On a chilly March morning in 2018, one hundred women—two from each state—marched up the steps of the Capitol Building. Clad in sleek power suits and designer sunglasses, they topped off their look with bold red lipstick. Balancing handbags in one hand while taking selfies with each other, they laughed and posed for loved ones back home. The side of one of their charter buses was emblazoned with the motto THIS TIME, IT’S PERSONAL.1 Their palpable energy was like that of an army before battle. Or teens exiting a limo on prom night.
These women represented the billion-dollar “clean beauty” company Beautycounter. And they were on a mission: lobby Congress to nix harmful chemicals from personal care products. Specifically, these women came to support the Personal Care Products Safety Act, a bipartisan bill to promote industry transparency and strengthen cosmetic regulations. They were there to educate politicians on “clean beauty,” a relatively new (and shifting) term that refers to products free of any proven or suspected “toxic” ingredients. They wanted to remove “bad” ingredients—be they synthetic or “natural.”
These women were representative of many more. Beautycounter counts more than sixty thousand independent salespeople—called “brand advocates”—who are drawn to the company’s mission. Beautycounter employs a direct retail marketing model (or what some might call multilevel marketing) that could be described as an activist twist on Avon. Consultants sell the products online and peer-to-peer within their communities, persuading others to buy a face wash and also telling them why they need clean beauty. The latter is what inspires many women to get involved. Their mission feels important, as if the power to prevent sickness (or impact legislative change) lies in their ability to off-load an eye shadow palette. It gives them a sense of pride. As one Alabama-based brand advocate—or salesperson—explained, “The example I am setting for my children is immeasurable. When I returned home from D.C., the first thing out of my daughter’s mouth was, ‘Mommy, did you change the world?’”2
“Empowerment” is a word thrown around a lot with this group. The more I learned about these consultants, I could see why. Show up at your neighbor’s door hawking Mary Kay cosmetics, and they presume you’ve merely found a new side hustle. But show up with a whole awareness campaign on women’s health, and suddenly you’re Maria Shriver. Blurring the lines between advocacy and salesmanship, Willy Loman got a socially conscious makeover.
Beautycounter founder Gregg Renfrew led this battalion of concerned women who had little or no political experience. Renfrew, with her honey highlights, minimalist jewelry, and understated makeup, exudes effortless professionalism. Think jeans and a striped T-shirt topped with an open blazer. With a high-wattage smile, she rattles off stats and political facts at breakneck speed, made digestible by her ease and optimism. Laughter comes easily to her. She’s enthusiastic, but not too enthusiastic. The kind of entrepreneur young women of that era aspired to become.
Beautycounter hopes to change the landscape through activism, deploying an arsenal of charcoal facial masks and lipsticks as a Trojan horse for personal care product reform. “It was never about getting beauty products into the hands of everyone,” Renfrew told me. “It was about getting safer products into the hands of everyone.”
Which brings us back to that energized morning in D.C. As a reward of sorts, Beautycounter flew in a hundred of their top-performing brand advocates to enjoy a weekend of fine dining, champagne, and socializing. They enjoyed a dinner at the National Portrait Gallery before knocking on politicians’ doors. They regaled elected officials with moving personal anecdotes, cancer recovery stories, and hopes for their children’s health—their passion rubbing off like red lipstick on a shirt collar. Just as the sign on their bus proclaimed, their mission was personal. “[Our community] believes in being part of something bigger than they are as individuals,” says Renfrew. “Given all that’s transpired [since 2016], women have woken up to the fact that maybe our voices haven’t been heard as loudly as we would like.”
Now their voices are being heard. The fight to guarantee beauty product safety has gained momentum on a national, state, and even local level. Shoppers want to know what’s in their moisturizer just as they want to know what’s in their Goldfish crackers. I see it everywhere. Facebook friends post on how to banish parabens and sulfates from bathroom cabinets. Acquaintances declare they want to “feel good” about what’s seeping into their skin, “the largest organ in the body.” Friends imagine a Psycho shower scene of a shampoo bottle stabbing us with invisible chemicals. Many of their concerns could have come straight from a Beautycounter ad.
But Beautycounter isn’t the only firm selling us “clean” and raising an alarm about chemical exposure. If you’ve read any women’s magazine in the last decade, you’ve likely come across the following stats: Some studies suggest these chemicals play a significant role in early puberty, obesity, cancer, and infertility. Activists say thousands of personal care products contain synthetic chemicals known as endocrine disruptors, which mimic and therefore confuse the body’s natural hormones.
That’s in addition to all the publicized lawsuits. In 2019, Johnson & Johnson recalled 33,000 bottles of baby powder due to accusations centered on traces of carcinogenic asbestos. Claire’s pulled makeup products after the FDA indicated the possible presence of asbestos fibers.3 WEN Hair Care settled a class action lawsuit after they received thousands of complaints, some from people who claimed their hair came out in clumps. Headlines like these left me skeptical of the government’s ability to regulate chemical safety. Was it Big Tobacco all over again?
By the time Beautycounter went to Capitol Hill, I too was “aware.” In the Sephora beauty aisle, I began checking out the “clean” skin care products and second-guessing my Pantene conditioner. When I received a bottle of a Bath & Body Works shower gel as a holiday gift, it sat in the corner of my bathroom for months. Finally, I emptied it into the guest bathroom hand soap dispenser, rationalizing, Visitors will only use it once or twice a year. How much chemical damage could it do? My husband watched from afar, not fully comprehending the switch-and-bait occurring within what had now become a soap caste system. He freely and merrily continued using his Kiehl’s soap and Mitchum deodorant. “I really don’t think about that stuff,” he shrugged.
I started writing articles about how and why millennials were flocking to “chemical-free” alternatives. I named Beautycounter as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of the Year. I also started shopping. A lot. Suddenly, my bathroom shelf exploded into a mini apothecary of Goop-approved products. If I was already spending money, I thought, why not drop a bit more cash and get the better option. Why take the risk of convenience store sushi when you can go to Nobu?
