Leaping Bunny and Why It Matters

In the name of full transparency, please be aware that this blog post may contain affiliate links and any purchases made through such links will result in a small commission for me (at no extra cost to you).   

   I have always loved makeup. From a very young age I would sneak into moms’ purse and play (destroy) her Mary Kay lip and eye palettes from the 80’s. I was two, come on. I would beg grandma for lippie stick, and she would pull out her Revlon lip balm that was in a lipstick tube so I thought was rocking the same mauve lips as her.  She was so stylish, a little mix of Blanche and Dorothy of the Golden Girls. I was even caught styling her white toy poodle a time or two with rogue. Oops. I didn’t know any better.

I followed grandma’s footsteps into the salon when I was 25 and became a beautician as well. I attended a Paul Mitchell school, which was at the time the absolute best I could attend in the rural community that I lived. They pushed professional brands as the best and especially touted their brand, cause hello, PM school so PM products. Makes sense.

One thing that PM did different was aim to avoid animal testing and only does human testing of their products. I was impressed with that. The subject wasn’t even on my radar prior to starting school.

I got to thinking about other products that I used that may test on animals, but I had no idea where to start my research. As a poor kid living on my own, internet was way out of my ballpark. I had to settle for what I could glean from magazines, my instructors at school, and whether or not a product stated it on their label.

I knew about big label makeup brands like M.A.C., Bobby Brown, and Estée Lauder. Grandma had used Estee for years and years. It was what the quintessential 1950’s housewife wore. I drooled over the M.A.C. website after watching YouTube makeup gurus dripping in the expensive stuff.

When I was in Las Vegas on a beauty school trip, I was able to go to my first M.A.C. store and it was amazing. I was after one particular shade that everyone used, and I happily forked over what little food money I brought with me to obtain it. I was on cloud nine for days, weeks even, after buying it and using it. I felt so boujee. That high didn’t last though.  

I was on Facebook doing my endless doom scrolling out of boredom when I came across a M.A.C. post. It wasn’t unusual as I followed them, as well as a few other brands I had in my makeup table. What I found unusual was the young woman posing happily with a white bunny that had bright pink something rubbed into the ‘cheeks’ of its fur. I was actually a little surprised at first and then angered after reading the caption that said something along the lines of ‘happily animal testing for safety’.

A brand I adored for their creativity, beauty, and exclusiveness turned into a monster in a split second. I was so mad but not so mad that I was going to throw out the fifty dollars of hard-earned makeup I had just purchased. But I wasn’t so hot to use it anymore either. I put it away and focused more on my new vibrant love, NYX Cosmetics. I was happy because they openly said they didn’t do any animal testing.

I purposely left myself in the dark not wanting to further my knowledge on the subject for fear of narrowing what I would be able to use. I’m not a vegan or vegetarian by any means, I love meat, but I also don’t agree with torturing animals for anything. We have prisons full of test subjects. Just my two cents and I’ll move on.

I focused on becoming a good hairdresser and learning as much as I could in the early part of my career. I loved makeup and always did fun and fancy eyes that occasionally were extremely bold.

I couldn’t stay in the dark forever though, and I had to make a choice.

I learned that anything sold in China was required by their laws to be tested on animals, sadly that meant that the Mary Kay I had been using for years was no longer an option for my skin care and I started looking for alternatives and landed on the only thing that I could find to meet my standard of safe and clean. Simply virgin cold pressed coconut oil.  It wasn’t perfect, but it worked.

That didn’t solve my makeup problem though. Most of the drug store brands did animal testing and were open about it on their corporate websites. I also got help determining what to use from PETA. They have an extensive list of cosmetic and skincare brands for those of conviction.

NYX was my go too until about 9 years ago when I learned that L’Oréal had acquired NYX Cosmetics and I was crushed. But I couldn’t afford the brands I knew were vegan. Most of them were fledgling indie companies with vegan claims but no verification and still an outrageous price. I couldn’t justify paying those prices without the certification.

I inquired into a few of them but never received an answer. To me that said, piss off, we don’t want to tell you we haven’t even tested our products for human consumption.

While I still admired the bright looks they posted on their social sites and the imagination of the makeup gurus that are now called influencers, I used what I had and wasn’t purchasing anything new.

