How Far Down the Rabbit Hole are You Willing to Go?

An avid label checker, today, I found myself in ingredient shock after scoring a teensy sample of a former product fav from a posh Neiman Marcus cosmetics counter. This product I sampled from a "botanical" skin care/cosmetic line, was formerly for me, that one. The one utterly indulgent and expensive product that I would rationalize the purchase of, despite the price. Some womens' secret weapon is a fine parfum, mine was a luxe bust firming cream that leaves the decolletage glowing in all her radiance. Large or small, this botanical bust firming cream firms as promised, but then delivers so, so much more. Almost immediately post application it leaves the entire chest area glowing with a non-greasy, dewy, healthy radiance. It's really amazing! So today I retrieved my sample and did something I never thought to before, I checked the ingredients. Unsure of what many of them were, I decided to make a chart of ingredients and then researched each in search of it's mystical properties. Instead I found that 8 of the 23 ingredients in this luxe "botanical" lotion are dangerous preservatives or emulsifiers. Of course, one might expect that these awful chemicals would be used in minute amounts, coming in at the bottom of the ingredient list. But the fourth product in a 23 part mix is a known toxin! That means that the fourth most important ingredient to this formulation is simply a vile additive. And thus one must decide: glowing bust with a toxic cocktail or eau natural sans awful (possibly) cancer-causing chemicals. My vote is for the natural botanicals sans icky synthetics and petroleum derivatives. Of course, that raises a whole other concern: product instability. Are you prepared to risk finding that your fav skin cream has grown a little mold? 

Tags: Natural Makeup, Natural Skin Care, Paraben Free