Renfrew had been ahead of many of the other corporate players now crowding the clean beauty space. Starting the company wasn’t Renfrew’s first rodeo. The serial entrepreneur had previously found success with her bridal registry company, The Wedding List, which she sold to Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia in 2001. She was itching for a new project when she watched An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s documentary on global warming, in 2006. “It was really jarring,” reflects Renfrew. “A real wake-up call. It was the first time that I began to contemplate my own life and how it was impacting the earth.”
Many of Renfrew’s friends were dealing with fertility issues and diagnosed with different types of cancer in their thirties. Others had given birth to children who had health problems or couldn’t leave the house without an EpiPen. Reading up on the links between substances that are harmful to the earth and also to human health, she zeroed in on toxic chemicals in everyday products. She started washing her floors with water and vinegar. Nonstick cookware was thrown out in favor of stainless steel replacements. Plastic containers got the boot to make way for glass.4 But when it came to purging her beauty cabinet, she was hesitant: Could anything less “toxic” really meet her high bar for skin care products? Where was the Clinique for Whole Foods shoppers?
Renfrew didn’t just want to build a beauty company. She aimed to address the alleged systemic issues at play. “This isn’t just shopping your way out of the problem,” says Renfrew. And so the company continues to lobby Washington each year and to date has conducted more than 2,000 meetings, made 16,000 calls, and sent 200,000 emails to lawmakers. Renfrew hobnobs at political parties while her consultants host meetings with congressmen in their hometowns.
Beautycounter is fighting for the whole beauty sector, because without regulatory support from the government, clean beauty is still very much out of reach for the average consumer. Clean beauty basics generally cost quadruple the price of a drugstore equivalent. A Beautycounter foaming cleanser runs $35, in comparison to Neutrogena’s mass competitor at $5.29. Beautycounter’s red lipstick—the same one worn by the Capitol Hill marchers—costs a cool $34. Their aluminum-free deodorant, beloved by Jennifer Garner, goes for a whopping $28. You won’t find these at your local Food 4 Less. Hence, Renfrew hopes to represent all consumers in the marketplace through the company’s efforts. “Safer products should be a reality for everyone,” says the founder. “This is about all people.”
Indeed. Though presumably we want to be sure we’re steering people in the right direction.
Flashback: Women as House Managers: Foot Soldiers for Health
Boston, Massachusetts, 1870. The faculty at MIT were at a standstill. The chorus of mustachioed men, dressed in varying hues of gray and black suits, were huddled to debate the admittance of a female student. One by one, they addressed the potential issues. Could the applicant keep up? Would this compromise the institute’s standing? Did women even have the intellectual capacity to study science?
The student in question was Ellen Swallow (later Richards), a Massachusetts farm girl with a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College and a passion for sanitary chemistry. Despite the initial discrimination, Richards prevailed to become the first woman admitted to MIT. A true trailblazer, Richards studied popular packaged foods of her day, in which she found sugar mixed with chloride or cinnamon powder full of sawdust and sand—a discovery that would later inspire the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which prohibited the mislabeling of food and medicines.
At the time, Americans faced a rapidly changing environment: new diseases, new technology, and new public health challenges. Before the advent of advanced sewage systems, illnesses like typhoid fever killed 20 percent of those infected. As germ theory seeped into the national consciousness, how to limit disease in an easily contaminated environment was a popular topic.
As a fierce consumer advocate, Richards acknowledged the need for government and industry oversight of commercial products, but she also encouraged homemakers (and their domestic servants) to oversee their surroundings. She instructed women how to wipe down floors, purify water, and safeguard food. To Richards, chores were “a fine action, a sort of religion, a step in the conquering of evil, for dirt is sin.”5 The man would come home from the factory dripping in evil germs, and the woman’s job was to scrub them all away. This art of protection was deemed “domestic science,” which we now know as home economics.
Richards believed that a successful housewife “was constantly asking herself what could be better, healthier, cleaner, or more effective in her home.”6 Under this newly intense scrutiny, homecare grew fraught with anxiety. It was up to women to ensure that their children were not carried out in tiny caskets. Then companies began to realize they could capitalize on the fear. A slew of brands marketed a wide range of disinfectants under the guise of sanitary adherence. Women who had been lured to professionally study the science of sanitation with hopes of educating their peers soon found themselves hired to market the latest household appliance or cleaning agent—some of them fraudulent or unnecessary.7
What did their tactics look like? To sell iceboxes (nonmechanical refrigerators) in the 1920s, they emphasized the importance of fresh food while invoking gendered and exaggerated fears. Cold storage meant less contamination and thus fewer children’s deaths, they claimed. As one fridge pamphlet warned: “When a baby’s health hangs in the balance the intelligent mother will see to it that the ice supply never runs too low.”8 Women had become both corporate foot soldiers for health and household safety leaders who couldn’t afford not to rely on consumerism.
Fear is a potent marketing tool. Today, as much as at the birth of domestic science, women are frightened into taking responsibility for family safety. “Asbestos. Formaldehyde. Lead. Not exactly the words you think of when you’re purchasing your favorite personal care products,” reads the website of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), an advocacy group popular within wellness circles. “Sadly,” the EWG notes, “toxic chemicals in our cosmetics, sunscreens and skin care products have gone unregulated as far back as the Great Depression.”9 The EWG’s solution for such paltry regulations? Becoming your very own inspector, supplied with lists of chemicals to avoid and a guide for interpreting product labels.
This practice is called precautionary consumption. As with housewives of yore, the goal is proactive oversight. It falls to you, the consumer, to vigilantly protect yourself and your loved ones from chemical dangers.10 When you shop at the market, you are expected to recall all the restrictions to ensure safety. If you need a new bodywash, you must scout for a list of “dirty” ingredients. When buying a new moisturizer, you calculate, Will this product cause cancer? Each time you see an organic chicken sitting alongside a normal one in the meat section, you are forced to reckon, How much am I willing to pay to keep my family healthy? All the small decisions add up.
