Siobhan and I just love to self-diagnose. Is it responsible or recommended? Absolutely not. But long before we wrote the book, and got more serious about such things, we’d developed a pretty bad habit of trying to figure out the ins and outs of our beauty and health dilemmas.
Take this website for example: Every time either of us would have a breakout, we’d fire up this Mary’s Herbs site to see what on earth was causing it (our liver? our ovaries?). Chinese medicine says that the face can be used as a diagnostic tool for internal problems. But is it true? Let’s do a little unscientific survey to find out, shall we?
Here’s what we want to know. 1. Where do you break out? 2. Can you associate your breakouts with anything: food, menstrual cycles, partying, etc.?
In our experience cystic acne in the chin area tends to be a product of our menstrual cycles and imbalances in sex and/or thyroid hormones, whereas cheek acne seems more lifestyle related, and breakouts around the mouth appear to be more about digestion. Consider these very loose diagnoses of course. It’s what we have found to be true.
[A note from Siobhan: Example! I've always had clear skin on most of my face, with moderate to bad chin breakouts. Once I got my hormones in check with the help of my endocrinologist, omegas and yoga, my skin cleared up a TON. I still break out sometimes, especially during certain parts of my cycle or if I've been misbehaving, but it's wayyyyy better than it was for almost 10 years—and I don't use any spot treatments other than green tea clay.]
So what about you? Looking forward to your answers.
Very pretty face-mapping drawing via Organic Apoteke
K, so we know that people do all kinds of kind of insane things in the name of beauty, right? Like, we flatiron formaldehyde onto our hair, or wax away our whole shebang, or we have someone spray-gun brown dye onto our naked bodies by a person in a gas mask. We get it, we’ve done some of it, and we understand and do not judge the impulse. It usually starts with “Oooh I didn’t know such a think existed!” and then it’s “OMG you did it? Should I?” Followed by “I deserve this! I’m gonna treat myself!” And the next thing you know you’re butt naked in front of a stranger, and you’re paying a pretty penny for it.
Also, after I heard about the utterly inhumane and revolting pedicure process where fish are forced to eat dead skin off your feet to make them soft, I thought I’d been seriously inured to any further “They do what?” shock. And yet! Today, as I was poking around our Gmail account, I came upon a note from Nicole, a reader, with a link.
Nicole tipped us off to an article in Bazaar about something that there is no delicate way to describe. It’s about a vagina facial. Serious!
Like a steam-exfoliation-extraction facial. On “your private parts. At a spa for 50 bucks.
Some highlights from Alex Kuczynski’s piece:
—”Do you normally use an exfoliant?” she asked my vulva as she performed a mild cleansing under the bright aesthetician’s light.
—After cleansing, Marta applied a triple-action organic scrub, then cleansed again.
—”Look at all these ingrown hairs!” Marta said with a giddy clap of her hands. She got to work plucking and picking and springing free the tiny curled buds, then tweezing them away. She applied a dab of Prince Reigns, a serum that prevents ingrown hairs and razor bumps and also helps with discoloration and hyperpigmentation.
—As an add-on, Haven also offers the Baby’s Bottom, which cleanses, exfoliates, and uses an acid peel to rid your buttocks of acne, scars, and bumps. I’m not going there. [Ed's note, again: Good choice!]
I wish I could write something really smart about this, and build a strong argument about how this is symptomatic of the (literally) douchey advice thrust on women for a way too long about how unclean their genitals are. Because it is that, obviously. And Kuczynski does a nice job weighing some of this stuff in the piece, which you should read. But sex politics aside, hello! Women’s bodies are very delicate little ecosystems, and introducing perfumey, chemically anything down there is always a bad idea. Always. Full stop.
I’ll end with this: Yes, ingrown hairs are a bitch, but you don’t need to spend $50 at a spa to get rid of them. Consider this one more thing you can spend money on but shouldn’t. Because our bodies are miraculous things, and the less we tamper with the natural order of things, the less things go wrong. Trust.
Image via
We are verrrrrry excited to announce this event next weekend in New York City. On November 20, I will be participating in a day of natural beauty at the raw and vegan heaven that is Organic Avenue. On hand will be nutritionists, holistic therapists, herbalists, detox experts, and natural beauty mavens such as myself, Tata Harper and Spirit from Spirit Beauty Lounge. It’s going to be an amazing day and we’d love for you to come.
