![\"tarte-naturally-gorgeous\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2009\/08\/tarte-naturally-gorgeous.jpg\" "\\"tarte-naturally-gorgeous\\"")
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Tarte\u00a0is a products sold by Sephora, which has a whole line of “naturally gorgeous” brands:<\/p>\n
![\"Picture1\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2009\/08\/Picture13.png\" "\\"Picture1\\"")
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Naturally gorgeous could mean two things, I suppose:<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0 You are gorgeous without make-up.<\/p>\n
LOL… moving on:<\/p>\n
2.\u00a0 Our make-up is natural.<\/p>\n
This is what Sephora means.\u00a0 But if you use their “naturally gorgeous” products, will your gorgeous be natural?\u00a0 Not necessarily.\u00a0 As Audrey at Triple Pundit<\/a> points out, the USDA does not regulate cosmetics, and neither does any other governmental agency.\u00a0 They can apply the word “natural” to any product because no entity ensures that the word actually means anything.<\/p>\n Audrey continues:<\/p>\n According to their website<\/a>, their natural products are \u201cformulated with high concentrations of plant-based and naturally-derived ingredients, and fewer to no parabens, sodium lauryl sulfate, phthalates, petrochemicals, and synthetic fragrances or dyes.\u201d And the products in their organic section contain over 70% organic ingredients.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So Sephora says they’re natural.\u00a0 The Environmental Working Group<\/a> however, an organization with a wholly different agenda, says that products that Sephora labels natural–such as Tarte, Caudalie, Decleor, and Korres Natural Products–present a moderate to high toxin hazard.<\/p>\n I think this is a really nice example of how difficult it can be to figure out what’s true.\u00a0 First, language is tricky and it’s used to trick us.\u00a0 Second, we can’t trust corporations (we just can’t).\u00a0 They say that they have our best interests in mind, but they do\u00a0not.\u00a0 Third, other entities also have agendas.\u00a0 The Environmental Working Group is a non-profit organization, but it too has an agenda.\u00a0 Audrey points out that if there is a make-up that doesn’t get labeled as toxic by the Environmental Working Group, she has yet to figure out what it is.<\/p>\n So how do we know?\u00a0 More problematically, how do we know when there is a question like this to be asked of every single product and service we could buy?\u00a0 Because even if we had time to do the real research to figure out the answer to the cosmetics question, no one has time to do the research to figure out the answers to all the questions.\u00a0 And while there are website designed to tell you the answers (like the Environmental Working Group or this one on eco-labels<\/a>), we still have to look more closely at them in order to know whether their answers are good.\u00a0 So the work in finding the truth isn’t alleviated, it’s just one step removed.<\/p>\n See also this post on the framing of genetically-modified food by activists<\/a> and this post on what “organic” looks like<\/a>.<\/p>\n (Image via<\/a>.)<\/p>\n \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n Lisa Wade is a\u00a0professor of sociology at Occidental College<\/a>. You can follow her on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tarte\u00a0is a products sold by Sephora, which has a whole line of “naturally gorgeous” brands: Naturally gorgeous could mean two things, I suppose: 1.\u00a0 You are gorgeous without make-up. LOL… moving on: 2.\u00a0 Our make-up is natural. This is what Sephora means.\u00a0 But if you use their “naturally gorgeous” products, will your gorgeous be natural?\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[257,23384,2123,2089,2104],"class_list":["post-12732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hygiene","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-environmentnature","tag-gender-beauty","tag-knowledgeintelligence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12732"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51884,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12732\/revisions\/51884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}