all like our granola and clean stuff but then you're like random mascara you know it flicks so I asked my partner crime my makeup artist to be my director of products and help me develop together I feel like we're a little bit of a superhero group because she won't pass anything until it performs well.

5:19And I won't pass anything until it meets environmental working group guidelines. And to me, EWG, and I'm sure you're familiar with them. Yeah, I interviewed Ken Cook. Oh, I love it. You guys, just for people that might not know, you know, like the FDA isn't really into regulating makeup. Like they did something back in 1918 and then they made an amendment, I think, about seven years ago. Don't quote me on that. but it's in the last decade where the amendment was where they just call companies to make sure we're basically not making makeup in our basement that's as far as the FDA gets we get a call where's your uh manufacturer located and we're of course in the United States so I could be hands on and I'm very hands on so EWG though to me is what I leaned into to know what's clean and what's not.

6:05They have the team, and I'm sure you know this, they have such a remarkable team for decades that go in and do the work. So when I met with them, I said, I have an idea to create an entire beauty brand around your restrictions. And they were so excited and they said, good luck because not many people come in here because it's almost impossible for brands to do this. That's why a lot of brands don't have that certification. So they handed me, I'm not even kidding you, 900 pages of restricted ingredients that you cannot use. And me and my chemist were like, what do we get ourselves into? It's like everything's, can't use anything, you know?

6:46It's like trying to bake a cake without any of the ingredients. And then you still want it to perform well. So that's where, you know, it takes our company a long time to put out products because batch after batch after batch, trying to perfect it and make sure it's good. Because like I said, it can be clean, but it's got to be just as good or better than the other brands. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that's so awesome, though, that you did this. Because honestly, let me tell you, first of all, I love every product and formulas. I've tried them. I love the formulas. Like, they're so nice. And it doesn't feel like the brand is lacking.

7:20You know what I mean? That's where I think you really did such a great job, is that you guys obviously did this approach of it has to be clean. But you're setting an example, you know, in the industry where it's like, you can do this. We don't have to think that it's going to be crap. You know what I mean? The products are going to, they can be great. They just have to be well thought out. So I think that's huge. But more importantly, I think showing people that there are these options is so powerful because I feel like especially like women, I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've had either a patient or somebody I know, right?

7:50Be like, well, I can't go without my mascara. That's like the one thing I need, you know, in my routine. I have to have this. They won't part with it because they're like, I know it's bad for me. You know, I know it might not have the best ingredients, but I have to use this. And that's my routine. And so I think that's where it's so powerful because it's like, well, you can still have that. And I remember, doctor, I remember when I first started and I was like, okay, where do we start after our glosses? I had people in big makeup say to me, you know, good luck trying to make a mascara. They said it's almost impossible to make a good mascara without some toxins in there.

8:23So when we went to work, I was more determined than ever, especially when people tell me no or I can't do something. It's probably why I'm still around after 30 something years in this business. So it's not believed or, you know, so I went to work with my chemist. And I was like, talk about the nasty ingredients that are in mascara. And he said, well, besides the phthalates, the formaldehydes, aluminum powders, they used sometimes to blacken it. But there's also almost all hormone disruptors in mascara. And I said, you're kidding me, the endocrine disruptors, why? And he said, because waterproof, anything waterproof, of course, and you probably know this as those hormone endocrine disruptors.

8:58And they're so I don't, you know, need my hormones disrupted anymore. Yeah, we don't. They already are, especially, you know, in perimenopause, menopause, the estrogen dominance is a real thing. As you know, that can be linked to breast cancer, so on and so forth. So we made ours water resistant. And the remarkable thing in that is it works just as good. It works just as good. And that's what when I go on live, I go on live twice a week for about four hours a night. Because when I say I'm hands-on, I'm hands-on. So I am educating people every week on my TikTok, on Formless Beauty's TikTok, about ingredients.

9:35And everyone always says to me about the mascara, well, I don't want it to flake. I'm like, ours doesn't flake. Well, I need waterproof because I just do. And then I break it down. Well, why? Why? Well, I'm afraid of, you know, having the flakes sent at the end of the day. And I'm like, ours doesn't. Ours is water resistant. If you just bend out of that, we all got sucked into that water resistant because we're afraid if we sweat, if we cry. Anything, anything. Yeah, tearing up. Yeah, we think it's going to run. Now, water resistant, remarkably, at least ours, I haven't tested other people's, works remarkable.

