There’s a psych term—”compassion fatigue”—that I’m going to borrow for the purposes of this post. What it typically refers to is the burnout experienced by caregivers: people who spend their lives making other people’s lives more manageable, and I’m not sure there’s more honorable work out there. For our purposes, though, we’re going to give it a new meaning. Something like:

“The world is so messed up, in so many ways, that sometimes I feel like there’s nothing I can actually do about any of it.”

Except you can! You totally can. If there’s one thing the last year and a half has shown us, it’s that the little guy isn’t taking it sitting down anymore. As everyone knows, there have been massive uprisings all over the world—many of them inspiring, a few downright baffling, and some of them tragic, too. It’s no wonder people feel a little hopeless sometimes, or if not hopeless than maybe helpless. But Pollyanna over here is a big believer in the idea that change starts with one person, and while you might not be able to move mountains alone—or, at the very least, stop people from blowing them up to extract coal from them—it doesn’t mean it’s time to throw in the towel. It’s true we can’t control the political and economic forces that create most of these situations in the first place, and I’m not suggesting we flatten the truth in order to make ourselves feel better about what awesome do-gooder citizens we are for taking small actions—but I do think small actions, when noticed by other people, beget other small actions. Sometimes, momentum builds. Sometimes, good things come of this.

And so we want to know: What in the world at large—and remember that includes your own backyard as well as your own medicine cabinet or makeup bag—are you the most fired up about? If you can also share what you do, or would like to do, about it, be our guest.

I’ll go first.

I can be a little promiscuous when it comes to my passions. I don’t love ’em and leave ’em—the issues that get me the most engaged have been with me for a very long time—it’s just that there are several of them. Plus, I’m admittedly pretty emotional by nature (this can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the circumstances), so I often encounter news things I care about (and maybe cry about) but don’t know what to do about. But I’m always looking for more effective ways to be proactive about the things I care about most. For me, so far anyway, that has come down to writing about stuff and sharing information.

Here are my two big ones right now:

The ingredients in cosmetics. What I do about that is…well, it’s what we do here every day. Education, and education done in a fun way, is what we’ve decided is the best way to spread the word and help people out. Women and men sharing information about making healthy, safe and environmentally responsible choices—what could be better? And our beloved readers are a huge part of that, since we’re stealing your tips all the  time.

What’s happening in Tibet. Off topic for a beauty blog! If you aren’t hip to it, you can read more about it here, here, here and many other places. Or you might just set up a Google alert, if it’s of interest to you. Because this is such a hugely underreported story, all I can think to do about it at this point is tweet about it and mention it here. I’m working on what else I could do about it. In the meantime, I was happy when I got an email the other day from an old friend telling me he’d never given much thought to Tibet but was now obsessively following what’s going on simply because he saw a few mentions of it on Twitter. Twitter is annoying! Also useful, though.

The truth is, there are many others, and they run the gamut from what’s going on right now with reproductive rights, to the sorry state of public housing, to the fact that fancy restaurants still have bluefin tuna on their menus—but I’m not doing much about those issues right now so I’ll bite my tongue.

What about you? What issue or cause are you the most fired up about right now?

Maybe it was the picklebacks my boyfriend made me drink last night at the Super Bowl party,* or the fact that my horoscope told me it was a good time for a detox,** but I woke up today contemplating cleanses.

Truth be told, I’m not a fan. I’m of the (well-researched) mind that our bodies, properly treated, do a very good job ridding themselves of “toxins,” and that good nutrition means eating three squares and snacking—not starving yourself with expensive juices, raw foods, or packets of mysterious powder.

It’s not to say I don’t like expensive juice and raw food, and back when Alexandra and I lived together in our little bachelorette pad in Montreal, we would occasionally do juice cleanses with our two other roommates. The four of us would loll about reading magazines and talking about how hungry we were, and when the three days were up, we’d feast on vegetarian food. I did it because they were doing it, but I’ve not done one since, and that was more than 10 years ago.

