Honesty is the first step in fighting addiction. So it's high time we admitted to ourselves:we are all addicted to chemistry.
When we enter the best drugstore, the true plague of fertility falls on us. There are creams for everything on the shelves, and the face care products themselves (not to mention colored cosmetics) can take the entire aisle almost from floor to ceiling. Everything is beautifully packaged, neatly arranged and inviting. Just buy another mask to spend money on the tenth shampoo. After all, a spare shower gel has not hurt anyone yet ... Everything has the perfect consistency, a refined fragrance and ... half a Mendeleev table in the composition.
It is enough to look around any room in our home. The kitchen is full of products for washing dishes, descaling kettles, refreshing dishwashers. In the bathroom, corrosive detergents for sanitizing toilets, scrubbing tiles, removing drains, cleaning windows. The rooms have a delicate scent spread by diffusers and scented candles, and the floor sparkles when washed with a special agent.
Seemingly clean, almost sterile. But is it really healthy? At every step, we come into contact with a whole lot of household chemicals, we breathe polluted air, we drink from plastic, we eat processed food. Do we have to additionally rub further doses of mysterious substances into the skin?
Chemicals contained in cosmetics can be deadly (source:public domain).
Self-tanner for the dead man
Now let's consider how often we use antiperspirant, for example. Once a day? Twice? Meanwhile, most of these cosmetics contain aluminum. We also take this element with milk, yoghurt, grains, cheese, flour, sugar, food stored in aluminum cans… Fortunately, most of the aluminum is excreted by our urinary system. What about the rest? It accumulates in tissues and may, for example, contribute to the development of breast cancer.
If we do not pay special attention, we are also exposed to constant contact with formalin. We associate it most with a corpse… and rightly so! This is what preserves the corpses and protects, for example, exhibits (even small mammals) that stand in scientific laboratories and in ordinary school classrooms for studying biology. As long as we are not medical or veterinary students, who learn anatomy on the animals recorded in it, it is better not to inhale it.
This substance is extremely irritating. To the extent that in contact with mucous membranes causes burns, irritates the respiratory tract and eyes, accelerates skin aging and is carcinogenic. So where does the presence of formalin in cosmetics come from? You can find it in nail polishes, self-tanners, hair masks and make-up removers.
Cancer for mother and baby
There are also parabens in skincare products, even those recommended by the Institute of Mother and Child. It is a group of bactericidal and fungicidal substances used in cosmetics as preservative additives. More and more often there is information on the packaging that the product does not contain them. What's all the shout about? Parabens, under various Latin names, can - according to the study of cancerous tumors in female patients in Great Britain - cause breast cancer. Also Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and related substances, i.e. the infamous SLS, are difficult to eliminate from everyday use.
After all, this strong detergent is hidden in many cleansing cosmetics, including expensive pharmacy shampoos, shower gels and, finally, in toothpaste for sensitive teeth. SLS perfectly removes dirt from the skin, but at the same time ... changes its natural pH and disrupts the secretion of sebum. According to researchers from the Medical College of Georgia, SLS that gets into the eyes (and that's not difficult - after all, it is in face wash gels!) Disrupts the process of protein synthesis in them. Not only does it wreak havoc but also slows down the healing process.
Reaching for another nicely packaged and beautifully fragrant product on a drugstore shelf, we don't even think what it's made of. If there is a honeycomb on the box, we think the honey is inside.
Meanwhile, probably our shampoo or shower gel, next to the sweet bee product, did not even stand. As conscious consumers, just like in the case of food, we try to check its composition ... Instead of the Polish names of the products used to create the cosmetic, we have a series of Latin words that tell us absolutely nothing.
There is no "E" lightning a red light in the head, and no warning signs. However, if we decode these enigmatic names with the help of the Internet, it may suddenly turn out that for years we have been washing ourselves in the shower with a mixture of harmful and irritating substances, only with an artificial fragrance. And a sensual soothing label ...
Harmful parabens are even found in cosmetics recommended by the Institute of Mother and Child.
Revolution from a century ago
We must finally stop drowning our bodies in poisons. It will not be an easy revolution. But fortunately we will not have to proceed without preparation. Instead of looking for new, golden means, it's best to reach for… the experiences of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers! They organized their own revolution almost a century ago.
Polish women living in the early twentieth century won the right to vote, but also - the right to work, earn money on an equal footing with men and to arrange their lives in their own way. They defended their own political interests and equality. They promoted sexual education, conscious motherhood and even the right to divorce. In a word:they stopped agreeing to being reduced only to the role of wives and housewives.
