Are your cosmetics safe?

Lately I've been taking an interest in what exactly I'm putting on my face. It started when I became concerned about Palm oil showing up in my products see here but before long I started to wonder what all these other scary chemical names were doing on products that were supposed to be "natural" or "organic".

I've found a great site where you can enter brands, ingredients or companies and get a full ingredient list and analysis of the product. It doesn't have all the brands on its database but it has quite a few. I was shocked to learn that some of the brands that are considered to be good for you can also contain harmful ingredients like parabens! Or that your lipstick could contain traces of lead...I don't want to harp on but if you are interested in skincare and haircare that isn't going to affect your health I would strongly advise visiting this site!

http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/

When I see how hard it is to find makeup that won't put my health in danger its really tempting to say FUCK YOU to the racist, sexist cosmetic industry altogether... but I'm not that strong or confident yet. I still feel a lot better with a little help from makeup but I'd really like to change that some day. I'm all for using makeup in creative ways to help play with your identity or challenge gender stereotypes (instead of just enforcing them) but I think there's a real problem when we rely on it to feel normal/attractive. Are our priorities a bit fucked if we continue to wear it even though we know it's linked to cancer? I'm now on a search to find safe, affordable products that are honest about what ingredients they contain. (I just hope they actually work! It would be a real shame if we couldn't look like Ziggy anymore.)

I also found this ARTICLE which is pretty interesting.