Product-Free Party Hair

New Year's 2010: I made a resolution to transition to sustainable beauty products. Since then, I've given up almost all hair products (except hair color: I don't think it's right to try to color your hair without cancer-causing chemicals, and ever since someone called me a "redhead" I've been committed to the fun of coloring my hair).

During the holiday party season, doing cute hair without product can be challenging. I absolutely love parties - especially Christmas parties! - and dressing up is one of my favorite parts. I have very fine hair. Until recently, I thought that Aquanet was the only possible way for me to have cute, upswept hair.

But now ... I have devised a party hairstyle that keeps my fine hair in place, gets lots of compliments, and takes less than five minutes to accomplish. Basically, it's the holy grail of hairstyles.

Want to learn how to do the messy updo that has transformed my party life?

Step 1:

Take a handful of hair from right behind your ear.

(Optional) Step 2:

French braid the hair from behind the ear. I do a little French braid pulling my hair from the neck line. Don't work too hard. Just stop braiding whenever you feel like it. Put a clip on the end of the French braid to hold it in place.

Step 3:

Pull back the hair from behind the other ear. Braid it if you're going to.

Step 4:

So, now you should have two hanks of hair or two braids. Gather the ends together and put a ponytail holder around them. See how messy it is in the picture? Don't worry about it. This is a messy updo - so relax.

Step 5:

So here's the tricky part. Have you ever seen those ads for the Topsy Tail? It's a device that turns your ponytail inside out. That's basically what you're going to do here. Take the ends of the ponytail that you just created, lift it, and flip it through the gap you created when you brought the two braids/ponytails together.

Step 6:

So here's the part that might seem tricky, but isn't. You just take the ends of your hair and roll it up like a burrito. Tuck any stray ends into your Topsy Tail. Again, it SHOULD be messy.

Step 7:

Your hair is now in kind of a jelly roll. Take a bobby pin and stick it in one end. Do the same on the other end. Then take a couple of bobby pins and stick them into the top of the roll. I usually use 4-5 bobby pins. They hold your hair very firmly, so don't go overboard.

And that's it: product-free party hair!

You can see up above how my hair looked from the front when I was at a wedding this summer. I always get asked how I do this style, and now you know the secret.

Sparkly and Fabulous!

I've had trouble finding a good, natural lotion that I like. I'm a big fan of most of the Burt's Bees products, however, so I tried out their Radiance Body Lotion.

Like most of their Radiance line of products, it smells nice and works like a champ. However, the first time I wore it outside, I noticed ...

... well, my arm was sparkling in the sunlight.

No, I hadn't been "turned" by one of the Twilight crew. It turns out that the lotion contains mica, a mineral that reflects light. It's actually kind of nice, but I think I'll keep looking for a lotion I really like.

Thursday Spa Day

It's Thursday!

Thursday? Why the exclamation point? you might ask.

I've decided that Thursday will be spa day for me. I'm a pretty low-maintenance girl. I wear make-up and comb my hair, but I've never cottoned to the beauty routines that a lot of girls swear by.

Take, for instance, mani-pedis. (No really! Take them! If my dad read this blog he would crack up). I have no desire to get one. I'm too ticklish to get relaxed while someone touches my feet or hands. I get bored easily and don't like to sit around. Hence, mani-pedis don't seem to be my thing.

But I do love nice nails and cuticles, and I do like to have a nice, fresh complexion (one reason to live in Houston, where the humidity acts as a natural anti-aging treatment). So, on Thursdays, when I sit back and watch Project Runway (where Portland's eco-friendly designer, Gretchen Jones , is doing two things to the other contestants: kicking their asses and annoying them) I'll have my own beauty night.

Of course, my spa day, just like a Project Runway dress made out of recycled bottles, must be eco-fabulous.

Nails

I have teeny-tiny little hands with the nails of a second-grader - scuffed and broken. I'm trying to look like an adult professional however, so I'm trying to institute a simple nail routine of filing and buffing. The little buffing block I use (which I bought from an Israeli girl at a mall kiosk) shines up my nails without any chemicals.

