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Life x Culture Lifestyle

The Year Of You: Wedding Trends To Watch For In 2018

Nothing says true love quite like a photo op with an alpaca, am I right? And even though it might be a stretch to say alpacas are the new symbol of holy matrimony, they’re getting invited to a surprising amount of weddings these days.


One newly married couple shared the spotlight with an alpaca in 2015, captured by wedding photographers at The Shalom Imaginative. A year earlier, alpacas had the honor of being featured as guests in a “bohemian-inspired” wedding shoot by Blue Eyed Yonder and Our Labor of Love.
[pullquote align=”center”]“[With modern weddings,] people want something different, they want magic, and they want to celebrate in a special way.”
—Niall Kelly[/pullquote]
Lifestyle website Brit+CO is calling llamas the latest trend in weddings, but it’s hard to say if this quirky wedding feature will be as common as doves anytime soon. What stories like this do highlight, however, is one massive trend steering wedding planning in 2018: personalization.

All About You

“It’s your big day.”
How many brides have heard this phrase repeated endlessly throughout the wedding process? Whether they’re facing an opinionated in-law, stressing over the budget, or just trying to decide on their color palette, friends and family are quick to remind couples that their happiness is top priority.

Now more than ever, weddings are being planned around the unique personalities, beliefs, and convictions of the engaged couple. In The Knot’s 2017 Real Weddings Survey, 64 percent of couples planning their weddings said decisions about their day were centered around personalization.
And thanks to the role of social media in wedding planning, we get a front row seat to watch how these amazingly personalized weddings are playing out.

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“Weddings are just all about the personal touches now,” says Leah Gunn Emerick, a wedding photographer and self-proclaimed professional wedding attender. “That can lend itself to some unusual situations just off of what is personal to the couple. Think having a bacon and bourbon tasting table instead of a regular bar and appetizer situation.”

From Fairytales to Fantasy

As more couples lean toward the personal, theme weddings are becoming more inventive than ever. Couples are taking a note from Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, planning royal weddings of their own.
Theme weddings aren’t exclusive to admirers of the British throne. Steampunk and Star Wars weddings are a couple of the most unusual weddings Janessa White, elopement planner at Simply Eloped, has recently planned. A future bride of hers, White says, will be bringing her cat to her small ceremony. White believes that engaged couples are becoming more aware of their options, thanks to PR efforts, viral content, and influencer marketing.


“People want something different, they want magic, and they want to celebrate in a special way,” explains Niall Kelly, a representative from Kilkea Castle, which has become a venue for fairy tale and Game of Thrones–themed weddings.

Getting Hitched for the ‘Gram

Photography has long been an integral part of weddings, with professional photographers and prop-filled photo booths helping chronicle the festivities, but in recent years, nuptial celebrations have become firmly embedded in social media.
Sixty-four percent of couples in 2017 reported creating a hashtag and asking their guest to use it to tag pictures from their big day, according to The Knot’s survey. Photo booths are changing with the times, says Maggie Lynn Hummel, an event planner with Terrace on Grand: Instead of printing the snapshots right then and there, photo booth providers are linking their booths to social media for people to tag and repost.

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One interesting new development, however, is the rise of the unplugged wedding—that is, weddings without electronics. Kristin Maxwell Cooper, the editor-in-chief of The Knot, was quoted by Brit+CO as saying this trend is experiencing an uptick, and Hummel notes this as well.


“They are usually putting up a sign and then announcing it before the ceremony,” explains Hummel, noting that phones are fair game once the ceremony comes to a close. “No one wants photos of everyone on their phones during the ceremony.”

Running Away Together

As more couples consider what they want most from their wedding day, more couples are making plans to elope. And we’re not talking about your run-of-the-mill weekend trip to Las Vegas with an officiant in a bedazzled jumpsuit, says White. Instead, she describes a highly personalized hybrid of an elopement and a destination wedding.

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Although there aren’t clear statistics on how many couples are eloping each year, The New York Times reported that the popularity of the choice can be attributed to the rising cost of weddings along with the complications that come with planning a large wedding. When you consider that The Knot found that the average wedding is setting couples back by $35,329, this choice completely makes sense.
According to White, brides and grooms aren’t making this decision on a whim. These are couples who have considered their personalities and their circumstances, sometimes years in advance, and have decided that an elopement is far superior to the stress of a traditional wedding.
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“We have people reach out to as far out as 2020,” she explains. “To be honest, rarely do the 48-hour, we-want-to get-married-this weekend [weddings] work out.”

The Small Things (That Add Up)

Not all wedding-planning decisions are about high-level stuff—being big, bold, or making a splash on social media. Make no mistake, the bulk of the decisions are grounded in the little details. For every conversation about the theme and the hashtag, there are ten more about, say, what will end up on the guest’s tables.
The most popular decor pieces and color palettes vary by the year, and 2018’s trends seem to be about returning to simpler times—and simpler parties.

“Once seen as corny and dated,” says Meghan Brumbley, owner and lead wedding planner at D.C. Engaged, “balloons are making a comeback this year.”
Indeed, balloons have expanded beyond birthday and New Year’s parties, according to Brides magazine, and they’re being implemented into weddings in creative ways. Instead of being used for for archways or on the getaway car, they’re being used by brides to create photo backdrops, table garlands, and place settings.
[pullquote align=”center”]A lot of brides are going simple. …It used to be everything needed to be very flashy, and everyone is really reeling that back now.
—Maggie Lynn Hummel[/pullquote]
For those concerned for the environment: Balloons were recently banned in Block Island, Rhode Island, after discarded, non-biodegradable balloons became an environmental nuisance in the town, reported The Boston Globe. If you want balloons in your ceremony, consider these biodegradable wedding balloons.
Color palettes are less flashy this year, too.
“A lot of brides are going simple,” says Hummel. “Ivories, light pinks, greenery, and maybe a hint of gold or rose gold. It used to be everything needed to be very flashy, and everyone is really reeling that back now.”

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Wedding favors aren’t taking priority this year, wrote Lauren Kay of The Knot. Instead of sending their guests home with a treat or gift, engaged couples are spending more money on making sure that the wedding experience is something their guests will remember fondly for long time.

An Unforgettable Experience

The desire to create a personalized, unforgettable experience is driving up the prices of weddings. Wedding are getting smaller, but engaged couples are spending more per guest than they have in years past. The average cost per wedding guest was $268 this past year, compared to $194 in 2009, according to The Knot’s survey.
“A lot of our brides are also thinking about their guests a lot more,” shares Hummel, who says that guest counts have dropped drastically at her venue in the last year. “They want good food, a good bar, and good music.”

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A smaller guest list allows for a more elaborate and unique experience, with musical entertainment, fireworks, sparklers, and photo booths taking the lead as the most popular experiential additions to 2018 weddings. More elaborate additions include magicians, comedians, and multiple musicians throughout the night.
“I recently attended a wedding where a man on stilts came out when everyone was dancing,” shares Kelsey Bowen, blogger at Little Things Favors. “He was dressed in all black and had an LED-light costume on. So there was this huge, light up robot looking thing dancing on the floor.”
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If a dancing robot isn’t your style, consider that some couples are blazing their own trails by booking adventure weddings. White has seen couples who’ve planned their ceremony on the summit of a mountain; they hike the mountain together and meet their family and officiants at the top.

Planning a wedding is certainly an undertaking.

For many couples, it will be the most elaborate event they plan in their lifetime. With countless decisions and ample pressure to please everyone involved, it is easy to be overcome by the stress of the planning. If there is anything to learn from the weddings so far in 2018, it’s that today’s weddings place importance on the expression of the couples’ individuality.
The freedom to plan the wedding you want, whether it’s an elopement or an elaborate event, is yours. Bring an alpaca if you want to.

Categories
Wellbeing

Bug Spray And UV Rays: A Guide To A Safe, Healthy Summer

One of my kids’ favorite books is a hilariously ridiculous story we’ve read at least a hundred times since it first appeared at the library two years ago. The main character, a crocodile, begins by professing his love of watermelon, but dissolves into a full-on freak out when he realizes he’s swallowed a seed. Everything turns out okay for this anxious reptile, of course. He belches up the seed on the last page.
I have to admit, my husband and I get a kick out of this book almost as much as our kids do—him because he loves to act out the panic for our kids; me because this fear of swallowing a watermelon seed is something I connect with. As a kid, I fell for the myth that swallowing a seed was dangerous territory. I’m certain it was my older brother who started the whole thing, waiting until my mom was out of earshot before convincing me swallowing the seeds would result in a belly full of growing watermelons.

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I learned the truth eventually. Like most adults, I know better than to believe that a watermelon plant could take root in my guts, but that doesn’t mean we’re not all buying into other summertime falsehoods.
Let’s shed some light on some of the most frequently discussed summer health issues so we can all get back to enjoying our time (and snacks) in the sun.

Food Facts

Cookouts and tailgates are some of the best parts of the summer months, but bad information about food safety can turn a great party upside down. Next time you load up your coolers with your favorite grillable meats and a pack of LaCroix, consider whether or not you’re doing enough to protect yourself and your guests from foodborne illness.

During the summer months, we actually see a rise in foodborne illnesses, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). We can blame warmer temperatures and the questionable practices that often come with outdoor food prep for this. Food that should be refrigerated often isn’t, and the people in charge of food prep are less careful about spreading germs with unwashed hands.
“Make sure you keep lots of superchilled ice and gel packs,” advises Julie Joffrion, fitness nutrition specialist and owner of All Inclusion Health. This will ensure that your food stays around the ideal refrigerator temperature, she says, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration lists as 40 degrees Fahrenheit or below.

Additionally, the USDA suggests keeping food and drinks in separate coolers because drink coolers are opened more frequently, causing the inside temperature of the cooler to drop. Make sure you are cooking meats to their recommended temperatures and keeping your hands clean by having hand sanitizer nearby when you can’t make it to a sink.


While we’re talking about summer food, are you still waiting to swim for at least 30 minutes after you eat? This is a summer safety guideline that may be nothing more than and old wives’ tale. According to Duke Health, there isn’t scientific evidence to back up the belief it’s dangerous to swim on a full stomach. As this resource points out, it actually makes a lot of sense to fuel yourself before you engage in rigorous exercise.

“Swimming is a very heavy exercise, and you’ll need good protein and carbs in your system before you dive in,” says Joffrion. Her recommendation for fueling your swim? A turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread.

