Skin Deep: It's in the Details

I.

Little Scotty Meek announced one day, out of the blue, that Vaseline is made of petroleum, just like gasoline. I was seven and he was nine. His information launched a heated conversation in which I reminded him that Vaseline neither smells nor looks like gas, and that if it was at all related to it my father surely wouldn’t put it on my lips when they were chapped.

Then came the quest for the bottle of Vaseline, which he pointed out, is also called: “petroleum jelly.” Since we lived in oil country, I knew petroleum was a fancy name for gas, but the new knowledge didn’t trip me up. Plenty of words, I told him, sound the same, but have different meanings. I couldn’t pull the word homonym from my pocket, but I did have examples: board/bored, write/right/right, and every child’s favorite: but and butt.

He wouldn’t concede, so we took the matter to my grandfather, a mechanic, and of course, I lost the argument. After that I refused to use gasoline jelly. No matter what people said, my child’s brain would not allow for the dual use of petrol in our car and on my lips. Lucky for my dad that Scotty didn’t know pajamas, toothpaste, or baby oil, vitamins, and bubble bath were also petroleum products or I’d have had the excuse I’d always needed to be in actuality the naked, dirty, deficient little varmint with rotting teeth that I’ve always been at heart.

II.

Lucky for BabyG, in the last couple of decades knowledge about not only the petroleum, but a host of other chemicals used in bath and body products has almost become mainstream. The likes of the world’s hippies, old-fashioned-recipe-traditionalists, new agers’, yuppies, and power-yoga-enthusiasts expressed so much distress at using these sorts of products that a number of new, more “natural,” often organic products had been called into being.

Of course, plenty of people working in the beauty industry did not relish being left out of the new order of environmentally-friendly upstarts. They realized many people weren’t even sure what they wanted when they bought 'natural'…that the word itself had become a fad. They hired ad executives who concluded something like: petroleum comes from old dinosaur bones: what’s more natural than that?, and then stuck the word natural on all sorts of dangerous, healthy, and not what I would consider "natural" products.

As a green consumer, I thought one simple way to ensure I get more “natural” products, is to shop at stores that are geared toward environmentalism. So for awhile, after our family decided to go green, we shopped at Whole Foods, and bought the exorbitantly priced lotions and toothpastes and shampoos there. But I couldn’t get it out of my mind that just because it’s at Whole Foods, doesn’t mean it’s natural. That’s like thinking buying a product at Safeway’s or Randall’s means its safe. You would like it to be so, but experience suggests you need to take the quest a few steps further.

I googled around until I found recommendations from environmental-friendly sources. But I was dismayed that while many of them told you what major-consumer-brands to avoid, why to avoid them, and what to use instead, they rarely if ever explained what products were used in the making of the ones they touted.

So I got online and researched the sorts or chemicals I definitely wanted to avoid. You’ll note the length of that list if you click on the link. It was a little much for me to carry every time I went to the grocery store, so I settled on just a few of them.

III.

Enter the Environmental Working Group, “a non-profit research and advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. focused on safeguarding public health and the environment.” This group spent two years compiling information on almost 15,000 products, and they offer up their findings in an online database called Skin Deep. If you want information on a beauty product not already in the database, you can send the brand in and get it added.

Skin Deep has an incredible database that not only includes information on brands like Crest or Suave, but it covers alternatives like Tom's of Maine, Jason, and Avalon Organics.  It analyzes the numbers of toxins, the number of ingredients that haven't been studied, and the known risks of the toxins that have been studied and comes up with a level of safety: 0 for products that pose no risks, 5 for extraordinarily toxic products.  You can search the database by typing in a brand name you're interested in, or by searching via a general area, like baby shampoos.

Below, I entered "Jason toothpaste," which I switched to when we first went green.



If you click on the product name, you get a long page detailing the particular products analysis, as well as a side bar glance that sums it up.  To the right, is the sidebar that came with the Jason Sea Fresh Spearmint Toothpaste my family has been using awhile.  It took awhile to get used to Jason -- it's a clear gel with a tingly taste totally unlike any toothpaste I'd tried before -- and I wasn't looking forward to switching brands.  I was relieved that although the Sea Fresh Spearmint we were using rated as moderately unsafe, the Sea Fresh Plus Coq-10 rated a whole point lower (go Coq-10!).  The lowest rated toothpaste, Fresh, is made of Umbrian Clay and costs $20 for 4 oz. -- I can get a 4 pack of my Jason Sea Fresh Coq-10 for that.  Its safty rating ties with Burt's Bees, but and lags only behind Fresh, Dr. Bronners, PeelU, Accelerade and Garden of Life. One day I might get sick of shelling out money for toothpaste and revert to using Baking Soda like my dad (but what about fresh breath!?)...but until then, I'll enjoy the days dappling in the oddities of health food toothpastes.

