I've been in a 40 year long search for the perfect facial cleanser, and I think I've finally found it. Fragrance free, and with moisturizing lotion, this product gets my face clean without burning, stinging, or leaving it dry and itchy.

While I like my old standby, Ivory, and now really like Ivory's aloe version, for general cleansing of body and hands, even that leaves my face feeling tight and dry. Basically, if a soap or cleanser is mild enough not to, then it leaves me with blackheads.

This Dove product is gentle, feels good, and cleanses away anything resembling a blackhead.

I had not noticed Dove products on local shelves. Instead, the brand caught my attention when they did the ad campaign to broaden standards of beauty. I liked that their models are built like my neighbors, instead of like cancer ward patients. (And that is not an off the cuff comment - I watched my beautiful grandmother go from a 110 pounds elegant woman to a 45 pound skeleton. She looked a lot like the size 4 models promoted in the past few years)

So, to be supportive of a company that is trying to make a change, I went looking for their products and found them in Longs Drugs in Honolulu.

Many products claim to be "unscented" but have a mild, but nasty, "chemical" smell. On application, this product has a mild scent, nothing you could call a "fragrance," it is not at all perfumey. Once washed off, there was no detectable scent.

TRULY unscented products are important to me, as many common fragrances used in body products leave me with my eyes nearly swollen shut and a face looking like my father's pet shar-pei.

I really like the Dove website (www.Dove.com) which, unlike the Hawaiian Tropic, gives very thorough information about the products, including listing all of the ingredients. In this case:

Water, Sodium Trideceth Sulfate, Cocamidopropyl Hydroxysultaine, Ammonium Laureth Sulfate, PEG-80 Sorbitan Laurate, Glycerin, Disodium Lauroamphodiacetate, Glycol Distearate, Disodium Oleamido MEA-Sulfosuccinate, Sodium Caproyl Lactylate, Sodium Lauroyl Lactylate, Polysorbate 20, Citric Acid, Sodium Laureth-13 Carboxylate, PEG-150 Distearate, Wheatgermamidopropyl Dimethylamine Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein, Disodium EDTA, DMDM Hydantoin, Polyquaternium-10, Rosa Damascena Extract, Vitis Vinifera (Grape) Seed Oil, Iodopropynyl Butylcarbamate

Wheat germ-based chemicals, and rose extract give me a warm fuzzy, and I'm not noticing any petrolium-based chemicals here, so that's another warm fuzzy. While I don't know what a lot of this stuff is, nothing leaps out at me as being horribly evil. That's good.

I will now occasionally try other products when they are on sale, just to see what is out there. But Dove Sensitive Skin Foaming Facial Cleanser will be my main facial cleanser for the foreseeable future.

Recommended: Yes