Skin Deep

When it comes to summer health tips, skincare and sun protection shine through most—and have the most fiction among the fact. Is it okay to get a base tan? Is sunscreen protecting you from cancer risk, or is it actually a part of the problem?
It’s important to understand that all burning of the skin, or even tanning, is skin damage on some level. The idea of a base tan being safe or protecting you from further burning is completely unfounded, according to Tsippora Shainhouse, MD, FAAD, a skincare specialist.

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“If your skin gets tanned, it means that it has been assaulted by UV radiation and damaged,” she explains. “Your skin puts down this ‘base tan’ in an attempt to protect itself from burning and further damage, but it means that it has already been damaged.”

So, sunscreen—we all should wear it, right?

The answer is yes.
But in 2014, multiple publications reported on a study published in the journal Nature—the study found that sunscreen “only provided partial protection” against melanoma, and one study author told the Daily Mail that sunscreen should still be used—just in conjunction with other preventative measures, like “wearing hats and loose fitting clothing, and seeking shade when the sun is at its strongest.”


The Melanoma Research Foundation cites numerous studies which state that sunscreen reduces the incidences (not increases, as some online publications claim) of melanoma. The organization recommends generously applying high-SPF (30 or above) sunscreen year-round, no matter the weather, but they also recommend wearing protective clothing, seeking shade when sun rays are the strongest, and refraining from tanning. To avoid a deficiency, people should consume ample amounts of vitamin D, particularly if they live in areas with low sun exposure.

“Everyone should try to avoid direct UV exposure from tanning beds and during peak sun hours (10 a.m. to 3 p.m.), wear a broad-spectrum sunscreen … which covers both UVA and UVB rays, and wear protective clothing, sunglasses, and wide-brimmed hats when outdoors,” says Shainhouse.
There aren’t really any exceptions to this rule. So if you’re still hanging on to the idea that you can’t get a burn on a cloudy day or you believe you’re protected from the damaging effects of overexposure to the sun because your skin is dark, think again. Everyone needs to wear sunscreen if they’re spending time in the sun. And, when it comes to makeups with added SPF, they’re probably not enough to protect your skin.

Bug (Spray) Bites

Protecting yourself from bug bites is about so much more than avoiding annoying itching and scratching. Some bug bites are associated with a risk of illness or disease.
We know that tick bites, specifically from ticks native to the northeastern region of the United States, are related to an increased risk for Lyme Disease, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mosquito bites are also associated with risks of disease and infection, according to the Mayo Clinic. In both cases, prevention is the best defense.

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Even so, there are fears surrounding the use of bug spray containing DEET. Several years ago, there were reports of DEET exposure causing seizures. Although these reports were true, the National Pesticide Information Center, an organization that works to provide “objective, science-based information about pesticides and pesticide-related topics,” reports that these instances were associated with improper use of the product, including ingestion.


The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends foregoing insect repellants on children younger than two months.
Not only is it true that DEET is safe when used as directed, it is also the best way to repel ticks while outdoors. Dermatologic surgeon Sejal Shah, MD, says that, ultimately, the risks of a bug bite–related infection or disease are much worse than any potential risks associated with DEET.

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Stick with the recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Wear long sleeves and pants while hanging out in heavily wooded areas, and use bug spray containing at least 20 percent DEET (the AAP recommends not using any product with more than 30 percent DEET on children).
When selecting a bug spray, Shah encourages consumers to pay close attention to the ingredients in their bug spray and double check how effective it will be at protecting you from specific insects in your area.

More Than a Fashion Statement

Many people falsely believe that their skin is the only organ in their body that needs a little extra protection from the sun, according to Ryan Parker, doctor of optometry and director of professional services at Essilor.
“[Most] people don’t realize the sun can be as harmful to their eyes as it is to their skin,” he says. “Repeated exposure can increase your chances of developing eyelid skin cancer, cataracts, or experiencing temporary blindness.”

Repeated exposure can add up over time, causing serious damage to your eyes. To protect your eyes from sun damage, the American Academy of Ophthalmology recommends wearing sunglasses that protect your eyes from UV rays all year long as well as wide-brimmed hats. Avoid looking at the sun directly, and don’t forget to wear your shades on cloudy days, too.
According to Joel Schlessinger, MD, a dermatologic surgeon, many people are unaware or ill-informed about how the sun can damage their scalp. They may be vigilant about keeping their skin protected but forget to cover their heads. He recommends hats as the simplest protection, but also points out that sunscreen powders do exist for use on the scalp.

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A healthy summer is a fun summer, so take care of your body during the hottest months of the year. Getting the facts straight on sun protection, bug bite prevention, and food safety is a good first step toward being an informed advocate for your own health.

Categories
Nosh

Tomato, Tornado: The Grind Behind Your Favorite Farmers Market

If you want the best produce anywhere—along with humanely-raised meats, local honey, and the occasional cool art trinket—visit your local farmers market. You’ve probably got one nearby; according to a 2014 survey from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there are over 8,400 of the markets throughout the United States, and demand continues to grow.
We regularly visit our weekly farmers market, but we wondered what goes on behind the scenes. How much time do vendors spend at their booths? How does the weather affect their operations? (Both a lot and a little, it turns out.) Are we annoying them when we try to haggle?

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We reached out to a few vendors to learn the ins and outs of the trade (and hopefully get some good tips for endearing ourselves to our favorite farmers). It turns out that…

The work starts long before customers stroll in.

To some degree, this isn’t a surprise. However, if you’re thinking about joining your local farmers market, we can’t stress it enough: Make sure you’re aware of the work you’ll be putting in.
“For me, preparation can vary from the day before to a couple weeks before, depending on what time of year it is and if I have other events planned,” says Lisa Graham of YYC Beeswax in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

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“At the beginning of market season, it takes a bit longer to prepare/update display pieces and make sure inventory is up to date. I sell handmade products, and the time it takes to make each item varies, so I usually start preparing a few weeks in advance of my first market of the season and at least three days before a market in the middle of the season.”
Many of the vendors at farmers markets are—surprise, surprise—actual farmers. They live in rural areas, so commuting can take some time.
“I grow all my own product,” says Stan Caliper of Caliper Farm to Market in Royse City, Texas. “It takes at least two hours to pick and at least an hour to drive to a market from my rural location. It takes a minimum of one hour to set up and to stock the tent. The shortest markets are four hours.”

“[I plan for] at least one drive back and one or two hours to sort and restock,” he says. “That’s about 10 hours to do a four-hour market, not including any production time.”
If you’re thinking about getting into the farmers market trade, Caliper warns that you’ll never have a Saturday free. You’ll be spending that time outdoors in a pretty pleasant environment, of course, but hey, it’s still a sacrifice.

Your profits depend on the weather, which can be frustrating.

“It’s all weather related,” Caliper says. “On the best days, I can’t take the money in fast enough. [On] rainy and cold days, I sit in a chair, exposed to the elements, and see no one.”
If you’re a full-time vendor, that’s a big problem. However, once you’ve opened your booth, you’re in it for the long haul.

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“We are out at the markets rain, shine, or near-tornado,” says Stephanie Peace of Ludwig Farmstead Creamery in Missouri.
Wait…tornado?
“A couple of years ago, there was a bad storm coming in—we all had the option to stay or go. I was already set up along with a lot of other vendors, so we opted to stay. We could see the dark, ominous clouds rolling in fast, and we all tried to help the other vendors get their tents up as quickly as possible.”


“Even with weights to hold the tents down, a couple of tents flew up in the air and ended up forcibly crashing and getting twisted and broken. It was definitely an exciting afternoon. Thankfully, no one was hurt. After all of that, some of our die-hard customers came to the market and helped to salvage a hard beginning to the day.”
Our sources seemed to agree on that point; a bad day can quickly become salvageable, so the seasoned veterans don’t start packing up until the market’s officially over.

It’s something of a fraternity.

One of the big perks of being a vendor? You get to interact with a lot of really cool people, and, if you’re lucky, you’ll walk away with a few free tomatoes.
“The other vendors and I barter with our products through the market season,” says Merilyn Konnert, founder of Utopia Bath, Ltd. in New York. “I get so spoiled with the freshest vegetables, the freshest fish, it’s fantastic.”

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Konnert says that she feels a strong personal connection with the other vendors. A two-time breast cancer survivor, she runs a survivorship coalition at her local hospital, and people often stop by her booth to ask for advice.
“If I miss a Saturday morning, the following Saturday, they’ll stop at my table and check on me,” she says. “It’s marvelous.”
Other sellers told us that farmers markets are tremendous places for networking. For farmers, a connection with a local restaurant can prove extremely valuable.
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“Farmers markets were our main source of income when we first started out,” says Peace. “But now, they are mostly for exposure and to meet some chefs in the area.”
Of course, some vendors don’t have much time for networking.
“During the open hours of the market, I stay at my booth as much as possible to interact with shoppers,” says Graham. “When it slows down, it’s nice to learn a bit more about fellow vendors nearby. All of the markets I attend have great communities, and we get to know each other well as we run across each other at other markets.”

No, you’re not supposed to haggle.

We’ll admit it: When we visited our first farmers market, we tried to negotiate for a packet of artisanal beef jerky. As it turns out, that was a bit of a faux pas.
“I have had a few people try to haggle on price, and I do not appreciate it,” says Graham. “This is my livelihood, and I spend a lot of time evaluating my prices to give what I feel is a fair price to my customers.”
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“Occasionally, we have people who try to haggle,” says Peace. “It is generally not an accepted practice with any of the markets. Some vendors may offer some things on sale for that week, but haggling is not something we do.”
“[Haggling policies] depend on the location,” explains Caliper, “but it rarely happens to me. I don’t appreciate hagglers, personally.”

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When you run a booth at a farmers market, you interact with customers one-on-one. Sometimes, that means being assertive when they’re being unintentionally rude.
“I’ve had parents allow their children to touch all of the soaps—ruining the packaging with their sticky-bun or pickle-juice fingers,” Konnerth says. “But I’ve learned to just speak up.”

To succeed, you need to offer something different, and you need to be flexible.

