Read labels and ask questions. Look for ingredients such as pure, skin-loving oils: olive, coconut, avocado, jojoba, or sunflower, organic honey and beeswax, and exfoliants such as oatmeal or almonds. Try moisturizing butters such as cocoa, shea and mango.
Use natural hair color enhancers such as camomile tea rinse for blonds and black tea or coffee rinse for brunettes. For more permanent results, pure organic henna in many different shades can be found in most health food stores.
Today you can find water-soluble nail polishes and acetone-free nail polish remover. Lip balms made with beeswax, vegetable butters, and honey–then tinted with natural mineral colors or plant extracts–can also be found in many health food stores as can eyeliner made of kohl.
You will find these safe products in your health food stores where the belief is, “What you put in your body is the same as what you put on your body,” and where their paramount value is your health and well-being.
Your good health is your choice: be aware, be beautiful, and choose your cosmetics wisely. While it may be true that we’re never fully dressed without a smile, many women feel naked without a swab of color or a dab of gloss on their lips. Since a woman who wears lipstick daily could swallow four pounds of it in her lifetime, it’s important to consider what goes into these color sticks.
Our love affair with lip color can be traced to the ancient Egyptians, who used henna to paint their lips. Cleopatra wore lipstick made with a deep red pigment created by crushing cochineal beetles and blending the concoction into a base of ants. Other formulas used potentially toxic combinations of fucus-algin, iodine, and bromine mannite, and early shimmers were achieved with a substance called pearl essence found in fish scales.
Fast-forward a few thousand years, and we have modern lipsticks containing a variety of waxes, oils, pigments, and emollients. Common waxes such as carnauba and candililla are used to create the shape of our lipsticks. Candililla wax is produced by boiling plants in water containing sulfuric acid and skimming the wax as it rises to the surface. Beeswax, another commonly used wax, could be a concern for vegans and those with bee allergies.
Oils and fats used to pretty up our puckers range from nourishing castor oil (from the castor bean), olive oil, and cocoa butter, to petrochemicals like mineral oil and petrolatum. Unfortunately, petrochemical oils can contain carcinogens such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and xenoestrogens. Also known as estrogen-mimics, xenoestrogens have been linked to breast cancer and other reproductive cancers. Additional concerns about our lipstick come from the phthalates used for fragrance or flavor. Phthalates are also xenoestrogenic and should be avoided at all costs. Frosted or shiny lipsticks typically contain bismuth oxychloride, a compound with low toxicity when swallowed and linked to allergic skin reactions when applied topically.
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