For those of you dying to see a general topic search, the first one I looked up was baby shampoo.  Because while GreenDaddy and I have gone no-poo, Lila is an Aubrey Organics girl.  Here's what I found:



Clearly, I was pleased to see BabyG's was the least toxic on the list...of 18 shampoos, it was only one of two with a low concern rating.  But one thing I like about this list is the surprises: Johnson and Johnson was in the lower 2/3...but still ranked about the same as the "green" brand, Desert Essence.  However, Desert Essence signed a cruelty-free compact, and Johnson & Johnson didn't.  The worst rated shampoos are Gerber, Mustela, and Modern...they got actual red, high risk dots.  

IV.

Admittedly, obsessing over these sorts of things can be loony-bin-making material.  I'm still not sure how bad moderate is, really, or how good low is.  When I look up one of my favorite products and get a long list of the toxins it contains, the ingredients nobody knows anything about since they haven’t been studied, and the final analysis of its safety, I am slightly flummoxed. I am no scientist. I don’t really understand the analysis, but the spirit of the site: which is free, which sometimes recommends big-named-brands over the health-food store brands, I trust. And in this era in which the numberless amount of labels claiming to be natural finally suggests the word "natural" itself has crossed into homonymuous terrain, this might be the closest I’m going to get to understanding what I put in or on my family’s bodies.

A Call to Parents Round the World

Take a look at this new video from avaaz.org. My friend jip wrote, "So important to reject this concept of a constant, ahistorical culture clash. The video lays out the lie of inescapable difference between 'East' and 'West' very well."

Ten Reasons Why Our Protests Against the Iraq War Were Not Inconsequential

Back when we were dating, MaGreen and I led local protests against the Iraq war. We were the megaphone carrying, permit securing, speech writing, meeting attending activists. The marches and rallies we helped organize were the largest Houston had ever seen. We spent between twenty and forty hours per week, between the two of us, on anti-war organizing from 2003 to 2005.

We never got paid and nobody gave us a plaque. Our activism was at a tremendous personal cost. Yesterday, a student I work with told me, not knowing my history of activism, that the anti-war protests were “inconsequential.” My chin started to quiver as I tried to calmly explain why the protests did have tremendous consequences. Below is the list I wish I had given him:

10) The invasion and subsequent occupation has devastated Iraq, killed thousands upon thousands of soldiers and civilians, drained funding for pressing problems, and undermined diplomacy. At one level, I’m simply glad to have voiced our opposition, and helped others’ voice theirs, to this catastrophe.

9) We helped develop a critical public discourse before the invasion, which will contribute to ending the war more quickly now. Widespread, public opposition to the Vietnam War did not develop for many years in the US and the catastrophe of that war lasted a very long time.

8) By questioning the motives behind the invasion, our dissent helped prevent UN backing of the invasion and helped to keep most nations from joining the so-called coalition of the willing.

7) Our protests helped embolden corporate media to cover dissent and the catastrophic effects of the war. We helped shape a media landscape dominated by coverage of celebrity wardrobes and football games.

6) We helped build a national and international infrastructure for coordinating dissent. We planned our actions on dates set by United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). I attended the UFPJ’s first major conference and voted on its governance and agenda.

5) The anti-war protests helped generate interest in the development of alternative, local media in Houston, such as houston.indymedia.org and KPFT local news.

4) We learned how to plan actions without much help. We made mistakes. Once we had figured out how to secure permits, hold meetings, form functional coalitions, disseminate our announcements, and stage a good event, we trained other people who wanted to do something but did not know how. We especially tried to collaborate with young people, women, and people of color. I think we contributed to the development of a more empowered and diverse group of activists in Houston.




3) We were transformed. We passed through fire. We saw the charred innards of activism in the US. Yet, I believe we emerged less cynical. We may be weary, but I feel strong inside.

2) We became friends with extraordinary people who worked with us organizing actions. Our lives have been filled with their love and support.



1) MaGreen and I learned that beautiful, unimaginable things can come of our relationship. I grew confident that we could be good parents.

More Britney Smears – Pretty in Stink

In my last post, I defended Britney Spears. Maybe I didn’t defend her so much as express my ambivalent feelings about her. My argument was that the whole Britney is a bad mother thing has more to do with America’s schizophrenia about gender than her actual ability to parent. But today, I’m more in a smear Britney mood.

Take a look at these pictures of Britney:



These pictures haven’t garnered nearly as much controversy as the picture of Britney nearly dropping her baby or the one where she’s driving with the baby in her lap. But I think these pictures are more upsetting. Why? It’s not because they're tacky like a 1985 glamour shot. My problem is that she clearly has make-up on. I’m guessing she’s wearing perfume as well. Those cosmetics and fragrances contain unregulated petrochemicals that mimic estrogen and testosterone, hormones that affect the development of the body in a myriad of ways we don’t fully understand yet. Here is a diagram of dibutyl phthalate, a chemical commonly found in cosmetics, and a diagram of estrogen.



Are you having trouble figuring out which is one is which? Your body has a hard time too. Sadly, women of child-bearing age are expected to wear cosmetics and fragrances. Those products are marketed aggressively to the one demographic that has the most reason to avoid them. Endocrine disruption could harm our children’s mental, sexual, and general development. Decreased penis size, hypospadia, breast cancer…scientists who do not have a vested interest in the commercial success of the cosmetic and fragrance industry are gathering more and more evidence on very disturbing effects of endocrine disruptors.