Such a "modern woman" of the twenties definitely did not fit the corset, neither the literal one - laced, with underwires that cut into the ribs - nor the exceptionally tight, metaphorical corset of morals and morals. So what did our grandmothers do? They dropped both of them and finally took care of themselves. Thanks to their newfound freedom, taking care of beauty has finally ceased to be something embarrassing. The pre-war photos show beautiful women with perfectly styled hair, manicured hands and radiant complexion. They lived almost a century ago, and yet they often look better than ourselves!
Before the war, women who wanted to dazzle with flawless skin and beautiful hair struggled with the same problem that we face today:how to take care of your beauty without harmful chemicals? The photo and caption are from our newest book, Beauty Without Preservatives.
It is hard to believe. We think:after all, those were such primitive and simple times. Ladies did not have thousands of different care spreads, makeup palettes with dozens of shades, contouring tools and hybrid manicure tools at their disposal ... And yet they had the secret of natural, flawless beauty. What was it about?
The Secret of Beauty
It is not true that in terms of cosmetology, pre-war Poland was a virgin land. New trends - allowing not only great ladies to take care of their beauty, but also ordinary Kowalska - were quickly noticed by doctors and businessmen. The domestic cosmetic industry has developed enormously.
There were beauty institutes in the country (in a way the equivalent of today's spa), specialized cosmetics were produced, and magazines and guides entirely devoted to beauty were published. There were even professional beauty courses. A whole big machine dedicated to hygiene and beauty. But the greatest strength lay in… independence.
Although women's magazines were full of advertisements for cosmetics, treatments and beauty devices screaming at full pages, more than one specialist of that time discouraged their producers from reverence and faith. Ba! Some have even stated that these supposed miracles often do more harm than good.
The authors of beauty guides proposed an alternative - home-made cosmetics. It was not only a safer solution, but also simply cheaper and more accessible. Women deprived of access to drugstores and perfumeries - especially those living in villages and provincial towns - had to cope somehow. They had a choice of buying the right specifics when staying in larger towns, shopping at a traveling salesman, or manufacturing them on their own.
Women from villages and small towns had to somehow cope with the lack of access to cosmetics, or the alternative was to make them yourself (source:public domain).
When it comes to purchasing supplies from a random merchant, it is worth treating the fate of one of the most famous red-haired girls in the world as a warning. Anne Shirley, who lives in a small room in Green Gables, has not been to the city. When she dreamed of using a special cosmetic, she was at the mercy and disfavor of the dealer who showed up at her house.
For a long time she had dreamed of changing her hated hair color, and here was an opportunity. Without even thinking for a moment, she spent all her savings on paint that was supposed to make her hair look wonderfully black. Instead, the hair is… completely green.
Although Lucy Maud Montgomery's book was not compulsory reading in school at the time, our great-grandmothers knew that it was better not to take risks without it. And just prepare your own proven hair dye.
The power of independence
They did the same with soap. For example, in a landed gentry with several to a dozen or so people on a daily basis, they were used up for power. For washing, cleaning, washing hair and body. If the hostess wanted to buy them, she would have to do so in huge amounts. It was much more profitable for her to prepare the soap on her own than to overpay in a pharmacy store.
Especially since the household guides gave her detailed recipes. The list goes on and on. Our great-grandmothers made creams, shampoos and toilet vinegars on their own. When she became skilled at it, they could modify recipes, change smells and textures, adjusting the effects of their cosmetics to their personal needs and tastes.
Many books that taught before the war about beauty were more like those of a little chemist. Our ancestors, however, did not scare us. Although the developed Polish cosmetics industry gave them the opportunity to buy the necessary products, they coped with most of the problems using home remedies. And they were just proud of it. Many of their methods are still valid. They are as successful as they were in 1920 or 1930.
It is really worth using the proven recipes of our great-grandmothers (source:public domain).
In today's era of ubiquitous and unnecessary chemistry, in particular, the recipes of cosmetics that our great-grandmothers mixed in their own kitchens should seem attractive to us. It's worth trying them out. Perhaps self-made products will not be as beautifully packaged as creams from the highest store shelves, and their consistency will not always seem perfect.
However, they will have a major advantage over the store ones. We'll personally decide what's in the face cream jar and shampoo bottle. We will make sure that each ingredient serves us in the best possible way. Convinced that there is something to fight for? So the stirrers in hand!
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Dozens of reliable recipes. Affordable recipes. And this:a fascinating story about how Polish women cared for themselves in pre-war Poland. Buy your own copy of Aleksandra Zaprutko-Janicka's book 'Beauty without preservatives. Beauty secrets of our great-grandmothers. ”