Good Enough to Eat
By Jenn Breckenridge
Filed Under Green Living |
Women love products. We do. There’s a cleanser, cream, spray, soak, serum, lotion, potion, tonic, foam or gel for every last inch of our bodies, and then some. At some point over the years, I realized my quest for cleanliness, beauty, and a powder-fresh scent was contributing a stockpile of plastic bottles to our already overtaxed landfills. I also realized that propylene glycol and sodium laureth sulfate might not be the best ingredients for my health conscious lifestyle. Giving up the products appeared from the outside like a beauty suicide and quite honestly, what could one clean and coif themselves with that didn’t come in a plastic bottle full of chemicals?
I had heard about soap and even remembered a time during childhood in which I’d actually used it myself. Bar soap seemed a thing of the past, an antiquated remnant of an age far gone, something a frontierswoman might have used after a long day driving the wagon train in the same no-nonsense way that she used cow chips for fuel. Wasn’t it drying? Wasn’t “one-quarter moisturizing cream” something that had fallen short of my expectations time and again? If memory served, I felt less like a Dove post-soapdown and more like Melba toast, which is why I’d switched over to the fancy plastic bottles full of unpronounceables to begin with.
Well, I just had to give barsoap a second chance… for posterity’s sake, native peoples everywhere, and a number of animals on the endangered species list…not to mention my own health. So experiment I did, and to my surprise, found quite a few finely crafted, dare I say, artisanal soaps lining the shelves of my local health food store. Oatmeal, olive oil, lavender, shea butter, honey, almond, even chocolate…they sounded good enough to eat. And I finally figured out- that was the point. Truly natural beauty products contain ingredients that we can swallow and not be hauled to the emergency room, which I’m not so sure I can say of dimethicone, methylparaben, or hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride. Huh? Exactly.
Through trial and error, I found a beautiful face soap that wasn’t drying at all, and even slowed my semi-regular breakouts to a halt. I am thrilled to let go of the chemicals and certainly the excess plastic bottles of shower gel and facial cleanser. I must admit, I do use a separate barsoap for my body, but it is multi-purpose, since I lather it thickly into a very effective shave cream for my legs. These natural soaps often come in recycled paper wrappers or even no wrappers at all, sweetly lining the soap divots in charming wooden display cases in your local health food store. One company even embeds little basil seeds into their recycled paperboard soap cartons which you can plant in your garden. I’ve crossed over into nature’s bevy of beauty products and I love it! I can’t say I’ve kicked the chemical hair dye or the occasional petroleum-packed manicure session, but I’m looking into it.
I saw Axil Comras, who runs Green Home, on television talking about the toxic amount of chlorine a person absorbs in the shower, and referred to skin as the “body’s biggest mouth.” If my skin took part in a soap-eating contest, which it essentially does every time I shower, I’d hedge my bets on the Indian Green Tea with Mint over Lever 2000 any day of the week… and I’ll take it in the basil seed-embedded packaging which, as it turns out is also, good enough to eat.
Posted on April 10, 2008 |
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