My nails, post-filing. Note how freakishly small my hands are.

I don't wear nail polish because I can't keep it unchipped, but I do like the way it looks. However, it's not Mama Earth's best friend. Nail polish, as you can tell by its toxic aroma, often contains weird chemicals. You can download a wallet card to tell you which brands are free of toluene, formaldehyde, and dibutyl phthalate. Just because a nail polish is free of these chemicals, however, doesn't mean it's toxin free. As always, the Skin Deep Cosmetics Database is a great place to look if you want to know the impact of the products you use.

Wily gets into spa day with some claw-filing.

Clean Face

My go-to facewash is ... Ivory soap! However, sometimes I like a deeper clean, so I go for Burt's Bees Pore-Refining Mask with French Green Clay (ooh la la!).

Burt's Bees ... since I've started this blog, Burt's Bees is my beauty company of choice. No, they aren't "the greenest", but they are the most consistent company I've found in terms of eco-impact, price, and effectiveness. Go Burt!

Moisturized Face

I don't need much moisturizer, due to the fact that the very air in Houston moisturizes my skin. When I do need something (as I did in our peculiarly dry spring) I like Burt's Bees Radiance Night Cream. It has royal jelly, which is something involving bees, and which I don't look into too much, in case I'm grossed out somehow.

Here's me, face completely stripped and clean. Not too bad, Burt's Bees!

What do you do to pamper yourself?

Kisses!

So, in January, I made a New Year's resolution that I would start using beauty products that are healthier for me and the environment. As each product ran out, I vowed I would replace it with one that scored a hazard rating 5 or lower (out of 10) on the Skin Deep Cosmetics Safety Database. (Except for hair color. I'm not crazy. You shouldn't try to color your hair with anything less than industrial-grade chemicals).

How's that resolution going? you might ask. Catfish, you haven't written about it for quite awhile.

That's because I've settled into a routine with most of my beauty products. I've been using Burt's Bees shampoo and conditioner, and as far as I can tell my mineral foundation is fine (Skin Deep doesn't list the exact color I use, but most of the others in the line are a 3 ... except for one worrisome 7). I use Ivory soap on my face at night, and a Burt's Bees scrub in the morning.

I've given up hairspray with very little difference in my hair style.

But this past week, a tragedy occurred. I ran out of lipstick.

Now, a girl's lipstick is a very personal item. Vividly, I remember standing around while my mom tried sample lipsticks on her hand. I was taught that one doesn't leave the house without lipstick, even if everything else is a mess. I've simplified by relying on a single lipstick -- L'Oreal Colour Riche in the "colour" Milla's Plum. I originally chose it because it is named after the model and butt-kicking Resident Evil babe Milla Jovovich, who I've liked ever since she graced the pages of Sassy magazine.

Sassy Magazine. Best friend of every girl who grew up in the grunge era. RIP, Sassy.

Knowing I would have to buy a new lipstick, I turned with trepidation to Skin Deep. What I feared did occur -- Milla's Plum was a 7.

Damn.

I began searching for lipsticks with hazard ratings of 5 or lower, and found, to my happy surprise, that many common brands rated between a 3 or 5. Armed with a list, I headed off to Target -- I wanted something that I could find in any drug store in America, rather than a specialty brand that might not be available in a lipstick emergency.

I ended up settling on Revlon ColorStay Liquid Lipstick, in another plum color. It's a bit different than I'm used to -- as the name implies, it's a liquid that you smear on like lip gloss. It has a rather sticky consistency, but doesn't taste or smell weird (some of the more natural brands have menthol which makes your lips tingle and tastes minty). While the color isn't as deeply plummy as Milla's Plum, it has a nice pinky glow. All in all, not bad.

Muah! Thanks, Revlon! They are also known as one of the first major cosmetics companies to swear off animal testing.