The focus of the three-hour workshops is inside-out and outside-in beauty and we’re going to answer your questions and talk about food, supplements, juicing, beauty products, makeup, skincare regimens and more. Plus, you know, we’ll all get facials like the one Alie—that’s code for Alexandra—had a few weeks ago, and we’ll get our makeup done.
Seriously, it’s the kind of thing that, if I wasn’t going to be speaking at it, I’d definitely want to attend. I can’t wait to learn from the other amazing women on the schedule.
Here’s the rundown:
INSIDE BEAUTY
* Which foods to eat to enhance beauty from the insides. And which foods to avoid.
* You will learn easy to prepare recipes including different ways of juicing, and what you can do when you need something fast and on the go.
* Which supplements to take daily to support skin health, energy and vitality.
* Ways to detoxify your body for optimum well-being.
OUTSIDE BEAUTY
* Latest natural technologies for real skin care results. What skin care products to look for.
* Which harmful ingredients to avoid and ways to find them.
* Skin care regimens and what to for your skin daily, once a week and once a month.
* Different personal techniques you can do at home
* All-natural make up application
It does cost to attend, but it’s not for nothing. You’ll get a free facial, lots of freebies, amazing advice, and more. You can get your tickets now!
This one is bound to be blazing across the Internet. Yesterday CNN and others reported that Mark Haub—a professor of nutrition, no less—lost 27 pounds over two months eating nothing but Twinkies every three hours. Oh and some Doritos, Oreos and other convenience store fare.
His point? To prove that calories are king when it comes to weight loss: Haub only ate about 1,800 on his junk food regimen, down from about 2,600. Over the course of the experiment he managed to move his BMI from overweight territory into the “normal” category. But here’s what everyone’s talking about: Other indicators of health actually improved too, like his cholesterol levels and so on. Hmmm.
So, here’s what I think we can learn from the Twinkie diet: 1. The dieting industry is full of crap, and I applaud Haub for proving it (though I’m wary of a possible Twinkie diet fad that could emerge). 2. Weight itself plays a huge role in overall health, and this is a funny reminder to us health fanatics that we don’t always have to be so serious about what we eat. Nonetheless, I’d have to be pretty ravenous to eat a Twinkie. 3. This experiment is not healthy! Yes Haub lost weight by cutting calories, and shedding those pounds showed an immediate positive impact on his health, but can you imagine the longterm consequences of this diet? In my unprofessional opinion, he’d be a skinny man with diabetes, terrible mood swings, scurvy and some serious acne.
Haub himself is not out to say Twinkies are good for you, of course. Hopefully that message won’t get too lost in the hoopla about his weight and cholesterol levels. Now that he’s stopped the diet he should probably check out exactly what’s in a Twinkie. Here’s a hint: It has 37 ingredients and very few of them are food.
What do you think about this Twinkie tale?
Here’s part two from Virginia, who is taking us inside her beauty school experience. Yesterday she talked hair and today we’re going to find out what happened when beauty experiments were launched on her face. You can read more of Virginia on her awesome blog Beauty Schooled.
Before Beauty U, I washed my face during my morning shower, slathered on some SPF moisturizer, and left it at that. And my skin was pretty awesome. I got the occasional breakout around my period and kept a tube of benzoyl peroxide on hand to dab on the odd trouble spot (not clean, I know!) but otherwise, I’ve been extremely lucky to have the kind of skin where strangers would stop me in stores and ask me what I used on my face. And be annoyed when I would say “ummm, whatever is in my shower?”
Then, on my very first night at Beauty U, Miss Jenny demonstrated the Daytime Face makeup application using me as the model. She stippled on a thick liquid foundation from the school’s motley cosmetics collection. “I don’t even know what this stuff is,” she said. “I prefer mineral makeup, but we’ll work with what they give us.” My skin looked like it had been spray-painted. I went home and scrubbed it all off the best I could with my random drugstore brand facewash—and woke up the next morning with a pile of monster zits on my forehead. Which proceeded to go forth and multiply all over my face for the next 10 months, because four nights a week, I would have to pile on yet more skanky makeup, cleansers, toners, glycolic peels, mineral masks, you name it.
My skin’s panic attack became the focus of many a class—Miss Jenny forbade me from using what we all agreed was a super questionable liquid foundation, used me to demonstrate the school’s fanciest acne-fighting facial (think masks that smelled like synthetic dog poo and led to yet more breakouts), and even tried zapping my zits weekly with glass electrodes from the high-frequency machine. This is a gadget (like this one) that uses a sinusoidal electric current of 60,000 to 200,000 Hertz frequency to vibrate the water molecules in your skin, producing heat that manufacturers claim will stimulate circulation, oxygenate the skin, and kill acne-causing bacteria. In reality, it does nothing whatsoever except buzz loudly and sting like hell when someone turns the current up too high. I was also everyone’s favorite guinea pig for extraction practice since I had so much to squeeze out. This resulted in my developing an abnormally high pain threshold for pinching.