There’s a lot we’re told to to worry about. Women on average use twelve personal care products a day, exposing themselves, according to brand marketers, to 168 unique chemical ingredients. The average man, in comparison, uses six personal care products a day. A Beautycounter brand ambassador on Facebook assures: “With all the craziness surrounding us, it’s nice to know that the products I’m using are significantly safer … giving me one less thing to worry about.” By purchasing the right facial cleanser, one brings structure and order to a chaotic world.
The media joins the circus by asking women to evaluate every nook and cranny in their home and handbag. Women’s Health tells readers to “green your beauty routine with these 5 natural makeup swaps” and warns that toxins are everywhere. Even our nether regions require vigilance: WARNING: YOUR VIBRATOR COULD BE MADE WITH HARMFUL CHEMICALS, one headline proclaims. In contrast, male magazine readers are fed features on fitness, diet, work, and biohacking their way to Chris Evans’s abs. The word “toxic,” if ever used, predominantly refers to an unhealthy relationship with one’s boss.
Renfrew acknowledges that the clean movement was primarily built on women. “If you light the fire under the asses of women about something they care about,” she says, “they’re going to fight tirelessly,” whether it’s Mothers Against Drunk Driving or child safety initiatives.
Companies also target moms because they still bear the brunt of decision- making in the family, upholding the legacy of the woman’s domain. Branch Basics—a line of all-natural, nontoxic home cleaning products—showcases a smiling woman washing her hands with her child in a pristine white kitchen, alongside the caption CREATE A HEALTHY HOME: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO REPLACE DOZENS OF TOXIC CLEANING PRODUCTS. The Honest Company, which primarily focuses on moms, promises customers can “rest easy” knowing their products are made without “health-compromising chemicals.”11 The brand’s campaigns and social media posts show mothers happily cuddling their children, including founder Jessica Alba. The actress turned entrepreneur claims there are “a lot of toxic chemicals in everyday products” and especially in baby products. With her line of products, however, moms don’t have to choose between “what works and what’s good for you.”12
In a way, not much has changed since the 1930s. Back then, as the American historian Roland Marchand writes, advertisers believed women possessed a “greater emotionality” with “inarticulate longings.”13 Manipulating women’s emotions continued for decades to come, as the feminist writer Betty Friedan expounded on in 1963’s The Feminine Mystique. And the tactics continue today. Precautionary consumption plays on women’s vulnerability and demands our vigilance. Made fearful of “hazardous” ingredients, our intense risk aversion manifests into a bible on what we can and cannot consume. Some items are forbidden to us, hence we scout for a kosher “clean” symbol ensuring we’re on the right path.
Shopping becomes a layer of protection, but at a cost. Personal purity mandates drain time and resources—a limited commodity in an already hectic existence. Women still do more laundry, grocery shopping, and household cleaning than their male partners, regardless of any recent discourse on gender equality. Now they need to do it even better and safer, with noxious chemicals peering over their hunched shoulders. Adding to their sense of urgency, their children’s lives could presumably be in peril; cancer and chronic conditions loom on the periphery.
In time, women might come to blame themselves should they fail to buy their way to healthy freedom. Dafna, a marketing consultant and mother of three young children in New Jersey, considers her home “clean.” She buys strictly nontoxic cleaners, consumes only organic produce, and counts seven natural deodorants on her nightstand. Plastic bottles are banned, as is most processed food. “I’m basically the CDC of our household,” Dafna explains. Naturally, she was shocked when her eight-year-old daughter showed signs of early puberty, including breast development. Her pediatrician’s tests confirmed follicle growth on her daughter’s ovaries.
The discovery sent Dafna into a tailspin that caused her to fault her diligence, believing if she’d just tried harder and completely banished all synthetic chemicals and GMOs, her daughter wouldn’t be in such a predicament. She joined parenting groups and read health sites that stressed the need to eradicate anything that didn’t grow straight out of the ground.
“It’s so easy to lose yourself in these forums, you don’t know which way is up,” Dafna recalls of the avalanche of information. In detoxing her home, the worried mom threw out any items that she believed could be contributing to her child’s unwelcome development. Dairy was replaced with almond milk (much to her husband’s dismay), and the perfumes were shelved away. “Could I have protected her better?” she asks with a strained voice. “I thought I was doing a good job.”
The hectic mom likens herself to a smartphone running twenty apps at once—likely to crash—versus her husband, running just one. “It’s not that my needs come last,” she sighs, “it’s that they don’t come at all.” Dafna doesn’t blame her spouse: he doesn’t encounter even a tenth of the information thrown her way. In frustration, she framed a quote—Michelle Obama’s response to Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In philosophy: “That shit doesn’t work all the time.”
Dafna is not alone in her frustrations. It’s neither cheap nor easy to carry the safety burden. For those unable to afford the expense of clean products, questionable chemicals will simply have to do. Lacking the disposable income to assemble a pure bathroom counter, most women continue to worry about ingredients as the media warns they’ll jeopardize their future health. Meanwhile, it’s not like women can opt out of the entire system: our labor market demands a certain level of hygiene and beauty. Women need to smell nice, look good, and be “presentable” not only to get a job but to keep it. A female professional cannot simply forgo consumption; she might feel as if she cannot stop dyeing her hair (with products made from ammonia and peroxide) unless she’s willing to be subjected to ageism.
Although “clean” is a relatively new concept, it has hijacked women’s anxieties, not only about beauty but about food, household cleaners, and even over-the-counter medicine. Suddenly we’re all terrified of chemicals. Justifiably? Perhaps. Or not.