I started to notice lots of different bunnies popping up on packaging. But not all of them were Leaping Bunnies. But they were all animal testing free though, right?

Turns out there are many different standards to animal testing. Some of the bunnies just mean vegan, some mean they have been approved by PETA, and then Leaping Bunny International.

It wasn’t enough just to see the bunny for me though because my Mary Kay lady told me that the products I was purchasing were never tested on animals and I knew that to be false. It was a big deal for the market to open to Mary Kay in China where they hadn’t been allowed to sell before. I needed to know more.

I started to become more politically aware around that time in my life as well and was irritated at the amount of companies that outsourced labor to other countries rather than producing the products they sell here in the United States. I learned that cosmetic companies were doing the exact same thing. Products that were produced and not sold in the countries where they were made but sent back to the states to be sold, those products had to be tested on animals. WHAT?!? Absolutely ridiculous.

My world became very small so to speak because there wasn’t much left I could buy in my price range that met my standards of cruelty-free and American made. I was frankly irritated at the beauty industry I had been intrenched deeply in for ten years at this point. Well, my whole life considering grandma’s career. On top of that, I wasn’t feeling very well more often than not and I wasn’t happy in the world of beauty anymore.

A very close friend from high school had been sending the occasional intro info about a brand she had found and made a point to let me know that it was clean, safe, and nontoxic. But was it tested on animals? A big absolutely not was her response. Without even being prompted she told me that it was also produced completely here in the United States.

I was thrilled beyond belief. Not only did Crunchi meet my animal and country of origin standards, but they fell into the other category I was becoming more and more aware of as my body began to fail me, nontoxic.

I started small with the purchase of their charcoal facial bar. It was gentle and didn’t strip my skin of what little moisture I have with chronically dry skin. With continued use I went from breakouts all over to just in my most problematic place of my chin. For me that was an incredible improvement. That bar lasted me a good three years because a little goes a long way.

In my search for more nontoxic way of living I have come across other companies that not only had healthy alternatives to cleaning products and supplements to support my compromised immune system, but they also had clean and nontoxic options for skin care as well.

It’s so much easier now to find ethical and cruelty-free options with resources like Ethical Elephant, Cruelty Free Kitty, and PETA. It still comes down to doing your own research and making the decisions that best align with your beliefs. I've included links below to further your own research.

Leaping Bunny

Ethical Elephant

Cruelty-Free Kitty

PETA

Tooth Powder is the new thing..?

Who knew that tooth powders would become so popular in the last few years?

But did you know that toothpaste wasn't always how teeth cleaning was done?

In the name of full transparency, please be aware that this blog post contains affiliate links and any purchases made through such links will result in a small commission for me (at no extra cost to you).

A little history on cleaning teeth. Not going down the rabbit hole like I could, cause well if I'm honest with myself, I love history, and I could. Humans have been cleaning their teeth for thousands of years. They have evidence of this from cuneiform text found at archaeological sites in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq. In 355 BC Hippocrates recommended a dentifrice powder for cleaning the teeth. There is examples for tooth brushes found in Egyptian tombs. Mind you they were not what we would expect to see today. They were more of a twig that had a splayed end that was used to ‘brush’ away debris that coated the teeth.

Dentifrice, or tooth powder was common in many cultures including the Egyptians, Chinese, middle east nations, and as mentions above, in Greek and Roman culture. It was part of standard hygiene practices.

The technology to brush teeth stayed the same for many centuries with random inventions from the medical community but these were usually only available to the wealthy.  The stick ‘brush’ stayed relatively the only way the everyman cleaned his teeth or even just with their fingers. 

In Egypt they used mixtures of green lead, verdigris, and incense while the Greeks and Romans used crushed bones and shells for their  abrasives. Fine sands and pumice were used as well but it was discovered later that it was too abrasive. In Europe they used salt and strong acids. I was unable to find a source on what that meant, but I’m really hoping it’s just vinegar.

Modern, and I say that loosely, toothpaste began to be developed in the 18^th century and was usually homemade. Apothecaries did start to brand and sell their own as well. A paste made of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide was largely the basis of these pastes and they would add things like cinnamon or mint to make it more pleasant, though as someone who has tried this, I don’t imagine adding the herbs and spices helped much. In the beginning of the 20^th century things started to change, but not for the better. The addition of chalk and even pulverize bricks were added to these home pastes until they lost their appeal with the easier to apply paste in a tube that became widely available after World War I.  

