Recently in 11: Cosmetics (Nov 15) Category

The ethics presentation on the cosmetic industry focused a lot on the creation and promotion of the "Ideal" female role and the trends of makeup use. A lot of what the group touched on was the "social norms" of both makeup use and body image as a whole that women are expected to adhere to. This made me think a lot about how trends in makeup and body image and the "social norm" change. One trend that underwent a particularly drastic change was the use of bronzer. In the Victorian era, light pale skin was seen as the ideal, a sign of wealth and beauty, whereas a tan complexion was a sign of the working class. In the European middle ages women went as far as bleeding themselves to obtain a pale complexion. Today, women expose themselves to harmful UV rays by lying outside in the sun and utilizing tanning beds, in order to get a tan. Tanning lotions, sunless tanner, and bronzers are a staple in many women's daily routines.

Another thing the cosmetic industry group focused a lot on was the presence of hazardous chemicals in many cosmetics and the cosmetics database that informs consumers of these chemicals. Cosmetics have contained hazardous chemicals as long as they have been in existence. This article describes the history of makeup and different chemicals used throughout history. In Greco-Roman society women wore white lead and chalk on their faces. Face powders were made from arsenic, causing hundreds of deaths. The most dangerous chemicals used in many cosmetics throughout history were lead, nitric acid, and mercury.

My question to you is why the "trend" of using hazardous and potentially lethal chemicals in cosmetics has carried throughout history and are still being used and produced today? Why have society's pressures of makeup use lead so many women to ignore the damage they are doing to themselves in order to "fit in" with the social norms of the time?

Are we slathering hazardous chemicals and unregulated substances? Cosmetics and other body products bring us in contact with more than 120 chemicals daily and many of them are hazaradous to our health. I was watching the Dr. Oz Show shorty after the Cosmetic Industries presentation. I though this article titled The Price of Beauty brought up a lot about what the cosmetic industries group was saying. An interesting point that they made in the article was using these products, such as anti-wrinkle cream, for beauty pays a price. The article mentions that using these products such as anti-wrinkle cream actually promote skin breakdown, thus leaving you at a higher rate for more wrinkles. It seems these beauty products are only a temporary solution to create and perfect the 'female ideal' created by the media and society. Cosmetics are hazardous to our health, and we know it. Will we rise up against the female ideal and stand up for our health? Why is the cosmetic industries putting hazardous chemicals in products that we use on children? Why are the cosmetic companies hiding the ingredients that go into their cosmetic products? Do we need to do something about this? Are cosmetic products really that dangerous? We use them everyday to cover up our flaws, clean our children, clean ourselves, clean our animals. How much is too much?

After paging through a magazine at work on my break, titled "People Style Watch" the presentation given this past Monday about the Cosmetic Industry came to mind. This magazine was entirely centered around clothing, accessories and makeup.

Tons of makeup tricks, ideas and new products presented to the reader. It then occurred to me how the media is so involved with the cosmetic industries, and how wearing makeup now seems to be the "norm." For example, if a celebrity isn't wearing makeup, you find various magazine articles "exposing" her real features and almost puts a negative connotation to them. It's almost as if, if a woman is not wearing makeup she is then regarded as not pretty or even not "womanly." I guess I never really took notice to the cosmetic industry and how large and influencing they can be on society. We are shown commercials daily about various cosmetics to buy, to reduce "fine lines around you eyes, enhance your lips, or volumizing your eyelashes" as if women, and even some men...are not good enough to go out in public unless we have these material things. I myself wear makeup everyday, I don't wear much, just mascara and some blush, but I've begun to think, "Have I myself been pressured by the industry to wear makeup, so I will fit in with the standards of today's society?" I would like to believe I chose on my own regard, but really...I'm starting to think this is not so. Don't get me wrong, I do go out with no makeup on too, but it's once in a blue moon.

So girls (and possibly men) I ask you this: Do you feel pressure to wear makeup? Do you feel like society has put a standard on how you should present "your face?" What about anti-aging makeup in general? Is our society today so out of skew with this ideal that wearing makeup makes you beautiful, makes you a "woman" that there is no way for us to turn away from this view?

Cosmetic surgery is by no means new (it dates back to before A.D. even), but has boomed into a business that we all know of and don't even bat an eye at any longer. We've become used to seeing people with reconstructed noses, lips, eyelids (like the double-eyelid surgery), and breast implants.
As in the following article from a few days ago that I recalled reading about, there were issues with a breast implant called Poly Implant Prosthesis (or PIP). It was banned by France due to the high chance of rupture, but the manufacturer changed the gel within for one designed for mattresses (that just increased the chance of rupture even more).
Since medical devices don't take long to be given the OK and not usually tested, people getting breast enhancement surgeries are the "guinea pigs".

