Greening Hollywood: Guild by Guild, Focus Make Up and Hair, Panelists from I.A.T.S.E. Local 706 Hollywood’s Make Up Guild. Moderated on June 14th by Rachelle Carson Begley and Presented by Paige Donner, Founder, Greening Hollywood.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nNow, when you\u2019re an underfunded non-profit such as EWG and Campaign For Safe Cosmetics (a.k.a. breast cancer fund) and you\u2019re going up against well-established cosmetic companies who have big slices of the billion dollar beauty industry, what do you do? Well, if you\u2019re Lisa Archer (CFSC) and Becky Sutton, PhD. (EWG) you simply tell it like it is. AND you create a ratings system called SkinDeep.org where consumers can go to search and see how their products rank in terms of harmful ingredients. Their perspective is a consumer\u2019s advocate one.<\/p>\n
This is where the friction between cosmetic companies \u2013 both big and small \u2013 and these research non-profits rears its head. I contacted one cosmetic company to ask its CEO to speak on our panel and got an earful about the EWG and CFSC. This particular company is known to be one of the cleaner cosmetic companies and donates its profits to charity \u2013 all of its profits. They are on the smaller side as cosmetic companies go. I quickly was informed how they\u2019d nearly been put out of business because of information pushed out to the public regarding their trace amounts of lead in a few of their lipsticks.<\/p>\n
Now the issue of lead in lipstick is a big one. Last year California narrowly defeated a bill that would have disallowed the sale of lipstick in our state even with trace amounts of lead in it. Most cosmetic companies that you recognize when you walk into a department store have product lines that they sell in Europe – including lipstick with NO lead in it. So, it doesn\u2019t seem to be a stretch for them to just introduce those products here and phase out the ones that are perceived to be harmful to our health. But, no. Alas, a handful of the biggies lobbied successfully last year and defeated the California bill that would have disallowed leaded lipsticks in our state.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, the smaller company I referenced above, who is not a California company, did reformulate to take out all lead from their lipsticks. But she nearly went bankrupt doing so. She explained to me that there is more lead found naturally in a bar of chocolate than in a whole tube of her lipstick (before reformulation). And what the scientists apparently forget to consider is that someone, especially some of us women, can and will sit down and eat a whole chocolate bar. But never do we eat a whole tube of lipstick. Surely not in one sitting!<\/p>\n
The point being that the SkinDeep rating system is an extremely useful tool. It does have its fallacies, however. Namely that it is self-rated. So a company whose CEO is honest will submit all its ingredients factually and candidly and get a certain rating. Whereas another company more savvy with playing the SkinDeep system, will submit only those ingredients they know to be rated safe and simply omit the harmful ingredients so that their ranking is strong on SkinDeep. They know that there is no auditing mechanism. Whatever they say is what their rating will be based on.<\/p>\n
That said, when speaking with the President of Local 706 I.A.T.S.E. the Make Up and Hairstylist\u2019s guild, she emphasized what a concern health issues are to her and her membership. Many guild members work long 12-14 hour days inside small trailers or otherwise enclosed spaces. To be inhaling noxious fumes and chemicals for long periods like that is not healthy and only time will tell what sort of ailments come of it. Similarly, many actors and actresses are also subject to vast amounts of chemicals in the form of beauty products being applied to them. One of our panelists, Nikoletta Skarlatos, a guild member, spoke about the use of prosthetics and how the industry is formulating natural-based prosthetic make up as an alternative.<\/p>\n
Robert Hallowell, the \u201ckitchen beautician,\u201d another of our panelist\u2019s and also a 706 member, acknowledged that a natural and effective hairspray is the Holy Grail of hair products. His line of hair care products, \u201cPrawduct,\u201d is all natural-derived and from recipes he cooked up in his kitchen.<\/p>\n
Christina Marcaccini, who founded Raw Natural Beauty based in Manhattan Beach, spoke on our panel saying that when necessary companies have to re-formulate their products. If for no other reason than to capture the growing consumer demand and burgeoning market share that safe and pure ingredient cosmetics now command. L.A. \u2013 based O.P.I. nail polish company did this and removed three of the most toxic ingredients in their nail polish. The scientists see this is a victory and O.P.I. still has a huge slice of the nail polish pie. Girls won\u2019t stop using make up \u2013 after all, most of us girls just want to play. But we can play safe and we can do so by choosing products that contribute to our beauty \u2013 both inside and out. And when needing a boost to go within, try Buddha Nose<\/a> balms and aromatic sprays. Serenity in a bottle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paige Donner presented the panel Greening Hollywood: Guild by Guild in Santa Monica. Paige, Founder of Greening Hollywood, invited panelists who are members of the Hollywood Makeup and Hairstylist’s Guild, I.A.T.S.E. Local 706 to speak about clean and green make up use on film and tv sets. Moderated by Rachelle Carson-Begley – co-star of Living With Ed. More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":2504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false},"categories":[129,538,2,15,91,11,335,12,133,1],"tags":[3943,3944,867,3945,452,3890,3946,3947,3948,3949,3950,3951,3952,3899,3953,3954,3955,3956,3957,3958,3959,3960,3961,3962],"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/panelists-with-paige-seated-guild-by-guild-june-14th.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelgoodstyle.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}