When referring to beauty, “clean” has been a trendy buzzword used in the industry for the last few years. You don’t need the last name Paltrow or a shelf full of powdered mushroom extracts to care about your beauty products’ ingredients. From parabens, phthalates, and sulfates to triclosan, hydroquinone, and artificial fragrances, these dirty beauty words are fear-inducing enough to elicit a Marie Kondo-style purge of your entire bathroom cabinet, even in the most apathetic among us. But what does clean beauty even mean? Can you trust all-natural labels? And are ‘nontoxic’ products essential? Clean beauty does not have one definition, which can make the category confusing to the consumer. With several options come more greenwashing opportunities, and it leaves most of us dumbfounded when knowing who to trust.
SCADstyle brought together Rose Marie Swift (co-founder of RMS Beauty), Cashmere Nicole (founder of Beauty Bakerie), and Brian Lamy (founder of Hello Good Lookin) to separate science from fiction. Everyone has their own personal reasons for supporting clean and green beauty; for all three interviewees, their health led to their interest in clean beauty. Lamy started his bath product business after discovering how being in the bath allowed him to connect to his feelings. Nicole spoke on her experience with breast cancer and how aware she became of her body.
Finding experiences that let you connect to your mind and body and essential to furthering your wellness journey. She reminded us that being clean extends further into wellness as it does not just limit what we put on our body but also in it. What we eat, how much attention we give to our well being and how often we listen to our body. Our body tries talking to us constantly. Whether it’s that one angry acne that you wish would go away or your foot twitching. Every signal is like a text message that we often leave on ‘read’.
We hear this all the time: “Listen to your body!” “We should follow how we feel, right?” But what does this really mean? And how do we do it? Our body pays attention to us and knows we are important. It tells us what it needs and what is happening, as long as we listen. To open these channels of communication, we suggest: Have a date with your body. Become sensitive to yourself. Learn about yourself, mentally, emotionally, and physically. That feeling in your body is where you’ll find your intuition and your capability to act. Listen to it as it is your best friend.
“Dating” yourself often comes with tired and old archetypes. This makes us often feel guilty in indulging with our needs. Self-care or spending extra time or money on the food that makes you feel good is labeled narcissistic. We live in a ‘live to work’ society which rewards people for overworking themselves every day at work. These habits are not selfless but self-sacrificing. It is time to turn the volume to this line back on.
Words by Annika Petersen and Rhea Gupta
Graphic by Emily Tobias