And I wasn’t the only one struggling with skin troubles. While the teachers liked to attribute my breakouts to my infrequent hair washing, frequent phone use, and not changing my pillow cases often enough, it was a widely accepted fact among the students that the process of learning professional skincare would result in a period of weeks or even months of hardcore skin rebellion. “We’ve all been there,” the senior students would say as they painted the synthetic dog poo mask on my face. “You’ll get better once you can practice on real clients instead of each other.”
Stay tuned for part three tomorrow!
I’m really pretty pink. Of course, there are triggers that worsen it, like standing on my head for too long, or red wine, or sending embarrassing text messages. But even when I wake up after a deeply restful nine-hour sleep, I tend to be a little bit flushed.
For a long time I didn’t really think about it. I didn’t wear much makeup, so color-matching wasn’t an issue, and I grew up around a lot of other Irish kids, so they were kind of pink, too. At some point, though, I started thinking about the color of my skin as a problem that had to be fixed. Indeed, my pink skin had become the thing I hated most about my appearance.
It started when a famous dermatologist, who I went to see for an annual skin exam, walked in the room, took one look at me, and said “Okay, so the rosacea. There’s a new pill out…” as she reached for her prescription pad and started scribbling.
That was the first time my pinkness had been “diagnosed,” and it was the first time it occurred to me that it wasn’t stray blemishes or moles I had to worry about, but my whole entire face.
I’d never heard of rosacea, and the last thing I wanted to do was take a pill for a problem I didn’t even know I had. I left her office feeling horrible (and hideous).
It’s hard to explain, but there is something about being told your whole freaking face is a problem that really kind of stings. Since then, I’ve had makeup artists suggest I prime my entire face with something tinted green; I’ve been prescribed topical steroids; I’ve had estheticians suggest expensive five-packs of “cool” lasers; I’ve had ayurvedic doctors forbid me from eating tomatoes for four months; and I’ve had makeup-counter people point me to lines for women with “rosy undertones” by Clinique or Origins. There are even infomericals on TV for skin like mine.
In our book, we interview Evan Healy, a holistic esthetitian who has a skincare line that we really like. She talks a lot about rosacea, and how common it has become, suggesting that the widespread use of aggressive peels and acids has resulted in an increase in the number of women with red, irritated skin. Even Alexandra, who is anything but pink, battled with redness a few years ago when she was still using acids on her face and getting regular facials.
But here’s the thing. I don’t do that stuff, and I never really did. Over the past two years, I have completely detoxed my skincare regimen, I am incredibly gentle with my face, I am careful about what I put in and on my body, and yeah, sure, my skin has calmed down a little. But it’s still totally pink. And I still have doctors suggesting I fix it with topicals and drugs.
This isn’t life or death stuff, of course, but these are nonetheless the things we all live with—our own impressions of our own appearance, based on personal hangups as well as what we are told is pretty. And for whatever reason, this one has been the hardest for me to make peace with.
And yet…I kind of have. It’s part of what this natural-beauty thing is all about for Alexandra and me. Somehow, along the way, your perspective shifts, and you stop feeling like your hair, or your skin, or your body are things that need to be tamed and molded into submission. You learn to smile when doctors give you bad advice, because you know your skin better than they do, and you trust yourself. And then you go stand on your head for as long as you want, and you eat tomatoes because they’re delicious, and you send those embarrassing text messages. Sure, your face turns pink as hell, except now, you really, truly don’t care.
What has been your biggest hurdle?
Beautiful girl via
Speaking of high fructose corn syrup—oh, excuse me, I mean “corn sugar”—we have our suspicions about what it might do to skin. Is there proof? No. But dermatologists love to say that food has nothing to do with your complexion as they hand you a prescription for industrial-strength benzoyl peroxide.
Don’t get us wrong—we love our french fries as much as the beauties in this pic, and we don’t think they’re to blame for our breakouts. But with all the weird chemicals pumped in food (and you know, all the nutrients stripped out), we know people are having reactions left, right and smack in the center of their faces. Some friends we know break out from wheat, others from dairy or nuts, some from sugar…
So have you noticed any correlation between what you eat and how your skin looks?
