– how does my purple shower gel and my blue shampoo not colour my skin the same colour as it has been designed to look? It’s a colorant, a pigment isn’t it? How the hell does it just turn to soapy goodness without leaving me the colour of a Smurf?
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Molecules are basically little guys that make up a thing. Some of them don’t like their hands empty – like the ones in shampoo or shower gel. They like to grab onto things, that’s how they clean you. They also grab onto the little pieces of pigment so when you wash them off, they take those with them.
Purple shampoo does color your hair if you leave it on for long but with shower gel, we don’t give it enough time to leave a noticeable tint.
One of the primary functions of your skin is to be impermeable to most of the stuff that’s outside your body. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty effective.
We notice the few pigments that leave a lasting color on our skin because they’re rare and they have a visible effect. Most of us walk around most of the time in our natural skin color, even though we’re frequently exposed to colored liquids. So really it’s more a question of why anything is able to discolor our skin by surface contact.
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