Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Borderlines

Only must read from the NYTimes:

Opinionator - BORDERLINES

"Countries are defined by the lines that divide them. But how are these lines decided - and why are some of them so strange? Borderlines explaores the stories behind the global map, one line at a time."
- Written by Frank Jacobs, "a London-based author and blogger. He writes about cartography, but only the interesting bits."

Great articles about maps, countries and boarders. And he uses references.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Organic Beauty Products

I have noticed a significant amount of mentions of organic beauty products on different sites recently. Goop sent out an email for Earth Day on organic beauty products. If you visit the site intothegloss.com you will see a lot of wealthy, fashionable New Yorkers who seem to love Ren and Tata Harper. Most recently, on NYTimes The Moment blog for T Magazine, there was this post by The Samurai Shopper on organic beauty products.

The commenter Simplicity links to the Cosmetic Cops review of the brand Ren and it is quite scathing. This leads me to wonder about a few things.

1. Why do women who obviously dye/highlight their hair or use Botox or fillers or even drink bottled water care about switching to organic products as it seems many women on the blog intothegloss.com seem to? Doesn't doing any of the things I mentioned severely negate any benefit from a face wash or even a night cream? I mean you say you are a raw food vegan and then you have Chanel nail polish and that's not even 3-Free.

2. How do we trust the authenticity of the organic ingredients in these products? Most of the people who start these companies do not seem to know much about skin care other than they use it. I have read that there is more produce sold as organic than there is produced in the food industry (even if you include the fruits and vegetables from small, non-certified organic farms).

3. Is natural really better in beauty products? I do believe that a balanced life and diet truly helps personal healthy and beauty. This includes the foods ingested and the amount of activity and sleep a person gets. Do I think products with this extract and that extract or green tea truly makes a difference? I don't think so. I use prescription retinoids and I really doubt that its all-natural. However, it has benefited my skin and my confidence greatly. And nothing else has worked like it.

I do believe that cosmetic companies shouldn't be trusted. There are a lot of banned ingredients that were regularly used in the past and its interesting to see the sites that track ingredients and products that S.S. listed in the post. While I do not care enough to look deeply into it, it is good to know that people do care and hopefully there will be progress.