The Ugly Side of Beauty

An interview with Stacy Malkan, author of Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry

In the late 1990s, Stacy Malkan was working as a journalist for a community newspaper. A controversy erupted in the community she was working in when the county started implementing a plan to spray weeds along bike paths with pesticides. “It was a relatively small community, but 200 people showed up for a meeting. There were high tensions around this topic, and it ended up a melee of screaming and tears. People were very upset about the public use of these toxic chemicals on the parks where their kids run and play, and their pets run around.”

     Stacy started interviewing locals and experts to better understand the story, and quickly saw that the government officials knew a lot about the weeds, but not much about the chemicals they were planning to use. Her research, bolstered by a nagging recognition that she and many of her friends from high school were experiencing weird health problems for their age, sent her off in a new career direction: in 2001 she became the communications director for Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), an international coalition of hospitals and health care systems, medical professionals, community groups, and others, "dedicated to transforming the health care sector worldwide, without compromising patient safety or care, so that it is ecologically sustainable and no longer a source of harm to public health and the environment." In 2002, staff and supporters of HCWH launched the nascent Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, and Stacy took on communications efforts for the Campaign.

    In November (2007) Stacy’s first book, Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry came out. Stacy starts the book with a confession: “I’ve always been obsessed with cosmetics. When I was a Seventeen–magazine reading high school cheerleader desperate to fit in, the Osco Drug cosmetics aisle was my comfort zone. With each measured purchase—cobalt blue eyeliner, soft rose blush—I was one step closer to that girl I dreamed of: the confident, lovable version of me.”

    What woman can’t identify with Stacy’s confession? We all have looked at beauty products as something to bring out our best. But the truth is, the beauty industry is bringing out something far uglier than it is giving us in return.

    I chatted with Stacy the other day, and here’s what she had to say.

Carol: What was the most surprising thing to you, personally, when you began getting involved with this issue, and as you wrote the book?

Stacy: A couple of things took me by surprise. I would say the most disturbing is the resistance of industry to making obvious changes. So many companies are entrenched, they have a ‘we have to keep doing things this way because it’s how we have always done it,’ attitude that flies in the face of the growing and obvious understanding that we need to do things differently. Many things—global warming, peak oil, the ubiquitous toxic exposures in the environment— have clear links to health problems that so many of us are experiencing. So this needs to be a time of great change.

     I also find it surprising, and hopeful, that there are such positive and powerful models of successful organizing. We’ve seen some major changes happening, especially with the cosmetics work. The organizing that is happening with teenage girls is particularly uplifting. They show a real interest in asking deep questions about the products they are using. They are learning about science, organizing, lobbying—none of which I thought much about when I was in high school—and that makes me feel very hopeful about the younger generation. I think they are a more sophisticated bunch than we were. I think of myself as a pathological idealist, so in that context it is fun to do this work.

Carol: You talk about Pinkwashing in Not Just a Pretty Face. What is pinkwashing, and what can people do to avoid being pinkwashed by unscrupulous marketers?

Stacy: Basically, pinkwashing is companies marketing themselves as being very concerned about women's health, but not stepping up to do the right things. I think it’s outrageous that beauty companies market themselves as friends of breast-cancer awareness if they are not willing to question their own use of carcinogenic chemicals. To look into the details of that is very disturbing, and that was actually the hardest chapter for me to write, because it was the most personally upsetting. My grandmother had breast cancer and I have friends who have had breast cancer. It is a huge epidemic, and these industries that are purchasing chemicals that are linked to cancer—and especially the beauty companies—should be at the front of the line, working to end the epidemic, rather than making excuses that it’s OK to keep using hazardous chemicals.

    There is no need for carcinogens to be in personal care products. Companies are using the pink ribbon as a marketing device, but they are unwilling to really do what’s needed to protect women’s health. The science [linking toxic chemicals to] breast cancer is very compelling and very important: we know that the longer a woman is exposed to estrogen during her lifetime, the higher her risk of breast cancer, and the evidence is strong on that. So what can we do to reduce these exposures? It is not just one thing, it is not just beauty products. We are exposed by so many things, but beauty products is an obvious first place to do something about it.

    These products are so intimate and we use so many of them. The average American uses ten personal care products per day. Carcinogens shouldn’t be in them. The beauty industry really could do a service for women’s health, for all people’s health, by making a public commitment to eliminate their use of carcinogens and endocrine disrupting chemicals from their products, and to demand that the chemical industry that supplies them innovate safer alternatives. These companies can do better. They should do better. There is no reason why beauty products have to be toxic.

Carol: If you could shout one message from the rooftops, what would it be?

Stacy: Question everything! We can change things and we have to; we really don’t have a choice, but the important thing is that we have the power to make the change. I think it is the most exciting time to be alive. We know the consequences of our actions in a way we have been able to ignore in the past. This is not just one problem, chemicals in cosmetics, but all of these problems—global warming, global poisoning—are interconnected. They have the same roots and the same history: After World War II, we learned how to rapidly process petroleum and use the byproducts to make petro-chemicals, and these chemicals became the building blocks of our entire material ecomony. Now they have became ubiquitous in our environment, in our homes, and also in our bodies. Every baby born on Earth is contaminated with man-made petro-chemicals.

    Global poisoning and global warming have the same solution. We need to reinvent our economy and the way we do business. The focus has to be on human health and societal impacts, and go beyond the focus on the bottom line.

Carol: Can you talk about your Keep It Simple advice? What can we as individuals due to protect ourselves and our families?

Stacy: My best advice is “keep it simple”—fewer synthetic chemicals, the fewer ingredients, and fewer products overall. Personally, I am avoiding synthetic fragrances as much as possible (that can be hard), and I’m avoiding known estrogenic-substances, such as parabens and phthalates. I am eliminating some product categories altogether. For example, I don't use bubble bath any more. Many mainstream bath products contain heavy fragrances and multiple toxins, and you’re sitting in these chemicals for long periods of time. I gave up hair color, which I admit was really difficult. Now people actually ask if I’m dying my hair darker [she says with a laugh]—that’s how expected it’s become in our culture to color hair.

    How are the companies I am supporting with my money contributing to the world? I can’t support the mainstream beauty companies—the L’Oreals, the Revlons, the Cover Girls, and other products that I grew up with, and that frankly, I loved. They are not allowed in my house, because I am outraged that these companies won’t take women’s health seriously. Unfortunately, many of the multinational corporations are under pressure to keep costs low, so they use cheap petrochemicals and spend their money finding ways to sell us the same old products, with the same ingredients they have been using for 20 years. It’s time for change.

Stacy’s book is excellent, and I think it should be required for all women, but particularly young women. I am giving copies to some of the young women in my life. I want them to know about the ugly side of beauty.