“At any market where you want to be a vendor, make sure you have something different to offer,” suggests Peace. “You can still have some similar items as other vendors, but you will stand out and make more if you have a different product available. We are vendors at multiple markets that have another cheese vendor, but they sell goat’s milk cheese, and we are raw cow’s milk cheese, so that we don’t compete too much.”
Full-time vendors typically attend multiple markets, so schedules can be somewhat hectic.
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“I have my favorite markets I frequent as often as possible,” Graham says. “They usually change from week to week. Markets that run all summer, I try to book one, two times per month. I am reaching the point now where I will be at multiple markets on the same day, which means I have to prepare double the inventory and hire help. In addition to farmers markets, I also attend handmade markets geared toward hand-crafted products and community events.”
Different markets appeal to different types of consumers, and experienced vendors understand how those differences can drive sales. Peace says that first timers should look for markets that can guarantee decent attendance, even if registration prices are somewhat expensive.

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“Before becoming a market vendor, ask some of the vendors who are there how the market is,” Graham says. “It’s even better if you know the vendors well. It’s also helpful to learn the demographics of the market and the marketing strategy. There are sometimes opportunities to take advantage of marketing opportunities for your business, such as in the market newsletter or via donations to a local event.”

Mind your manners (or move on).

“The average customer may not realize that the person behind the stand actually produced the product,” says Caliper. “Know your farmer. I’m standing right here. I don’t want to poison you, or me for that matter. I know the history of the product.”
If you make comments about quality, make sure to stay respectful. Otherwise, don’t be surprised when your favorite farmer turns you away.
“If you insult me or diminish my product, I will take it personally,” Caliper says. “I don’t even want you to have it, at any price.”

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Ultimately, the people who set up booths in farmers markets don’t do it for the money; they’re passionate about their work, and they enjoy building personal relationships with their customers. That’s why farmers markets are such awesome places to visit—you get the peace of mind that comes from knowing exactly where your food comes from.
“This is my passion and my livelihood,” Konnerth says. “I’ve learned a great deal. None of this makes a 5 a.m. Saturday morning wake-up easy, but it does make it rewarding, and I love it.”

Categories
Conscious Beauty Lifestyle

Teflon Or Tefl-off? The Makeup Ingredient That's Causing A Serious Stir

When was the last time you read the ingredients label of your favorite cosmetic product?

For us, the answer is, “the last time my smartphone battery died and I didn’t have anything else to read on the subway besides the box that came with my eyeshadow.”
Unless you’re allergic to something specific, you’re likely in the same boat. Ingredient lists aren’t exactly compelling or easy to find, and if your makeup looks fab and you aren’t breaking out, you probably don’t have much of a reason to care.

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But recently, we’ve seen a rash (yes, that’s a pun) of articles warning about a certain toxic ingredient hiding in our favorite cosmetics. We know that the beauty industry isn’t always clean, so to speak, so we keep an open mind when we hear bad news about certain products, even when we really, really want to give those products the benefit of the doubt.
This week, we’ve seen numerous reports that several makeup brands contain Teflon, which has been said to cause serious side effects, including cancer. We decided to reach out to a few experts, do some research, and find out whether we need to worry. Short answer: It’s complicated.

Are cosmetics really full of Teflon, and if so…why?

According to those aforementioned reports, a number of popular cosmetics are loaded with Teflon, a chemical best known as the coating on non-stick pans (in fact, we’re pretty sure that’s the only thing people think of when they think about Teflon).

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Search for “Teflon in makeup,” and you’ll find dozens of results from apparently reputable sources claiming that the substance causes birth defects and cancer. It makes for a great eye-grabbing headline, and there’s a grain of truth to the rumors; however, the full story is more complex.
First, why is everyone talking about this? As far as we can tell, the issue went mainstream when the Environmental Working Group (EWG) published an article titled “Is Teflon In Your Cosmetics?” That piece looked at polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), used in various creams and anti-aging products for its sleek feel. Spoiler alert: PTFE is the same thing as Teflon.
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Essentially, cosmetics manufacturers use PTFE for the same reason that pan manufacturers use it; it gives products a slick feel that’s difficult to replicate with other substances. According to EWG’s online database, it’s found in various foundations, sunscreens, moisturizers, eye shadows, facial powders, and even mascaras. Brands that use PTFE include e.l.f., MAC Cosmetics, Olay, and many, many others.
Why is that a problem? We’ll let the EWG explain.
“Teflon is a brand name for PTFE, one of thousands of fluorinated chemicals known as PFASs or PFCs,” the piece says, “some of which have been linked to serious health effects including cancer, thyroid disease, and reduced effectiveness of childhood vaccines.”

We looked into those claims and found them to be accurate. The links in the statement above lead to government pages and scientific studies backing up the assertions; EWG did not provide the links, and to our knowledge, they weren’t necessarily referencing these specific studies in their original article.

Those sound like fairly serious side effects.

However, as you might have guessed, there’s a bit of a wrinkle here.
We reached out to the Personal Care Product Council, a national trade association representing cosmetics manufacturers. A representative forwarded us a statement from Linda Loretz, PhD, the council’s chief toxicologist, who adamantly refuted the findings of EWG.
“A recent report by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) incorrectly focuses on the use of the ingredient polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE; trade name Teflon®) in cosmetics,” Loretz says in the statement. “PTFE is an ingredient used at low levels to improve the cosmetic feel of some products that are applied to the skin.”

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“However, the safety concerns raised by EWG are about a different material called PFOA (perfluoroocatanoic acid). PFOA was used in past years as a processing aid in the manufacture of PTFE. However, PFOA is no longer used to manufacture PTFE and, thus, would never be found in a cosmetic or personal care product.”
The Personal Care Product Council didn’t respond to requests for further comment, but to summarize their position: PTFE is only dangerous if made with PFOA. (Yeah, we’re getting a little tired of the acronyms, too.) The EWG’s database doesn’t list any cosmetic products that use PFOA.
Teflon has been used in products since the 1940s, and over the past several decades, it’s been studied fairly closely. The American Cancer Society notes that “Teflon itself is not suspected of causing cancer” while also noting that PFOA has been shown in laboratory tests to increase risks of certain liver, breast, and pancreatic cancers.
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We reached out to the FDA and asked whether they’ve studied this issue.
“Companies decide which tests are needed to most appropriately substantiate safety,” a spokesperson tells us via email. “However, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act does not require cosmetic companies to tell the FDA specific testing they have done or to share their safety data with the FDA. The FDA does not conduct safety assessments for every ingredient used in cosmetics, nor does the FDA have a list of ‘safe’ ingredients for use in cosmetics.”

The FDA typically only gets involved when an ingredient is creating a clear danger, and while they occasionally comment on specific ingredients, Teflon isn’t one of them.
“The FDA doesn’t have a specific position on the use of Teflon or related compounds, commonly known as perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), in cosmetics,” the representative says.

Still…it’s Teflon, right? That doesn’t seem like something you should put on your face.

You’ll have to decide for yourself whether you want to use products with PTFE, but we’re just trying to set the record straight regarding safety. The fact is that even though Teflon is, uh, Teflon, it’s not necessarily dangerous.
Toxicologist Mimi Huang, writing for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, noted that Teflon can be toxic in certain situations—for instance, when directly inhaled from an overheating pan—but it doesn’t seem to be dangerous under normal circumstances.

iStock.com/xubingruo

Unless you’re a bird (for some reason, Huang wrote, our avian friends seem particularly susceptible to Teflon), you can ingest minimal amounts of PTFE, and it’ll pass harmlessly through your system. Hey, that’s why we use it on our pans; it doesn’t stick to things.
Huang notes that PFOA can be toxic, writing that, according to research, it might “interfere with hormonal balances as well as reproduction and fetal development.” Those are serious effects, and they deserve consideration, but remember, PFOA isn’t used in the production of PTFE—not when that PTFE is used in cosmetics, anyway.
iStock.com/PeopleImages

We’re going to have a really long talk with our non-stick pans when we get home, but let’s keep following the trail. We’re looking for a fairly definitive answer: Is our eyeliner a ticking time bomb?

Even EWG provides conflicting information about the dangers of Teflon.

EWG notes on their website that PTFE (or Teflon, if you want to be slick) isn’t suspected to be bioaccumulative, meaning that it doesn’t build up in human tissues over time, and it’s not suspected to be particularly harmful. However, they classify the substance as a moderate health concern, simply because it hasn’t been studied.

iStock.com/PeopleImages

We asked Fayne Fry, MD, a board-certified dermatologist, for another opinion. After all, before we started writing this piece, the most time we’d ever spent thinking about Teflon was when we were doing the dishes after a particularly eventful omelette attempt (don’t ask).
“Harmful effects of ingredients are determined by the dose of the chemical, not by the chemical itself,” she says. “500 milligrams of Tylenol (acetaminophen) will rid your headache, while 1400 milligrams of acetaminophen can [be fatal]. Water is good for you, but six liters at a time can [be fatal].”
iStock.com/pogrebkov

She says that Teflon is a stable compound, which means that it doesn’t really interact with other substances. Hey, that’s the reason that it’s popular, right? Currently, according to Fry, there’s no good reason to assume that PTFE is harmful, at least when used in cosmetics.

So, ultimately, our sources didn’t find PTFE to be a particularly worrisome cosmetics ingredient.

If you’d like to breathe a sigh of relief and hug your makeup bag, feel free to do so.
With that said, if you decide to use cosmetic products that don’t contain Teflon, we won’t call you paranoid. The EWG contends that federal cosmetic regulations are outdated and claims that the government should ask for more research before allowing substances like Teflon in makeup. They advise consumers to avoid products with PTFE and to contact their legislators to push for better regulations.

iStock.com/zoranm

“PFAS chemicals are often listed on product labels, so you should be wary of any ingredient with ‘fluoro’ in the name,” EWG researchers David Andrews and Carla Burns wrote.
The organization notes that 66 cosmetic products include the substance, so if you have any lingering concerns about PTFE, you should be able to avoid it easily with a bit of research. In fact, we’ll make it easier: This page on EWG’s site lists all products known to have PTFE.
iStock.com/skynesher

Cosmetics frequently include scary-sounding chemicals, and as we’ve shown here, expert sources often provide conflicting information. We do agree with the EWG that more research is always a good thing, but for the time being, we’ll let the Teflon warnings slide by.

Categories
Lifestyle

When It Rains, It Roars: A Conversation With Label-Slaying Model Rain Dove

Rain Dove doesn’t love labels.
She doesn’t hate them, either. To her, the differences between men and women are practically inconsequential. We’re all humans—why make things more complicated?
“I know my name is Rain Dove,” the model tells HealthyWay, “so there’s definitely going to be some hippy-dippy s**t in here.”

