Bold lipstick colours are fashionable but also kinda gross…

There is something that is not often talked about in the make-up world, or actually should I say, over looked: and that is the sad fact that almost all bold lip colours are made up of heavy toxic chemicals and metals, some trace, and some not so trace.  The bottom line though, is that it’s in there, and that wearing a fashionable shade of red, or the current trend of fushia, is probably loaded with not so great stuff.

When I was younger, say ten years ago, I would always wear lipstick.  After using the restroom, I would wash my hands and reapply that creamy stick, covering up my natural lip colour.  It looked good, so I did it, ignoring the fact that lipstick gets everywhere, on clothes, on coffee cups, on ciggy butts.  But the place that it was probably getting into the most was my stomach when I inadvertently ate it.  There are statistics out there about the staggering amount of lipstick a woman ingests over a year, and over her lifetime and it’s gross.  But we don’t need statistics to use our common sense and know that we are eating it.  Anything on our lips eventually makes its way to our stomachs.  It’s on our mouths after all.  Which is why these fashionable bold lip colours are kind of scary to wear if you want to think about it.  You don’t ever want to eat lead, or mercury, or cadmium, but it’s in almost all lipsticks.  Just do the foil test to see this in your favourite lipstick shade.

My suggestion is is that if you’re not going to a red carpet event, do we really need bold lips on a day to day basis?  Probably not.  Why not wear a tinted lipbalm?  Sure, it’s usually very sheer, and less noticable, and less fashionable, but it’s healthier for your lips.  Since I stopped wearing lipsticks, my lips have naturally turned more pink, meaning I don’t actually need thick lipsticks to put colour into my lips.  Also, I barely need chapstick because my lips stay so moist, even in the winter!  I’m a bit of a crafter, so I made my own tinted lipbalm made with coconut oil, cocoa butter and beeswax, coloured it with a bit of fushia mica, and what I got was this:

So pretty, no?

Am I going back to toxic lipsticks and stains? Yes, it is fashionable, and unavoidable, but for day to day, I got this moisturizing tinted lip balm to carry me through!