Forgetting for a second that some cleanses are downright dangerous, am I missing something here?

It’s not that I don’t get the impulse. Like finally donating that pile of jeans you don’t wear or deleting exes from your phone, the urge to purge can be a healthy one. It’s a way of saying to yourself I’m done with that, it’s time to start fresh. I’m not really in that headspace right now, but since we’ve been talking a lot about what it takes for us to feel our best, I’m going to start my version of a cleanse: Committing to doing the things that make me feel my best—and actively avoiding the crap that doesn’t.

Because let’s get cheesy for a second: It’s not just about feeling your best, but also acting your best out there in the world. For me to do my best work, to be kind and patient with myself and others, to write blog posts that don’t suck and be present and happy in my day to day life, I need to take care of number one. Probably, I’m thinking, so do you.

So here’s my cleanse idea: A plant-based diet with a little fish (but definitely not this one), lemon water, lots of sleep, consistent meditation (tips, as always, are here), dark chocolate, as well as three whole pieces of fruit, daily—but also I’m going to do things that I find fun—because that’s a big part of it, too. I’m going to do this for a week, maybe two, and see what happens.

See what I did there? I came up with a cleanse where I get to eat a lot and have a ball. What about you? Do you do cleanses?
Do you like them? Tell, tell.

* If you have never had one and you do drink alcohol, do yourself a favor and get on that. Also, he didn’t really make me.

** Obviously this is the real reason.

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Surprise! It’s 2012 and we are trying new things.

Continuing love-thyself-for-Valentine’s-Day theme, we have teamed up with a fashion designer we love to create two little gift sets for women who are in need of some serious pampering—or who just love pretty things!

Society for Rational Dress has been a longtime favorite brand of ours, so when founder Corinne Grassini approached us about doing a partnership, we got pretty excited. The SFRD name was inspired by a Victorian anti-corset women’s movement called the Rational Dress Society, and Corinne has made female partnerships central to her brand’s philosophy. We obviously love that.

While we don’t fancy ourselves fashion designers, we really enjoyed brainstorming and giving our input to help create this organic hemp nightie (isn’t it pretty?) and relaxing lavender, rose petal and chamomile face pillow. We wanted to offer something that encouraged women to pamper themselves, as well as to take timeouts from their busy days.

The items are being sold as a set of all three (third item being…the book!), or if the nightie’s not your style, you can get just the eye pillow with a book as well. And of you already own a book? Great! Gift it to a friend! Though this one is different from a conventional Friday Deal (BTW that one is still running!), as our readers you get a special discount.

You’ll get an additional 10% off the sets and anything else on the Society website when you enter the NMDL promo code. Because this is sort of an experiment, these were all made in very limited quantities. So if you like it, get ‘er!

And P.S. While we can all agree the model is a total beauty, we also know for a fact this nightie also looks good on girls with some curves. Which matters! Just sayin’!

You probably could have predicted this one, yeah? It’s almost V-day, and whether or not you think that holiday is a Hallmark sham, we can all get behind 1) love, 2) the delicious organic chocolates from Wei of Chocolate, and 3) the bewitching blends (including new perfumes!) from Lotus Wei. So this week we have a double deal from these two very special companies.

Here’s how it works: Get a 15% site-wide discount on any of the delicious, flower-essence infused, meditative chocolates from Wei of Chocolate. Nom nom nom.

And get a 20% site-wide discount from Lotus Wei—be sure to check out the infinite love products (one of our favorites, and truly a love potion). Two deals, two sites, lots of love.

Promo code, as always: NMDL. Deal lasts till next Thursday, February 9, at midnight.

Now, in keeping with our new tradition: If you have tried the chocolates and/or scents from either of these lines, please include your own little review in the comments!

If you have no idea what we’re talking about, as in “what the heck are flower essences, and why would they be in chocolate or anything else?” please go back to previous posts like this one and this one or this one, just to name a few. We’re obviously huge fans.