RainDoveModel/Instagram

Dove made international headlines in 2015 when she walked the runway at New York’s Fashion Week in menswear, quickly becoming the central figure in four separate shows. For most people, that would be a crowning achievement, but for Dove, it was a means to an end; in 2016, she was a major player in the fight against North Carolina’s controversial bathroom bill, and she continues to fight for representation of non-binary people in media.
RainDoveModel/Instagram

We’re just scratching the surface of an incredibly interesting life: Dove also lived as a man for a year while fighting wildfires, gave a stirring TED talk about gender identity, and went viral for challenging Victoria Secret’s beauty standards. She also attended the University of California at Berkeley where she pursued a degree in genetic engineering.
We spoke with Dove to learn more about her first (accidental) foray into modeling, what she learned while living as a male firefighter, and how we can fight back against harmful perceptions of gender.
[Editorial note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]
HEALTHYWAY: Thanks for taking the time. For the intro to this article, do you have a pronoun preference?
RAIN DOVE: A pronoun is just a sound to me, and all I’m listening for in the sound is positivity.
RainDoveModel/Instagram

Awesome. So you started modeling when you lost a bet on the Cleveland Browns. Would you mind going over that?
Sure, yeah. It was a dark and stormy day, and I went out with some drinks with a friend who was the face of DKNY at the time.
We were watching a football game, and they told me that I should consider modeling. I told them, “Models are pretentious people who don’t eat, and I love food too much. It’s not going to fit me.”
RainDoveModel/Instagram

But they said, “I have a feeling it’d be a really important part of your activism, so I’m going to make a bet with you. If I choose the winning team, then you have to go to a casting call of my choice.” And, of course, they picked the right team. I ended up having to go to a casting call three months later for Calvin Klein.
I didn’t know anything about fashion, and honestly, it seemed like the worst possible thing to send me to do. I just really, really was uncomfortable. And when I went in, they told me I was there on the wrong day. I looked around, and all I saw were like blondes and one redhead. I thought, “Oh, they must do it by hair color, that makes sense.” You know, you don’t want the color of the hair to clash with the color of the clothing.
RainDoveModel/Instagram

So they said to come back tomorrow. I came in the next day and it was all men. I realized, “Oh, they think I’m a man. Okay, whatever.” I’d been mistaken as a male before, and it didn’t really offend me, so I just went with it.
They ended up casting me in the show. When I went there, they handed me a pair of underwear and said, “Alright, we’ve gotta do our runthrough in 20 minutes. Everybody get running! Roll, roll, roll! Rain, go put on your outfit!”
I said, “Okay, where do I get my outfit?” And they’re like, “That is your outfit.”
And I realized that I was in a Calvin Klein men’s underwear show.
RainDoveModel/Instagram

I knew I had two choices. I could be like, “Hey, there’s some things on my body that probably don’t align with the particular marketing scheme you have for this garment, so thank you so much and goodbye.” Or I could make my friend just as embarrassed as I was—so I took the underwear, went into the dressing room. At the very last second, while they’re rushing, I came out of the dressing room—just, like, burst out, in only the underwear. No bra or anything. And I went down the runway.
How did they react to that?   
The casting director really looked like he was going to s**t himself. I mean he was just like, “Oh, my God, my career is over!”
And little did I know that that moment would change everything about my life and what I do. I didn’t think I would ever get into modeling, but when I started getting more job offers, I did them, because you can make more money in a half of a day of modeling than you could in an entire week of manual labor.
RainDoveModel/Instagram

When I saw how much people were spending on a Chanel purse, I realized—if they can spend $3,000 on a purse, they can afford $3 a month to help people change their lives through various causes and organizations.
So I decided to give modeling a shot, because I realized that—well, we always end up preaching to an echo chamber, you know? We talk to people who are already listening. I wanted to talk to the people who weren’t listening or who didn’t want to, because they’re the ones who need the change the most.
Yeah, and I think part of the reason that you’re such an engaging figure is that you’re kind of taking down the norms of the fashion industry while participating in it. Do you think that your opinion of the fashion industry has changed significantly since you’ve become a part of it?
Yes, it has. I used to just think it’s full of pretentious people. Whenever you think of the fashion industry, you always think that it’s full of people who are dumb and vapid. And there are those people that do exist in this world.
But I realized that fashion—I never really had much of a fashion sense growing up. I just wore what was comfortable. When I open up my dresser, for me, it’s more like opening up a toolbox than it is me opening up the world of creative possibilities, you know.
RainDoveModel/Instagram

I realized that clothing, for a lot of people, is like armor. It’s like an extension of their flesh. It allows people to say who they are, sometimes without ever having to say anything out loud at all.
There are good guys and there are bad guys, you know? There are people who really care, and who are trying hard to change the way that we market things. The issue is not really in high fashion; the issue is in commercial fashion.
You’ve described yourself as a gender capitalist. That seems very linked into this idea of making non-binary genders culturally acceptable—I guess, making them more marketable.
That’s exactly it. The things that we’ve always known [in fashion], we have a pretty good idea that they will work, but you need to be able to take risks. And you have to be okay with the fact that those risks won’t always pay off.
https://www.instagram.com/p/_LZWmTBsZ7/?taken-by=raindovemodel
I say that I’m a gender capitalist because I just don’t have time to f**k around. I do flex myself in society to get the best out of it. But the reason I need to [do that] is to break the binary, to break the system. To make people feel like they’re not enslaved by the clothing that wear or by the language that they speak.
That’s fantastic. I guess what’s interesting to me is you’ve got a unique perspective because of your experiences—you lived as a man for a year when you were a firefighter, correct?
Yes. Eleven months. I didn’t make it out to a full year; I got injured towards the end of it. I was so bummed.
What happened?
I got caught in a blaze with two other people. That’s actually how people found out I was a woman. Or, not a woman, but you know—that I had female on my birth certificate.
It was a really brutal time period. In fact, we all got injured really badly. The helicopters came in to airlift us out, and they only had room for two people, and there were three of us. They took one person named Colin, who was male-identifying, because he was the most injured. He was barely alive.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BAR8Vz_BseJ/?taken-by=raindovemodel
And they looked at myself and this other person, and this other person was very femme, female-presenting. Then there’s me, who’s been operating as a male for a while. We both had very similar injuries; I had a head injury with a helmet kind of melted into the side of my head, and she had multiple fractures in her foot and her ankles. We both had broken collar bones—it was just a mess.
But you know what they said when they were trying to determine who to take first? They were like, “Well, ladies first.” And they picked her up and put her on the ‘copter.
I was like, “Wait! I mean, sure go for it! I mean—of course, she’s my crewmate, but that can’t be the reason. Surely, tell me that her injuries are worse, that’s why you’re taking her. Don’t just say ‘Ladies first,’ like—come back here, f****r!”  (Laughs)
RainDoveModel/Instagram

But it was when I spent that time period as a male firefighter—I thought I had found the golden ticket to life. I could look like a cisgender, white, decent-looking guy. And I thought that was the ticket to having a better life.
In a lot of ways, it was, but one of the things I discovered when living with all these men as a male—I got to hear their conversations. The types of conversations and subjects that they just don’t talk about around women, you know?
I found that guys are actually—well, we always say that they’re not emotional, but they do tend to be kind of gossipy sometimes, and they do tend to have feelings about things and talk about them pretty intimately with their buddies. I realized that they have a lot of pressures on their shoulders, pressures that I never had as a woman.
RainDoveModel/Instagram

They always feel like they’ve gotta have their s**t taken care of, for themselves. There’s no fallback…If they need someone to take care of them, then they feel weak or depressed.
And actually, the rate of depression in my group was really high because a lot of guys felt like they weren’t going to be able to live up to certain expectations. There was a lot of frustration.
Can you give an example of that type of frustration?
We had these female crew mates and they would yell at us, like, “No! You need to do it this way!” That’s just fire banter—you just do that, you know? We get fiery with each other sometimes. It’s a life or death job, you do not have time for feelings, you’ve just got to say stuff.
But a lot of men felt really frustrated, because they couldn’t say things at the same level … “We feel like we can’t do conflict resolution because we’ll be seen as mansplaining.” Or, “We can’t talk about how we feel about something because it’ll be seen as aggressive.”
RainDoveModel/Instagram

And men would highly sexualize the women, but only when they’re trying to impress each other. It doesn’t happen in a one-on-one setting.
It’s like a call-and-response thing. It was almost like it’s just programmed into their language. But for the most part, when you just talk to a guy on your own—the conversations I had were actually not so much about attraction. They’re actually very much function-based, like “She annoys me,” or “She works hard.” They were an assessment of the value of the person physically and through action rather than sexually.
As a culture, I guess we focus on saying that things are easier for this group, or things are easier for this group. I think things are probably much easier for men than they are for women, overall—but it seems like such a valuable enterprise to be pointing out at the way that sexism and genderism make things difficult for everyone.
Yeah, it’s important for us to recognize that people are treated individually and assessed based off of multiple intersectionalities, from color to ability to the mannerisms in their body.
RainDoveModel/Instagram

The first division we have is our genitals at birth. I mean, that’s the very first division we experience. And I get it. I get it, you know? But at the same time, it really does curate a lot of our experience. And I think in order for us to be honest and sit down at the table, we cannot go into it saying, “It’s red team versus blue team.”
We have to say that there are disadvantages on both sides of this spectrum. There are problems for men, and we have to recognize that. And there are problems for women that you might think are over, but they aren’t over. There are different kinds of women in society.
RainDoveModel/Instagram

And I hope that we get to a point where we just assess every person individually for their experience, not for their body.
The irony, of course, that in order to stop talking about gender, we have to talk about it constantly. Kind of like we’re doing right now.
Yeah, that’s exactly it. Like, I don’t want to have to talk about this stuff, you know? But we have to.
You said in one interview that you wanted to be boring. I thought that was really interesting.
Yeah, I mean, that’s your ideal, right?
What’s something you would like to tell people they could do to try and help with these issues? To make a positive change?
I think that the easiest thing to do—well, it’s actually very difficult, but it doesn’t involve taking to the streets, or, you know, dressing in a squirrel suit and jumping off a building and attacking Mike Pence or anything like that—the easiest thing is just to be honest with yourself and allow other people to be honest with themselves.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVSdM8EF24L/?taken-by=raindovemodel
So many times, we shove down our truth just because we feel like we shouldn’t be having it, or we feel like there’s something wrong … So when you’re like, “I like this color,” just let yourself f****g like the color. If you’re like, “I like this person,” just let yourself like the person. If you love the smell of fresh-cut grass, just be like, “I f****g like that!”
Because the things that you like and dislike, that’s you. Allowing people to be honest about what they like and dislike is important because you’ll find very quickly that some things we like are biases that have been created through social programming. Racism is a great example, homophobia is a great example. We won’t be able to have conversations about how to change that programming if we can’t be honest with each other about the fact that we’re having these feelings.
RainDoveModel/Instagram

I always tell people we’re not our bodies. We can remove any part of your body, any organ can be replaced with a plastic pump these days. But the you that is you is something so much more than your body. It’s an experience. It’s an awareness. So the best thing that people can do is really be honest about their experience and let other people be honest about their experiences.
And as long as those people aren’t getting in your way of food or other people’s ways of food, shelter, water, physical safety, and freedom of movement, just let them f*****g be.

