Reviews for The Green Beauty Guide: Your Essential Resource to Organic and Natural Skin Care, Hair Care, Makeup, and Fragrances

The average rating for The Green Beauty Guide: Your Essential Resource to Organic and Natural Skin Care, Hair Care, Makeup, and Fragrances based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-11-30 00:00:00 Michael White Most women will look in Cosmo or other beauty magazines for the latest cosmetic and fashion tips, but what many of these magazines don't tell you is that the products manufactured by these companies are using chemicals and other compounds that once your skin absorbs them could cause other ailments or problems. While I don't readily wear makeup or use cosmetics, I gladly took on a TLC Book Tour stop for Julie Gabriel's The Green Beauty Guide. I love holistic looks at our everyday lives and books that seek to provide an alternate perspective to how we live our lives whether its from turning holiday celebrations green or learning how to reduce our own carbon footprints. The Green Beauty Guide goes beyond the typical fad advice given by glossy magazines, providing the reader with recipes to create their own natural shampoos, facials, and other products, while at the same time providing readers with the know-how to become savvy cosmetics shoppers. Check out the Ten Commandments of Green Beauty at the end of Chapter 2. Through a combination of science, insider information about the cosmetic industry and government regulation, and common sense, Gabriel dispels some of the myths espoused by the cosmetics industry. For instance, did you know that the skin absorbs about 60 percent of the substances applied to its surface? I didn't, but now that I do, I plan to be more careful about what solutions I use. Think about your morning routine. . .how many cleansers, lotions, and gels do you use before you leave the house each day? Examine the ingredients of those bottles, and you'll see exactly how many chemicals you expose your skin to every day. Given the complexity of skin and other systems throughout the body, it is no wonder that diet, exercise, and other behaviors can influence how well those systems function. Beauty or the health of your skin is tied to all of those things and more. One of the best sections in the book discusses green washing, which will help those newly interested in the "green" movement to discern which products actually are safer for them and made from natural products, and which are merely using the presence of natural products to claim they are "green" or organic. Gabriel even provides Green Products Guide with a one-, two-, three-leaf system that categorizes how natural a product is. Other helpful sections of the book provide ways to make your own green beauty products, with a list of necessary tools, ingredients, and tips on where to purchase the ingredients. I also was surprised to find green beauty tips for babies in terms of diaper area care, massage oils, baby wipes, and bathing for babies. Overall, this guide has a great many tips for those looking to expand the care of themselves and their environment into cosmetics and beauty care. I recommend this for those who wear makeup, lotions, shampoos, conditioners, and other products, which is pretty much everyone. We all should take better care of our planet and ourselves, and what better way than to start with the beauty products we use.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-02-04 00:00:00 Martin Docampo A useful book, but a little didactic. I agree with the author's contention that we surround ourselves with way too many potentially harmful chemicals in all our personal care products and cutting down on them seems like common sense, but the tone of this book-- that everything on your bathroom counter is basically plotting to give you a cancerous tumor-- is a bit extreme. For example, at one point Gabriel contends that it's important to use all-natural toothpaste because the average person swallows the equivalent of a tube of toothpaste a year, and that just sounds ridiculous to me. Sure, I swallow some toothpaste residue here and there, that stands to reason, but an entire tube? Really? I barely use an entire tube in a year. Personally, I think you have to pick your battles; going all-natural for the ingredients in moisturizer, which seeps into my skin, seems wise. For some other products, having some chemicals in there for germ-killing effectiveness might not be such a bad idea. After all, as a doctor friend of mine likes to say, "There's nothing more natural than dying." That criticism aside, if you're looking for information about what products are safer to use on your skin and hair, this book does the job. I admit that I'm not going to photocopy the list of 100 harmful cosmetic ingredients and carry it with me everywhere I go, but just seeing what brands of organic products get the Green Beauty Guide seal of approval as "real" organic products (as opposed to those that just use the word organic as a marketing ploy) is helpful. The many recipes for making your own beauty products look intriguing, but I know that I will never, ever end up using them. If you're the kind of person who likes to experiment with your own homemade potions though, this book could be incredibly valuable for you. For me it was just a "what stuff to buy and what stuff to avoid" guide, which is fine.