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In my decade-long career as a beauty editor, I’ve sacrificed a lot of limbs (and eyelashes, and fingernails, and bathroom outlets) in the name of product testing. This year alone, we estimated my team tried roughly 708. Through it all, there’s one thing I’ve learned: the power of beauty runs deep. One swipe of lipstick doesn’t just make you look nice — it can also make you feel more confident, playful, good.

That’s exactly the energy we’re trying to capture with Popsugar’s first-ever 2025 Feel-Good Awards. Our trusted team of editors across our five core categories — beauty, health, fitness, home, and sex — reviewed thousands of submissions to find the entries that fit the bill for the most joy-sparking products out there. Then, we embarked on the long journey of testing each and every one of those items to ensure we’re recommending our audience the very best. (Did I mention we tested 2,138 new launches in total?)

For beauty, that meant slathering on every body cream, swiping countless mascaras, and putting plenty of hair masks, lipsticks, and moisturizers (to name a few) through multiple rounds of trial and error. We looked for textures that actually felt fun to use, creams that soothed more than just our skin, and scents that left us complimenting our damn selves. Curious to see what scored big on the mood-boosting scale? Keep scrolling.

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