Categories
Lifestyle Well-Traveled

The Six-Year Honeymoon: How To Travel The World For Cheap (And Never Stop Traveling)

When you’re on your honeymoon, you sometimes wish it could last forever.
Unfortunately, honeymoons eventually end—for most couples, anyway.
That’s not exactly true for Mike and Anne Howard. On Jan. 22, 2012, the couple left their New York home for their honeymoon. Their plan was fairly bold: They’d travel to as many countries as they could, limiting their budget wherever possible.
They’re still traveling. Over the last six years, they’ve become National Geographic co-authors (check out their first book, Ultimate Journeys for Two, here), started a travel blog, visited all seven continents, volunteered in tribal villages, and launched their own travel workshop service.

HoneyTrek

We spoke with Mike and Anne to find out how they manage the financial (and personal) challenges of living a life on the road.
[Editorial note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]
HEALTHYWAY: So, you guys have been traveling nonstop since 2012, is that roughly accurate?
ANNE HOWARD: That is accurate, yes.
We just decided—life is short, and the world is big. For our honeymoon, we planned a year-long journey around the world. We just haven’t come home yet. We realized that there was a lot more to see, so we just pressed on.
HoneyTrek

Recently, we bought this little funky RV, and we’re now exploring North America.
That’s awesome. Had either of you traveled extensively prior to that?
MIKE HOWARD: Sort of. We knew we had a sense of adventure. We were living in New York and used whatever vacation days we had to go on international trips or take road trips, but that was nothing like this. This is on a different scale—it’s really nomadic living.
And you got the inspiration from a friend of yours, is that correct?
M: Yes, that’s right.
A: Mike was actually at an Oktoberfest for a friend’s bachelor party. He met his buddy who’d just went around the world with his girlfriend for under $100 a day. We said, “Wait a minute, that’s basically the same as our rent, and we’re not even eating out or doing anything fun at all.”
HoneyTrek

That was a benchmark that we thought we could achieve.
Setting benchmarks seems pretty crucial for this sort of thing.
A:  Yeah, I mean it was really helpful to have that encounter. Honestly, our life was good when we were in New York. We had good jobs, we’d just bought a house, we were about to get married. There was no reason for us to just sort of drop everything.
I think a lot of people decide on around-the-world journeys because they think, “Well, I’ve hit a rut in life, and I just had to get perspective.” That wasn’t us.
HoneyTrek

M: Our lives were good, but we also knew that’s just one view of the world. There’s so much more to explore and experience, so we decided that we valued travel that much. We said, “Hey, we’re going to prioritize this, because you can get hit by a bus tomorrow.”
A: You know, you could wait until you’re 65 and your knees are creaky, but then you can’t hike that mountain you wanted to hike. We just thought, “No messing around. Let’s do this. Let’s start saving.”
I think most people think that you’d have to be rich to do something like this.
M: Yes, it’s good to have those numbers be tangible, because we’re not millionaires. You could—if you start saving, it’s basically cutting out your Starbucks coffee and not going out every night of the week. You could make some simple changes and start a travel fund.
So we suggest that to everybody. If you do want to travel, quit talking about it and start making plans. Make yourself a travel fund. Set aside 5 percent of your paycheck every month towards travel. It is very achievable at every level.
HoneyTrek

A: We’ve now been traveling for six years, and our budget keeps going down. And we’re getting better at travel hacking—from frequent flyer miles to using home-sharing services, travel is crazy affordable. It’s way cheaper than going home, in fact.
What’s your travel budget around these days?
M: We don’t measure it on a daily basis, but we did an audit in 2016. I should note, we’ve had a lot of different travel styles—the first two years was just straight backpacking. We did 33 countries from 2012 to 2013.
HoneyTrek

A: And that speed can be expensive. We traveled really fast and went a lot of places, which increases your budget.
M: So our budget in the first two years was $74 for the two of us per day. That was all in—flights, hotels, visas, food, everything. From 2015 to 2016, we did a lot of house sitting. We averaged 10 countries per year, for those two years, so we went a little bit slower. Basically, we visited 20 countries over those two years.
HoneyTrek

House sitting helped bring our costs down a lot and gave us more immersive experiences, and our budget went down. And flights—like Anne said, we do almost every long-haul flight on [frequent flyer] miles for the entire trip. I don’t think we’ve paid for any flights, so that helps.
Last we checked, the budget was under $25 for the two of us, all-in, per day.
Whoa. Are you traveling comfortably for that kind of money?
A: Yeah, we know, it sounds really scary. We throw out those numbers, and people say, “Are you living under a bridge? Are you watching paint dry for fun?”
But no, we’ve had some really epic experiences. We took care of a beach house with two infinity pools overlooking the Pacific Ocean while in Costa Rica. That cost us nothing. We had a cat that we fed twice a day, but that was pretty much our only job!
HoneyTrek

M: We took care of a farm in Portugal. That was actually a phenomenal experience, to take care of a farm at the height of harvest. And you have neighbors, so you’re bartering potatoes for tomatoes and breaking bread together. It was a kind of thing that you couldn’t actually pay for. We did it for free, but it was invaluable.
A: That’s the thing with travel. Traveling inexpensively doesn’t mean you’re skimping on experiences. It’s actually shown us how to become a little more nimble and resourceful, realizing that the more creative you are with the ways you travel, the more rewarding it is.
I love that outlook. It’s really about these organic experiences. Is that something that kind of developed as you were traveling, or did you hit the road with that in mind?
A: I’d love to say that we were that wise going into this, but no. We had our bucket list. We wanted to hike Machu Picchu and scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef. But it was really about the people we met along the way and the unforeseen events—the serendipitous moments. That’s the magic of travel.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ba9_-ynhZtZ/?taken-by=honeytrek
Taking the photos, that’s not what leaves you fulfilled. It’s really getting to know the people. The people are what make every place unique.
M: What stands out are the moments.
A: We’re in the bayou right now in Louisiana. We went to this Cajun dance hall that’s been around forever, and they’re famous for their live music.
Well, you know what? When we were there, there was no live music that night, but instead, we wound up hanging out with the family that owns the hall. They kept the place open until midnight, just chatting with us. We learned their life story, and they were showing us these family photographs and instruments—let me tell you, we had a more intimate experience than anyone who’s ever seen them play as a band.
HoneyTrek

You can’t plan everything, and that’s a good thing.
Do you have any other examples of when things have gone wrong?
A: Oh, plenty.
M: The one in Jordan…
A: That was more of a risk, but yeah.
The buses had stopped running. Buses don’t run on a normal schedule on Saturdays in Muslim countries, and we were trying to get from Petra to Ammon. It was my birthday, and Mike had organized a nice hotel—normally, we don’t splurge on something like that.
HoneyTrek

Oh, and we were leaving the next morning, so things kind of needed to run on schedule. With no bus, we decided we could take a really expensive cab, but that didn’t seem like a great option, so we decided to just ask around.
We see this bus that is full of Jordanian women, so we ask the driver, “Are you heading to Ammon?” And he says, “Well, eventually. Let me ask the girls—we can give you a ride to Ammon, but we might make a stop on the way.”

M: Turns out they’re going to a wild dance party in the middle of Wadi Rum desert, two hours in the opposite direction.
We get on the bus, and they greet us with tea and sandwiches, then they cranked up the music. It was a full-blown dance party that they’re throwing on our behalf, just because they wanted to welcome us and share this experience with us.
So we didn’t get to the fancy hotel. We didn’t make it home at a reasonable hour. But let me tell you, that couldn’t have worked out better. It’s all about traveling with an open mind, a warm heart, and letting things unfold.
And I imagine that kind of helps to keep the stress levels low. I’m sure you get asked about that a lot, but—well, being in close quarters with another person for so long, that has to be stressful.
A: Oh, for sure. It all looks so glamorous on Instagram, but that’s not real life. We are living on the road. We didn’t know where we were sleeping or what we were eating. Your basics of survival are kind of in question every day when you travel. You don’t know where you’re going to sleep, what you’re going to eat, or how you’re going to get from point A to point B.
You’re reinventing all the time, and yes, that can be stressful. There have been some low moments, but the high moments are over the moon.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BWVWOGuBU36/?taken-by=honeytrek
Like Mike always says, we think of this in terms of chapters. Right now, we’re in this RV chapter—we’ve got this 33-year-old Toyota Sunrader without power steering. It’s got a four-cylinder engine. It’s nothing glamorous, but then again, we didn’t have a closet for five years.
M: We didn’t have our own kitchen, our own bathroom, our own bed. Those things were always changing, so this level of consistency has been really refreshing.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bf02wDNBAWB/?taken-by=honeytrek
We have this adventure-mobile, and we do all these crazy things, but at least the main piece is consistent. It’s our bed. It’s our kitchen, even if it’s not fancy. If you’re nimble and you change how you think about things, the stress of traveling is absolutely manageable.
Do you think that you’ll ever find yourself living in a normal house again? Is that on the horizon, or is that not even something you’re thinking about?
A: It’s nothing we’re thinking about in the near future. We stopped planning at a certain point, and we just let things happen.
And it’s working for now—like they say, don’t fix it if it’s not broken.
[related article_ids=21691]

Categories
Health x Body Wellbeing

7 Unsanitary Things People Do Each Day

Even the most extreme germaphobes—ones who sanitize every nook and cranny of their homes and avoid shaking hands like the plague—still participate in activities in which germs thrive on every surface. Despite all efforts to keep themselves as healthy and microbe-free as possible, they will still encounter these icky microorganisms on a daily basis.
Heck, anyone will. No sense in worrying.

iStock.com/PeopleImages

In fact, before we get into it, let’s get one thing straight: Germs are not inherently bad. And as one of our experts points out, it’s irrational to think a germ-free life is possible.
But there are a few common places where the make-you-sick kind of microscopic visitors can thrive. The following are just a few of the dirty things we do each day (and ways to clean them up):

Checking Your Mobile Phone

Standing in line, waiting at the doctor’s office, taking a break at work—your cellphone constantly calls to you even when you don’t hear the text notification or feel the vibration. There’s a nagging need to look at it all the time.
On average, we check our phones 47 times a day, according to a study by Deloitte, a professional services network. Eighty nine percent of people check their phones within an hour of waking up, and 81 percent look at their phones in the hour before they fall asleep. In short, we’re smartphone addicts.

