The ugly side of beauty

In No More Dirty Looks, former Montrealers Siobhan O’Connor and Alexandra Spunt dish on the dangers of our beauty products, the trials and tribulations of finding natural alternatives and why we should change our habits now

LOOKING GOOD: O’Connor (L) and Spunt

by SACHA JACKSON

It’s called a Brazilian blowout. “I used to get my nails done at this salon in L.A., and I’ve got really big, curly hair, so every time I went, they were like, ‘Oh! You have to get the Brazilian blowout, it’s amazing,’” says Alexandra Spunt, co-author with Siobhan O’Connor of No More Dirty Looks, a new book that covers what’s in our cosmetics, what they’re doing to our bodies and what we can do to change it.

“We both started real jobs when we were really young,” says Spunt. “Part of our ritual as friends was doing these fun things together. Sort of, ‘We work so hard, let’s go to the spa.’ Truthfully, neither of us are particularly high-maintenance.”

Full disclosure: both O’Connor and Spunt worked the phones as receptionists at the Mirror before moving on to editorial and freelance positions. Though they’re born and bred Montrealers, they’ve spent the better part of the last decade living and working in New York and L.A.

Indeed, when I meet them at a café in Outremont, they are both wonderfully fresh-faced for two women who’ve spent the better part of the past week celebrating at launches on both coasts.

“We’ve always sort of been into beauty,” says O’Connor. “I would go to L.A. and we’d go to Larchmont, do masks at home, silly, girly things because that’s what you do when you’re…”

“Silly and girly,” Spunt chimes in. They’re not alone. Cosmetics are a $35-billion industry in North America. A recent study by British company Superdrug found that the average woman spends $13,500 on make-up in her lifetime, and that’s not including things like manicures, pedicures, waxings and hair dyes. The average adult slathers on 2,000 chemicals every day, in everything from body lotion to shaving cream, deodorant to chapstick. Even those who consider themselves low-maintenance— men, we are looking at you—are not immune.

But back to the salon. “Siobhan was in from New York and a friend of ours was hosting a party and we decided to go get this treatment,” says Spunt. “I started off in a smaller room and Alexandra was in the main area and they had to take me out because it was getting so intense,” says O’Connor. “The fumes were just wild. They opened the windows, our eyes were watering, we were coughing, they gave us goggles.” Which, as they say in No More, seemed perfectly natural at the time.

Once the goggles were off, however, their perspective started to change. What was in the treatment that could both make their hair silky smooth and their eyes water? What they found was pretty scary. Not only did the blowout include natural keratin, it also had formaldehyde—better known as the stuff they pump into dead people. “We’re sold these things that aren’t good for us and we’re told that it’s going to make us look good,” says O’Connor. “At the end of the day, it’s doing bad things to your body and it doesn’t make you look good.”

CRUSADE FOR CLEAN

The day before I met them, Spunt and O’Connor participated in a media conference call that included U.S. Representatives Jan Schakowsky, Tammy Baldwin and Ed Markey and activist, cancer survivor and beloved Nanny Fran Drescher. The call was about the Safe Cosmetics Act, a brand new bill that, if passed, would grant the Food and Drug Administration the power to ensure that personal care products are free of harmful ingredients. Which, you may be surprised to find out, at the moment the FDA doesn’t do. In fact, the present bill hasn’t been changed since 1938, and as such, companies have veritable free rein when it comes to ingredients. Of the estimated 12,000 chemicals found in the wide scope of personal care products, less than 20 per cent have been tested, so no one really knows what they’re doing or how they affect us. Add to that the fact that our skin lets in about 60 per cent of the stuff we put on it, and you’ve got cause to be worried, or at least interested.

“There are 20 chemicals of concern in our book,” says O’Connor. “You hear a lot about carcinogens, which obviously should not be anywhere near our products. But personally, I think more people should be concerned about endocrine destructors, which are chemicals that trick our body into thinking that it is estrogen and they’re most effective in smaller doses. It’s a problem because it’s a phthalate and phthalates are in fragrance and fragrance is in everything.”

In particular, it’s been speculated that endocrine destructors are linked to a birth defect in little boys called hypospadia, which in the worst cases can lead to male hormone deficiencies and a feminized penis. Between the ’70s and the ’90s the number of cases of hypospadia in the U.S. doubled.

Though the FDA doesn’t have jurisdiction over Canada and Health Canada’s regulations are much stricter, many products imported from the U.S. may not be following our guidelines.

“The ‘Hot List’ is a list that Health Canada has of chemicals of concern, that aren’t outright banned but are on a watch list,” explains O’Connor. “When it comes to actually regulating the use of chemicals, they take cues from the Personal Care Products Council (PCPC) that represents the industry in the U.S., which is incredibly powerful and incredibly well-funded.”

In fact, they represent the vast majority of companies whose products are sold in the States and, in most cases, Canada.

“There seems to be more awareness here about cosmetics,” Spunt adds. “But let’s put it this way: No American company is reformulating [the products’ chemical compounds] for Canada. We do know that some companies reformulate for Europe, because it has more stringent guidelines. Which begs the question, if we can reformulate for Europe, why don’t we just reformulate?”

(Indeed, an industry insider, who wishes to remain anonymous, confirmed with the Mirror that although Canada has stricter regulations, there are no laws restricting what is imported from the U.S. and companies sometimes lie about the inclusion of hazardous ingredients that require a Drug Identification Number from Health Canada in order to get a product to market.)

“What we can say about Canada though, is that when it came to BPA [bisphenol A, a controversial and potentially harmful chemical], Canada was way out ahead and I imagine that’ll continue,” O’Connor adds. “Maybe we’re optimistic because we’re from here, but I feel confident they’ll continue to be ahead.”

AU NATURALE

Even if the dream bill does get passed, it’s still a long way off, so taking steps now is the best solution. With the blowout behind them, O’Connor and Spunt ditched all of their chemical laden beauty products— from their heads down to their feet—for natural ones. The first to go were the hair products—the shampoos, conditioners, all that other shit we put in it to make it look shinier, less frizzy, more “natural.”

“There’s this sort of ‘it’ll be okay’ feeling about hair, everyone experiments with it. We were much more concerned giving up our make-up and switching our face products,” says Spunt.

“I always had frizzy hair, and I always had this weird rash on the back of my neck—it had been diagnosed as a million different things—but it never occurred to me that it had anything to do with a product,” says O’Connor. “I tried a couple of clean products and it was like night and day.”

Finding a good clean shampoo is a cinch, as it was one of the first products in the clean category to hit the market, so there is more choice, including high quality “gateway brands,” as O’Connor jokingly calls the ones that feel like a regular shampoo. “The exception being that you won’t get the same kind of lather,” she says. “But just rub your hands together, it’s not that complicated.”

In fact, for the most part, they found natural products—everything from foundation to cleansers, body lotion to nail polish—better than the chemical ones, and the book is full of helpful DIY-tips and experiments like a raw sugar body scrub or an eyeliner made of activated charcoal.

“We wanted to keep it simple,” says Spunt. “No more than two ingredients in each.”

“Ideally,” O’Connor continues, “it’s stuff you have around the house, like the lemon and vodka hair spray. I always have lemons and vodka at my house. Who doesn’t?”