honey and rosewater, my new best friends

There's plenty more to say about my hair, but since that's not the only thing I'm up to right now, I thought I'd talk about something else first. And today's "something else" is Homemade Beauty Products.

I should say, first, that for the last three or four years, the complete list of beauty products I've bought and used regularly is as follows:

-shampoo (usually Suave)
-bar soap (usually Dove)
-shaving gel (usually CVS brand, which is actually very good)
-razors (my one expensive item: I use Gillette's Venus Divine, because they really are better on my sensitive skin)
-a thick lotion (essential when you're constantly washing hands at work)

I have a small stash of makeup, which I put on maybe four or five times a year. I have a few tinted lip glosses which I sometimes wear in the summer. That's it. Before I gave up on attending to beauty, I would often put on eyeliner and lip gloss on my days off work, but I haven't done that for the last couple of years.

Part of this minimalism is due to economy. Part of it is due to never wanting to spend time on face creams and makeup and all that. Part of it is due to resentment of the vast beauty-product machine, its aggressive marketing and the subtle but persistent idea that these products will buy you love. (Maybe the message reaches other people differently, but for me, with my looong history of unrequited love interests, that's always been it: maybe if I use X, he will suddenly find me irresistible.)

And my gosh, what a sick message that is to have in your brain. It doesn't help that I had it reinforced by a very strong external voice, coming from a person I find it hard to doubt. It was the need to purge that message from my brain, more than anything else, that led me to give up on caring about my appearance. I don't have it all figured out, but I'm smart enough to know that those things we do in a desperate scramble to earn love need to be abandoned if we're going to grow.

This whole project is about moving past the need-driven pursuit of beauty, to some more healthy and fulfilling attitude. And as a second step (the first being the shaved head), I've started making my own beauty products.

The connection probably isn't obvious. In fact, there's no necessary connection at all. But for me, making my own products, at home, out of simple ingredients I understand, has been tremendously empowering. There are several reasons for this. The first is that I just love making things. Cooking, knitting, designing greeting cards, sculpting out of clay-- I'm a dabbler in all manner of crafts. The process of making something with my hands is deeply satisfying to me; the attention to detail and slow, fine-grained physicality of all these crafts complements the mental, imaginative buzzing that most of my life is made up of. So simply the process of making these mixtures is fun and rewarding for me. (Remember when you were a kid, and loved mixing things? I would use all my mom's discarded shampoo and lotion bottles, and make the most awful, messy, weird-smelling concoctions. Happy times.)

The second reason is that it makes me feel independent. Our lives these days are built on such long, long chains of cooperation (my daddy's phrase!) that we barely understand most of the things we use. We are so, so distant from the raw materials and simple concepts that all our products and systems are based on, and sometimes it gives me this very tense, out-of-control feeling. I wouldn't trade it-- the complexity of our socioeconomic order brings profound gifts to us-- but it's nice, sometimes, to go a little simpler. I still may not know where the honey and oats in my shampoo were harvested, but I understand what they are, and I have a theoretic knowledge of how to produce them. Unlike, for example, methylchloroisothiazolinone.

The third reason is that it makes me feel quirky and defiant and self-expressive. I just like swimming a little bit against the cultural stream. I'm not snooty and elitist about it, as I used to be, but I still prefer to keep to a lifestyle that's just... a little bit... different. Buying face cream at a department store does not accord with this preference. Making it out of olive oil and beeswax does.

So, for all these reasons, I immediately became enthusiastic about beauty supplies when I found out you could make your own. I have a big book of recipes-- I've tried about six of them so far, for everything from shampoo to mouthwash. And since using them I've found, what I didn't find before, that there is a satisfaction that comes from using them as well as from making them. Regardless of whether it makes my skin look or feel better (I haven't performed any scientific studies as yet), it feels good to anoint my face with cold cream and astringent. This is probably not news to most women, but it is to me. Before, any time I was engaged on any kind of complicated beauty ritual, it was all about how other people were going to respond to me; now it's about nurturing myself, cherishing my own skin. It's a lovely thing.