“Clean” isn’t the only buzzword taking over your local Sephora. “Natural beauty” exploded in popularity alongside it, propelling luxury brands like Tata Harper into an industry worth billions. The naturals market is defined by products made from naturally derived ingredients stemming from plants and minerals, presumably free of synthetic chemicals. Think botanical ingredients that are usually in a fruit salad but somehow end up in your facial toner.
The appeal of nature is obvious, if not nostalgic. Nature worship has deep roots in American culture. (The naturalist John Muir, for instance, wrote that “nothing truly wild is unclean.”)14 By the more religious, nature is regarded as God’s handiwork; therefore, the closer we get to it, the closer we are to godliness. In nature, we feel stripped down, minimal, and pure. We’re clean in the most fundamental sense. And maybe that’s a logical desire in a society in which we’re divorced from nature and tether ourselves to tech in our artificial environments (like our cubicle offices). We long for that which we feel missing, and what we’re missing is minimalism. Everything feels overdone, overstimulating, and overwhelming. Less—as Marie Kondo tells us—is more.
A return to the natural order of things can presumably undo modern brutality, all the man-made “toxins” polluting our space and our world. More to the point, it signifies an awakening to the unhealthy environment around us. We want remedies and products to reflect our values: local, small, or handcrafted alternatives. The farmer’s ideal. We long for days of yore, romanticizing village life when we personally knew the pig that ended up on our dinner plate.
Roughly 75 percent of millennial women say “natural” ingredients are an important factor in their purchases.15 Consumers are drawn to naturals because they’re “the real thing,” believing that their bodies intuitively reject synthetic chemicals. They appreciate the authenticity of ingredients that have been “crafted” by nature, extracted from the beautifully evolved plants of the wild. Some women from ethnic communities use herbal remedies to reconnect to their cultural heritage, a link to a long maternal history. Likewise, people are attracted to the foreign, exotic, and ancient—centuries-old cures assumed to contain wisdom.
Corporate behemoths have flocked to this natural flame, eager to cash in. Clorox bought Burt’s Bees, Colgate-Palmolive acquired Tom’s of Maine, Unilever scooped up Schmidt’s Naturals. Retailers built up entire “natural” and “organic” sections. Chemicals are out, “natural” is in—even in fashion. By late 2020, Gwyneth Paltrow could be found walking around her Brentwood neighborhood in a $100 white sweatshirt adorned with a single word: NATURAL.
All of this marketing does make you wonder: What even constitutes “natural”?
In 2019, the natural skin care brand Herbivore Botanicals advertised their $44 jars of Pink Cloud, a moisturizing cream reportedly made without harsh chemicals. “Everything we make is natural, chemical-free, non-toxic and entirely good for you,” reads their website. The pretty, minimalist jars, inspired by the soft pink clouds of a Hawaiian sunset, quickly sold out. Allure posted a story to announce when it was restocked.
Alas, some who had scooped them up in time opened their jars of coveted loot only to encounter clumpy, funky-smelling goo. Their promised clouds of moisture? The texture of yogurt. A portion of Herbivore’s naturally formulated products turned out to be moldy, and a recall was issued at Sephora.16 As it happens, some “natural” beauty preservatives don’t always work as well as their traditional “chemical” competitors. “Natural” preservative substitutes, if ineffective, can allow more contaminants—bacterial spores, yeast, and others—resulting in something more akin to a third-grade science experiment.
Herbivore wasn’t the only company to experience this problem. The FDA increasingly recalls beauty products over bacterial contamination resulting from less effective preservation. And since “natural beauty” took off, dermatologists have reported an increase in patients reporting itchy red rashes, bumps, swollen areas, and other allergic reactions.17 Such products often contain high concentrations of botanical extracts that can also be skin irritants. Not to mention that many “natural” ingredients are far less effective when it comes to results-driven skin care (aimed at wrinkle reduction, moisturizing, acne treatment, and other remediation) and lack the same rigorous level of clinical research. That means people are potentially paying a premium for inferior ingredients that not only underdeliver but (in rare cases) might irritate them.
But isn’t natural supposed to be better than chemical?
Personal care products are all, technically, made of chemicals. The term “chemical-free” perpetuates science illiteracy because everything is composed of chemical compounds. Just because a company arbitrarily labels a product “natural,” doesn’t mean it isn’t chemical. As one irritated Twitter user once tweeted at me when I wrote a story on the popularity of “natural” fragrances, “natural essential oils are complex chemical mixtures.”
“[Beauty products] are all processed in some way,” explains Perry Romanowski, a cosmetic scientist and formulator who delves into these complicated issues on his podcast The Beauty Brains. “You cannot go out into nature and pull a bottle of shampoo off a bush. There are no lipstick trees.” A chemical is a chemical is a chemical; only its source and synthesis differ. But corporations love misusing the term “natural” as a way to distinguish their products, as if their concoctions are yanked right out of a garden.
The narrative surrounding chemicals in beauty products reminds me of a famous 1983 April Fools’ Day prank. The Durand Express, a Michigan weekly newspaper, reported that dihydrogen monoxide—“a chemical known to cause death” if inhaled—was discovered in the city’s water lines.18 How terrifying! After paragraphs alerting readers to the chemical danger, the joke was later revealed: dihydrogen monoxide is simply the chemical name for water, literally H2O. The lesson? Everything sounds scarier if you identify it by its chemical terminology.
There might be less confusion if the use of the label “natural” to market products was clearly defined and regulated somehow. But although there have been efforts to establish a standard for the term “natural,” uniform definitions simply don’t exist. Any brand can slap “natural” on a label regardless of the ingredient list. These distinctions are often false advertising, offering consumers nothing more than a pricey placebo and a way to satisfy conscientious shoppers despite negligible botanical content.
“Natural,” by definition, means existing in or caused by nature. Anything beyond that is conjecture. In fact, many natural substances (e.g., arsenic, asbestos, mercury) are more toxic than man-made ones. Even the seemingly most benign of naturally derived products can be harmful if used in the wrong way. This includes “natural” remedies like essential oils, which can act as irritants and allergens—or worse. Our illogical deference to Earth’s bounty has become so widespread that researchers had to give it a name: the “appeal to nature fallacy,” which occurs when we automatically assume something is better just because it’s natural, and likewise, worse if it’s not.
