For as long as I can remember, my mother’s bathroom was a treasure trove of interesting jewels: red lipsticks, purple eye shadows, strange metal contraptions for curling things. I approached this room with fascination and my curiosity led to many unfortunate incidents, like lipstick smeared on walls and tups of powders spilled on cream carpets. She was always adamant that I was too young for makeup, until I started high school. Social pressure and constant nagging wore her down and we made a trip to the local chemist to buy my first lip balm. I’ve worn makeup in some capacity since I was about thirteen. I’ve asked many of the women and girls I know, and this seems to be an age of new things, a rite of passage of sorts for girls discovering their womanhood. It started with bright pink nail polishes and then lip gloss, the clear kind with blue and pink sparkles that we all wore to school. My grandmother caused great distress one Christmas when she scolded me and my cousin, both fifteen, about the dangers of wearing eye shadow. She told us we were polluting our eyes, and that the fine powder could cause eye problems. I burst into tears and refused to speak to her for the rest of the day. How times have changed! I now look back on those days of early experimentation with beauty regimes, learning about makeup and often over applying everything, and I realise that I have been putting toxins onto my skin, and so into my system, since those first days of glitter gloss. Surely it can’t be good for us to be swallowing, in effect â€eating’, glitter? With the benefit of hindsight I can now understand the wishes of my mother to delay this onset of artificial beauty, and even my grandmother who had some wisdom in her thoughts about the health considerations associated with wearing makeup. The sinister sides of the beauty industry have recently exposed some ugly truths about our desire to look beautiful. I have been reluctant to acknowledge this issue, I’m just attached as the next woman to my tried and tested beauty favourites. I have a bronzer that makes me look more tanned, a concealer that can hide even the most obvious blemish, and special brushes to go with each shade of eye shadow. With the New Year upon us, I have been reassessing my lifestyle and my choices. I have discovered a big hole in my view on the world, and how I am living. I have been happy, even excited to make other changes to my life †green bags for shopping, recycling, limit plastic water bottles, vegetarian eating, planting a herb garden †my life has been greatly enriched by all of this. But, mention the reality of the products I put on my face, and I become defensive. I turn up my nose at the smell of disinfectants, refuse to eat any meat because I claim to love animals, don’t drink caffeine or smoke cigarettes and will proudly lecture anyone who cares to listen (and some who don’t!) about the benefits of eating fruit and vegetables. I make fresh juices, drink three litres of water a day, and have sworn off inappropriate high heeled shoes. I thought I was doing well, until I looked at this other part of my life. I was in for a shock. I have realised that I am not paying attention to the things that are closest to me †namely, my beauty products. I am applying chemicals, just as toxic as the cleaning products I dislike, directly to my face, my lips and my eyes. They are packaged differently, smell pretty and promise to enhance my features, but is this really a good enough excuse to turn a blind eye? 2010 is a new year, and I have decided to make a change. My house if full of old or chemical-rich products. Bathroom cabinets, makeup bags, boxes of eye shadows, I feel like I have been collecting cosmetics my whole life. I see the same thing in my friend’s houses too †just open a cupboard and there are bottled, potions and powders galore. Much of what I own is years out of date, or full of chemicals, but I just haven’t been able to throw anything away. Well, now is the time. I’m sure, if any of us gathered up all of the beauty products and cosmetics we owned, researched all of the ingredients and their effect on the body, we would be horrified. Combine this with the inhumane practices of animal testing, and the picture isn’t nearly as fabulous as we thought. I have to ask myself why an innocent rabbit should be blinded by processes designed to test a new mascara I may buy. Is this really ethical? The answer, is no. No more. With this new knowledge, I am forced to confront every product that I own, and I find that most of what I have is tested on animals and contains little or no natural ingredients. It is quite humbling to face the truth about ourselves, and to be spurned into action. Yesterday I did something radical, something long overdue. I took a large black garbage bag and I began a systematic cleansing of my bathroom. I threw out every product that was tested on animals, and every makeup item I could find that was not natural, organic, or made with earth-based ingredients. Ninety-five percent of what I owned had to be thrown away. This was quite a hard process, letting go of my favourite products and also considering the money I had spent to buy them. But, what use is something that is potentially damaging my health? Much research has gone into the effects of makeup on the body, with results finding that we swallow kilograms of lip product in a lifetime, and eye shadows can leave chemical residue in the eyes. It seems my grandmother was right. So, with cupboards and makeup bags emptied , step one was complete. The second part of this process is to replace what has been removed. I like makeup, I like to wear it, I just want to make informed choices this time around. I found fantastic products in my local health food store, that don’t test on animals, from Australian companies that use natural ingredients. What a revelation for women! We can now wear makeup that doesn’t negatively affect us or the earth. I finally feel good about feeling beautiful..
Please Rate this Article 5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5
Not yet Rated