The article is here.

Also as highlighted in the article, there's an artificial hip that's been reported to create metal shards that broke and lodged themselves in the bodies of the patients. The fact that the company that created the hip did not have any clinical trials since it was not required is appalling. The lack of regulation in these medical devices need to be strengthened for the public's safety, even if it means that businesses manufacturing these devices must take longer to send their products out to the public.

As I was listening on Monday to all the dangers posed by the everyday cosmetics, it reminded me of a plot point from Tim Burton's 1989 film Batman. In the film, the main villain, the Joker, takes over a huge chemical company and uses his knowledge of chemistry to create a line of cosmetic and hygienic products that, when used in combination, will cause the wearer to die laughing. I thought during the presentation that this is essentially what's happening today. Given that today's cosmetics won't cause one to die laughing, it does raise an interesting point that here we are 21 years after that movie came out and yet our cosmetics do pose a health risk that most people don't even realize, just like the citizens of Gotham City in the movie. I'm sure that no one watching that movie in 1989 would have dreamed that cosmetics they would wear one day would become so hazardous to their health. And to go further, the citizens in the movie were saved from the Joker's products because Batman found out the problem and released the knowledge to the press. As we in the real world have no such Dark Knight to protect us, this means that people do not know about the dangers posed by the chemicals in cosmetics. True, the website that the group presented does have the information that people need to know, but many people are pretty much unaware of its existence. So who should go about the task of informing the public? Is it the responsibility of consumers to know what they're buying? Or the government to protect its citizens? Or the companies to protect their customers?

I tried to embed the video but it didn't work, but check out the following website and watch the clip. Also, just copy and paste as I cannot for whatever reason link anything ever.

www.thestoryofstuff.org/cosmetics

There is a video that is about 10 minutes long that is pretty easy and accessible to understand, and has links to a ton of other related issues such as bottled water. Let me know what you think of the site if you check it out. I just stumbled across it earlier tonight and have yet to check everything out.

I remember being overwhelmed and skeptical when I began learning about the way we are being sold potentially unsafe food and products. I realize it is in many ways unavoidable, and it is just yet another thing to worry about in our overstimulated, over-informed, over-worried state of being. However, it is important to know that there are many power dynamics that operate in order to keep us uninformed and loyal consumers to products we don't necessarily need and could choose to avoid if we were given the information.

I do not think that the responsibility can fall to the consumer only and that it should not be framed as individual choice, as this removes the very real damage that disproportionately compounds already marginalized communities both in the US and abroad (the term 'environmental racism' can be applied here).There is the issue of affordability (which comes into play both for affordable and accessible healthy food as well) in which chemical-free often means more money spent on natural products.

A lot of people seemed surprised on with the ethics presentation on Monday about the cosmetics industry. I first learned about this during an Ecofeminism course I took in about 2004 at Minneapolis and Technical College, taught by Carol Hogard. This woman was fantastic, and forever changed my life in pushing me to see how blind we can be do the injustices that do have systemic roots and that we are all a part of.

We understood environmental justice as a complex issue in which the relationship of humans to the earth and nonhumans is one of domination, control, and exploitation of resources. Destroying natural ecosystems and polluting environments stands strongly as something that should be contested, especially when much the destruction is being done by cutting corners and the dictates of unchecked capitalism.

This last point is important, as low-income and poor communities across the globe are disproportionately and systematically chosen as sites to build factories and dump toxic waste, as it is a matter of economics to do so. Also, as was explained during the presentation, many chemicals are found to mimic estrogen and/or can affect fetuses which make this a particularly female issue. How is it that the right for corporations to pursue profit can be prioritized/ valued over the forms of life that we are (or depend on or are inseparable from)?

What are your thoughts about the cosmetics industry (as well as other harmful practices) being unregulated as to what they use and disclose to consumers about the known effects of some chemicals used in their products? Can the 'epistemologies of ignorance' be used to explain the politics of how such a thing can and does continue to occur? Should agencies that claim to protect public health such as the FDA be expected to inform us or even mandate labeling for consumers? How is it that corporations set up their own regulatory agencies, and only require voluntary participation in meeting the standards set forth (as the video states: 'making the rules and then deciding whether or not to follow them')

Lastly, at the very end of this clip the Precautionary Principle is mentioned. This was essentially what my ecofeminism class concluded as both a personal and institutional solution that is so easily grasped and neutral, yet powerful and radical given that as it stands the United States have not yet adopted this as practice. It is simply that since we don't know the long term effects of these chemicals (or technologies such as GMOs, depleting non-renewable natural resources, among other topics of debate) that we should be cautious until we do know. Right?

