5 Reasons To Shop Cruelty-Free In 2023
Stop The Torture, End The Abuse!
Seen and Green is excited to welcome our guest blogger, Lisa Simpson, for today’s post! Just kidding. I couldn’t afford her. However, if Lisa was here with us today, I’m sure she would say something like, “Stop the torture! End the abuse! Tell those animal testing Satanists, I mean scientists, to get a REAL job! Shop cruelty-free in 2023!”
Damn, Lisa. Tell ’em.
1. Cruelty-Free Products Are Often Safer
Don’t believe every advertisement you see about some miracle cream that promises to take 10 years off of your face. Besides, what’s the point of that when it may take 10 years off your actual life, too?
Products that are tested on animals tend to have a long list of chemical ingredients that aren’t just toxic to the animals they are tested on. They are toxic to humans too, which is why companies end up testing on animals in the first place in a half-assed attempt to make the public feel safe.
The irony is that after all of the animal torture, the finished product that ends up on the shelves is still dangerous to humans! Many countries recognize this to be true and have banned a long list of chemical ingredients that are still somehow legal to sell in America! There are over 1,300 cosmetic ingredients banned in Canada and many European countries, but most of those same ingredients are still completely legal in the United States which has only banned about 11 ingredients.
You may not have an immediate negative reaction to the toxic chemicals in cosmetics, but when used daily over time, some of these ingredients can do real damage, kinda like junk food. I call this a “slow kill.”
Your skin absorbs what you put on it. That’s why nicotine patches, birth control patches, and other types of patches are effective. It’s also why your skin feels so smooth after rubbing lotion on it.
Marcy Laub, of Harvard University, says that toxic ingredients in cosmetics “penetrate the body and join the bloodstream, where they may cause unknown harm.” She says a few common ingredients to watch out for are parabens and triclosan which are both endocrine disruptors that mimick hormones like estrogen and can cause developmental disorders, birth defects, and cancer.
Some countries that have banned animal testing are: the UK, Columbia, Mexico, Chili, Guatemala, Switzerland, Taiwan, Norway, and many more!
However, the United States is slowly moving closer towards giving a shit about consumer health and animal cruelty, with California leading the way.
You’ve probably seen the warnings on everything from fishing lures to whoopy cushions that say something like, “This product contains a chemical that is known to the State of California to cause cancer and reproductive harm.” Have you ever seen a cancer warning from the good ol’ state of Michigan? I know I haven’t. California is always the diligent whistle blower for cancer causing chemicals in the United States.
In fact, California recently banned 24 toxic cosmetic ingredients. So, it’s not surprising that the state that seems to really care about cancer warnings and cosmetic safety also happens to be the first state that banned animal testing in 2018!!! Since then, 9 other states have followed the lead in banning animal testing, including: Maine, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Louisiana, Nevada, Illinois, and Hawaii.
Formaldehyde is used in some cosmetic products like hair straighteners, shampoos, mascaras, eye shadows, nail polish, and more. It is often disguised in other ingredient names that release formaldehyde slowly over time like diazolidinyl urea, DMDM hydantoin, imadazolidinyl urea, quaternium-15, and polyoxymethylene urea.
The California Department of Public Health reports that “Pregnant women who are exposed to formaldehyde are more likely to have a miscarriage.” And, studies show that formaldehyde causes leukemia, throat, sinus, and nose cancers.
As a very conscious consumer with over 15 years of experience comparing cosmetic brands based off of their ingredients list, I’ve noticed a trend. Many cruelty-free products have a safer ingredient list than typical beauty products owned by popular mega-corporations that conduct animal testing.
So, when you decide to stop the torture on animals, you are deciding to stop torturing yourself and your family too!
***Disclaimer: It is not always the case that cruelty-free products are safer! This is simply a trend I have noticed. Check future posts for a carefully constructed list of the safest and kindest cosmetics!
2. You Don't Have To Compromise With Cruelty-Free
If you think that cruelty-free beauty products means only using 3 boring shades of eyeshadow, staining your lips with berries, and dying your hair with walnuts and tree bark, you’re wrong. Every single item that I have ever desired for my hygiene and beauty collection, I have been able to find cruelty-free: every color, every shade, all the glitter, all cruelty-free.
You don’t have to compromise any of your beauty preferences to shop cruelty-free. Check in for future posts showcasing the best cruelty-free products on the market!
3. Make A Difference
Some people say things like, “Changing what I buy doesn’t make a difference. Animal testing is going to continue whether I buy the products or not.” This is so pessimistic and entirely false.
I’ll admit that one person alone cannot make a huge difference. But, we are not solitary creatures. Humans have the ability and the duty to stand united and create positive change.
Remember Myspace? Didn’t think so. Ok, well maybe some of you remember it, but is it popular anymore? Absolutely not. People quit using it, so it effectively died. That’s just a quick example of how the success of anything is highly dependent on human interest and engagement, otherwise known as demand.
According to a Forbes article by Zach Conway, “Every dollar empowers a company to continue its practices in every facet of it’s operations, including it’s treatment of employees, it’s business ethics, it’s sustainability policies, and so on. Inversely, withholding our dollars, especially as part of a collective action in the form of a boycott, can shift the behavior of companies and institutions.”
The way you spend your money heavily influences how companies operate. If everyone shopped cruelty-free and refused to buy products tested on animals, imagine how much pressure that would put on all companies to stop animal testing.
