So, I’m still lacking my deodorential Holy Grail (if Jews are allowed to possess Holy Grails), but I have been doing it Renaissance-rich-lady-style using perfume on my pits, which is working fine, if a bit expensively.

I spent the first part of this week obsessively inhaling deodorant reviews on Makeup Alley, particularly for the Kiss My Face roll-on, which, as mentioned, was my product of choice for over 10 years. I was trying to figure out what went wrong: I had written the company a letter a few years ago asking them WHY, GOD, WHY, but they never wrote back. One lone reviewer notes that she doesn’t know exactly how parabens work, but that the new paraben-free version is not cutting her odor-prevention mustard. A-HA! Another reviewer reports that, even though it’s advertised otherwise, the roll-on actually does contain aluminum in the form of potassium alum, which, she says, is the potassium double-sulfate of aluminum: KAl(SO4)2 12(H2O). Reading her review, which includes the chemical formula, I had several Mensa-induced orgasms, then realized that I was back where I started.

Who knows what’s in everything we glop onto our bodies? As someone with a list of food sensitivities the length of Babeland’s finest and a family history of fibrous/lumpy breasts, I tend to pay very close attention to certain things but am quick to shine on everything else.

It was with all this in mind that I found myself on the waxing table a few nights ago discussing various products with my #1 fave aesthetician lady. #1 was talking about how much she loves LUSH’s Happy Hippy shower gel, except that its first ingredient is Sodium Laureth Sulfate. The American Cancer Society has nixed rumors that SLES and its cousin surfactant, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS), are carcinogenic. But studies have shown both to be skin irritants — in 2003 the University of Marburg’s dermatology department found “a pronounced reaction to SLS, and a far milder one to SLES.” A July 2007 article in the British Journal of Dermatology reveals that a study piggy-backed on the Marburg one recommends that doctors wash up with an alcohol hand rub instead of surfactant-based soap, since the alcohol is “significantly less disruptive” to the skin barrier. Just for the short time it takes for handwashing! “You would think that a company advertising that their products are fresh and handmade...” #1 trailed off. “When I worked at LUSH, we were encouraged to emphasize that the products include ‘safe synthetics,’ and to say that SLS/SLES is everywhere, including in toothpaste,” I responded. And then we contemplated silently for a while until she ripped out my pubes, and I screamed.

I spent the rest of the week reading labels in my bathroom, seeking products solely comprising ingredients as few and understandable to the non-chemist consumer as possible. Honey and sugar facial scrub: yup. Trader Joe’s Purify Tangerine Sugar Scrub: cool. Oyin unscented Whipped Pudding: nothing weird here. Annnnnnd...that’s all.

Yesterday, when I checked out the Burt’s Bees cleansers at the health food shop, I read “vegetable soap base” and thought, well, that says a whole lot of nothing. Sodium palm kernelate, another common surfactant, could be called a “vegetable soap base” since it comes from palm oil. FRUIT soap base, technically. But still.

I’m not planning on, like, boiling my own cattle for tallow or anything. Nor will I be forsaking the glitter or industrial-wear lipstick. But with all this — and with a mama friend of mine switching all the plastic in her kitchen to glass in an effort to avoid exposing her family to Bisphenol A and pthalates — I am left with more questions than answers about looking and smelling good while sustaining as little damage as possible. And I’m just talking personal damage. Planet damage is another tale for another time.

Stay beautiful and healthy,
--Chaia