Our review of Benefit’s brightener and concealer “Erase Paste” — does it live up to the hype and the $26 price tag?
As you may have noticed, your fearless leader Sam has been trying out beauty products with great reputations and high price tags to see if they’re really worth the hype, and this week I got in on the action, trying out Benefit Erase Paste ($26).
I’m prone to some dark circles and uneven coloring under my eyes and the occasional frequent blemish on the rest of my face (one day, I truly will stop squeezing them), so a product that touted itself as both a concealer and a brightener sounded perfect for me, a total no-brainer. At least until I got to the $26 part, at which point I thought I might wanna get my brain involved. That’s a lot of money to spend on a little pot of goo, so come along with me as I discover whether it’s as magic as everybody says.
What It Claims
Erase Paste is described on the box as a ‘brightening camouflage for eyes and face,’ which I’m totally into. I would absolutely love to brighten + camouflage my face as though I were a hare concealing myself in an exceedingly well-lit forest. Here’s the blurb from the website:
“Benefit Erase Paste is a concentrated, creamy, blendable concealer that instantly brightens and camouflages all-in-one. It has an innovative formula which makes sure signs of stress and fatigue are a thing of the past. These three brightening neutral shades give every gal correction perfection.”
The shades in question are Fair, Medium, and Deep, and since I can feel cancerous cells yawning as they begin to awaken in my pale European body after about fifteen minutes in the sun, I decided on the lightest, Fair, during my trip to Sephora.
What It Looks Like
I don’t have to tell you that Benefit has adorable packing, so it should come as no surprise that the Erase Paste was no exception. It’s a little purple and peach box, and inside is a bright pink and purple tub containing THE MAKEUP MAGIC.
If the packaging speaks the truth, I should be going from ‘now’ to ‘wow’ at any moment.
Note: the Internet tells me that the box is also meant to contain a ‘handy little spatula,’ but I know not of that. I don’t think I saw a handy little spatula, and if I did, there’s a good chance I threw out the handy little spatula because it looked like garbage. I’m sure it’s very handy, though.
So since we’re all unpacked and ready to go, I’m guessing you’d like to see the before picture and whatnot. And you will! But just imagine that the photo you’re about to see was taken of a person at the end of a long workday who apparently thought she was posing for mugshots.
We don’t need to see the whole photo because come on, but you can see the discoloration I was talking about under my eyes — some rashy reds and bruise blues — basically, colors that have no business on an erase pasted face. It should be noted that I do have some basic makeup on here (namely Rimmel BB cream), so the application of the Erase Paste wasn’t onto bare skin.
Benefit recommends that when applying to the undereye region, you place a small amount of paste on the back of your hand, dab some up with your ring finger, and make a dot on the inner and outer corners of your eye, then ‘delicately’ connect them into the middle, so that’s what you’re seeing here. This was just the first layer, but now that I’m looking at the photo, I’m realizing I probably didn’t use enough, which might be why I wasn’t thrilled with the results later on. (Spoiler alert!)
It definitely works, but it’s not quite the miracle product that I was naively expecting. Like in the photo above, I’ve applied it under one eye and not the other, and I don’t think you can immediately tell which is which. Once I tell you that it’s the one on your right (it is), you can see that the skin tones there are more even and smoothed out, but there is definitely still a shadow. I wouldn’t say it melted away my stress and fatigue necessarily, but that’s really up to me, and a good night of sleep, now mean, bro?
Final Verdict
I don’t know; I wasn’t blown away. The paste definitely works, and it seems like the tub would last a long time, giving you good value for your $26, but using it made me feel like it was intended for faces with a better complexion than mine. If you throw it on top of a pimple, it lights it up brighter than the rest of your face, so it stands out like a beacon, so I definitely don’t recommend that.
It did last the day, though, and looking at that final photo compared with the first one, I’m actually coming around to it. Mostly it just makes me think it might look better with all the other Benefit products, which gives me an itchy trigger finger to go buy Sephora out right now. Honestly, though, it’s probably just one of those things where I should have used (just slightly) more than I thought I needed. I will definitely try again and hope for more magical results.
So that’s that! Another product reviewed! So far, we’ve done:
- Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Lip Tar
- Yves Saint Laurent Touche Éclat Radiant Touch
- Dior DiorShow Mascara
- NARS Orgasm Blush
- GlamGlow YouthMud Mask
What else should we review? Tell us in the comments! And if you have any experiences of your own with Erase Paste, go on and tell us about them!