Beauty products… and the beast

These days, it seems like we all worry about the chemicals that go into our food, our water supply, the paint on our walls... but I, for one, have to admit I don't put a whole lot of thought into the ingredients in the various soaps and lotions I put on my skin, a mix of cheap, familiar drugstore buys and fancy brand-name concoctions received as gifts.

Until recently, that is, when I read "No Impact Man" — a book that made me start feeling very, very guilty about things like take-out coffee cups and paper bags, albeit not guilty enough to eliminate them from my life entirely! Midway through their no-impact year, the writer and his wife switch to using soaps and lotions from the farmers' market, and their skin is suddenly healthier than it's ever been. Huh.

Anyways, I saw this funny and scary video this morning from Raw Natural Beauty, and thought I'd put it up for all to ponder. It suggests (rather implausibly, but theatrically for sure!) that women ingest an average of 7 pounds of lipstick in the course of their lives, so we might want to check out what the ingredients are. To check the toxicity of your favorite beauty products, you can run a search in this handy database, but be warned: you may not like what you find!

HuffPo via The Cut