Maacaron - Natural beauty alchemy : make your own organic cleansers, creams, serums, shampoos, balms, and more

Copyright 2015 by

Fifi M. Maacaron

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages.

All photography courtesy of Wael Hamza unless otherwise indicated on .

ISBN: 978-1-581-57272-8

ISBN: 978-1-581-57629-0 (e-book)

Published by

THE COUNTRYMAN PRESS

P.O. Box 748, Woodstock, VT 05091

Distributed by

W. W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC

500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

Natural Beauty Alchemy

Beauty is a perceptual concept that grows with individuals of every society and culture.

As we begin to understand what it means and grasp its dimensions, we learn to appreciate it and search for it in every facet of our lives. We also attempt to bring beauty into our daily lives by incorporating beautiful things into our surrounding environment and by trying to beautify our own appearance.

Most women, men, and children have an innate desire to look and feel beautiful inside and out, and there is a certain harmony that often links inner and outer beauty and reflects the result to the outside.

Each person defines and implements beauty in a different way, but despite the subjectivity, a huge platform remains common ground for most people in search of a more beautiful look. That platform is nothing but the vast field of cosmetics.

Making cosmetics has always been part of human history, and recipes are part of popular traditions and folklores, preserved on papyri and cherished by descendants for generations.

Very simple and basic, most preparations were concocted from naturally available and locally grown ingredients: Cleopatra bathed in milk and honey; Romans used olive oil and rose water to make creams; Arabs made perfumes from agarwood (called oud), amber, and saffron.

As humanity evolved, the complexity of cosmetics evolved, as well. It became possible to transition from old-world beauty traditions to new age formulas, and modern techniques allowed packing some beauty goodness into jars and tubes of all shapes and colors.

Newer technologies and emerging scientific protocols endorsed the benefits of countless ingredients. Herbal extracts have been purified and standardized; active molecules have been identified, analyzed, and documented; and placebo controlled clinical trials have been conducted to test efficacy claims.

Such an abundance of scientific information made it possible to concretely understand the secrets to the success of various formulations, to appreciate numerous natural ingredients, to choose what is most suitable for every specific need and use it in an optimal way for optimum results.

Cosmetics concretized modern alchemy and managed to pour some of the utopic beauty fountain into individual jars that require only simple steps to nurture, soothe, protect, and rejuvenate skin.

Even though this may sound a little like a fairytale, it is far from being one. What was once folklore heritage has become the high-profit industry of the fifty-billion-dollar U.S. cosmetics empire. With countless chemical innovations and high-tech industrialization, the fast-paced world of cosmetics has grown further and further apart from its natural sources and acquired an unpleasantly dense chemical complexity, with a predominant emphasis on efficacy and little focus on safety and tolerability. With the quasi absence of official regulations, manufacturers began comfortably including an increasing number of questionable ingredients for profitability reasons such as extending shelf life and reducing costs.

For that reason, for many, cosmetics themselves needed a makeover.

Several public interest groups such as professional authors, feminists, animal rights activists, environmentalists, and many others campaign against this humongous empire of cosmetics and broadcast data to raise awareness at the consumer level.

Consumers, mostly women, understand that what makes them look prettier may not be good for them. They realize that there may be ugly harsh ingredients inside their beauty products; that what is offered as a solution to a need may not be what they want or how they want it; that unfortunately, unethical, profit-driven marketing exists and they do not want to be misled.

More exigent consumers divorced glamorous brands and started a search for safer, better-tolerated, time-tested, more natural and skin-friendly solutions in an attempt to build their own independent, effective, transparent, and honest beauty regimens.

While manufacturers still try to drive market demand toward their own products through various strategies, such as TV commercials, price drops or coupons, and attractive packaging, other decision factors are affecting choices, making it obvious to conventional product manufacturers that there has been a considerable shift in purchasing behavior, with fewer impulsive and more informed consumers. Those emerging market dynamics forced the creation of a new, more natural category of cosmetics that targets the lost customers, avoiding questionable ingredients and including more naturally sourced, skin-friendly components.

Even though those changes have been welcomed, problems have not been completely solved, and the new products have created a new labyrinth. Poor regulations and vague standardization guidelines have led many consumers to wonder why finding the right products to upgrade their beauty arsenal has become so difficult, complicated by stretched claims, countless different logos, and lengthy lists of ingredients that often include incoherent information and require expert analysis. Thus, the decision to shift to more natural skin care hasnt always translated to easily finding satisfactory products according to natural criteria.

As a consequence, a vast multitude of skin care product users pressed the reset button of their beauty routines, and many others are about to do the same; all of them are in need of unbiased, trustworthy information, as well as better alternatives.

Natural Beauty Alchemy will decode the secrets of the trade and dissipate the mystery surrounding the world of cosmetics. The professional-level information, up-to-date research, and impartial opinions in this book will help you to understand the dynamics behind the fascinating world of skin care. Ingredients are analyzed, benefits are listed, technicalities are explained in detail, and every bit of knowledge is presented in such a way that readers can understand. Every woman will be able to take charge of her own beauty regimen, understand what her skin needs, and provide it with the best care without compromise.