The invention of paste in a tube was manufactured by Doctor Washington Sheffield of New London in 1882 in lead tubes, the first introduction of poison, albeit unbeknownst to most people at this time in history. The second addition of poison was fluoride, to prevent tooth decay in the 1890s as well. It was not approved for use in the United States by the American Dental Association (ADA) until the 1950s.

Now some of you will object to my use of the widely praised magical fluoride as a poison but let’s dive into that a bit too.

Fluoride is a mineral that occurs naturally and is released from rocks into our environments. It even leeches into the water table all on its own, but according to reports it isn’t enough to ‘prevent’ tooth decay. It’s a salt that is found on the periodic table under the classification of F for Fluorine. As science isn’t my forte, I won’t go into minute detail but with a rise of tooth decay with the addition of fluoride into the drinking water as well as a standard treatment in dentistry, you have to wonder why, if its so good for us.

Studies as far back as the 1960s have shown that Fluoride is a neurotoxin that reduces the cognitive skills in children and collects in the brain like heavy metals. Think Lead, methylmercury, and arsenic. These are hard to remove from the body if at all. There is a huge rabbit hole to jump into and I will let you decide if you want to ponder over this or go on your own deep diving expedition. I would say you can even leave your tin hat at home, because a conspiracy isn’t a theory anymore when it’s found to be true.

So, back to the main topic, tooth powders. Why are they on the rise? I think it’s because many people have gone on these deep diving expeditions into the history of medicine and found a correlation with our health and how we have been turned into a commodity to make money for the upper echelon. Rather than as a living breathing, free thinking, human being all with a unique personality and life experience. And they would rather be in the latter.

By taking out Big Pharma and going back to our roots and using what God gave us, we take back our health and minds.

There are natural ways to clean your teeth without all the poisons and industrial cleaning chemicals that have been added to a tube of Colgate or Crest.

I decided to switch from my beloved Toms of Maine for a few reasons. I had a nasty cold in 2018 the led to a complete loss of taste and smell. When it returned seven months later nothing was quite right but something that bothered me was that certain things smelled like chemicals instead of the fragrance or taste I had purchased them for. Fast forward to the end of 2021 when I got the “Rona”. I had stayed healthy all that time and right before Christmas, whammy sense of smell and taste gone again! And unfortunately, nothing has been the same since but that’s a whole other blog post. I started looking at natural toothpastes and powders popped up. I asked a friend what se liked to use and she recommended a few websites that might help lead me in the right direction. Boy did they.

I found a few but decided to try Earthley Wellness first. Their Remineralizing Tooth Powder sounded like it would be the easiest for me to pallet as I also have texture issues along with my olfactory being on the fritz.

I first off, liked that it didn’t have any sodium lauryl sulfate aka SOAP in it. That was a big one that I could taste in everything my family gave me to try. I might as well have chewed on my bar of soap at the sink. Blech!

Second, I liked that their ingredients were simple and all things that I knew what they were without having to do a Google search on each ingredient to see if it was a chemical or not.

Activated charcoal, bentonite clay, stevia powder (certified organic) and mint powder, which they break down and explain that they use spearmint and peppermint. Yummy! They also have two other flavor profiles to choose from, spice or lemon-berry. They have lots of information on their website that is clear and easy to understand for all of their products.

Their product arrived quickly and packaged nicely in an easy-to-use container that can go into the recycle bin when it’s empty. I found the powder super easy to use just dipping my dry brush into the powder and making sure to tap off the extra and brush a little before adding water to help spread the product around more. Too much and you are a gummy mouth spitting for five minutes. Had to remind myself they there is clay as an ingredient, duh.

Overall, I really enjoy the Earthley tooth powder, though because of my olfactory issues I can’t really smell or taste the mint. It leaves my mouth feeling very, very clean, squeaky even. I like that fresh from the dentist feel without having to be picked at for an hour by a hygienist.

I’ll leave a few other links below to some other brands I’m hoping to try in the future that I have found after researching are along the same lines of clean and nontoxic.

Van Man

Bite Tooth Tabs

If a powder isn’t up your alley, I have also included some companies that have a paste as well.

Dr.Brite

Redmond