Beauty Doesn't Have To Be Cruel

I fancy myself a writer of sarcastic humor and witty lines. I like making people chuckle. It's one of my strong points (well, in my writing, anyway), as long as the reader understands my sense of humor. But this is a topic that requires me to be a bit serious. Just a bit.

So, I'll admit, my relationship with the beauty world has been a bit, erm, shallow. I guess I can see how some people would think makeup is shallow in general, considering it's essentially there to, well, make someone's physical appearance look better, or more enhanced, for a better word. But what I mean is, I never really looked into what the makeup was, or what went into the process of creating that product. I was under the silly impression that if a product was expensive, it meant it was good. If a product received as much hype as American Idol, it meant it was good. Aaaand that was the extent of how much I looked into things.

UNTIL...

The other day (and I literally mean that -- I think I had this epiphany on Friday, and it is now Monday), I was talking to my friend Shannon from BeautySavvy. Now, Shannon is all about cruelty-free beauty products, and by that I mean, she's against testing products on animals. I knew this about her, of course, but I honestly never gave it much thought. As we talked, though, I really got to thinking, and it dawned on me that I'm using these products that came to be from being tested on animals. Some guinea pig in a cage helped create my favorite lipstick, and some rabbit locked in a box helped create my favorite mascara, and some monkey chained to a wall helped create my favorite foundation. Uh, what? Color me disgusted.

And so began, yet, another journey I'm embarking on. I did my research, read/saw some horrific things (and granted, I do take things I read/see on the internet with a grain of salt, but still), and it honestly boggled my wee mind how many beauty brands actually do this. Honestly. And really, you would think that, in this day and age, with the technology and knowledge that we have, we wouldn't need to use animals to test out some freakin' lip balm (oh yeah, I went there).

Because I don't want to bore you guys and leave you reading a blog entry for three hours, I'll try to cram this all into a nutshell. Let's try and make it a pistachio, shall we? So, basically, I'm no longer using products from brands who test on animals. Simple as that. If a company tests on an animal, for any reason, I'm no longer using their shizz. There is just no excuse for it, in my opinion. We're talking makeup here, not curing cancer.

Now, I'm not going to get all preachy on you guys, and I'm not going to tell you that you need to follow my lead. This is a personal choice I'm making, and I don't expect anybody to go along with me just because I said so. I just wanted to fill you guys in on what's been floating around in this little ol' noggin of mine, and I guess in a way it's a heads-up as to what you'll be seeing here from this day forward.

I'll see you folks soon.