Wellness Wednesday - Makeup

It's a new year and with a year comes resolutions... at least for most people, I imagine. I'm a band wagon New Year's resolution maker. But I'm still genuine! I guess I don't view the turn of the calendar as a time to make a change. However I enjoy analyzing my current state of things and seeing if there's something I should resolve to do. Typically my New Year's resolution is to floss. I'm not an every day flosser but hopefully I will be one day.

Today I'm not sharing my New Year's resolutions (shocker, I know) but I'd like to share last year's. Last year for my New Year's resolution I decided to dedicate the whole year to wellness and treating my body better. I wanted to focus on wellness, prevention, making healthful decisions, and I resolved to change things that weren't aligned with that focus. Last month I shared a bit about this when I wrote about swapping out my facial cleanser and moisturizer. I didn't tell you then that it had been my New Year's resolution! And, really, I've been sharing quite a bit with the wellness themed posts!

I knew tackling that wellness New Year's resolution wasn't going to happen overnight. I wanted to make decisions and changes that were rooted in research. After I identified the things that were preventing me from optimal wellness I researched how best to change them. We started exercising more and going to yoga and we did a food challenge to eliminate processed foods. Then I realized I'm doing these surface level things for my wellness all while exposing myself to toxins that were in everyday things that I used - primarily our cleaning supplies and my makeup. Be forewarned - you might fall down the rabbit hole once you start looking into these things. The bottom line, for me, is that the FDA doesn't require testing of the cosmetics industry and companies don't have to disclose ingredients if they're part of their "trade secret" recipe for the products. Furthermore the European Union bans over 1,300 chemicals from their cosmetics while the United States bans only 11. ["International Laws" from Campaign for Safe Cosmetics] This article from the American Cancer Society highlights some helpful facts in an unbiased manner.

So... Do I think wearing my old makeup would cause cancer? I don't know. Do I think it will decrease my quality of life? Not now but maybe later. Even though this seems like a small thing I decided to switch over the makeup products because makeup is on my skin the majority of the day and because I can. There are alternative products that are safe to use. There are companies that are transparent with their ingredients and these same companies are producing a safe product.

I'm not a huge makeup wearer and probably don't have nearly the collection of products that some women do but I also took this opportunity to "declutter" my makeup. I was a sucker for the Clinique promotions and the majority of the makeup in my bag were freebies. I decided I'm done with that. I'm only keeping in a makeup bag the essentials. My makeup (primarily Clinique) was replaced with products from Juice Beauty, Beautycounter, Shea Moisture, and Mineral Fusion. I feel confident that these products are safe for me! I did a lot of googling around to come to this companies. I wanted to try a few products from each company so I could compare them (even though I wasn't comparing the same product).

Here's a before and after of the makeup bag:





Juice Beauty - powder, lip gloss, tinted cc cream, hydrating mist
Shea Moisture - pressed powder
Beautycounter - bronzer / blush, eye shadow, eye liner, lipstick
Mineral Fusion - lip crayon, mascara

And here's my "natural"makeup look


If you'd like some more reading, check out this Why this matters - cosmetics and your health article from the Environmental Working Group.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for this info. It has been on my list to go to more natural makeup. This will help me so much.

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