10:10And it's our number one bestseller. It's our MVP of our company. We sold out in the first month. It took us four months to restock because we did it. Like we cracked the code. And that's another one where I hope companies go, oh crap, look at she actually did it. She's able, now I just need to educate people. Like you don't need to have the water resistant. Just break out of that brainwashing and give it a try. Because I was like that too. I was crying to my chemist going, you don't understand. I'm a menopausal actress. I need water proof. Yeah. And I mean, no, but you know, it's so relatable.

10:44And I think a lot of us are like that. And that's what I meant. I feel like people don't believe it till they see it, you know? We have to tangibly hold something for us to say, wait a minute, this is possible. Here we go. And I think that's where, like, I love, you had brought this up earlier about the whole clean movement and what clean beauty actually means. And I think this is such an important discussion because I've tried to, like, talk about this a little bit on the show where it's like, you know, clean doesn't tell you anything. You know what I mean? Like, that word doesn't tell you anything.

11:12So you're saying things like this is water resistant, you know, and like really explaining what the product is supposed to do. I feel like that's going to be what gets people more on board with clean beauty than the word clean. That's just my opinion. If we keep telling people like, okay, this is just clean. I don't think people are going to resonate as much as they would if we showed them, hey, listen, this is a healthier option for you, you know, rather than, yeah, like your drugstore mascara. And don't buy into the word clean. Like do a little bit of research. And this is another thing I'd like to uncover.

11:43And this is a great podcast to talk about it. When I was doing my own research in like other brands, how do they determine what's clean? Because I'm using the Environmental Working Group. To me, they are the top dog in this business. So what other brands are doing is that they make their own certification in-house. So basically, I'm going to make up a brand and call it Sarah's Makeup, okay? So Sarah's website, you can scroll to the bottom because it says like, oh, we're S verified. We're clean beauty. We're S verified. Now that sounds like, oh, they got a verification from somewhere. That means it's really clean.

12:20Then you go into the weeds and the S verified is Sarah. Yeah, that's wild. I couldn't believe it. I'm like, wait a minute. They're making their own verification and bragging about it. No one's looking over them. There's no one verifying it. there's no one saying it's clean except for them the fd doesn't give a shit like the fd is like what you have all these verifications no worries like we're we still have mocra though we're here somewhat it's crazy to me i hear you i've seen it myself and i don't know if you remember sephora had that whole debacle with the clean seal or whatever it was and like and everybody was like oh my god all the products aren't clean and i'm just i'm sitting here just like what did you guys think was happening.

13:04I mean, look at the ingredients. You know what I mean? Like read these ingredients and you can see that they're not clean and everybody's got a freaking check mark these days. Like, oh yeah, I'm good. You know, like it says who? So I agree with you. I completely agree. 100%. And then, you know, the other thing that gets me also, and this is a hard thing because we love our fragrance. We love the ways, you know, our cleansers, our moisturizers smell and we want it to smell good and la la la la. Well, just the homework on fragrance alone, I was like, dead. I was like, my God, because and I'm sure you've covered this before.

13:40Fragrance is considered an IP. It's an intellectual property. So companies get to hide all of their toxic ingredients inside of the word fragrance. So they don't need to disclose it on the back of the bottle. So if you pick up a bottle and you go, oh, it's got this and it's got this, it's got aloe and it's got fragrance. Well, inside of that word fragrance could be the hormone disruptors, could be the parabens, could be it's hidden inside there. They are protected. And that's what stinks. So I, of course, we're fragrance free because we're a company that's gluten free, fragrance free, vegan, all of it free, except for the price.

14:18No, I mean, I love that though. And I love that you brought up fragrance because this has been a huge pet peeve of mine. And I know a lot of people that tune in, like, I know a lot of you are very educated about this as well, where it's like, you know, it's very hard these days to actually find truly fragrance-free products. And it's exactly what you said, Jenny. It's because everything's hidden. There's no transparency. And as much as we are like kind of sticklers about parabens, phthalates, the nasty, nasty ingredients, we don't really question fragrance for some reason. Like I still see skincare brands that are very science forward.