Have a love-filled weekend.

xo

Smells like love: Back by popular demand, today we have a wonderful deep-discount deal from Essence of the Vali. This offer is our favorite kind: a site-wide reduction for our readers that lets you buy whatever your little heart desires. But with all the beating hearts just around the corner for Valentines Day you may want to check out the Passion gift set: a spicy-sweet combination of some of our favorites oils (notably Ylang Ylang, citrus, ginger… yum!). Gift it, ask for it, or treat yourself!

Onto the deal! Get any of your favorite scents, mists, and oils from Essence of the Vali for a whole 20% off when you use the promo code NMDL. Wham bam. Going through until next Thursday at midnight.

And if you ordered from E of V last time, be sure to drop a comment telling us and fellow readers what you liked (or didn’t). As most of you know, we are not the only reviewers with opinions on this site!

We hope you had a wonderful week. We did. Alexandra made a speed trip to New York for work, so us girls got to have a night of fun with some of our favorite friends. Let’s put it this way… we didn’t exactly wake up the next day looking like this, but it was well worth it. Here’s to a restful weekend.

Last night over a glass of wine, my friend announced he was on day 1 (and take 2) of a new diet. Well, not a diet, exactly, and I’m paraphrasing here, but he said something to the effect of: “When I cut out dairy, processed sugar and wheat, I wake up every day feeling better than I’ve ever felt in my life.”

Gah. I want to feel like that! Who doesn’t want to feel like that, frankly. But I don’t, and I notice it most when I first wake up in the morning.

Do most people wake up feeling awesome? Seriously?

The thing is, I would wager that most of us know exactly what we need to do to feel our best.

• We know how much sleep we need *
• We can list the foods we digest most easily **
• We can identify the habits that make us feel like garbage and, in theory anyway, we could not do those things ***
• We know what kind of exercise our body craves ****
• We understand who make us feel all happy and glowy  *****

I certainly do, I just don’t always do it—and how boring would life be if I did. (That’s what I tell myself, anyway—which might be part of the problem?) The truth is, I am a sucker for a good time, I’m pretty spontaneous, but I’m also someone who feels best when I stick to a routine. Because as anyone over the age of 30 knows, good times often come at a cost. And that feeling of waking up totally rested and relaxed? You can’t beat it. So I’m going to embark on a mission to have more mornings like that, and fewer when I wake up with a four-letter word in my head just because the alarm went off.

Now tell us, and be brutally honest, please: Do you wake up every day feeling refreshed? If so, I am jealous, but I want to know your secrets. Share, share.

* 8 hours

** Vegetables, cooked or raw, gluten-free grains, some fish, yummy good fats

*** I’m not telling

**** Vigorous yoga, hiking, boot camp drills in the park

***** You know who you are, and I thank you!

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Confession: Sometimes I sort of miss phthalates.

Ugh, OK, I don’t really mean that. But you know that feeling when you smell something so amazing—a flower, a candle, your boyfriend’s deodorant—and then all you want to do is smell that thing all the time? Well, phthalates can help with that. They can also help bend your gender, though, so we avoid products that contain them—which means almost anything with synthetic fragrance.

As such, I’ve been on the hunt for a perfume I could love as much as my old favorites. A signature scent, if you will. My criteria has obviously changed over the years: I don’t want a perfume to last all day—I find that weird; but I’d like it to be portable so that I can reapply it before I go out at night; I’d also like it to be 100% organic, or as close to that as possible; and I want it to elicit as many or more “You smell greats” as my Chanel and Hanae Mori used to.

Tough! But not impossible.

In the last three years, I have tried many, and loved few. Alexandra and I have both experimented with using essential oil treatments as perfume. She loves Hope Gillerman’s, and we both still adore Tata Harper’s Irritability Treatment; I love Honore des Pres for its luxurious and playful packaging and nuanced scents (Vamp à NY and Love Coconut are my favorites). There have been others. And now…there’s a new favorite in town.