Well, a study at University of Arizona found that our cellphones have 10 times more germs than a public toilet. And because everyone knows toilets are dirty, they get cleaned often. Cellphones? Not so much.
“We need to wipe our phones with [disinfectant] solutions at least once in two days,” says Lokesh Sharoff, MBBS, a doctor at P.D Hinduja National Hospital & Medical Research Centre. To remind yourself to clean your phone, keep a bottle near the charger.

Biting Pens

“People also have a habit of biting or licking the opposite side of the pen, which do carry a lot of germs,” says Sharoff. A nervous habit for many, gnawing on a pen can not only serve as an unsanitary action, but it can also damage your teeth.

iStock.com/Paul Bradbury

Health resource Health Guidance for Better Health offers the following suggestions for curbing the habit:

  • Coat your pens with nail varnish to make them taste bad
  • Wrap the pen with tape
  • Choose a non-tempting type of pen (a metal pen won’t look as tasty)
  • Let others know you’re trying to stop chewing on pens and ask them to hold you accountable

Using a Shopping Cart

With all the people who touch shopping carts on a daily basis, all the food that moves in and out of them, and all the employees who rarely clean them, the fact that shopping carts offer some of the dirtiest public surfaces should come as no surprise.
In study published in Food Protection Trends, researchers sampled 85 shopping carts throughout the West Coast and found that the cart surfaces contained more bacteria than 100 public restrooms—even including the filthiest parts of a toilet: the seat and the handle.

On top of that, researchers discovered half of the carts contained E. coli, and 72 percent contained coliform bacteria. The elevated level of coliform meant that fecal matter was involved in the contamination.
Before you start shopping, carry wipes into the store with you and wipe down the cart before you use it. After your grocery trip and before you put away your purchases, be sure to wash your hands.
Tsippora Shainhouse, a dermatologist and pediatrician, says to wash for 15 seconds and sing the ABCs in your head to ensure you get everything.

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“To make sure that your hands don’t take the brunt of this washing,” she adds, “use a moisturizing cream afterwards, preferably one with ceramides that help maintain the skin barrier.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Keeping hands clean through improved hand hygiene is one of the most important steps we can take to avoid getting sick and spreading germs to others.”

Visiting Your Office Break Room

You probably hit the office break room a couple of times a day to fill up your cup of coffee and pick up your lunch bag. Beware: The break room and kitchen are the worst places for office germs.
In “one of the most detailed and comprehensive studies ever conducted on identifying workplace hot spots where germs can lurk,” microbiologist Charles Gerba, in concert with Kimberly-Clark Professional, found that the break room, especially the sink and microwave handles, were “the dirtiest surfaces touched by office workers on a daily basis.”

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In this study, hygienists from Kimberly-Clark Professional, a subsidiary of personal care item producer Kimberly-Clark, collected almost 5,000 swabs from office buildings with more than 3,000 staff members. The office buildings included organizations from a range of industries, including law firms, insurance companies, healthcare, and call centers. Some of the dirtiest parts of the break room, their test results showed, were the handles of the sink faucets, microwave, and refrigerator doors.
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To work toward a cleaner workplace, management should offer easy access to cleaning solutions, like keeping hand and cleaning wipes next to areas that people often touch.
Christopher Calapai, DO, a board-certified osteopathic physician, also advises routinely washing your hands and using Lysol sprays in the office.

Driving

You have enough to worry about a lot when you’re driving—distracted, impaired, or lead-footed drivers, for instance—and now you can add germs to the list.
“Typically, things that we have our hands on all the time are risks, including money, telephones in offices, [and] some surfaces at home and in the workplace,” says Calapai. And all those germs make it onto your steering wheel.

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In a study out of Queen Mary University in London, researchers found that car steering wheels contained about nine times as many germs as a public toilet seat.
One of the germs researchers found was Bacillus cereus, which can bring on food poisoning, according to CBS News’ report on the study.
To avoid tracking germs back to your steering wheel, carry an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with you. “I always have one in the side bucket of my car. I rub it into my hands as I get into my car to make sure that I do not transfer any outside germs onto my steering wheel,” says Shainhouse.

Pumping Gas

According to a study out of the University of Arizona (as reported on by CleanTechnica), pumping gas is the most germ-filled everyday activity you can do.
The trusty team of microbiologist Charles Gerba and researchers from Kimberly-Clark Professional found that 71 percent of gas pump handles are highly contaminated “with sorts of microbes most highly associated with illness and disease.”

To prevent adding to the germ pile, you should wash your hands before using the gas pump. Also, keep a bottle of hand sanitizer in your glove compartment to use after you fill up.

Typing

Office workers, take note: Your keyboard, like many things on this list, is dirtier than a public toilet.
A consumer group called Which? tested 33 keyboards in their London offices and found that they housed germs that could cause food poisoning, according to the BBC. Of those tested, “four were regarded as a potential health hazard,” and another contained five times more germs than one of the office’s toilet seats. It was so dirty (with 150 times the recommended bacteria limit) that the tester had the keyboard removed and quarantined.

The less grime on your keyboard, the less material there is for bacteria to consume. According to Intel, to keep your keyboard clean, you should:

  • Spray it with a can of compressed air, which you can pick up at any office supply store
  • Vacuum it with a dust attachment
  • Turn it upside down and lightly tap the keyboard to knock away loose crumbs
  • Use the sticky part of a Post-it note for the hard-to-remove crumbs
  • Use cotton swabs around the keys
  • Use a screen wipe on the stubborn sections
  • Avoid eating over your keyboard

Keeping Yourself Healthy

Overall, you can take additional steps to keep yourself as germ-free as possible. Most of them are fairly elementary.
“The best hygiene tip is to just exercise common sense and practice good hand hygiene when in situations such as public transportation, restroom use, and prior to eating,” says Amesh A. Adalja, MD, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Ian Tong, MD, chief medical officer at Doctor On Demand, points out that brushing your teeth often when you are sick can help clear your mouth of germs.


Oh, and don’t forget to take your vitamins. “Consider taking vitamin D supplements—2000 IU—daily,” Shainhouse says. “The theory is that vitamin D is necessary for the body to make cathelicidins, part of the innate immune system that helps fight off infections.”

If it isn’t clear by now, you cannot live germ free.

Adalja is sure to note that the planet teems with microbes, the majority of which do no harm and are necessary for normal human functioning. “It is misguided to think that one can—or would want to—avoid germs altogether.”
Even spraying down your house, your car, and your clothes will not rid your life of microbes. To avoid the nasty ones, all you can do is keep yourself as healthy as possible by frequently washing your hands, keeping sanitizer (hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes, the like) in the proper places, and making sure you’re getting all of the necessary vitamins and minerals to strengthen your immune system.

Categories
Wellbeing

Symptoms Of Skin Cancer Women Should Know About

Melanie Wilson spent her younger years as many people do: lounging on the beach and tanning herself to achieve an attractive golden hue. On Jones Beach in New York, Wilson would rub herself with body oil while soaking up the rays and even sunbathed in the driveway of her home and at school using sun reflectors.
She ended up paying the price for a temporarily bronzed body with multiple skin cancer surgeries. “The biopsies they did on me were so very deep and large that I felt for sure they must have gotten all the cancers. I have had the surgery on my right arm and both of my lower legs,” Wilson says.

Despite the many surgeries, she still gets skin cancer symptoms. She often notices spots “of interest” all throughout her arms, legs, and face. Fortunately, most require little work to remove.
“The ones that I can identify always turn out to be ‘pre-basal cell,’ (superficial benign lesions) and they can be addressed either with a simple excision or by using Aldara cream,” she says. But they pop up every few months, even though the sun damage happened decades ago.

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Wilson, with fair skin, light eyes, and a history of sun worshipping, is the perfect storm for skin cancer.

Skin Cancer Facts

“Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer worldwide, more than lung, breast, cervix, colon, and prostate,” says dermatologist Alberto de la Fuente, MD. But the good news, he notes, is that skin cancer is the easiest to cure.


To demonstrate how common it is, the Skin Cancer Foundation provides compelling statistics:

  • In the U.S., each year, more than 3.3 million people receive treatment for non-melanoma, a less serious type of skin cancer.
  • More than 5.4 million cases of non-melanoma skin cancer are treated each year (some people receive multiple diagnoses).
  • One in five Americans will develop skin cancer at some point in their life.
  • One person with melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer, passes away every 54 minutes.
  • Women ages 49 and younger have a higher probability of developing melanoma than breast or thyroid cancer.
  • The cost of treating melanoma in the U.S. is $8.1 billion each year.


“When caught early, skin cancer is highly treatable,” says David Lortscher, MD, dermatologist and founder of Curology. “Although the vast majority of skin cancer deaths are from melanoma, the five-year survival rate for people whose melanoma is detected and treated before it spreads to the lymph nodes is 98 percent.”
So, what can you do to not become a statistic? De la Fuente says the most important advice he can give is to get any new or changing lesions examined by a medical professional.

Symptoms to Watch

Staying hyper-vigilant on skin awareness is your best defense, as is staying away from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. Symptoms you should look out for include:

A Growth on the Skin Found by Touching It

These growths are often overlooked and, if left untreated they can become cancerous. “[They] often form very small in shape and can really only be detected through touch, as they are often rough and/or raised,” explains dermatologist Gary Goldfaden, MD. He says you find them in areas often exposed to the sun, and some can disappear and then reappear bigger in shape. One of the more common versions of this is a small, slightly red spot, particularly on the forehead or nose.

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“If this spot feels quite rough, almost like sandpaper, there could be cause for concern,” says Lorna Thomas, MD, dermatologist at Detroit Medical Center and Detroit Receiving Hospital. She says that patients often treat these lesions with moisturizer, assuming they are just dry skin.

Lumps and Bumps in Places Unseen by the Sun

Skin cancers like mucosal melanoma can occur in places such as the nasal cavity or genital region, says Brenda Busby, program coordinator of pediatric and mucosal melanoma at the Melanoma Research Foundation. (Busby works for the organization but is not a medical professional).


