Hello! My name is Charity, I am a wife to a police officer and mom to two wild boys (5 & 3) and one perfect baby girl. I met Renee at JMU (go DUKES) through InterVarsity, and I was so humbled when she asked me to write a guest post about clean beauty!
I’ll be honest, I spent most of my life pretty aloof to ingredients and although I always tried to be ‘healthy,’ I didn’t spend much thought about what I put in or on my body. Prime example, I attempted to be vegan for part of my senior year. I was a biology student, and it seemed like the cool, healthy thing to do. I, however, did not think twice about spreading mayo all over my ‘veggie’ sandwich. Much later, during my first round of Whole 30 I was shocked to find out mayo was primarily made from EGGS. *facepalm*
You can imagine my surprise when I was confronted with some harsh truths about the beauty industry. Namely, that the last time congress has passed any regulation for cosmetics was in 1938, and only NINE cosmetics ingredients have been banned from US products. By contrast, the EU has banned 1328 chemicals from cosmetics. The US FDA does not require that cosmetics ingredients be tested for safety before they hit the shelves. This essentially makes you and I unknowing test subjects. Uhm. No thanks. Like most of you, I assumed that if something was on the shelf at Target, surely it was safe for me to use, consume, slather on my children…right?
Much like my first round of Whole30, I was completely overwhelmed. You mean to tell me I have to read the labels on my food AND ALL MY PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS?! Where do I even start? How do I know what ingredients I should avoid? The average woman uses 12 personal care products with 168 ingredients every day, and full disclosure, I am completely high maintenance, so my number is closer to 20.
After cleaning out most of my lotions, soaps, and cleaning products I started digging more. I found that my beloved makeup, that I had believed to be one of the cleaner brands, was made primarily from talc. By itself this is not a big deal, however I learned talc can easily be contaminated with asbestos, and this particular company does not rigorously test their product for contamination. Not only that, but asbestos has also been found in makeup marketed to children. Yikes!
Now as a true Taylor Swift fan, I love a good, bold red lipstick. However, I also found that more than half of name brand red lipsticks contain detectable levels of lead. The FDA limits lead in candy, thank goodness, to protect children from directly ingesting lead. However, lipstick has no regulation by the FDA even though, like candy, it is also ingested. Gross, I know. Google disputes the average amount ingested, but its somewhere between 1-7 pounds of lipstick in a woman’s lifetime.
Like I told you, I’m kind of a diva. I was skeptical that I could find clean beauty products that didn’t sacrifice on performance. So, I began my unicorn hunt. I downloaded the EWG healthy living app. The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit, non-partisan (is that even possible these days?) organization that works to protect human health and the environment. Their app rates a zillion different products and gives you specific ingredients where you are able to read about the different concerns with each ingredient. Full disclosure, this led me to become a consultant with Beautycounter. Their mission is to get clean beauty into the hands of everyone by formulating, educating, and advocating.
I believe that when we know better, we can do better. With the resources that the EWG provides I can be confident that I am making the best choices for myself and my family’s health.
If you want to know more about clean beauty:
1. The best place to start is EWG.org. They provide tons of shopping guides and articles if you are looking to research more in depth.
2. Download their healthy living app and start scanning the products in your bathroom. Try not to panic, but think of one thing you can swap out at a time.
3. To learn more about Beautycounter, their mission, and how they are changing the conversation visit https://www.beautycounter.com/our-mission. You can also text ‘betterbeauty’ to 52886 to make your voice heard and ask for congress to make better beauty laws.
Charity Campbell is a wife to a LEO and mom to two wild boys and one absolutely perfect baby girl. She spends her days homeschooling, trying to find matchless socks, and breaking up wrestling matches. At night she binge watches the Bachelor while working on her Beautycounter business. She’s a closet nerd who loves science and all things health. One day she plans to open a storefront with her sisters and sell cute things.