Lotus Wei has started making perfume! And at $45, it’s affordable! And portable! And organic! And…transformative? Ben oui!

Like all Lotus Wei’s products, these perfumes contain aromatherapy and flower essences, meaning they’re double-teaming you for best results. I have already professed my love for the Infinite Love Energy Mist, and I dose my friends with the Elixirs all the time. Now, thanks to the unbelievably delicious smelling perfume, I can wear it all day long, too.

So Infinite Love is the one I’ve been wearing. It has rose, and mandarin and honey, starting out as a mix of really bright—not heavy or musty—rose with citrus, and it quickly warms into a sexy, caramelly smell as it blends with my own skin. It’s garnered a lot of questions, comments and, yup, compliments, and because it’s got the flower essences in there, I feel like it’s working on a subtler level as well. Mmmmm!

So let’s toss this topic back to you guys. Have you found YOUR signature scent?

(And guys, get excited, because we’ve started calling in some aftershave and colognes as well. Expect some reviews from our boy testers soon!)

Here’s a thing we’d like to do: Challenge you guys—again—but this time it’s going to be all about food. We’re bringing back an early idea we launched here but never initiated as a formal challenge because this blog was just a baby then, and we hadn’t started our Challenge series yet.

Get excited: This is one is fun, easy, and rewards you with glowing skin.

A while back, a friend mentioned a study he’d seen showing that Japanese farmers who ate on average 20 fruits and vegetables a day were in significantly better health than those who ate just 10, even when controlling for other factors. They lived longer, had fewer health events and felt better. We’d wager they looked pretty good too.

Intuitively this makes sense, and it’s partly why we devoted two chapters in the book to food and lifestyle. We’re big believers in the idea that you can’t just slather on products and expect to look your best. You also need to eat avocados, drink plenty of water, sleep a lot, have sex, have fun, exercise and commit to relaxation in some form or another (preferably the sober kind, at least some of the time).

We’ve been talking a bit about resolutions here, and we’ve been (mostly) keeping up our Meatless Monday Inspiration posts, so how about we put those two together and eat more veggies! And fruit.

And we’re making it easy. A bite of anything that contains a fruit of vegetable, even if somewhat adulterated, counts for one point.

Half an apple counts, and so does the garlic you crushed into your pasta sauce*. And, like, if you eat a greek yogurt with the gooey raspberries at the bottom, well, ew, but that counts! Even better would be yogurt with whole raspberries, but that’s the thing with this challenge: You can fake it to make it. Cool? Great.

Now who’s in?

Some rules: Don’t cheat.

Instructions: For seven consecutive days, consume at least 10 different fruits or vegetables per day. Ten total: You decide how many of those you want to be fruits and vegetables. Then write us an email at nomoredirtylooks (at) gmail (dot) com with NOMNOM in the subject line, and include your first name and location, written thusly “Siobhan, Brooklyn, NY” and a brief description of how you felt at the end of your seven days. Send this to us by the end of the day Wednesday, January 18th.

Prize: We’re still working on a prize, but it’ll be awesome as always. Stay tuned. We’ll post when we have it locked and loaded.

Special favor: Help us make sure this awesome. Tell your friends on Twitter, Facebook, at the gym or at the bar. Friend us, follow us, and then RT us, or whatever. Spread the word!

The reason for the challenge: See above. It’s healthy. You’ll glow. And you’ll feel better. Also, when you turn life into a summer camp challenge, and you do it with other people, it’s way more fun.

Good luck! Share your clever veggie- and fruit-loading tips in the comments. Ten is a lot, but it’s not that hard. Bon appetit!

* Yes, we know there’s some debate about whether or not garlic is actually a vegetable, but we’re not sticklers here…and it’s good for you!

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Well, my boy has a bit of a problem, in any case, and I need your help finding him a good, um, boysturizer.

