Beauty Lies...

No sooner do I report on the loony left's use of makeup as a pawn in their Global War on Christmas than they turn their guns on makeup itself. Today's outrage comes from hippity-dippity E Magazine, where they finish dancing around the maypole long enough to pick up their Ren-Faire crossbows and fire off a few misguided rounds of disinformation at that most venerable of American institutions, the cosmetics industry:

Despite a scattering of media reports over the years, most consumers don’t give much thought to the recognized allergens, probable carcinogens, hormone disrupters and inadequately tested industrial chemicals in the perfumes, nail polishes, shampoos and other personal-care products lining the shelves of U.S. drugstores, department stores and specialty retailers. However, this seemingly well-kept industry secret has been on the radars of consumer and environmental groups, as well as concerned doctors and scientists, for years.

So, who is responsible? Who is regulating the cosmetics and personal-care industry and looking out for consumer safety? The cosmetics industry will direct you to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the FDA will direct you to the Cosmetics Ingredient Review (CIR) panel, and the CIR will gladly tell you about all the wonderful research they are doing in the name of safety to keep consumers happy and healthy. But don’t count on being reminded that they’re funded by the very companies whose ingredients and products must pass their review board prior to entering the consumer market.

The article is password-protected (Jesus subscribes -- don't ask...), but you don't need any more than the two paragraphs above to see the Bush-blaming/America-hating agenda of MSM at work. Totally ignored, naturally, are all the many wonderful things makeup does for us. Does the author even bother to consider the correlative relationship between increased use of cosmetics and the lengthening lifespan of the average American, or makeup's important contributions to America's rebounding economy, or even the important charity work performed by cosmetics manufacturers? Of course not. Similarly absent are the spiritual dimensions of cosmetics, whereby we Fallen Daughters of Eve spend hours a day returning ourselves to our Edenic splendor in a ritual fraught with sacramental importance. Instead, it's the usual chicken little boilerplate clamoring for more regulation, with cancer, birth defects, and sprouting testicles from our ladyparts used as scare tactics.

So, how would The Left like to see us beautify ourselves?

A variety of companies are now making personal-care products based on more natural, and often organic, ingredients, paralleling the rise of the natural foods movement. But be forewarned: marketing claims may still be inflated. The debate over organic labeling of cosmetics also continues to rage on (see “Body-Care Brawl,” Consumer News, March/April 2004).

In August, the USDA reversed a previous ruling and will now allow cosmetics, among other products, to carry the distinctive green organic seal as long as all the federal requirements are met. In recent years, a variety of products made from more natural, plant-based ingredients have been widely available from such companies as Aveda, Aubrey Organics, Earth’s Beauty, Ecco Bella, Grateful Body, Jakaré, Nature’s Gate, TerrEssentials and Dr. Bronner’s.

Oh, brother -- a plug for tinting our lips with berries we found while foraging in the woods. MSM has been trying to give this sort of paganism a respectable secular whitewashing for years: "Witch" hazel in place of your favorite astringent, anybody? Only if you want to be able to pot a ficus in your facial pores and make George Soros richer in the process. As that Divinely inspired meditation on beauty tells us, "There is no such thing as natural beauty." The sooner the moonbats figure that out, the better.