Cosmetics Galore

Watching a video of how former Victoria’s Secret Angel model Kylie Bisutti hung up her angel wings because of her Christian faith and belief that her body was solely for her husband’s eye, it got me thinking “how do the Victoria’s Secret model get their hair to looks so beautiful?”

They all have really great hair. One common theme is that it’s very long, but it’s also very glossy and seems to always lay right. So, do all the Vickie’s Secret gals just have great genes when it comes to their body and their hair, or do they use certain hair care products to make their hair look long, lustrous and full of body?

Or maybe they wear extensions?  That could be it, but I still think they also have naturally beautiful hair too.  I can tell you one thing, two of the Victoria’s Secret hair styling products are pretty good, and they do give you a bit of that “sexy hair” look that you see on the  models on the runway – the likes of Gisele Bundchen (and her Super Bowl gaffe in tow), Tyra Banks, Adriana Lima and more strutting around with their wild mane of hair.

One of the products is their “So Sexy Wave Enhancing Spray”.  It’s a pump spray that looks like it’s half oil, half water. Of course, it has a trademark heavy Victoria’s Secret scent, which I could definitely do without because that means it’s loaded with chemicals, but it does work to make your curls and waves bigger, bouncier and shinier.

I do like the product, but I’d like to use something that works the same way without having all the heavy scent in it and chemicals.  It manages to make you hair curl more easily when you put a large barreled curling iron to it, and it makes the curls and waves stay better while also making them bigger and more springy and bouncy.

You can truly have “big hair” if you use this product at night, dry your hair, then wrap it tightly in a high bun on your head overnight.  You have instantly huge body in your hair when you wake up.

Another good product they make is the So Sexy Smooth Straight and Silky Styling Mist. This one is great for those days where you don’t want waves and curls, but instead want a smoother, straighter look. It does lend itself to smoother hair. Again, there is the strong scent, but it does seem to help tame frizzies as well as smooth and straighten the hair better when combined with my FHI hair dryer and my Sedu flat iron.

I think that to get hair like Victoria’s Secret models, you do have to grow it very long so you can get that wild look. This may take the use of hair growth vitamins to help accelerate the process, and great hair care. When I’m trying to grow my hair out, I limit my trips to the hairstylist because they tend to whack off more hair than I want them to.

I usually will just have my husband give my ends a very light trim with our professional hair shears for several months to keep the ends healthy.

When I first started watching the guilty pleasure reality TV show “Jersey Shore” I wondered how all these girls could have such long hair. I mean it is loooong!  I wondered how they grew it out that long. I mean, were these girls all on some sort of super hair growth vitamin or what?  Or are Italian girls really that apt to have long locks so easily?

Jenny Farly, aka JWOWW, Nicole Polizzi AKA Snooki, Deena and Sammy Sweetheart (I believe Sammy Giancola?) all had really long hair. I mean, it’s pretty and all, but was it all real or were they all sporting expensive weaves or extensions to make it look longer?

Apparently they all have extensions. I finally got confirmation of that when season 4 in Italy aired. My husband and I are just now watching this season on DVD now because we never watch it live. We like to watch it uncensored because believe me, it’s a whole lot more juicy when it’s uncensored. You think these people act crazy on the tv show, wait til you hear how bad their mouths are when it’s all censorship free!

The gang was all put up in a really nice townhouse style apartment in Italy (probably much to the chagrin of the local businesses as I hear they caused quite a stir while there).

The outlets are all different over in Europe, so if you have, say a kick butt Sedu hair straightener or a really great ionic hair dryer, you can’t use it over there unless you have an adapter or unless you bought it over there with their special plugs.

So one of the girls confirmed that they all have extensions when she mentioned she didn’t know how a bunch of girls with extensions were going to style their hair without their styling tools.

They must’ve ended up getting some help from the producers though, because soon their hair all looked just like it did when they did their other seasons here in the states.  Now if only they’d use some better natural shampoo to make their hair look softer – but maybe extensions require special hair care products, that I’m not sure about.

God help me, that show sure is addicting!

I’m so happy. I’ve finally figured out a formula for natural shampoo that actually makes my hair look fantastic. It makes it bounce, shine and never look dried out like so many SLS-containing shampoos do. SLS, by the way, is Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, and it is found in thousands of shampoos, soaps, cleansers, industrial cleaners (yeah, and you may use it on your precious skin or hair), and a variety of other heavy duty cleaning uses.

It is not good to use on the skin or hair because it is very harsh.  The hair’s natural protective cuticle gets “roughed up” when cleansed with high-lather, high SLS content shampoos, and that shows.  If you notice your hair is lifeless, looks frizzy and dry and doesn’t have much bounce, you can definitely benefit from trying a natural shampoo out.  It may even aggravate thinning hair.

I’m actually going to release this shampoo soon on my newly launched natural body care website, which I will tell you all about when it’s ready for launch.  The natural shampoo formulation uses a very mild, naturally derived foaming agent so you still get that light lather, and some other naturally moisturizing, hair-friendly ingredients and essential oils that add shine and luster to the hair.

My hair has seriously never looked better and I can’t wait to get all the packaging and stuff figured out so I can launch this product. Very excited!  Look for an announcement over the next couple weeks, it’s very soon.

I’m also looking into a formulation for a natural conditioner that contains naturally moisturizing ingredients and no parabens or any other chemicals that you find in abundance in most of the brands on store shelves, so I’ll be announcing that when it is all final.

