Photo courtesy of FemmeToxic.

Many of the popular resources available on cosmetic products and toxic ingredients come from the United States. They include some useful databases and backgrounders, but their conclusions seem at times periphery to us Canadians. Up here, we regulate our cosmetics differently!

You may be happy to then know that FemmeToxic, a Montreal-based campaign for safe cosmetics, launched last summer. Its goal: to inform Canadian girls and young women about the chemicals found in cosmetic ingredients.

FemmeToxic is hosted by Breast Cancer Action Montreal, a cancer prevention organization. The Girls Action Foundation also partners the project, and operates to promote girls “to speak out, build skills, and create action on issues that are important and real to them.”

“Youth specifically are more susceptible to toxins in the environment, at that stage in development, so they decided to launch this project,” Angela Day said, the safe cosmetics campaign assistant.

Originally posted on TheThunderbird.ca. Read the rest here.

Sometimes trying to figure out how to find safe personal care products and what ingredients to avoid can be overwhelming. Depending on where you look, you might even find conflicting information that will only aggravate the headache you’ve developed in the process of your search. Below, I’ve provided a list of helpful resources that break down the details for us in a palatable way.

Health Canada’s Consumer Product Safety website on Cosmetics and Personal Care. This website is crucial if you want to know how cosmetics are classified and regulated in Canada. It also provides a “Hotlist” of ingredients banned from use.

Guide to Less Toxic Products developed by the Environmental Health Association of Nova Scotia.
This site compiles an extensive list of common hazardous chemicals found in beauty products and explains why they are problematic. It also ranks and recommends a wide range of natural product brands for eye and face make-up, hair care, feminine hygiene and much more.

Originally posted on TheThunderbird.ca. Read the rest here.

What’s in your make-up kit? And how many of those beauty products do you use in a day? Give or take a few products, my usual morning regime involves body lotion, tinted moisturizer, mascara, hair mold, and sometimes bronzer or eyeliner if I’m feeling so inclined. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of other women, particularly young women, also reach my daily average.

What concerns me is that most beauty products contain parabens, a type of preservative used to extend the shelf life of cosmetics and prevent them from developing mold. But, what concerns me more are recent studies suggesting parabens may pose human health risks.

Originally posted on TheThunderbird.ca. Read the rest here.

Picture from flickr user kuuipo1207

The living’s green and pretty in Vancouver, again named “the most liveable city in the world.” Just about every cosmetic product comes in a greenwashed or health-friendly option: there’s paraben-free lotion, deodorant without aluminum, and nail polish sans formaldehyde! I’ve spent a year trying to pick safe, personal care products that work, and I’m still confused about which ones I should avoid.

Sarah Dickson, the body care buyer at Capers Whole Foods Market in Kitsilano, puts it to me simply, “I’d like to be able to eat all my make-up if I had to.” Our bodies absorb most of what we put on our skin, and we can’t always break down that material she explains. If it’s not safe to eat, don’t put it on you is the idea.

The problem is many people don’t understand the meaning of the often hard to pronounce substances found on long ingredients lists, let alone their potentially harmful effects.

Originally posted on TheThunderbird.ca. Read the rest here.

(via flickr user masaaki miyara)

Over two weeks have passed since the death of mystified literary icon, J.D. Salinger, the author of The Catcher in the Rye and creator of its angst-ridden and much-loved antihero Holden Caulfield. Headlines and obituaries emphasize Salinger’s reclusive and secretive lifestyle, mentioning diehard fans’ wild goose chases for the man in his small town of Cornish, New Hampshire.

Although Mikki Halpin at Salon.com says she understands the appeal to see Salinger as a “higher intellect who has rejected it all,” she also finds this portrait of him “curious,” suggesting it conveniently bars the public from facing some uneasy assertions about the late writer’s relationships with women.

(more inside…)

I hope everyone is enjoying the new year! I’m usually ‘anti’ any sort of holiday, even if it’s not religious, but the fresh start of a new year is quite tantalizing. Anyone have any good resolutions to share?

Also, here’s a video review of the film Provoked:

Watch Provoked for free online, here.

Order the book, here.

It’s finally Friday, and that means another edition of my bi-weekly video review!

Comment and rate it, even if you hate it!

“Racism (and Misogyny) in the Elevator” video:

Overnight Robert Pattinson, star of Twilight, has pretty much became one of the sexiest badboys under thirty thanks to all those closeted and non-closeted teenage girls.

http://movie.moldova.org/actor/eng/1500/2/

In an interview for Rolling Stone magazine he tells, “I get letters that say, ‘I’m going to kill myself if you don’t watch High School Musical 2 with me.’” A mother has even asked him to bite her baby’s head!

Pattinson’s contradiction with the opposite sex is most intriguing:

The stuff I find attractive in women I always regret finding attractive. I always like a kind of madness in a woman, and when they are really, really strong. And they’re the worst - mental strong women! via Perez Hilton

Maybe some of us at Shameless have a chance with him after all? ;)

During memorial periods for the Montreal Massacre, the concept of feminism seems to receive a little bit more mainstream media airtime than usual. Well, maybe not if you count happenings such as the whole Sarah Palin debacle, but generally speaking, feminism takes a back seat if it’s not being dragged under the car itself.

This weekend, two particular yet absolutely polarized columns questioning the future of feminism caught my attention. One was authored by anti-feminist apologist Barbara Kay of the National Post and the second by Sarah Ghabrial, a co-founder of The Miss G__ Project for Equity in Education.

(more inside…)