Monday's presentation from the Cosmetics group got me thinking. I am thinking about cosmetics' role in our culture and their effects on all of society, but most importantly, on women. The Cosmetics group did a great job explaining the health hazards of cosmetics, along with the compulsion that women feel to wear makeup because of an impossible beauty ideal created by our culture. I think we can all agree that the media plays a huge role in this because of its pervasiveness into all aspects of our lives; media has become a major component of the "spectacle" that has become our culture. (Do I need citations in blog posts? It's from Debord's Society of the Spectacle) We, as women, absorb these images of manipulated bodily perfection and, hard as we may try, are unable to block them all out without internalizing them. Also, maybe as a result of this internalization or maybe not, a lot of us use and consume cosmetics. The larger question is what to do about it? Should I just stop wearing makeup as a rejection of sexual objectification of women? ...Coloring my hair? ...Wearing clothes that make me look nice? ...Participating in mainstream culture whatsoever?

I ask these questions rhetorically because I think there are other, more effective solutions than we as individual women turning our bodies once again into the battleground. So instead of placing the center of debate on my body and those of other women, I propose putting the central focus on alternative ways of fighting the impossible, male & heterosexually defined, harmful definition of beauty on those who disseminate it at a larger level.

Here are a few cool ways that people have targeted these harmful messages on a larger scale:

1. No Makeup En Masse: This woman decided to go without makeup for a week and gained a huge following of other women who abstained from makeup for a week. More people more power! Combining efforts helps strengthen the cause. Plus, a week is much more doable than trying to swear something off forever.

Girls at a Texas high school have decided to be makeup free every Tuesday.

2. No Photoshop: Photoshopped images are terrible! Well, when the media uses them in place of real people and we see them all the time they are.

This company refuses to use photoshop in its ads and its catalogues.

This is an alternative website to get your funny feminist news and celebrity gossip from that doesn't use photoshop.

Does anyone else have some other ways to effectuate change on a larger level than just not wearing makeup/using cosmetics? Or does anyone see a hole in my reasoning? Other ideas and possibilities are always welcome because this objectification of women has got to stop at point, somehow.

After completing our first week of ethics presentations, I want to make sure our class keeps a few things in mind, in order to move forward more productively:

All of the topics selected are contentious, and this is precisely the point: from day one of this course, we've discussed how science is an ever-evolving dialogue, an imperfect process in a quest for greater understandings of our shared world.

These presentations discuss a wide range of topics from many perspectives. While some of you have chosen to present "pros," "cons," and "neutrals" of a subject, we have to remember that the benefits and drawbacks of a particular topic should not be conflated with whether you're "for" or "against" it. When we make simplistic conclusions about an issue, we not only create unnecessary polarization, but we also foreclose the possibility for other insights to be revealed. The truth is, there are positives and negatives to most things in life, but ethical concerns are raised in science when we weigh questions of power:
...Who has the ability to control a scientific process and why? Who will benefit and who won't?
...What, exactly, makes this topic so contentious to some? What fears, anxieties, traditions, ideologies, does it uphold or threaten?
...What kinds of relationships should we demand between science and academies, industries, and governments?
...And though it will always be imperfect, impartial, and finite, how can we create BETTER ways of practicing science, science that promotes more livable ways of relating across the spectrum of races, genders, species, etc. for generations to come?

Finally, a note of caution on creating a classroom climate conducive to healthy debate, for there have been moments when productive questions have been shut down. Once we understand that:
...no topic presented is "bad" or "good,"
...that the point of these exercises is NOT to reach a final conclusion or resolve the debate,
...and that multiple considerations, in multiple contexts, must be weighed in order to grasp these complex issues,
we can move forward as a class asking more questions, becoming more aware and critical knowers, consumers, voters, and researchers, and creating a space where varying viewpoints can be aired. Remember, if critiques are raised, they can be harnessed to develop better ways of employing whatever scientific development we're considering, making it more effective, more sustainable, and more liberatory.

These presentations are meant to inform our class on important topics that may be brand new to some. But more importantly, they are meant to showcase ethical dilemmas. Keep this in mind, whether you present in the upcoming classes or listen as an active audience member. What larger concerns do these topics raise, especially within a context of feminist science?