Here’s another picture that ought to be as controversial as the one where Britney is driving with her baby in her lap. In this one Britney is marketing her own brand of petro-stink right around the time of her first pregnancy.



An excellent resource on this issue is the Not Too Pretty website. You can download their report at this link.

The Mother We Love to Hate

I’ve been thinking a lot about Britney Spears. I have loved to hate her since she became famous. People often say that the Madonna of the 80s was far more impressive than Britney. Madonna always controlled her media image and challenged norms. She shaped, refined, and constantly reinvented her persona. She still does. There’s always another religious culture for Madonna to appropriate. Britney, on the other hand, is thoroughly made by others. Madonna turned the music industry into her vehicle, but it’s clear that the industry made a vehicle out of Britney. That’s why I don’t exactly hate Britney. Yes she is vapid, but she’s more a victim than an agent. Victim isn’t the right word. She is a reflection of the dominant, American notion of femininity. The wholesome girl in an impossibly short skirt. The paradoxically virginal temptress. Safely ensconced behind the television screen, she asks to be “hit one more time.” I remember a period of about three years when her songs were as unavoidable as air. Gross anatomy lab, restaurants, a Peruvian village in the Andes mountains – I couldn’t go anywhere without hearing her. She was more ubiquitous than McDonald’s.



Then she got pregnant. A national crisis. An international crisis.

What do we do when our virginal temptress becomes a mother? We heap scorn on her. We gorge on photographs of her looking…different. As in tired and overwhelmed, not in schoolgirl-stripper condition. How dare she? She doesn’t put her baby in the car seat when the paparazzi chase her. Her baby falls out of a highchair. For a few days, it seems possible the government could take her baby away. Then maybe she could go back to creating perfectly borderline pornographic consumables and we could happy again. But she kept her baby through it all and got pregnant again. It seems she didn’t quite plan this second baby and she denied being pregnant. Then she was proud about the pregnancy on Letterman and still planning to return as diva.



Britney is not my hero by any means. As an individual human being, she’s stumbling through conflicting gender roles. Like my daughter will have to. But she is also a national allegory and this allegorical hasn’t reached its denouement. I’m sympathetic, curious, and horrified.

We Don't Have a TV

That’s right. We’re one of those people. Because we are pure. No, that’s not why we don’t have a tube. It’s because we can’t help but watch for hours when we do have one. It sucks us away. And the content is mostly terrible. Actually, we do have a tube. I’m looking at it right now and it’s hooked up to my computer. For all our TV chastity, we are enthralled to the computer. I think it would be easier for me to count how many hours I’m not looking at a computer screen than the other way around. Between work, using the web for plane reservations and such, DVD watching on the computer, etc. – it’s an all day thing for my wife and me. In terms of parenting, though, our daughter is only five months old so we really haven't had to deal with this issue head on yet, but I've been thinking about it. The Kaiser Foundation released a report on media and parenting that’s finally got me to the point where I have to express my thoughts on the subject.

But first, enjoy this picture of our cat watching TV (which predates our renunciation of the medium):



The Kaiser report documents in great detail just how much time children are watching TV, listening to music, or sitting at the computer. Here’s a pretty illustrative quote, “Kids who watch television and those who watch videos or DVDs spend an average of about one and a quarter hours on each (1:19 for TV and 1:18 for videos/DVDs), while those who play video games and use computers spend an average of just under an hour on each (0:55 for video games and 0:50 for computers). On the whole, the 83% of children who use screen media in a typical day spend an average of just under 2 hours (1:57) doing so.” The basic thrust of the document is that parents use media to help distract their kids so they can get chores done, cook, and have "me" time.

Yes, I am disturbed. Two hours of screen time per day…on average. When I was a kid, I played basketball, rode my bike, and did my homework. Well, I guess I did play video games too. But not that much. I am righteously appalled by today’s kids and their lazy parents who “can’t imagine how they’d get through the day without television, video, and DVDs” because they’re too busy to just sit with their kids. Actually, I’m just not surprised enough to be that upset. My main reaction to the study is that it didn’t ask the right the kind of questions for me to form a solid conclusion.

I'd like to suggest a distinction between different types of media. There's advertisement-saturated media that you passively receive. And there's media that you engage with or even create. For example, if I help my daughter (when she is older) to write a news report for the Houston Independent Media Center website, I hardly think that's equivalent to watching American Idol even though both activities would be counted as screen time. Even watching American Idol is different than just watching MTV. People talk about American Idol at work and school. It's a major, public event. It becomes social. It creates an imagined national community. I'd like my daughter to participate in that kind of thing occasionally.

I think it would be more interesting to ask questions like, “How much time do you spend creating media verses time spent consuming it?” “How much time do you spend discussing the meaning, rhetoric, and agenda of media?” “Do you spend so much time creating media like pictures and video that you can only experience your family through the hyper-reality of those images?” Basically, the Kaiser Foundation should hire me to set up their next study.