First, let me back up: Despite the fact that I do this for a living and can be a bit of a zealot (“Do you know what is in that?!”), this is something he has decided he wants to do (mostly) on his own. He’s switched his shampoo and conditioner, uses my Tom’s toothpaste, and is super supportive of what we’re up to over here. But after a couple of attempts to switch his face lotion to something a little less…Clean & Clear, we’re sort of stuck.

He likes his J&J moisturizer because it isn’t greasy, absorbs well and doesn’t leave any film on his skin. It also doesn’t smell like a girl, which is a bonus.

Now, I know most skincare lines are unisex, but if we’re being honest we all know that most of them smell like candy, fruit or flowers—and he doesn’t want anything like that. He also doesn’t want something that feels oily, which, hey, I get! It took me a long time to love the feeling of plant oils on my skin, and some people never get into it. Finally, it can’t feel filmy on his skin.

So far he’s tried Organic Apoteke Active Face Gel, which was too acidic and caused his face to turn red. The redness quickly faded, and with it a desire to ever try it again (which works well for me, frankly, since I only have half a bottle of it left and the company appears to be on hiatus!). Next, he tried Dr. Alkaitis’ Organic Day Cream, which is aloe-based but has shea butter high up on the list. This lotion feels lovely on my skin, but it was way too heavy for him, leaving him with that dreaded “coated” feeling. Also, it sort of smells like a natural version of the gum you get in baseball card packets when you’re a kid. To me this is a plus; to him, not so much.

So we turn to you:

Men, it’s time to stop lurking and share your skincare secrets. Women, tell us what your boyfriends, man friends and husbands are using. And if you’ve tried something yourself that you think fits the bill, weigh in. Let’s find him something that will make him as happy at that guy up top.

Please and thank you.

Let’s talk about sex, shall we? Ever since the fascinating and instructive conversation we had here on No More Dirty Looks a few weeks ago about going off the pill and the perils therein, there’s been a raging conversation going among some of my girlfriends about what to do about not getting pregnant unless you’re ready.

Some are still on the pill. One is ready to come off it but doesn’t know what to do. Some just use condoms. Some do the pull-out thing. Some track their cycle and are super careful around ovulation but loose the rest of the month. There’s some variety, but not much.

I recently read the new Jeffrey Eugenides book The Marriage Plot (thumbs up, for the most part) and was amused that the lead female is in college and uses a diaphragm. Maybe people still use these, I don’t know, but I certainly don’t know anyone who does, and I get why. There’s a scene in the book where she has to go put it in after they start making out and, well, they’re both sort of bummed about that and they stop. Admittedly, the book was written by a man, and I find it annoying when men complain about the inconvenience of birth control—not that he was complaining! it’s a novel! and her boyfriend was on Lithium!—unless he’s a real prince about using condoms. But there’s no getting around the fact that the diaphragm does seem to me like an especially unpleasant option, requiring either foresight or a “wait right here” moment, both of which can kill the mood. (The book, to be fair, is set in the 1980s.) At the same time, it’s a non-hormonal option, so it’s got that going for it.*

These days, there’s a buffet of safety** options (“I’m a safety girl!”) … right? I know I’m not breaking news when I say they’re all rather imperfect. I mean, no one loves condoms, and most of you who were on the pill had some complaints. Which is why we want to hear from you guys. We were taught about “family planning” in high school, which was a while ago now, and I have to assume there are people out there who have come up with semi-satisfactory systems for themselves, right? I keep hearing amazing things about the non-hormonal IUD, for instance, but then I hear sometimes it makes you spot every day. Point being, we’re curious!

Before we open the floor to you, another disclaimer: We are not doctors or family-planning experts; we’re just women and men chatting about what works, or doesn’t work, for us. You should consult your doctor or health care practitioner before making any changes. Nothing we’ve said here constitutes medical or family-planning advice, and nothing said in the comments should be taken as such either.

Now go ahead and post—anonymously if you want, by all means, and we want to hear from the men around here too: What method, device, drug or strategy do you use to prevent pregnancy?

* Whoever guesses the movie reference without googling will have our undying love.

** Ditto.

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