Get the Lead Out (of Lipstick)
March 14, 2012
By Mia Davis
Dear Cosmetics Industry: Please stop defending lead and other nasty chemicals in your products. Love, Mia A $25 tube of department store lipstick should be safe, right? You might assume it is safer than $2 drugstore brand. Not necessarily … During the busy 2011 holiday season, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) quietly released its new data on 400 popular lipsticks sold in the U.S. These products are contaminated with widely varying levels of… Read More >
Safe Cosmetics: Five Tips for Frugal Shoppers
March 2, 2012
By Stacy Malkan
If you’ve kept up on the latest news about toxic chemicals in cosmetics, you may be wondering if it’s possible to find safe products without breaking the bank. The good news is, you can protect yourself from toxic exposures while saving money too – it just takes some creative accounting and a willingness to look at the big picture. I like to think of money as energy, and I want to put my energy into… Read More >
What’s in that Pink Ribbon Product?
October 19, 2011
By Stacy Malkan
It’s that time of year again, when we can’t walk five steps without finding some new opportunity to spend money for breast cancer. We can “Kiss for the Cause” with Revlon lipstick, dust our cheeks with Estee Lauder’s Pink Ribbon Shimmer Compact, or hydrate our feet with Foot Works for the “Avon Breast Cancer Crusade.” Before I rush out for a pink-ribbon makeover, I have some questions for these companies: How much money are they… Read More >
Tangelo-Orange Superbug?
August 18, 2011
By Guest Blogger
Have you gone pesticide-free with your food or with your lawn care? How about with your hand soap? Though soaps from popular shops like Bath & Body Works often have yummy-sounding names like “Tangelo Orange Twist” and “Sugar Lemon Fizz,” they unfortunately contain a not-so-sweet ingredient: triclosan. Have you seen it on ingredient labels of your soaps or other cosmetics? Triclosan is a common antimicrobial and pesticide that has been linked to hormone disruption (which,… Read More >
The True Cost of Your Shiny Smooth Hair
April 19, 2011
By Stacy Malkan
Beautiful, shiny, frizz-free hair? Count yourself lucky to have hair at all! I first heard about the Brazilian Blowout from Susanne Harvey, who called to tell me she’d lost huge chunks of her long red hair1 after using the popular hair-smoothing product that is all the rage with celebrities. Turns out many women have had the same fallout experience, including actress Mary Louise Parker2 and scores of others who have been complaining to FDA for… Read More >
Love List: Luscious Skin Care
March 30, 2011
Hi Radiant Queen, From time to time I love to update my favorite organic beauty products. A few months ago I got the best gift ever! Annmarie Gianni sent me a slew of her healthy potions and lotions from her new skincare line. Ya know why I say it was “the best gift ever”? One: Because her products blew my mind (not easy to do). Annmarie harnesses the power of Mother Nature in a bottle.… Read More >
Modern Cosmetics Testing is Better for People and Animals
December 13, 2010
By Neal Barnard, MD
As the new year begins, Congress will take up the thorny issue of animal testing. A proposed bill, the Safe Cosmetics Act, would require that cosmetics and their ingredients undergo extensive toxicity tests, many of which will involve animals. The ethical issues around animal testing are obvious – should we really be killing animals for the newest holiday-scented lotion? These tests can be profoundly inhumane. The Draize eye test, for example, involves smearing a substance… Read More >
What’s in that pink ribbon product?
October 18, 2010
By Stacy Malkan
It’s that time of year again, when we can’t walk five steps without finding some new opportunity to spend money for breast cancer. We can “Kiss for the Cause” with Revlon lipstick, dust our cheeks with Estee Lauder’s Pink Ribbon Shimmer Compact, or hydrate our feet with Foot Works for the “Avon Breast Cancer Crusade.” Before I rush out for a pink-ribbon makeover, I have some questions for these companies: How much money are they… Read More >
Love List: Hot & Healthy Beauty Products
October 13, 2010
Hello Gorgeous! You are what you eat, but you’re also what you put on your skin. Everything we lather on our pores is absorbed into our bloodstream! So if you wouldn’t gobble it up, think twice about rubbing it on your beautiful bod. Have you ever looked at the ingredients in your beauty products? Can you even pronounce half the words in the ingredient list? My pal, Stacy Malkan at the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics,… Read More >
It’s a great day for safe cosmetics and your health!
July 22, 2010
By Stacy Malkan
On days like today, it seems actually possible that we can make the world a safer and healthier place. Or at least, we’re going to have a lot of fun trying! On that note, I invite you to watch and share Annie Leonard’s awesome new 7-minute film that reveals the toxic truth about the products we put on our bodies – and shows us what we can do about it. As Annie explains in The… Read More >
Petroleum in Perfume
June 8, 2010
By Stacy Malkan
Something doesn’t smell right, and not just in the Gulf. The horrifying destruction of life caused by the oil spill has everyone’s attention; what many people don’t realize is that the toxic effects of oil addiction are hitting much closer to home. Humans have found many uses for oil, but one thing we can’t do with it is process it with our bodies to use as food or nourishment. So it’s not really a surprise,… Read More >
Dear Cover Girl: We Want Non-Toxic Products
April 8, 2010
By Stacy Malkan
I love to wear makeup, feel sexy and look my best—I just want to do it without rubbing cancer-causing chemicals on my body. Does that make me a stick in the mud? Am I anti-beauty? Cover Girl (by Procter & Gamble) seems to think so. The mega makeup brand has launched a new “Dare to be Beautiful” ad campaign, complete with $50,000 cash prize and a host of celebrities led by Drew Barrymore (see my… Read More >
Why I’m a Beauty School Drop-In
March 19, 2010
By Guest Blogger
By Virginia I soap my hands up with cleanser and hover over Stephanie’s face. “Go on, get in there!” says our teacher, Miss Jenny. “You won’t hurt her.” I press on Stephanie’s shoulders and start stroking up her neck and over her chin and cheeks. That shoulder move is key; we learned that if you touch your client’s face right off the bat, they’ll jump out of the bed. Next I start circling into the… Read More >
Before you Kiss for the Cause: What’s in that pink ribbon product?
November 5, 2009
By Stacy Malkan
It’s that time of year again, when you can’t walk five steps without finding some new opportunity to spend money for breast cancer. We can “Kiss for the Cause” with Revlon lipstick, “shower for the cure” with Philosophy Pink Ribbon Gel, dust our cheeks with “Hint of a Cure” blush by Ramy, and “Kiss Goodbye to Breast Cancer” with Avon products. Before I rush out for a pink-ribbon makeover, I have some questions for these… Read More >
Feeling Beautiful (and Safe) Inside and Out
August 11, 2009
By Guest Blogger
Mia Davis, Campaign for Safe Cosmetics People deserve to feel beautiful, inside and out. Feeling good about how you look increases confidence, thereby creating opportunities which can lead to constructive change, more energy, and even a more vibrant community. And then you feel even better, and the cycle continues. Word! To make yourself look/smell/feel lovely, you probably use cosmetics (creams, makeup, deodorant, etc). Most of us do- on average, American women use 10 a day,… Read More >
What’s Really in Your Beauty Products?
July 9, 2009
By Stacy Malkan
Penis deformation? I don’t like those two words together. It’s not easy to make fun of deformed genitalia, but Stephen Colbert gave it a valiant try when he interviewed NYT columnist Nick Kristof about the bizarre plight of fish in the Potomac River (and the humans that drink it). As Kristof explained, hormone-disrupting chemicals are causing strange genital malformations in the wild kingdom — frogs, fish and salamanders with mixed-up sex organs. In the Potomac,… Read More >
