Are you familiar with the concept of “clean beauty”? It’s referring to the skincare market that’s differentiated itself from the rest of the industry because of the ingredients incorporated into its products: they’re real and non-toxic ingredients. otherwise known as “clean”. Clean beauty didn’t stir up quite the raucous that clean eating did, but it’s certainly made enough of an impact to gain traction and is well worth our time in discussing it.
What’s the Point of Clean Beauty? Why Does it Exist?
Unlike the food industry which has pretty tight regulations, the beauty industry is largely unregulated. Think about that for a moment: the personal care industry has just one single page of regulatory rules that has not been updated since 1938. What does this mean? It means that the industry itself is nothing short of a large free-for-all: do what it takes to make a product that smells good, lasts long, and is relatively cheap, even if it means slowly chipping away at the health of consumers after consistent daily use. Toxic ingredients like carcinogens and endocrine disrupters run rampant in the majority of beauty products available on the shelves of your local drug store, and while some companies devise clever branding schemes to distract consumers from the truth, some are downright deceitful as they include terms like “Natural”, “Green”, “Eco” right there on the label, knowing full that there’s no literal enforceable regulatory definition for those terms.
The concept of clean beauty was created out of a drive for holistic health– a concept that’s been manipulated to seem irrelevant in the personal care industry. much more than, say, in the food industry. Consider the move toward clean eating, and that a huge part of the world was able to get behind the movement to only consume the healthiest ingredients, and to recognize genetically modified, chemical, preservative packed, and non-organic items as nothing short of poison. If you think about it, the only thing that the beauty industry lacks in comparison? The regulatory paperwork to say what’s good, and what’s bad. Otherwise. wouldn’t it make sense that a toxin is a toxin whether it goes in via our mouths or via our pores?
Clean beauty features real products made from real ingredients; there are no toxins, there are no poisons, there’s nothing questionable in them to compromise holistic health.
Why Doesn’t Everyone Get On Board?
One would think that all of this information is more than enough to get people on board. Carcinogens are closely linked to cancer, endocrine disrupters will cause hormone problems that turn your world upside down, chemicals and preservatives slowly poison the body over time. what more is there to understand? The lack of regulation is one huge reason there hasn’t been as large of a push in clean beauty as there has been in clean eating. Additionally, clean products are typically more expensive, because companies aren’t using chemicals and preservatives to cheapen the product. Factor in the lack of concentrated, believable marketing and the price of the product that feels irrelevant because of a lack of meaningful marketing? You can easily see why it hasn’t quite gained the traction that it fully deserves.
We believe the regulatory issues will change the more people push back and begin to change the landscape of the beauty industry by spending their money on truly clean products. Until then? The very best thing you can do, other than maximizing your holistic health by consuming only clean products, is to have a conversation about it when the opportunity arises, and hopefully, change someone else’s outlook.