Cosmetic companies would be left with 2 options: 1. To comply with cruelty-free consumer demand, 2. Or to simply go out of business. When they see you aren’t playing around, they will comply.
One subtle and non-pushy way I try to inspire others to shop cruelty-free is to respond to compliments with, “Thanks, it’s cruelty-free!”
For example, “I love your hair color!”
“Thanks, I used cruelty-free dye!”
Or, “Wow, I love your glittery eye shadow!”
“Thanks, It’s cruelty-free.”
Every time I post a picture on social media with makeup on, I always mention that the makeup and hair dye I use is cruelty-free.
Maybe, this is not so subtle? Who cares? It’s an easy way for me to sneak in that little bit of information without coming off as pushy or offensive.
When people get bombarded with too much information, or are made to feel badly for their beauty choices, they are not likely to want to change their behavior, because of psychological reasons. It’s obviously hard to inspire someone that you have just offended.
However, with the compliment response technique, you are telling a person that something they already like is available without the cruelty.
4. Animals Have Feelings, Too
Someone shocked me recently by asking in a serious tone, “Do you think animals actually feel emotions the way people do?” Ok, maybe animals don’t feel emotions in exactly the same way as humans do seeing as how they aren’t burdened by taxes, work stress, and stock market crashes. But, there is abundant evidence that animals have feelings and emotions of some kind.
Dogs provide one of the most obvious examples of animal emotion.
Dogs smile, whine, get sad, get excited, and so on. They wag their tails with enough force to knock your glass of juice off the table, and they tuck their tails when it hits the floor and breaks.
If dogs didn’t have emotions, they wouldn’t make such a big deal out of you coming home from work or offering to take them for a walk. If they didn’t feel enjoyment, they wouldn’t play with their chew toy or ball. If dogs didn’t feel sadness, they wouldn’t look so visibly depressed at the animal shelter.
I’ve even seen mice show signs of significant personality and emotion. I used to own 2 pet mice. The black one was very friendly and curious, and the grey one was very shy and kind of mean! Both got super excited when I constructed a new cardboard toy for them, and they displayed their excitement by doing what is called “popcorning,” or jumping around all crazy. One’s favorite food was watermelon, and the other mouse preferred cucumber.
It’s not just domesticated animals that have emotions. Wild animals do too. A quick Google search will provide you with tons of videos of wild animals playing just for fun, like ducks and crows purposefully sliding on ice, monkeys in Thailand stealing car keys from tourists and laughing about it, and even dolphins purposefully getting high off of toxic puffer fish.
Jane Goodall, the world’s leading expert on chimpanzees, observed and documented a heartbreaking display of animal grief. A chimp named Flo died, and her son, Flint lingered near her place of death, became lethargic, and quit eating until he died, too.
Biologists have observed elephants huddling around a stillborn baby for days with their ears and heads down swaying gently as if they were depressed.
To people that operate under the mindset that animals feel no emotions and no physical pain, animal cruelty may not seem like a big deal. But, to me, it seems absurd to think that animals have no emotions when there is so much evidence that they do.
It is obvious that at the very minimum, they do feel physical pain. Pain is a built in defense mechanism that all animals have to motivate them to survive. If you want proof that animals feel physical pain, just watch a really intense nature documentary about predators and prey. Screaming and wide eyes = pain.
5. Pain Is NOT Beauty
We live in a society that doesn’t encourage us to question ethics. As consumers, we are trained by our economic environment to base our cosmetic buying decisions on shallow and selfish reasons like: 1. Will this make me beautiful? And, 2. Can I afford this?
Products tested on animals may make you feel beautiful, but I’m willing to bet, if you are reading this, you are ready for a deeper kind of beauty. You want to feel beautiful on the outside AND the inside.
I’m not going to torture you by showing you videos and images of animal testing, because I’m not trying to ruin your entire week. It’s that bad. Videos like that make me super depressed for at least a week.
I trust that you already have it in your heart to understand that pain is not beauty, torture isn’t necessary, and a better world is waiting for you to start shopping cruelty-free in 2023!
Sources:
1. Becker, Katie, “10 American Beauty Ingredients That Are Banned in Other Countries,” Cosmopolitan, November 8, 2016 https://www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/beauty/g7597249/banned-cosmetic-ingredients/
1. California Department of Public Health, “Formaldehyde (Formaldehyde (gas); Formaldehyde solution; Methylene glycol; Paraformaldehyde) https://cscpsearch.cdph.ca.gov/search/detailresult/4266
2. Pallotta, Nicole, “California Bans the Sale of Most Cosmetics Tested on Animals,” Animal Legal Defense Fund, October 15, 2018 https://aldf.org/article/california-bans-the-sale-of-most-cosmetics-tested-on-animals/
3. Conway, Zach, “How Voting With Our Dollars Hits Our Political Divide, Our Problems And Our Pockets,” Forbes, February 3, 2020 https://www.forbes.com/sites/zachconway/2020/02/03/how-voting-with-our-dollars-hits-our-political-divide-our-problems-and-our-pockets/?sh=5515625e198b
4. Bekoff, Marc, “Animal Emotions: Exploring Passionate Natures: Current Interdisciplinary Research Provides Compelling Evidence That Many Animals Experience Such Emotions As Joy, Fear, Love, Despair, And Grief – We Are Not Alone,” Oxford Academic, American Institute of Biological Sciences, October 2000 https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/50/10/861/233998