Mucosal melanoma is rare, making up 1 percent of skin cancer cases. But incidence rates are higher among women due to genital tract melanomas, according to research published in the International Journal of Clinical & Experimental Pathology.
Despite its overall rarity, Busby says, mucosal melanoma “is one of most aggressive forms of the disease because it is often caught late. People do not know to check for it and doctors may even misdiagnose it.”

iStock.com/Zinkevych

JB Ward was diagnosed with vaginal mucosal melanoma in 2016 and says that mucosal melanoma primary tumors “are more of the lump and bump nature and can be painful or not painful at all, and frequently don’t have a discoloration or tint to them.” In short, it is hard to find.

Reoccurring Shiny Spots That Almost Heal

These are commonly found on the face and upper body, says Tsippora Shainhouse, MD. These persistent patches or bumps are typically pink or translucent. Occasionally, they may bleed before appearing to heal. Before they totally heal, however, they bleed again, in a process that can take place over months or years.

“If you have a sore that won’t completely heal up after a few months,” Shainhouse says, “get it checked out by your dermatologist.”

Moles That Change Shape and Color

“The most obvious change is enlargement over time,” says dermatologist Mark Gray, MBChB. The change can even happen slowly and subtly—so keep your eye on them.
Malignant moles “tend to be asymmetric and are varying shades of brown, black, gray, and sometimes pink,” he says. He recommends looking with a critical eye at any lesions greater than six millimeters.

iStock.com/ChesiireCat

Of course, not all moles are easy to see. You need to check more than just your arms and neck. According to dermatologist Sam Hetz, MD, the deadliest type of skin cancer is most common in women on their back and legs. “I always make sure that patients keep an eye out for odd looking moles in these areas,” he says.

Skin Cancer Treatments

If a doctor finds squamous cell carcinomas (a non-melanoma skin cancer) at an early stage, you are in luck. Most medical professionals can conduct treatments on an outpatient basis at their office. A few such treatments include:

  • Moh’s micrographic surgery—Considered one of the most effective techniques to treat basal cell carcinomas (with a 99 percent success rate), the surgery removes skin cancer layer by layer. Doctors examine the tissue under a microscope until they get to the healthy skin around a tumor.
  • Radiation—For large tumors or tumors in locations more challenging for doctors to reach, radiation therapy might become a suitable alternative. In this treatment, doctors use a type of radiation called “electron beam radiation.” According to the American Cancer Society, “It uses a beam of electrons that don’t go any deeper than the skin.”
  • iStock.com/Mark Kostich
  • Topical therapy—Ointments and creams are rubbed on the skin to treat visible and invisible lesions. Wilson uses topical therapy with Aldara cream, but she finds the experience less than pleasant.
  • Photodynamic therapy—Drugs called photosensitizing agents are used with light to kill cancer cells. Wilson had this done approximately five times throughout years; she even has an upcoming appointment for it on her chest. “It is a good way to treat pre-basals when you don’t want surgery or to go through the horrible Aldara cream, particularly when there are many in an area.”
  • Excisional surgery—A doctor uses a scalpel or a sharp razor to remove all the growth by cutting or shaving it off the skin. The wound is then closed up with stitches.

Stay proactive.

To take a hands-on approach to skin cancer, you should always get a yearly wellness check by your primary care physician. A good way to remember to do so is to schedule it around your birthday or the first of the year. This way the doctor can check out any potential moles/lesions you might miss.

In addition, you should perform monthly self-checkups. “Once every month or so, look at your entire body and check your moles for any new lesions and any changes in shape, border, size, color,” says Shainhouse. She suggests doing this before you get in the shower.
“Examine all of your skin, including your face, ears, neck, chest, under and on breasts, abdomen, back, armpits, arms, legs, hands, feet, nails, and genitals; use a hand mirror, if necessary.” For the harder to see places, she recommends enlisting the help of a friend to check the scalp and back of your ears and neck.

HealthyWay
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And always, follow sun care best practices.
Find shade, stay covered up, and apply sunscreen that’s SPF 15 or higher 30 minutes before you head outdoors and again every two hours.
HealthyWay
iStock.com/RuslanDashinsky

Hearing the word “cancer” can make you feel scared and powerless at best. Fortunately, when detected early, skin cancer is highly treatable and curable. You cannot change the sun damage you experienced in the past, but you can always change the quality of the future by practicing conscious, preventive sun care, and examining your body for any changes.

Categories
Conscious Beauty Lifestyle

Forget Makeup, Food Could Be Your Next Favorite Cosmetic

Run out of foundation this morning? No worries. Head to the pantry and give peanut butter a try.
Where do you think we got that idea? From a YouTube trend, of course. At some point in the recent past, YouTube makeup artists began creating full-face looks with items from their pantry. Some have more success with their ingredients than others, but the array of foods they use, and the looks they create, are incredibly impressive—even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones.
Lily Lowe is a popular YouTube makeup artist who decided to try out the food-as-makeup challenge.
[pullquote align=”center”]“I knew the [food-as-makeup] trend existed, and I find it so enjoyable and fascinating how every single thing around us is an instrument for art.”
—YouTuber Lily Lowe[/pullquote]
“It’s obvious that fruits and stuff with food colouring will leave a nice tint, so I thought, ‘Perfect,’” she tells HealthyWay. “What’s going to go wrong?”
Lowe isn’t the only one taking on the challenge. It’s a full-fledged trend, and if you want to get in on the tasty action, just keep reading. Just keep in mind that this is just a one-off experiment, not a dedicated, daily makeup regimen.

iStock.com/Steve Debenport

Oh, and before you run off to the store and stock up on foods to try this yourself, be aware of allergies you might have. If you’re unsure about how something will react on your skin, test out a small patch first before slathering it across your whole face. And obviously, don’t use foods you have a known allergy to. That wouldn’t be good.

First, exfoliate.

Before you get ready for the day, it’s always a good idea to clean and exfoliate your skin. Exfoliation helps get rid of dead, dull skin cells, leaving you looking as radiant as possible. There are lots of different products out there, but why not save money and use a secretly amazing exfoliant that’s probably already in your pantry?

@BrookAlyson99/Twitter

We’re talking, of course, about coffee grounds. Not only do you get to enjoy a cup of joe in the morning, but you can then use the grounds as part of your beauty routine. Coffee grounds are coarse but not harsh, and you can use them on your face or your whole body. In fact, coffee grounds have nearly the same pH as your skin, so they shouldn’t leave you feeling too oily or dry.

2. A Tasty Foundation

Once your skin is clean and smooth, it’s time to apply your base foundation. A handful of artists use peanut butter because it is similar to a cream-based foundation. Make sure you buy smooth peanut butter, and if you need to make it thinner for easier application, just add a little coconut oil—this was Lowe’s saving grace during her attempt. Once you have the product prepared, just smooth it onto your face and use a brush or beauty sponge to smooth it into your skin.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BFPe3WkGH9p/?hl=en&taken-by=lou_flores
Plain peanut butter tends to work best for lighter skin tones, but you can add cocoa powder to the mix to adjust the pigment. If you find the peanut butter too thick or not as manageable as you’d like, you can mix cornstarch and cocoa powder to make a food-based powder foundation.

3. Eyeshadow

With so many colorful options available for eyeshadow, you might think there’s no way the food options can compare. Not true! Depending on the look and style you’re going for, there are a ton of food items that can replace store-bought products.

Lily Lowe/YouTube

The first option is to use different fruits. Smash blackberries and blueberries and (carefully) apply the juice to eyelids for a dark, yet soft tone. For earthy tones, you can use plain cocoa powder or spirulina. Be careful not to be too heavy-handed with the powders, though. Use a small brush and start off with a tiny bit of product, then build from there.

4. Brows and Contour

If you need to fill your eyebrows in, there are a few food-based options. However, most of them only work for those with darker hair. Cocoa powder can work as a brow filler, or you could use almost any other chocolate product. You could warm up a chocolate icing, a chocolate candy bar, or peanut butter and use those similarly as a liquid or cream product.
The same goes for using food for contouring. Chocolate products (in either powder or cream form) can be applied with a brush or sponge and used to contour your face. Some will blend better than others. And remember, if you’re having difficulty getting something to blend or set, try adding some coconut or jojoba oil.

YouTube star Ms. Yeah takes this makeup trend to the next level in her video. Not only does she use a plethora of food products found in her office (including chocolate powder for brow filler), but she creates a brow brush from an actual chicken feather.

5. Baking

Now you can actually “bake” your face with real baking ingredients! In case you aren’t familiar with the term “baking” in regards to your makeup routine, it’s a way to set your foundation for a flawless look. Baking involves dusting your face with a translucent powder, allowing the heat from your face to set your foundation and concealer for 10 minutes or so. Then you dust the powder off.

@rimmaco/Twitter

If you want to try baking your food-based full face, you can use actual baking flour. After you’ve applied your foundation, use a powder puff and press flour onto your cheeks and under your eyes. Wait 10 minutes and then dust the flour off.

6. Lips

Remember devouring tons of candy as a child and realizing if you ate enough Skittles or Jolly Ranchers your tongue would turn colors? Well, now you get to use those candies in place of boring ol’ lipstick.
https://twitter.com/vicesadvirtues/status/975307589599686656
Skittles or Kool-Aid are good options for funky lip stain colors. To use Skittles, warm the candy in your hand, or melt them down in a microwave (but be sure to let them cool before touching). Once they are soft or slightly runny, you can use your finger or a small brush to apply the color to your lips. For Kool-Aid, dampen your finger, dip it in the powder (just a little at a time), and apply to your lips.
You can also use crushed berries, barbecue sauce, or even hot sauce (though we aren’t sure why you’d want to do that) for more subtle tones. Check out Stephanie Lange’s video that shows her using barbecue sauce as lipstick and brow filler.

7. Blush and Bronzer

After all the work (and food) you’ve used to make yourself look great, you need to top everything off with a nice blush or bronzer/highlight. Why go through all that trouble to not look as stunning as possible?

HealthyWay
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Again, you can reuse a lot of the food products from other sections here, too—it all depends on your skin tone. Cocoa powder can work as a bronzer or as contour. Crushed strawberries or raspberries work well as natural blush colors. If you want something with a little more sparkle, you can try out some edible glitter as highlighter or blush.

Now, it’s your turn.

