The Truth about Lipstick

Photo by ShutterStock Footage

I have stopped using lipstick. Sounds harsh right? Well, it wasn't an easy decision and it wasn't sudden either. It was very gradual. I picked up a Burt's Bee's Lip Shimmer in Raisin a couple of years ago tried it liked it fairly well and kind of forgot about it. Well time went on and I started noticing that when I used Wet 'n' Wild lipstick my lips would be dry and cracked the following day... it didn't really seem like a big deal to me at the time, so I started using what in my mind was "nicer" brands such as Maybelline, CoverGirl, Revlon etc...

 The dryness wasn't as bad with these brands but is was still there. So then life started picking up a bit more and makeup took a bit of a backseat and I wasn't using lipstick hardly at all mostly Sundays for church(which meant it wore off right after I got home and had breakfast... so it was on my lips maybe two hours tops). Well when things started settling down I started doing full face makeup again and the dryness was there again but not as bad as WnW days so no big, or so I thought.

As it turns out one day I was talking with my Mom(who is a retired RN) about how I was noting that my jaw would kind of feel "locked up" every now and again and how I was wondering if maybe it could be from the faces I made while applying lipstick and mascara(you know what I mean ...like the picture above)? She thought that unlikely but was concerned about the makeup I was using, as she said that the"locked up" feeling in my jaw was a sign of allergic reaction and that it was quite serious in that the reaction was so close to my airways that if the allergy was to worsen my throat could close! Eeep! That had me pretty freaked out.

So you would think I threw away all my makeup right then and there right? If you thought No Way! you were right. I didn't throw out my lipsticks, and I didn't use them either(and during that time of not using them I stopped having any jaw issues). They just sat there teasing me with all their pretty colors. And that's how it stayed for awhile, until the season switched and I swapped handbags and found that old Burt's Bees Lip Shimmer that I mentioned above. I was ecstatic! I tried it out again, and while it was a little old( I didn't what to go out and buy a new one just to find out it would give me the same trouble as my current lipsticks) it worked just fine. Better than fine even. Since it is formulated with their chapstick there wasn't even any drying issues, let alone what I came to find out was that allergic reaction.

I'm still not sure what it was in those lipsticks that bothered me, but I do know one thing, our bodies are too precious to harm with these harsh chemicals! Even though it can be cheaper and easier to go that route it just isn't worth it.




I recently started looking into what they are putting into cosmetics and found a few interesting articles I'd like to share:
http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/lipstick-ingredients-020410

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/lipstick-ingredients-what-is-lipstick-made-of.html

http://allnaturalcosmetics.com/article/3

And then there is this neat site that has all cosmetics listed by the amount of harmful ingredients and by how much the companys are unwilling to disclose(which leads one to think they are trying to hide things from us, the consumer).