And there's still a tiny bit of Milla's Plum left for special occasions.

Reflections on Summer Odyssey 2010

My summer odyssey - 19 days of traveling the West Coast, visiting friends and family, working and playing -- is almost at an end. I am excited to get home, relax, sleep in my own bed and pet my cat. However, it has been a wonderful journey.

One of the things that has been best about this trip has been getting to spend time in nature. I make my best effort to get outdoors in Houston, but during the humid summer months I do most of my exercising indoors. The lovely weather in Portland and Northern California has allowed me many opportunities to examine the flowers, look up at the redwoods, and see a pod of dolphins jumping playfully in the ocean.

Wildflowers in Northern California -- it's pretty amazing what nature produces.

I've also enjoyed the ease with which a greener lifestyle is available in many parts of the West Coast (as someone who grew up in more rural areas of the West, I know it's certainly not available everywhere).

In Portland, my friends Caitlin and Connie, along with niece Carys, walked over to the amazing New Seasons Market in the Concordia neighborhood. I love grocery stores, and this one tops my list -- locally-owned, staffed by friendly people and offering lots of local and organic foods. We filled our small shopping list, then wandered the aisles pointing out different items and trading recipes, looking at the quirky selection of books about urban homesteading and DIY, and generally enjoying ourselves.

A VERY rainy spring resulted in profusions of flowers bursting out in Portland's yards.

Portland is known as a mecca for greenies. In fact, Popular Science named it America's greenest city in 2008, and it regularly shows up on other lists. As you walk the streets, you see sidewalk medians decked with mini-gardens and the city is a cyclist's paradise. It also contains Washington Park, a 400-acre oasis in the middle of town with hiking trails, Japanese garden, rose garden, zoo, and Arboretum. In Portland, you're never far from reminders of our dependence upon the natural world.

After Portland I headed south to the Bay Area, to stay with my friends Ron and Sara and "nephew" Desmond, and to attend a team retreat for work. The Bay Area is also crunchy, although as a large urban area, it has lots of challenges to green living -- for example, public transportation can be almost prohibitively expensive here and the cost of living means many folks are forced to drive from distant suburbs to their jobs.

It is, however, easier to reduce household waste here. I'm actually fairly happy with the city recycling program in Houston -- and it's improving through a pilot program which will add glass to the items we can recycle. However, in much of the Bay Area (including the small town of Aptos, where we had our retreat), compost materials are also collected. This is true in many parts of the West Coast and America's larger urban areas, but it's still far from the norm.

We saw a pod of dolphins just off the beach in Aptos. It reminded all of us how we need to protect the oceans.

(No really, it did. We even talked about it.)

In Aptos, we got to enjoy one of the West Coast's particular brands of grandeur -- ocean and mountains in close proximity. I firmly believe that spending time outdoors is good for the soul and helps ground one in the necessity of living life in balance with the earth (hippie talk is done now). Hiking, walking on the beach, and just sitting outside, we were refreshed and ready to face the less-tranquil parts of life.

Shampoo U

Do you remember the classic scene in Little Women when Jo sells her hair to pay for a train ticket and snotty little Amy says something like, "It was your one glory!"? Or do you remember that book - I think it's called The Holy Bible - in which Samson's power resides in his hair, and that crafty Delilah has only to cut it to render him a weakling? Or remember Rapunzel? Or ...

Yes, hair seems to hold a mysterious magic for cultures around the world. And in fact, one of the images of the green movement is a rude dude with a nasty ponytail that reeks of essential oils. For many years, I believed that to use green hair products meant to end up looking like that guy - stringy, dull-looking hair with an oil slick that would put Exxon to shame.

I tried green shampoos. I really did. But every time, it ended up being a waste of a plastic bottle. Here's what happened. Repeatedly.

Day 1: Oh, this new green shampoo might actually work. La, la, I'm happy.

Day 3: Hmm...