When I interviewed scientists to get their perspective on the natural product press releases flooding my inbox, I learned that the issue is not about synthetic versus natural, but whether the ingredient is safe and effective for use in the way intended. But why, I pressed, do brands continue to push a skewed beauty narrative? Why incorporate incorrect terminology?
Because it works. Over 90 percent of consumers believe natural beauty ingredients are better for them, according to a survey.19 “If that kind of marketing wasn’t effective with the people that are buying cosmetics, they would do other things,” says Romanowski.
This is Branding 101. To create a need for a product, one must differentiate it from its competitors, as Douglas Atkin explains in The Culting of Brands: Turn Your Customers Into True Believers. One must create a mythology that marks a clear distinction and flatters the shopper through shared values.20 Much as Apple fans buy in to the notion that their hardware purchase makes them “think different” than humdrum Microsoft drones, natural products make consumers feel good, educated. You know something others don’t, and your face wash reiterates your inherent authenticity and environmental concern. Only “normals” buy in to the mainstream system. But not you: You know what’s up. You are not satisfied with the status quo. You care.
Brands and influencers capitalize on legitimate yearnings. But they sometimes take it up a notch, assigning to nature fantastical traits and inherent virtue. They lean in to near-religious associations to sell nature as “purer” and “safer” (often without scientific backing) or to claim unsubstantiated superiority. Nature becomes something to worship. In some cases, you could easily substitute the word “God” and the copy would read like any devotional dogma. “Get rid of all of those harsh chemicals and come over to greet Mother Nature. She always has your back,” reads an ad for the skin care brand Allure of Nature. Fiddler’s Greens tinctures, composed of extra virgin olive oil and cannabis, are described as “just Mother Nature giving us exactly what we need.”
Nature now possesses all the wisdom once afforded a bearded man up in the clouds. Trust that nature has a plan, brands state, while ignoring the earthquakes, tsunamis, pandemics, famines, and poisonous mushrooms plaguing this troubled earth. Nature, as science shows, does not signify goodness: nature is brutal, relying on survival of the fittest. And yet it’s exalted as a higher power we can put faith in or that can transport us to a more wholesome era.
Shoppers gravitate toward this trend because of how cleverly it’s been marketed. “Natural” is mentioned alongside words such as “pure,” “authentic,” “good,” “real,” “honest,” “fresh,” “wholesome,” “worry-free,” “gentle,” and “safe.” Compare that to demonized synthetic chemicals, which are regularly called “fake,” “unnatural,” “harsh,” “toxic,” “harmful,” and “man-made.” Juxtaposing chemical versus natural creates a narrative that these two categories are at odds with each other when in reality that’s a false dichotomy.
“Household CDC” Dafna admits that highly publicized product safety scandals drove her to natural products. “In this fake world, you want fewer steps away from the source,” she explains. “It feels a little more innocent, less consumerist.” Having children also sparked a greater interest in what she describes as instinctual, innate womanhood. “You want to be in touch with nature.”
But when Dafna finally visited a pediatric endocrinologist for her daughter’s puberty spurt, she was advised to refrain from using lavender oil, which some studies have suggested may be a factor in premature breast development. Dafna was aghast. She used lavender oil every evening at bath time and rubbed it on her daughter’s feet because wellness websites suggested it as a “safe” alternative to most drugstore moisturizers. “For eight years, I’ve been buying all organic, natural, beautiful organic shit to protect my kids, and then this. How fucked is that?” seethes Dafna. “You can’t win.” This is not to say one can identify what caused her daughter’s early puberty. Studies have found associations with stress and obesity, among other potential factors (not to mention the randomness of genetic or hereditary traits). The point is that natural ingredients can potentially harbor the same concerns as “chemical” alternatives.
So why are we being told “alternatives” are always better?
When I started writing this book, I called a cosmetic scientist who told me the clean beauty “movement,” for all its promises of revolutionary change, is decidedly murky and chock-full of pseudoscience. His claims felt a bit inflated. So I called another. Same thing. Then another. Again, the same hesitance. By the fourth call, I began to accept what they were saying.
It’s all marketing, they said.
Several additional calls later, here’s what I learned about clean beauty. For one thing, it’s complex. There’s no simple answer here. But what is clear is that the science, as it stands now, is not being communicated to the consumer.
How so? For one, ingredients’ presumed effects are often exaggerated, especially in cases in which topical use of an ingredient is equated with ingesting it. (You aren’t eating your skin cream, right?) In addition, it’s also common to cite studies conducted on animals exposed to high doses of the ingredient under question, significantly higher than the amounts any human encounters. These studies’ findings therefore aren’t immediately applicable to humans, who are much larger and have far different biology.* And if you think that something harmful to an animal is automatically problematic for us, then perhaps you also think we should stop eating chocolate because it’s toxic for dogs.
In general, most ingredients in question are often used in amounts that are considered safe by toxicologists. Ingredients are studied for how much can be used, and cumulative exposure is accounted for. Toxicologists often repeat “The dose makes the poison,” which means that at a high enough level, even water can be toxic. The result depends on how an ingredient is used. Focus shouldn’t be placed on the potential dangers, but on the actual exposure, much as you shouldn’t equate a splash of water to a tsunami. Water is not inherently dangerous, but it can be in the form of a fifty-foot wave.
“Toxicologists distinguish hazard from risk, wherein risk is the likelihood that a hazard will occur,” explains the toxicologist Jay Gooch. “The fear game that is played is one where you simply mention the hazards that sound the scariest.”
