When I was about nine years old, I decided that I should learn how to perfectly mimic the voices of my family members. There were two major obstacles to this (completely pointless) goal. Firstly, I couldn’t practise while I was around the people I was training myself to imitate, which made getting some of the nuances particularly challenging. However, this wasn’t as frustrating as the second issue: which was that I sounded like a high-pitched bunny rabbit on cocaine (still do sometimes).
As a result, whenever I tried to mimic my father, brother, or grandfather, I’d end up sounding like a well-spoken Muppet. Fast forward a few decades, and I own one LED light bulb controlled via Bluetooth. It can do a whole spectrum of colours, and you can control how vivid/bright you’d like it. It does disco flashes and “mood lighting”. Just one bulb though, in case I want to throw myself a party while crying into a bowl of garlic chicken. So you can see that I clearly love useless, garbage things.
In fact, I love them so much that till very recently I used products with essential oils on my skin — gasp! Here’s what I’ve noticed: “natural” and “clean” brands will demonise synthetic fragrances while throwing in lavender, citrus and a whole host of the irritants in your moisturiser with little proof of them actually doing anything other than aromatherapy. Let’s discuss what essential oils are. These are the volatile aromatic essences of the plant (the scent, hence the name) made to attract bees (pollination) and for protection (deter herbivores).
They don’t contain vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, or fatty acids. So unless you are trying to get a herbivore to stop eating you, essential oils are pretty useless. As if this wasn’t bad enough, most of them contain a ton of allergens; think skin inflammation, dermatitis and breakouts. Balsam of Peru is one of the top five allergens and has found a safe home in several products. Sure you might say that they have antibacterial properties: but that really doesn’t balance the scales out.
They aren’t effective preservatives because they don’t offer broad spectrum protection against the growths that can happen in your products. Besides, your skin has a natural anti-bacterial barrier,- which gets broken down a little bit when it’s irritated. While oils like tea tree do have research showing them to be helpful: they also cause a lot of irritation and damage mucous membranes. They aren’t consistently effective, make you super sensitive to the sun and have an intense purge period.
There really isn’t a “better” essential oil for your skin. Turpentine is an essential oil and it can strip paint off a house. Do you want that on your face? Didn’t think so. Speaking of houses and my lightbulb: did you know that you can control up to nine bulbs at a time with the Pro app? (Which is actually free! Download the Pro app). So, if you’ve got money to burn a small bachelor pad to woo the ladies, buy the bulb! Keep essential oils in your diffusers. The end.
Saumya R Chawla @pixie.secrets
The writer loves to over-share, drink wine & watch period dramas