Day 5: It's noon. Why does my hair look as if I didn't take a shower? Argh! It's the curse of natural shampoo! I'm getting rid of that stuff!

Finally, I gave up. I just stopped trying. But when I made my "Year of Living Beautifully" resolution (to transition to beauty products that rate a 5 or lower on the Skin Deep Cosmetics Safety Database, which rates beauty products on a ten-point scale from low to high hazard) I knew I would have to buckle down and give the greener shampoos another try.

In researching, I've found that many "green" shampoos that have been recommended to me aren't actually green at all. For example, they might rack up a "high hazard" rating, or may contain sodium lauryl (or laureth) sulfate, which is known to be a skin irritant, and may have other health implications. SLS, as it's known, is what makes shampoo lather, and most of us feel that without the lather, our shampoo isn't working. So ... most of the green shampoos don't seem to work.

Very unscientifically, I went to the natural foods store, looked at the shampoos, and picked one that added volume and was cheap: Burt's Bees Very Volumizing Pomegranate and Soy Shampoo. It's not the greenest shampoo ever produced, but it has a lower hazard (4) than many more expensive brands that are sold in the "natural" aisle (I won't name names, but you can go to Skin Deep yourself - I was pretty appalled to see the ratings on many popular brands) and is sulfate-free.

I actually started using it before the new year, and have now been using it for two months. Out of all the "natural" shampoos I've tried, it leaves my hair looking ... well, like I've actually washed my hair. My hair is exactly as manageable as I would like, and while, perhaps not quite as soft, I'm really happy with the overall result. My one tip, should you choose to try it out, is to make sure your hair is very wet the moment before you slap the shampoo on your head. This creates the lather that SLS would have created.

Now, if only a prince would climb up my hair ...

No One Wants to Be a Dirty Hippie

Face it, greenies.

Eco-activism has a certain image.

And that image is accompanied by an aroma ... the aroma of patchouli and unwashed clothes.

I admit, I was raised by hippies. I like the smell of patchouli. For a busy city girl, however, who is often in elevators, smelling like you've just come from Woodstock is a no-no. Natural types have told me that once they stopped using deodorant, they stopped having b.o. Hmm... I live in one of the hottest swampiest cities in America. I'm not going to test that theory out.

I am, however, committed to trying to use beauty products that are safer for my health and the environment.

In researching the safety of deodorants and anti-perspirants, I found that there wasn't a lot of agreement - some say aluminum might be implicated as a neurotoxin, others say it's safe. Some say talc may cause cancer, another says no. Basically, however, I'm working from the theory that, no matter what, life's better with fewer potentially-hazardous chemicals on your skin. Therefore, as part of my New Year's resolution to choose cosmetics, skin, and hair products with hazard levels lower than 5 on the Skin Deep Cosmetics Safety Database, I started looking at what products I'm using to de-stinkify.

Usually, I use Lady Mitchum Clear Gel Antiperspirant. Depending upon the fragrance you choose, Skin Deep rates it a 1-3. That's low-to-moderate hazard! Huzzah! Choose unscented if you want a 1 - fragrances have all kinds of scary chemicals in them. I've found that this product does the job. On the hottest of summer days, a re-application is often necessary, and you do want to let it dry before you put on a black T-shirt. Otherwise, I've found that it beats out the others I've tried.

I don't need no stinkin' aluminum.

However, I did want to see if an aluminum-free deodorant could do the trick as well. I didn't want any sissy stuff, though, so I picked out Tom's of Maine Natural Long-Lasting Deodorant. It is supposed to last for 12 hours, ,but I've found that a mid-day re-application is often in order. I chose the lavendar scent, and I like both the scent and the smooth application. I find it to be good for my skin, although I noticed on some review sites a few people said it was irritating. While I don't think it would be great for summertime wear or working out, in the winter it has been a worthwhile find.

Of course, there are those who say that we should just be less uptight and get down with our natural aromas, man. And all I have to say about that is: you go right ahead and see how that works out for you.

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.