For example, lead is a natural element that can get into cosmetics, including lipsticks, at very low levels from a variety of sources. Beautycounter warns that lead poses health risks such as neurological effects, thyroid dysfunction, and reproductive toxicity in exposed adults. In response, the brand puts forth their own lipstick formulation, attempting their best to reach “non-detectable” heavy metal standards.21
But the level of lead in most conventional lipsticks is so minuscule and the exposure is so inconsequential that it can’t be measured in routine blood testing, explains Perry Romanowski. “You could chew lipstick every single day for a year and you’re not going to get lead poisoning.”
We’re not being given the full picture. “With a lot of ingredients that have been used for many years, there’s still no strong link between these ingredients and any long-term health effects,” says Michelle Wong, a cosmetic scientist who runs the popular website Lab Muffin Beauty Science. Contradicting the popular myth that “60 percent of skincare ingredients get into the bloodstream,” Wong explains that the skin is a very tough barrier, with very few ingredients possessing the right properties to penetrate it in significant quantities, which is why most drugs are administered orally. For the overwhelming majority of molecules to get through the skin, you generally need some sort of penetration enhancer, because the skin’s job is to keep the environment out. (I guess that’s why we don’t fear jumping into a chlorine pool.) Skincare formulations are crafted to stay within the first few layers of the skin. Beauty products are actually quite low on the list of potential hazards in comparison to something like air pollution or drinking water.
“The beauty industry is largely male, and they’ve largely ignored women’s concerns about these [ingredients],” says Wong. “And because they haven’t been addressed effectively, it’s made it really easy for pseudoscience to take hold and get ingrained into our consciousness.”
Often reporters believe in clean beauty’s exaggerated claims because they are, like many unsubstantiated theories, based on real, existent anxieties. “The problem is that we humans, as a whole, have an inclination to believe negative information,” explains the cosmetic chemist and formulator Esther Olu, who runs an Instagram account called The Melanin Chemist to combat misinformation in the beauty industry. We’re more inclined to prick up our ears when faced with terrifying tidbits than we are when presented with science. Humans are built that way, evolutionarily hardwired to focus on threats.
Olu, along with Romanowski and others, is part of an emerging class of science experts producing content through podcasts, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to share a more nuanced take on the beauty industry. Cosmetic formulators and scientists were once quite content to work on their craft and leave beauty writing to underpaid twenty-six-year-old magazine writers. But as the clean beauty campaign ballooned, they became motivated to peek out from the lab and address false information and oversimplified arguments. Remember, it’s not toxicologists running the beauty industry. It’s marketers. And even dermatologists cited in articles might be incorrect because they do not necessarily specialize in toxicology and might not grasp the complexities of formulation as an experienced cosmetic chemist would.
In speaking to these cosmetic science experts, you pick up on hints of annoyance and weariness, of having to explain basic fundamentals for the hundredth time. They sound a lot like public health experts in 2021. Tired.
One topic that can reliably get these scientists fired up is parabens.
Parabens are preservatives used to prevent the growth of bacteria and mold in everything from shampoo to shaving cream to mascara. They are probably the most rigorously tested ingredients in beauty. But some researchers hold that parabens may mimic natural hormone function, harm fertility, or increase the risk of cancer, and therefore have no place in personal care. The EWG cites animal studies in which certain parabens impacted female reproductive development and human studies that show a potential association with negative effects.22
But a blanket targeting of parabens is like saying all animals are dangerous. Which ones and at what level of exposure? Toxicologists I interviewed say the most commonly used parabens at their usage levels are not dangerous. The FDA, whose scientists continue to review any new paraben studies, states there is no proof that parabens’ cosmetic use has an effect on human health.
Some critics mention the fact that parabens are found in urine, which doesn’t sound great. But that doesn’t necessarily prove harm: our bodies are meant to expel parabens from our systems. Not that parabens should even be assumed to be the devil. Parabens are derived from para-hydroxybenzoic acid (PHBA). Hydroxybenzoic acids naturally occur in some fruits and vegetables. The ones that show up in your skin care are synthetic versions of that.
The dispute over parabens is a complicated issue that took off after a highly contested 2004 study published in the Journal of Applied Toxicology discovered parabens in breast cancer tissue. However, in this study, the tissue was taken from samples of just twenty patients and not from a control group (that is, the researchers didn’t test healthy breast tissue).23 And, as critics have pointed out, “they didn’t know if any of the people who donated tumor tissue used paraben-containing products.”24 The study did not demonstrate that parabens cause breast cancer, according to scientists I interviewed.
Some researchers challenge toxicologists on these matters, stressing that several studies suggest certain chemicals can be harmful at low doses. This is especially true of endocrine disruptors, since our hormone systems are activated at very low doses. Subsequent studies have suggested a possible link between parabens’ estrogenic properties and breast cancer development.25
Heather Patisaul, the associate dean for research at North Carolina State University’s Department of Biological Sciences, is a neuroendocrinologist who studies endocrine disruptors and says that they might be more subtle. “There can be this more insidious harm, like one could lose their fertility or could become obese,” she explains. “It opened up this complicated dialogue about [if we are] harming ourselves in a way that’s harder to see and evaluate than ‘Oh, I just had a major stroke because I got massive exposure to a pesticide.’”
Discovering exactly what is going on is difficult because the impact is rarely immediate. “We know that the incidences of many diseases are going up and up too fast to not have an environmental cause, but it’s incredibly challenging to establish cause and effect,” explains Patisaul. It could be, she argues, that there are significant mixture effects. “What if it’s parabens + phthalates = higher breast cancer risk? Or parabens + high sun exposure = higher skin cancer risk?… Those questions are rarely asked, let alone tested.”
Perry Romanowski agrees that some chemicals can be harmful at low doses, but reiterates that cosmetic ingredients are tested for safety at low dose levels. As for potential harm, he asks, where is the proof? “Lots of things could be true,” notes Romanowski. “Eating pizza could result in infertility. Exposure to soybean oil could cause birth defects. It’s simple to dream up potential problems … These things have been studied. There just isn’t any evidence to support the claim that cosmetic ingredients are causing ‘insidious harm.’”
