Manic Panic Pretty Flamingo + Atomic Turquoise

Friends, let’s face it: my hair was way too long.  Now you may be thinking, “Umwhat? Your hair was pretty flippin’ short!” — but no, for me it was way too long.  Since I like to bleach the everlivingcrap out of my hair, having longer hair (even a short bob) is pretty much out of the question.  Thankfully I found someone locally who could give me a great haircut!

Let’s look at the photographic evidence.  I just realized most of these were taken in my car. What can I say, the lighting is great in there, ok?

Before!

Here is my hair on a better, previous day.

 

As you can see, my hair was getting pretty damaged!  I’d just washed and blow-dried it here, making zero effort into styling it because that’s how I roll.

After!

Improvement, no?  All the damage was cut off and I got my trusty, fun, easy as all get out pixie cut! Huzzah!

So of course it was time to immediately bleach the everlivingcrap out of my hair again.  sadly, the very faded blue-green didn’t want to budge, so I was limited in what I could do.  I decided to do Atomic Turquoise on the fringe and Pretty Flamingo.  Atomic Turquoise is a new favorite of mine but I had never tried Pretty Flamingo before.  Exciting!

RESULT!

The Pretty Flamingo is a warm, soft pink.  Almost a coral. Actually, it’s the exact color of a flamingo.  I like it but I admit it’s pretty unusual for me as I typically go for more vivid colors!  While I do like it a lot, when it fades, I will likely go back to my beloved Hot Hot Pink.  Or, if I can get the Atomic Turquoise to budge, might try something different altogether.  I typically do bright colors in the spring and summer and then darker ones in the winter.  I think we’ve got a few more months of summer, unfortunately.

Even still, once again Manic Panic did not disappoint!  And did you know they have 2 new colors out?  Rockabilly Blue and Voodoo Blue!  Voodoo Blue looks like a deeper shade of Atomic Turquoise to me and I can’t wait to try it!

Manic Panic can be purchased at ManicPanic.com, Sally Beauty and Amazon.com and are cruelty-free!

Re-dedication to being CF

Ricky Gervais, being awesome

The past several weeks have been a whirlwind in the beauty community, as so many once-trusted cruelty-free brand have decided to sell out their morals for a quick buck and go quietly (or loudly) off the cruelty-free lists by deciding to expand into China.

Well, good luck with that, I guess.  But it has made me even more dedicated to buying only CF beauty items and only featuring CF on this blog.  (Which means my recent Revlon purchases won’t be reviewed here, even though I bought them before the news about Revlon selling in China came out. Bugger.)

Please rest assured that any items I review here will be CF to the very best of my knowledge.  As I branch out into sampling brands from around the world, the waters get muddied a bit, but I will also do my best to find out about a companies animal testing practices before I feature them here.

I won’t be tossing out my makeup from newly-nonCF brands because for me, that would be terribly wasteful.  The money is spent already, you know?  But the least I can do is just use them up quietly and replace them with a CF product later.

If you’re as passionate as I am about this issue but don’t know where to start, I heartily recommend Leaping Bunny.

 

I love bunnies, ok?

Long time no see!

Sorry about that.  I had an inadvertent hiatus there but I am back!  I have lots of fun things to review and show you but first I wanted to discuss my thoughts about an issue that is close to a lot of our hearts:  animal testing.

The Blogosphere was rocked when recently brands like MAC, Avon and Mary Kay all went quietly off the cruelty-free lists.  After some investigation from keen bloggers, it was discovered that these brand are expanding into China, where animal testing is required (either by doing testing themselves or letting the Chinese government do testing for them, it’s not entirely clear.)  A lot of people felt betrayed by this as these were brands that have been cruelty-free for decades in some cases.

Then, cruelty-free brand Urban Decay said they were going to start selling in China and again, people were upset and felt betrayed.  I know I’m not the only one who loved that the brand’s motto was “We don’t test on animals. How could anyone?”  There was a massive uproar and this past week Urban Decay announced that they will NOT be selling in China and thus, keeping their truly cruelty-free label intact.

Well huzzah, right?  Fast forward to now, when I see that Revlon — one of the first major US brands to forgo animal testing — is no longer on the cruelty-free list.  [insert the sound of a record player needle scratching across a record here]   Exercising my google fu turned up this petition by PETA, asking Revlon to “come clean” about their policies regarding animal testing. Right, so do they or don’t they? I just don’t know anymore!

It’s all incredibly shady, isn’t it?  That we, the consumers, have to constantly be on our guard in case some cosmetics company decides to put their profits ahead of their ethics. Without telling us.

But hold on there a second, the waters are murkier than all that.  What does it mean to be truly cruelty-free anyway.  Take Burt’s Bees, which doesn’t test on animals — but is owned by Clorox, who does.  Is it better to avoid Burt’s Bees altogether so that evil Clorox doesn’t get a cent of your money?  Or is it better to buy from Burt’s Bees and show Clorox that CF is something that matters to you regardless.

What about non-cosmetics items?  I’m not talking about things like medicine etc but what about, say, deodorant?  If you buy strictly cruelty-free makeup but buy a deodorant that is nonCF, are you suddenly an evil, horrible hypocrite?  What if you’re like me and live in a really shitty, rural part of the country where your access to CF items is extremely limited? Seriously, if I want to buy CF shampoo my options are…. let’s see…. nada, unless I want to spend a LOT of money on shampoo.  Well, I could buy Burt’s Bees… but… well… you see my dilemma.

The more I research (and soul-search) the more I see this just isn’t a black and white issue for me.  It’s hard to know where to draw the line or even if a line should be drawn.  What I see is that, thankfully, attitudes regarding animal testing in cosmetics are changing. More and more people are seeing that it’s just unnecessary and cruel to make animals suffer for something so frivolous. But we still have to be diligent and let companies know what’s important to us.

So what’s it’s all mean, to me, personally? Hell, I’m still confused.  But I do know that I will do my best to feature only products from cruelty-free brands on this website.  (Though I do have a few Revlon items I wanted to blog about, bought before this whole damn fiasco started and I thought they were still fully CF. Bloody hells!)  Most of all, I think I just have to do my best to stick to my morals and ethics and not beat myself up too much that I can’t do everything all the time.  And I certainly am not going to judge anyone who feels differently.

I think this is a deeply personal issue and each person has to decide for his/herself where they stand on it.

Thinking about all of this is exhausting, isn’t it?  Let’s just all have some damn ice cream!

Now here’s a picture of a cat.