Is a very broad term. Here is how I would define clean beauty; products that do not contain anything toxic. Those products are made with plants, natural oils... Today, I felt like sharing how I became interested in the subject. On my end, to get into clean beauty I needed some sort of wake up call and I do not wish this upon anybody. About a year ago I decided I was fed up with sweat. How humiliating is it to have sweat stains? Being on a first date or simply at a social event and here they are and the more you think about it the bigger they become. Okay, I know, sweat is completely natural but we live in a world where we want to be plastic perfect. After talking about my normal and natural sweat problems with a few friends I decided to try Drysol. Drysol is a strong aluminum treatment that temporarily stops sweat glands from producing sweat. I used it for a few months on my arm pits. It was painful but nothing more. The fifth time I applied Drysol I woke up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain. After an hour I decided to get out of bed to find out I was bleeding from my arm pits. I kinda panicked; I WAS SWEATING BLOOD. I did research and realised this was not the best solution. I guess I needed this type of reaction to inform myself on what I was actually applying to my skin and what it was doing to my body. Beware that there is a small dosage of aluminum in most commercial deodorant which is also not recommended.
Here are a few things I decided to change from my daily routine. Surprise! Surprise! First, I decided to eliminate aluminum all together. I was lucky enough to find the perfect all natural deodorant on the first try lavanila (I buy it at Anthropology but I know it is also sold at Sephora and online.) The problem with natural deodorants is that your body takes about a month (28 days) to eliminate aluminum from your pores which will cause a B.O (bad odour) smell. So don't be surprised, it is totally normal to smell B.O when you first start using this product. At the beginning I had to reapply the natural deodorant a few times a day. Now it works just as well as any commercial deodorant and smells fantastic.
Second, after becoming more conscious of what I was putting on my skin I decided to eliminate talc. Talc is in most makeup powder and prevents moisture which drys out your skin. In Europe most makeup brand broadcast on their packaging that they are “talc free”. In North America most makeup powder such as bronzer has talc mentioned as the first ingredient. Again, this made me realise that I didn't know what I was applying on my skin. In Canada only 573 ingredients are prohibited or restricted from cosmetics compared to Europe where they have 1715 ingredients on that list. I still have a lot to learn but now my number one rule is if I don't know the ingredients I simply Google them.
I wanted to share this little anecdote because last week I was lucky enough to be invited at the opening of Bloom Beauty. Bloom beauty sales all clean products and offers clean beauty services such as facials, sugaring, makeup lessons... In their store I fell in love with one line in particular; Indie Lee. I was touched by the story of this brand and how Indie Lee came up with a clean beauty product line. To give you a quick resume; Indie Lee was a healthy women whom was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Her doctor claimed that our environment was the cause for this tumor. We often forget that our skin is our biggest organ and absorbs everything in our environment. We cannot change the air we live in but we can change what we directly apply to our organ. Sadly, most of us need a wake up call to get into something drastic such as changing our daily skincare routine.
Nowadays, we are lucky enough to be able to look up everything online. There is no reason for us to purchase products that can be health damaging. What do you think?