Image of hot and hungry gals via
Regular readers will know we’re kind of nuts about baking soda, so Alexandra thought it would be cool to share with everyone just how much you can do with the magical white powder!
Over at GOOD her post just went up. Here’s a sampling:
Even the ancient Egyptians—and what beauty post would be complete without them?—used a compound similar to baking soda as soap. The stuff is antiseptic, antifungal, and lightly exfoliating. It will take the stains off your coffee mug and your not-so-pearly whites, and can be consumed internally to ease your tummy ache. And fridge odors aren’t the only smells it absorbs so don’t turn your nose up, and bring on the baking soda!
Spot-Treat Acne Our favorite natural acne remedy is clay, like this green tea one we swear by. But in a bind, making a little paste from baking soda and water and applying it to an unwelcomed visitor will help dry it out. We don’t recommend this for deep cysts, but for more surface afflictions, it works like a charm.
Cleanse Your Hair If you’re looking to join the ranks of non-shampooers (we know a few), to reduce how often shampoo, or simply to get rid of some product build-up on your roots, look no further than baking soda. Just fill a glass with warm water and dissolve about a tablespoon of baking soda into it. Take that to the shower, and after wetting your hair pour the mixture through. Comb it well before rinsing—your hair will feel a little coated and slippery until it’s fully rinsed out.
And five more, at GOOD.
Illustrations by Brianna Harden
We’d love to share some advice we read today. It was on Vanity Fair’s beauty blog, which we love and read daily, and the advice was care of celebuderm Patricia Wexler, the super-quotable women’s-magazine mainstay who has a line of cosmetics that you couldn’t pay us to use.
This was a list of “did you know?” tips from really famous dermatologists (and one weight-loss expert), all of whom, like Wexler, have their own product lines.
Pat Wexler took on acne, and we’d like to weigh in on the advice she gave.
From the top:
Did you know…that bad luck isn’t to blame for that monster zit on your really important day? It’s stress. Stress increases the cortisol level in our blood, which then increases oil production and clogs pores, which creates a recipe for disaster.
Plus 10! Stress is to blame for a lot of acne. It can trigger some very real and very skin-unfriendly physiological effects. All too often root causes are overlooked in acne treatment, so it’s great to see her get straight to the point here. But wait….
To prevent it, use a good salicylic acid cleanser regularly.
Minus 3! Stress is to blame so…use a salicylic acid cleanser (like, ahem, hers)? How about “try to focus on reducing your stress” and then offer some helpful tips on how to unwind, like turning off your BlackBerry at night, or meditating and doing yoga, or having sex more often? Anyway, even if you go holistic, we understand that often enough you just get a freaking zit anyway (or, like, five). So what to do?
If you feel something coming on, try a topical product with salicylic acid or benzoyl peroxide with an anti-inflammatory ingredient to reduce redness because you don’t have to kill your skin to kill your pimple.
Minus 1,000! Ugh. Benzoyl peroxide. As we have mentioned: BP has been shown it to be free-radical-generating, and it has caused tumors in mice—to say nothing of its skin-peeling harshness. We strongly advise people to stay away from this topical.
We’re not trying to be fight-picky we swear! We just think that there’s a lot of bad acne advice out there. If you want some gentler, more holistic (but still effective) ways to tackle breakouts, you can read some advice here.
Final rating: -993
And we don’t mean Cheetos, though we love them as much as the next guy. We mean like actual, beneficial (or at least slightly less sinful) snacks. If you’ve read our book, you know we have a whole chapter on nutrition, because we believe that food and lifestyle choices are as important as products in how we feel and look (big duhs). So we want to hear from you—what do you eat when you need to calm the monsters that sometimes pop out of your brain (and mouth and face) the week leading up to your period?
We’ve tried a bunch of things, from doubling our doses of evening primrose oil, B12 and omega 3s in an effort to keep our hormones in check, to going raw or vegan for the seven days before. Have you tried anything that works? And what’s your perfect PMS dinner?
Here, I’ll go first. My perfect dinner is olive oil drenched oven potatoes (basically fries, but like, not) with a greek-yogurt-sriracha mix for dipping, spinach and salmon salad loaded with veggies, a side of asparagus and then coconut sorbet if I want dessert. Asparagus is a diuretic, salmon is great for skin and hormones, veggies are just plain good and anything from the fry family is my favorite thing to eat ever. So that satisfies my very strong desire for fats (the good kind!) and salt (the good kind! just kidding) and crunchiness—without making me feel worse.
Y tu?
Street art image from (cc) Flickr user Bluejake