So we’re always stuck with these questions: What do we do when the information is seemingly inconclusive? It’s a complicated field of science, and one that, like all areas of health science, continues to evolve and incorporate new information. Experts call for more scientific research.
It’s especially complicated when a host of other factors might play in. Take deodorants, many of which contain parabens. Because breast cancer is found near the armpit, deodorant is often blamed. But both the National Cancer Institute26 (the federal government’s principal agency for cancer research) and Susan G. Komen27 (the world’s largest breast cancer organization) state there isn’t sufficient evidence to support this claim. And why blame the parabens when there are more likely candidates? The American Cancer Society notes, “Although parabens have weak estrogen-like properties, the estrogens that are made in the body are hundreds to many thousands of times stronger. So, natural estrogens (or those taken as hormone replacement) are much more likely to play a role in breast cancer development.”28
One reason breast cancers grow not far from the armpit is that tissue is denser in that region and dense breast tissue is linked to an increased risk for breast cancer, suggests the University of Pennsylvania Health System. Denser tissue is also more difficult for doctors to detect via mammograms.29 “So far, studies have not shown any direct link between parabens and any health problems, including breast cancer. Many other compounds in the environment mimic naturally produced estrogen,” concludes the American Cancer Society.30
Isolating one culprit is extremely difficult because we are exposed to so many chemicals in our environment. Finding the smoking gun is nearly impossible because of the large number of chemicals we encounter each day in the air, the soil, and our frizz-free hair conditioner. For that reason, medical researchers (a conservative bunch) err on the side of caution in presuming culprits. Correlation does not equal causation. But that answer isn’t definitive enough for some consumers.
A final note on parabens: the entire purpose of putting parabens in products is to avoid the growth of funky bacteria and fungus. So sometimes there’s a weighing of risks. And we shouldn’t always err on the side of nature, because nature isn’t necessarily safer. In fact, parabens have been far more tested in comparison to newer, more “natural” substitutes which have less data. Parabens have thousands of studies assessing their safety. They also remain one of the least allergenic preservatives.31 That might be because “natural” preservatives, which aren’t as effective, need to be used in higher concentrations. “The reason that parabens are so difficult to replace is because there’s no other preservative that works that good and is that safe,” says Romanowski.
But ultimately, even when the body of evidence heavily leans in a particular direction, it’s a tough call for the average consumer. One might think there is no concrete causal evidence, but who’s to say they won’t find it down the line?
Even if we concede there’s a debate, the inconclusiveness doesn’t stop companies from exaggerating probable harm. Some brands tout a refusal of fourteen hundred ingredients already banned by the European Union, in seemingly stark contrast to the United States, “which has banned or restricted only thirty [ingredients].”32 These numbers give the impression that the oversight process is an indiscriminate free-for-all. But the majority of those fourteen hundred “questionable” ingredients—like rocket fuel—never end up in beauty products, so restricting them is unnecessary. Just as banning Legos from food production is pointless.
Some clean brands love to say the United States hasn’t passed a major federal law governing the cosmetics industry since 1938, implying that regulators have sat on their laurels for eighty years. This accusation is disingenuous. The framework is the same, but the FDA regularly updates regulations. Potential issues can and sometimes do slip through, and the FDA could certainly do more. But claiming that nothing is regulated is an exaggeration.† “It’s just taking little points out of context and then confusing the marketplace,” says the science communicator and formulation chemist Jen Novakovich, founder of the podcast and blog The Eco Well.
Most conglomerates and well-known brands, such as L’Oréal and Unilever, are obligated to take safety very seriously. Plenty of toxicologists point to their Scrooge McDuck–size budgets to research ingredient efficacy and safety. Big brands, especially in our highly litigious society, generally (though certainly not always) try to ensure safety because the consequences of not doing so can be very costly. If they face a class action lawsuit, they know they need to substantiate safety, and if they can’t, they will have to pay out millions, if not billions, of dollars. This is why many also push for cosmetic regulation bills—because they already abide by many of the requirements proposed for legislation.33
What about all those lawsuits? If it’s all just pseudoscience, how are lawsuits being won against big companies? On this front, the wellness shopper’s concern is understandable. Product fiascos have left us wary of major manufacturers. But there’s not always a simple answer—even for incidents that seem like a done deal. Thousands of women sued Johnson & Johnson, claiming the company’s talc baby powder caused ovarian cancer due to naturally occurring asbestos contamination. Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay over hundreds of millions of dollars, while other juries have ruled in favor of the pharmaceutical giant.
Johnson & Johnson denies their product was liable, and indeed some scientists say there’s no conclusive evidence to suggest a causal link between talc and cancer development. A few experts I spoke to accused law firms of aggressively recruiting clients for class action lawsuits. But then other scientists defend women’s claims. Studies are mixed, with some suggesting moderate risk and others unable to establish causality. In 2020, a study of a quarter million women was unable to find “a statistically significant association” between talc-based powders and ovarian cancer.34 It’s an ongoing scientific debate, one with worried consumers caught in the middle.
What does seem clear, however, is that J&J failed to disclose asbestos contamination to regulators and consumers, even if it was trace amounts. Ultimately J&J pulled the baby powder from U.S. store shelves, discontinuing a product that—harmful or harmless—was now too tainted by all the negative publicity. The company’s lack of transparency fueled suspicion that they now admit simply cannot be overcome. Perhaps there’s a lesson in that lack of transparency.
Everyone should have some skepticism toward any industry, so I’m not advocating trusting big brands en masse. Rather the point is to recognize that the activists in the clean beauty industry are also selling something—and profiting on anti-conglomerate sentiment. Any investigation into the beauty industry needs to be one that looks into the corners of the clean one as much as the mainstream one. Slapping a “free from” label on a bottle doesn’t absolve a company of scrutiny. Just look at Jessica Alba’s The Honest Company, which has recalled products and been hit with lawsuits, including one that charged it falsely mislabeled forty-one personal care products as “natural.” (The company settled the class action lawsuit in 2017.)
