On beauty and cruelty-free brands

As I mentioned in my recent blog post on this renewed attempt to start my blog again, I am going to incorporate some more beauty-related blog posts. I have been a bit of a makeup junkie for years now, and it has taken a toll on my makeup collection. I have a ton of beauty-related products, and I would like to actually work on downsizing. As my friends who live close-by do not like makeup as much as I do, I cannot just give them the products that I doubt I will be able to finish in a reasonable amount of time, so this let me to a little bit of a conclusion in around April. I have been doing project pans since then.

If you don't know what a project pan is, let me quickly summarize the idea behind it: You pick out a certain number of items that you want to focus on either finishing or hitting pan (that means you would see the bottom of the product packaging, which for the most part is a metal or aluminium pan). You may set a time limit to make it less stressful and go with whatever progress you made during this time or you keep going until you have reached your goal for all these products in your project.

For me, I have been doing quite well, if I may say so myself. I have managed to set reasonable goals for myself and was never too frustrated with the products I chose to pan. The only tiny disappointment was a project I had started a while ago where I tried to finish a few nail polishes. I love my nail polish, but sadly, I have a lot, and as I found out recently, not taking any breaks in between applications takes a toll on my nails. They began to chip like crazy, which I do not appreciate. But I digress!

Now, in my attempt to learn more about makeup, animal testing came up again and again, and it was frequently linked with somewhat misleading pictures of animals wearing makeup, including nail polish. Sadly, this is so far from the truth, it pains me to think about this. In fact, the procedures to test makeup and ingredients on animals are so cruel I just wanted to throw up. I cannot understand the reasoning behind this, not in the 21st century when there are many more reliable and affordable options are available to companies to make sure a product is safe for the use on a person's skin. For one, animals are different from us, and quite a bit at that. This means that the results gained from animal testing cannot securely guarantee that a product that did not cause harm on an animal in these tests will not cause harm on a person. So for me, I do not see the point. And secondly, I think about which brands use animal testing. The big names pop up as being not cruelty-free - like L'Oréal, Shiseido, and all these companies certainly have revenues that are big. There should not be an argument there really. If you look at companies that do not test on animals, you can find some of the bigger names, that is certain, however, you can also find names of brands such as Flower Beauty (Drew Barrymore's brand, which is a drugstore brand and very affordable), or wet'n'wild, another drugstore brand that is very affordable. Both these companies I named as examples likely do not have revenues as big as L'Oréal and Shiseido, yet they actively chose not to test on animals. Why? Because testing without causing harm to animals is not expensive (which is something people frequently assume)!

For me, this information has led to a simple conclusion. I want to go cruelty-free with my makeup and my makeup collection. As I have mentioned before, I have a larger collection, especially for someone who does not earn a living with makeup. I am also a student, so every money spent is money I earned working on the side, adding hours to my already full schedule. Naturally, I do not want to just trash makeup I have spent money on. That would be wasteful. So my plan in short is the following:

I will use up the products I have already started using. I will do this by doing project pans, but also by just using them as I go along. While doing this, I hope to find good dupes that are in fact cruelty-free to replace these items - be it the color or the consistency.

If a product is new or almost new, I will try to find a good home for it. Just because I have decided to go cruelty-free with my makeup does not mean that others have to. It is up to them.

While I will still be using (up) these products that are not cruelty-free, I will only buy cruelty-free from now on. This does not mean I will not make mistakes. I am, after all, only human, and I know that this is very much a learning curve, just as taking on a healthy lifestyle or learning a new language have learning curves that come with mistakes we make.

If you are looking for sources on cruelty-free beauty products, you can check out the following resources, just keep in mind this is a list for the very first steps and there is much more out there!

Logical Harmony
Taschina Combs is the amazing woman behind this blog. She maintains a very reliable list of cruelty-free - and vegan - brands. She is frequently cited to be the most reliable list, and she talks to each company asking detailed questions before she adds them on her lists and she really stays on top of things.

Leticia of xoLoveLeti
Leticia has a great YouTube channel where she frequently posts about new cruelty-free and vegan beauty products and other areas. She is a very energetic person that just draws you in with her positive attitude. She is also the founder of a Facebook group Bunny Lifestyle: A Cruelty-Free Community, where people from all over the place chat and help each other out.

Phyrra
This blog is run by Phyrra, a colorful (you'll get it when you click the link!), wonderful person. As a fellow pale girl, I appreciate her foundation posts and reviews a lot, and in general her knowledge about all things beauty has quickly made her blog a must read for me.

Like I said, this is really just a short list of places to start. You can find many more resources checking out links you find on these websites or by simply researching the topic some more. Nonetheless, these are the links that were a starting point for me and that I use on a regular basis when I am looking for something before I venture out.