14:49They'll come out and I'm like, well, why does this have fragrance though? You know, like you cut all the dyes out and you cut out all these great, you know, the ingredients that shouldn't be in there, but then you still got this thing. Like fragrance is absolutely unnecessary in cosmetics. Like there's no reason for that. It's true. And guess what? Essential oil, we use essential oil and they smell even better. And they have a purpose. A lot of them are anti-inflammatory. So it's like, why wouldn't you. And I guess also the reason is it's more expensive. Like if I went the route of cheap ingredients that I didn't care about, I would actually be way more profitable than I am right now.

15:27Like my intention was, you know, about health. It wasn't about profit. It was about clean in the hopes of being profitable. I love this because I want you to really speak on this because I have a very different viewpoint about celebrity brands because I don't think celebrity brands are bad. Okay. I don't. And I know a lot of people out there are like, if it's a celebrity brand, obviously they've skimped on something or it's a cash cow or, you know, they have all these negative opinions about this. And I just disagree with that. You know, I don't think all celebrity brands are the same. And I would love for you to speak on this because you have such a passion for what you're doing and you've come at this with such an informed mindset.

16:03And I would love for you to speak about this kind of misunderstanding around the whole topic of like a celebrity founded brand. Could I understand why people are hesitant with celebrity brands? Absolutely. I mean, even me being a celebrity has some doubts sometimes, but the ones that I trust are the ones that have the origin story behind it. You can really tell the celebrity brands from the ones that, you know, just slap their name on it. They might get a, you know, a package in the mail where they go, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. You can kind of tell that. And that's where I feel like discernment is important, even with celebrities, like check out the meaning of why they created a brand.

16:42What was the purpose behind it? and for me I think if people just do a little bit of digging you can check the history of my son I've been a health advocate for him and now into myself into my perimenopause years that I'm just madly dedicated to it and the whole reason I started for it was like you know what I'm going to make this for me and if there's people that care about it as much as me they can join in and be part of our formless beauty family that was my intention it wasn't like boy I'm going to try to make millions of dollars. It was a selfish need for health and for hoping that other people care as well.

17:15And the thing that I love even more is the community of trust that I've built with our chemotherapy patients, that our lupus patients, our autoimmune patients, like you don't mess with that group. You know what I mean? You give them all the care and the respect and it helps me drive me even further to create more products for them. Because they're like, Jenny, you know, I need such clean. And I'm like, so do I. So my passion is honestly to help. That is it. That is to help and bring honesty, transparency, and hopefully be a trailblazer for a lot of these maybe other celebrities that want to come up and create their own brand.

17:57Like, hey, if Jenny McCarthy can do it, maybe I can be another alternative. There's room for everybody because people would say to me, why are you in this? This is a crowded market. I'm like, first of all, there's room for everybody in this world. Everybody is allowed to have an effort to at least try, including celebrities, including, you know, people we've never heard of yet. But I'm hoping that I can be a little bit of an inspiration of like, wow, if she did it, and also an inspiration of being in it, not just around it. I am in the lab. I have meetings. I work, and I'm not exaggerating, probably 50 hours a week on Formless Beauty.

18:36Five zero. Wow. I'm the CEO, not just in my LinkedIn. I am in it. I am a founder. I'm a CEO. I travel. I'm doing interviews. I educate eight to 10 hours a week online. So you can tell I'm really passionate about it. Yeah, you're in it. You're like knee deep. And I love that, though. and I really think you are a trailblazer, especially right now, the way the beauty industry is. I can tell you as a consumer, when I look out into this world, I personally, as a woman of color as well, I see very few real options. People say it's crowded and people say there's so many brands. There are a lot of brands, but if you really look, and I know a lot of people listening, you guys can relate, you know, like when we really look for truly good brands, you're not going to find that many.

19:22You know what I mean? Like there's a lot of fluff and there's a lot of, I call it like background noise. And I say this a lot in the podcast, I feel like there's a lot of packaging out there more than anything. It's a bunch of packaging. You know, everyone's got things coming in from Asia every day, you know, when it comes to components and stuff. And that's what they just bottle all these, the same formula over and over again. But when you look for something that is grounded in like functionality and like solving a true problem, right? Or like a white space in your own life, it doesn't have to be like, even broad.