Another industry-wide issue: many of these clean and independent brands outsource their manufacturing. They’re not in full control. The Honest Company’s baby wipes, which were voluntarily recalled over mold concerns, were made in China.35 “[Some companies] don’t have the type of oversight over their production and quality that a company like Procter & Gamble does,” says Kelly Dobos, a cosmetic chemist and a member of the American Chemical Society’s expert panel. Although conglomerates also make mistakes, “bigger companies have the resources to investigate, to be extremely thorough, and to handle a recall situation.”
It’s a lot to consider, but it’s obvious that it would be helpful to take fear and hysteria out of the equation. Granted, science does change based on new information, but all we can do is act on what the current evidence shows.
The beauty industry, as it stands, isn’t explaining the available evidence. Instead, wellness marketing perpetuates chemophobia—an outsized fear of synthetic chemicals or “chemical exposure.” Though many of us are quick to parrot popular catchphrases like “trust science,” a substantial portion of us are not well equipped in science basics, evaluating evidence, or critical thinking—thereby making us susceptible to pseudoscience. All the more so when we’re taking advice from “experts” who aren’t necessarily experts in the field they’re weighing in on (or worse, dermatologists failing to disclose they’re being paid by a brand). In fact, one 2021 study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that people who are pro-science were more likely to believe and share misinformation when presented with articles and arguments packed with supposedly scientific lingo.36 The bottom line: we’re easily duped by academic language, seduced by the mirage of science. If it sounds like Bill Nye, we’re sold.
Yet for all the debate surrounding clean beauty, Beautycounter did succeed in opening the floodgates of transparency. Before this movement, says Renfrew, the beauty industry had been built on secrets, which surely didn’t help with industry mistrust. Now consumers demand to know the ingredient list and take a strong interest in what they buy.‡
Conglomerates and institutions could certainly do more to better test heavily debated ingredients and fund more research. But to do better, we need to take an honest look at what the current challenges are in our marketplace and not just make stuff up, which would only prevent real change, says The Eco Well’s Novakovich. “Consumers have to be given the right information,” she says, reiterating that current regulations aren’t perfect by any stretch. “Otherwise, we’re misdirecting the energy.”
The Environmental Working Group, which has been nicknamed “Environmental Worry Group” for relying on inflammatory, fearmongering language, isn’t necessarily helping. The organization’s methods for assessing risks are not uniformly shared by all experts, making it “beloved by activists but detested by scientists,” according to the American Council on Science and Health. Critics say the organization peddles “scientific half-truths and outright fabrications.”37 In one survey of nearly one thousand members from the Society of Toxicology (an association of professional toxicologists), nearly 80 percent believed that the EWG overstated the health risks of chemicals.38 Some scientists I interviewed have accused the EWG of depending on obscure, flawed, or dated studies with minuscule sample sizes—cherry-picking those that support their theories—and misinterpreting data to their liking.
The EWG cannot even be described as an impartial party, as it has a lobbying arm and receives heavy financial backing from the organic food industry, corporate brands, and “clean” beauty, including Beautycounter. The EWG also participates in affiliate programs (like Amazon’s) and sells a certification label to make money off the very same products it recommends.§ If you go through their tax forms, you’ll find folks like Michelle Pfeiffer, founder of the “clean and transparent” fragrance brand Henry Rose, who paid the EWG for ingredient guidance.
The EWG instills fear, then pushes certified products that will make it all go away. “So many people forget how much money they’ve made by doing the certification programs for brands,” says Olu.
When clean beauty companies say they opt for “safe” ingredients, they imply that the competition doesn’t. But toxicologists reiterate that the personal care aisle is not oozing slime, and that the body of evidence should be communicated to the consumer. Marketing cannot claim your face wash is out to harm you without being able to back the claim up. This is no longer even limited to small clean brands. Even conglomerates have pivoted to get in on the trend of the day because that’s what the consumer responds to. They just give in to what’s fashionable—exploiting doubt, fear, and guilt—regardless of the science. It’s why you’ll see CoverGirl promoting its “sulfate free” clean pressed powder even though sulfates wouldn’t make their way into such a product. I’m surprised it isn’t also labeled “fat-free” or “cage-free.”
Still, with ingredients’ impacts being debated, more research is required; perhaps that’s what we should be lobbying for, considering beauty doesn’t receive as much research or funding as other sectors. Although one thing is certain: we are worshipping a golden calf of misinformation. Novakovich and others would love to see the word “clean” removed from the beauty lexicon altogether because it perpetuates so much undue apprehension around safe products. The term reinforces the idea that if someone experienced bad effects or poor health, it’s because they didn’t buy the right products. It’s fueling a culture of self-blame. “That’s toxic,” she says.
Don’t get me wrong: I still buy Beautycounter (specifically their lightweight cleansing oil that dissolves makeup faster than any other cleanser I’ve tried). But I don’t buy it out of fear, as though it’s some magical amulet protecting me from chemical demons. I buy it because it works. And I like it. Maybe we can return to a space where we enjoy our products without fueling unsubstantiated assumptions. As the back of my Beautycounter cleansing oil informs me, “beauty should be good for you.” Agreed. Perhaps that should apply to our psychological health as well?
The teachings of clean and natural beauty can cause bigger problems. Instilling an irrational fear of “chemicals” and claiming that nature reigns supreme—in other words, science illiteracy—can change the way we think about a whole lot of other stuff beyond lipstick. Some women take those simplistic lessons and apply them elsewhere. Because confusion or distrust over what’s inside a package isn’t just an issue with beauty. This concern reaches far beyond our bathrooms and extends to so many of the products we depend on. More and more women are asking, What’s in my food? What’s in my medicine? What’s in my vaccine? What’s in everything?