The Year of Living Beautifully

I am a girl.

I am not a "girlie-girl" or a "high-maintenance girl" but I'm most definitely a girl. I have always believed that a woman should not leave the house without lipstick, although I eschew most other make-up. I blow-dry my hair, use moisturizer, and am trying to be better about filing my nails, which look like an 8-year-old boy's and are just as dirty, sometimes.

I am also a girl who watches a lot of sci-fi, listens to a fair smattering of hard rock and rap along with her Lilith-Fair folk, and who just taught her nephew to say "Andy Lau" and "Takeshi Kaneshiro." Which is to say, I believe that being a "girl" is delightfully fun since the Third Wave of feminism opened up the possibility of both sparkly eyeliner and ass-kicking co-existing in the same universe.

So. What does this mean for my new year's resolution?

It means I believe that I should be able to look cute and kick pollution-heinie at the same time. Since my (very late, I admit) discovery of the Cosmetics Safety Database, I've come to realize that I'm slathering my skin with a lot of chemicals that I don't really understand. And thanks to the relentless work of columnists like Nicholas Kristof, I've come to be a bit scared about what such chemicals are doing to us. And to frogs. (Click the link. Read Kristof's column. Trust me.) And to our planet.

This new year, then, I'm resolving to begin converting my beauty products to ones that are safer for the environment and for me. This means that I will:

1: As each beauty product runs out (I don't want to replace them all at once, because that would mean a lot of extra packaging waste) I'll check the hazard level on the Cosmetics Safety Database.

2: I will replace each product with one that has a hazard level of 5 (out of 10) or lower.

3: I will write about product on these digital pages.

As I said, I am a girl.

I want to find products that are safe. But I'm not going to lie. I want pretty hair and skin. I want to be able to have blue eyelids if I choose to. It's my prerogative, as a lady. And I won't use a product that's environmentally-friendly but doesn't do its job.

After all. I'm worth it.