19:50But like, you mentioned, And for example, like autoimmune or like, you know, compromised people, immunocompromised people, like that is a real white space. You know, that's still an area where it's not being catered to. And I can't imagine going through something like chemo and then looking out and being like, I need my essential items in my life. And there's like five options. You know what I mean? And then everyone's screaming from the rooftops. Hey, we're in a crowded industry. Like, no, we're not. But it's really, I'm glad, I'm so glad you said that because it is true because, you know, think about my chemo patients that write me and they're like, I want to be able to wash my face and put moisturizer on knowing I'm not absorbing toxins because that's the crazy, the juxtaposition of just a cleanser alone in terms of you're supposed to clean your face, but you're adding toxins to it.

20:35Makes my brain go crazy. It's wild. Yeah. It just makes my brain go crazy. I'm like, how can you be cleaning your face with toxins? It's nuts. so that's why I made sure there's our skincare I'm not sure if you tried a lot I did I love it I love your skincare line by the way and I want to dive into that actually I just you know I before we get there the one thing I do I have to ask you this because this is something that's on my mind a lot we all want to fit into the world of beauty you know and somewhere I mean you've been in the limelight for so long so I'm just curious like how was your view of beauty shaped you know and when you look at the world now especially like TikTok people right like there's teens on TikTok there's so much makeup going on where everyone's got this full beat all the time you know like what's your opinion about all of that i'm so glad you brought that up because literally it was on my mental list to discuss because of the amount of young young girls that i see walking around sephora that and now sephora has all of these giant you know point of purchase stands that are catered towards the eight-year-olds.

21:39And I'm absolutely shocked. And sometimes I've approached some parents that are in the store because their daughters are all like picking out stuff. And I said, listen, just do me a favor. I don't even mention my brand, of course. I just go, just make sure you're checking out the ingredients. Because even though the packaging is pink and colorful and they're trying to, you know, lower your daughter in, it's very important since all of our daughters out there are starting so young. They're starting so young because they're influenced on social media. We didn't have that back in the day. I had Noxzema.

22:11That's what we had back then. Right. I remember Noxzema. Yeah, Noxzema, pretty much. And now there's just so many choices. And to be bombarding your face with that amount of chemicals as these girls, even before puberty, it's pre-puberty, that I see them pounding their face with all of these chemicals makes me crazy. Now, this is a sign of the times because of what we're seeing on social media. And it's another reason why I try to educate so much each week to say, listen, you guys, if you have daughters, please consider looking into the ones without hormone disruptors, without all of these chemicals, because it's going to be really hard to sway your daughter when they turn 13 or 14 or 15.

22:54They're going to be like, we're not wearing your makeup choices, mom. You know, at eight and nine and 10, you can kind of educate them. Like my son, I educated very early on and he approaches people in restaurants. I'm like, don't do that. He's like, you originally shouldn't have that bread, that gluten. I'm like, Evan, you can't do that. If you can make an impact when they're young and educate them on choices, then they can pick out what they want based off of that, based off of knowledge, information, because it's only going to get worse. It's only going to get worse as they get older and they don't listen to you anymore.

23:31But if you at least educate them on the toxins, you'll be ahead of everybody in your family. Yeah. No, that's solid. I love that you said that. And I couldn't agree more because yeah, that whole thing going on with the tweens, you know, like the eight-year-olds, the 11-year-olds and buying, like, I don't even know what they're buying. I mean, Isn't it scary? It's scary. It's so scary. Yeah. The thing is, I'm like, oh my God, does a nine-year-old need an exfoliant? They don't. No, never. Does a nine-year-old need toners? No, they don't. They need a clean little cleanser. And if you want to get them a little moisturizer, do they need those under eye gel pads?

24:10No, they don't. It's just wild to me of what I see. The forecast and what they're doing in the beauty industry to grab your daughters or your sons, you know, whoever wants to wear makeup at a young age is scary. So be so mindful parents if you are out there listening. Also, Jenny, I feel like it's this systematic thing going on where not only is it bad for you, obviously, all the chemicals, but I always think about like the psychology of the kids too, because I remember being eight or, you know, 11 years old and I wasn't even thinking about makeup. Like I was thinking about, like I saw it, my mother had makeup and we play around.

24:46I think every little girl is like this. Like you play around, you have fun but like going into a store buying a whole you know what I mean like a basket full of makeup what is that yeah you know what doesn't help is the the apps that you you put makeup on and you can see what you look like you know the the face app app or snapchat alone you can see what you look like with a glammed face so what does that do it makes you want to go out and be that 10 year old girl that goes and buys makeup exactly exactly and it's just the most disgusting like and we're literally preying on these children. I don't know why certain things just need to be flat out banned.