Can’t wait to share this with the world and I’m excited to see what people think since I am so thrilled with the results   COMING SOON!

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, which is an organization that maintains a database of cosmetics and body care product safety and lists actual product and ingredient safety information as well as educates the public about safety in the cosmetics, hair care products and personal care products they use on their body, has launched a campaign against the Brazilian Keratin and Brazilian Blowout products.

The Brazilian Keratin hair straightening and hair smoothing treatment is a semi permanent treatment that is administered in salons across the US. It was a craze that started probably a little over five years ago after the much hyped Japanese Straightening, or thermal reconditioning straightening craze died down a bit.

It was touted as a semi permanent solution to frizzy, curly hair as it lasts about three months or possibly more depending on the person’s hair. It was also sometimes preferred over the more severe straightening process of thermal reconditioning (Japanese straightening) because it could still leave a little body and wave while reducing the frizzies.  Here is my experience with Japanese Straightening  treatment and my experience with the Brazilian Keratin treatment.

It also is slightly less expensive than the other treatment, although it can still run from $200 to $400 depending on the length of a person’s hair.  I’ve actually gotten both treatments done, before I was aware how dangerous the chemicals are that they use in these treatments.

The Brazilian Keratin products many times contain formaldehyde in unsafe concentrations. Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen.  Stylists have complained that they had symptoms after treating customers with the products, and customers have complained as well.

It is a tissue irritant, so it can cause watering eyes, irritated throat, irritated skin, and even bloody noses in some cases. Those are all sure signs that something is a carcinogen, since the very definition of carcinogen (cancer causing agent) is that it irritates tissues to the extent that it can cause cell damage and cell mutation.

Formaldehyde definitely has no business in any personal care or body products, and I can tell you I will never again get one of these treatments on my hair after knowing what I know. I have even changed to natural hair dye because I’ve become so much more educated on the hazards of chemicals that we use to become more beautiful, but which actually destroy our hair or skin in the long run.

If you want to see more about the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics’ initiative to educate people and force makers of the product to take the formaldehyde out (in the form of methylene glycol, which is just formaldehyde by a different name essentially) – see http://www.safecosmetics.org/.

I’ve been using natural hair color for a while now. I have read too many deeply disturbing things about all the harsh chemicals that are found in most commercial haircolors.  Ammonia, peroxide, parabens, resorcinol, and a variety of other cancer-causing toxic chemicals are just a few of the reasons to avoid many haircolors.

Not only that, I noticed that these typical hair dyes were really starting to burn my scalp, and started to affect the health of both my hair and my scalp. My head was often itchy and dry, and my hair seemed like a dry haystack after coloring my hair with these chemical-loaded colors that I was buying off the shelves.

My first foray into the natural hair color world was a disaster.  I tried a henna hair color and ended up with hair that looked almost grey.  I decided never again was I even going to attempt a henna hair color. It left my hair looking worse.  Not that henna is a bad thing – it is contained in some natural hair dyes today, but I tried using just straight powdered henna and it was awful.

I also tried a couple other brands of “natural hair color” only to find that they burned my scalp and dried my hair just as badly as the other stuff.  This was because they still had several harsh chemicals in them.

I finally found Nature Tints hair colors online about a year and a half ago, and I’ve never looked back – it was one of my favorite hair care products of all time. I’ve actually tried several of their colors and landed on the medium brown as my favorite because it matches my natural color best and gives the best finish.

While the formula does have a pungent smell, it does not burn my head when I apply it. Nor does my hair look dry, dull and lifeless after I use it.  It actually looks healthy, bouncy and shiny, and it never did with the L’Oreals, the Revlons and the Garniers that dominate the store shelves.

I’ve never found Nature Tints on store shelves, I’ve always purchased mine online at Amazon, where I’ve found the most competitive price for this product.

My husband has become addicted to a few of the Aveda products much to my dismay (they’re a bit pricey, but goshdarnit, they smell good and I like the way they make my hair look). He actually recently lost his just-purchased Aveda Damage Remedy Daily Hair Repair tube that cost him a pretty $24 and tax and had to re-buy it.

Talk about a double whammy to the wallet! But I definitely understand – once you really like a product and it really works well on your hair, well there’s no going back. When something makes his hair lay right, it’s game over. He’s got thicker, wavy brown hair that is a bit longer (he doesn’t get it buzzed but rather cut with regular sheers every time he goes to the stylist), so when it looks good it looks fabulous, and like others with longer hair, when it looks bad it looks downright sad.

The product, which I have snagged a couple times from him to use of course, is a pretty good one. It could be a little too heavy for some hair types, but my long brown hair tends to me more on the coarse and dry side, so my hair just soaks it right in. As with many other Aveda haircare products, a little bit goes a long way which is comforting when you’re paying more for a higher quality product.

It comes with that same old woodsy-earthy smell that most other Aveda products come with, and it’s claim to fame is that it is made with quinoa protein. Quinoa is a seed that is commonly eaten almost like brown rice is. It is a very unique grain/seed because it contains all of the essential amino acids, which makes it a great dietary choice for vegans and vegetarians who cannot eat animal or dairy sources of protein.

My husband uses a little dab of it after he washes his hair. He lets his hair air dry with it in, and he swears that it makes his hair more tame and less frizzy and crazy throughout the day, so I’d say that’s quite a ringing endorsement for this particular hair product - especially from a guy who barely runs a comb through his hair in the morning otherwise!