If you’re curious about this makeup trend but don’t know where to start, there’s a good chance your favorite makeup artist has already made a video of them trying it out. Some have more success than others, but you can see how each food item reacts and works in different situations.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BNIBbarhrQX/?taken-by=makeup_maven
Lowe, who you’ll remember from the beginning of this article, set out to do a natural, full-face look using nothing but food.
“I knew the trend existed, and I find it so enjoyable and fascinating how every single thing around us is an instrument for art,” Lowe tells HealthyWay. “So that was my main reason for making up my face with food, combined with the fact that I just fancied a light-hearted fun challenge for my channel.”
In the video, Lowe does a great job at implementing the products…but some of them just won’t cooperate.
Lowe’s plan included: peanut butter for foundation, setting the foundation with flour, contour and eyeshadow with cocoa powder, edible glitter for highlighter, blueberries for eyeshadow and mascara, a mix of cocoa powder, flour, peanut butter, and coconut oil for her brows, and Skittles as a lip tint. Lowe was confident with her choices in the beginning.

HealthyWay
Lily Lowe/YouTube

“I did have a lot of faith in the food at first! I’d done some research beforehand, [which taught me that foods] that have good color pay off,” she says.
When Lowe began applying the foods to her face, she quickly encountered some difficulties. Thinning the products with coconut oil definitely helped, but each item came with its own difficulty in regards to blending and covering the skin evenly.
“Getting my base done was definitely the hardest,” Lowe says. “Mixing everything with coconut oil seemed to be my savior, as it thinned the peanut butter ‘foundation’ to a nice consistency, but it definitely doesn’t feel the best on your skin, nor does it supply any coverage you may be surprised to hear.”
HealthyWay
Lily Lowe/YouTube

These problems didn’t stop Lowe! She powered through and finished applying all the items, discovering some surprises along the way. Despite the peanut butter being tacky and the cocoa powder refusing to blend, Lowe created a beautiful, neutral-tone look, and says she is eager to try all of this again.
If you’re worried about how your skin will react to being covered in food, just know that this wasn’t a problem for Lowe.
“I think a lot of people expected my skin to suffer a lot after this, but I can truthfully say that my skin was completely fine afterwards,” she says. “If you think about it, there is probably a lot more harmful chemicals in the stuff we put on our skin everyday, and it was only sitting on my skin for a brief time before I cleansed it thoroughly.”

Another makeup artist, seen above, took this challenge to a whole new level and only used food items to apply her makeup. No brushes—only food. Think you can master these techniques?
Before you try either one of these, it’s important to try to waste as little food as possible. Buy products you would normally use, and only take out small portions at a time. This way, you’ll be looking good responsibly. Good luck!

Categories
Lifestyle

The Facekini, Neck Rings, And The Yaeba Procedure: Looking At Beauty Standards Around The World

Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of skincare knows that sun protection is the key to beautiful skin. While the rest of us endlessly research for the perfect high SPF sunscreen, some people are utilizing some more creative tactics. Enter the facekini.
Essentially the swimsuit’s equivalent to the balaclava, the facekini has caught on at beaches in China, much to the amusement of the Western world. Whether it be a floral-patterned head covering or a full-body suit, they’re a far cry from most American beachgoers’ attires. Stateside sun lovers would much rather forgo perfect porcelain skin in exchange for a visage that’s sun-kissed in their youth and potentially sun-ravaged as they get older.


These ensembles are not only a reminder of how far some people will go for their appearance, but how differently each culture interprets beauty.
Christopher Santo Domingo Chan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington. He also helps create Cut’s “100 Years of Beauty” videos.

“My teaching interests involve the anthropology of pop culture,” he says, “getting students to think about their favorite TV shows, their Insta feeds, and their beauty tutorials as all embedded in a political and visual economy, and that pop culture hides the political in plain sight.”
Early anthropologists collected artifacts and symbols of a different world for their museums and collections, Chan notes. He says that these items, particularly those that reflected the fashion and aesthetics of non-Western cultures, shaped the idea of what it meant to be a part of Western society—they learned what they were by defining what they were not. This trend continues today—by looking at beauty in other cultures, we can further understand what we consider beautiful, too.

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Chan argues that there’s no one thing that connects every culture, though we still search for “universal master narratives to describe something like beauty.”

“…we have relied on particular scientific strategies to calculate our perception of beauty—using big data, optical tracking, facial measurements, and the like,” he says. “But ultimately, beauty is always in withdrawal—when we think we know definitively what beauty is, we are inevitably surprised by its emergence elsewhere.”
Yes, we’ve all seen those Photoshop experiments where retouchers all over the world are asked to reveal their idea of beauty. Unfortunately, the only lesson that could be gleaned from that was why you should never hire the cheapest retoucher you can find. Want to see some real examples of beauty around the world? Check out these unconventional practices.

Arm Covers—South Korea

South Korea is famous for its skincare obsession. Much like the facekini enthusiasts of China, they’re well aware of how damaging the sun is. The solution? A stocking-like sleeve that rolls over the arm to protect it from the sun.

eCRATER

While they are reminiscent of those cringe-worthy fake tattoo sleeves you’d find in a carnival showbag, these accessories are actually super effective at deflecting UV and, in some cases, keeping the arms cool. They’re particularly favored by athletes and truck drivers.
For those of us who aren’t South Korean, the look might be a little hard to warm up to. But guess who’s going to have discolored, wrinkled arms covered in moles in a couple of decades? Not South Korean truck drivers!

Skin Lightening—Asia

Quite possibly the most controversial beauty product in existence, skin lightening cream is something that never fails to stir up debate in countries where it isn’t all that common. Companies like Dove and Nivea have been accused of peddling a pro-white skin agenda to countries where darker complexions are the norm.

Shills via TreeHugger

It goes without saying that this is an incredibly problematic message. However, there are some forms of skin creams don’t lighten the skin so much as brighten it. The aim is to create a more even glow to the skin. Of course, this is dependent on the ingredients in the product. Some of them really are straight up bleaching the skin.

Neck Rings—Myanmar

The Kayan women of Myanmar know all too well the mantra of “beauty is pain.” They enclose their necks in shiny golden coils from childhood, gradually adding more to push down the collarbones. This creates the illusion of a neck much longer than natural.

It’s a painful process and one that’s still practiced to this day. It’s not quite as common as it once was, but some Kayan women still hold on to this ancient beauty custom.

Leblouh—Mauritania

In a country as poor as Mauritiania, a fuller figure is a much-coveted sign of health and beauty. Unfortunately, this is taken to the extreme with leblouh. Young girls are taken and force fed a calorie-dense diet at “fattening farms” in order to bulk up. As they rapidly gain weight, they become more attractive in the eyes of a potential future husband.

BBC via Daily Mail

Far from a marker of body positivity, it’s a dangerous return to old tradition following a military coup in the West African country.

Plastic Surgery—The World

Plastic surgery isn’t unique to one culture, but its popularity certainly varies from culture to culture. For example, Brazil—a country already obsessed with attaining and maintaining perfectly round behinds—also happens to be the birthplace of the Brazillian Butt Lift. Also known as a buttock augmentation or lift, it’s a way to achieve a Kim K booty without all that gym work.

South Korea is the plastic surgery capital of the world, so it’s no surprise that going under the knife is a fairly normal thing for those who can afford it. In fact, one K-pop group, Six Bomb, celebrated their surgical makeovers in a music video where they debuted their new faces. Plastic surgery clauses have long been rumored to be part of the K-pop industry’s infamous “slave contracts”.

Yaeba—Japan

Plenty of us have had to endure those awkward braces years as teenagers, or perhaps forked out a lot of money (and endured a lot of pain) to fix crooked teeth as an adult. But in Japan, one trend has seen people going to the dentist to correct their overly-straight teeth.

SpinkaFun/Youtube

The Yaeba procedure involves creating snaggleteeth with the front canines that some people find cute. Granted, the procedure involves plastic fronts rather than a permanent de-straightening.

Stretched Piercings—Various African and Asian Countries

Though popular in Western culture today, many cultures have practiced stretching for generations. For example, the Dayak women of borneo use weights to stretch their lobes. The Apatani tribe of India even stretch their nostrils.

Urska Furlan/500px

Some remote African villages, such as the Mursi in Ethiopia, wear lip plates as a sign of beauty. Other African peoples, such as the Nuba, wear a plug in their stretched labret piercing just below the lip. T

Circle Lenses—Asia

Particularly popular in Japan, circle lenses create the illusion of big, cartoon-like eyes, much like an anime character.

YouTuber Taylor R made a video about her damaging circle lens addiction. She would apparently wear the lenses for so long that her dry eyes would be unable to “breathe” and now suffers from vision problems.

Shockingly Familiar

These international beauty trends may be considered shocking to us, but our own concept of beauty has its own uncomfortable history.
Women once wore tightly-laced corsets that were as important as any other piece of underwear. Lead and arsenic makeup was toxic enough to be lethal. Some even dropped deadly nightshade into their eyes to dilate their pupils.

Ladies Home Journal/Wikimedia Commons

In fact, if you look at modern Western beauty trends, they’re really not all that different to those from other cultures. Women once starved themselves to achieve the gaunt 1990s model look but are now going to extreme lengths to achieve that Kim Kardashian booty. And there’s no denying that alternative subcultures have drawn inspiration from far away tribes with their much-loved gauged ears and plug earrings.
“I like to trouble the idea that there is somehow a purely ‘Western’ beauty tradition,” says Chan. “Even in the 15th century, European nobility and the emerging bourgeoisie were constantly influenced by the circulation of images, practices, techniques, and styles from travelers, scholars, intermarriage, and migration from around the world. Thus, ‘Western beauty’ has always been global and vice versa; Western beauty and fashion … constantly needs new input and new stimulus from visual reserves around the world.”
But you don’t have to look to these subcultures to see examples of our society’s unconventional beauty standards. We age our skin and expose ourselves to risk of cancer by sun tanning. We tattoo makeup, eyebrows, and even freckles onto our skin. We fill out lips with foreign substances that “plump” them. We even remove and inject our own blood into our face and call it a “facial.”
https://twitter.com/kyjennerworld/status/970055632593346563
While these practices may seem the norm to us, they may very well be quite the shock to other cultures—proving that “shocking,” just like beauty, is subjective.
“When we talk about beauty, we are really condensing all the complex realities of a person’s identity into an image,” says Chan. “Thus, all the work we must put into producing this image, we are endeavoring to communicate the internal self to the external world.”