Conscious Fashion: Living Au Natural

Being fashionable is about more than just looking good; real beauty stems from the inside. Somewhere along the way though, the idea of inner beauty was changed by society and equated with being thin. Fortunately, for everyone that’s not a size zero, beauty is about more than just a number. Feeling beautiful from the inside out can start with healthy eating and paying attention to what we put into our bodies.

Walk into any grocery store, turn on the news or open a magazine and you’re bound to see something stamped as being green or eco-friendly. From the growing number of consumers concerned with fair trade practices, organic food and sustainability, it’s clear that we are beginning to think about what we are fueling our bodies with. We’ve taken steps to ensure that the meat we consume is hormone free and that the vegetables we eat are organic and pesticide free, but what actions are we taking against other items we consumer on a daily basis such as medication? The pill, a familiar contraceptive drug, may be one that we haven’t been paying enough attention to. Oh yes, it gets a lot of media attention and has been in recent political debates, but are we really stopping to look at this drug we are putting into our bodies? According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), oral contraceptives are a Group 1 carcinogen. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t think I want to be regularly ingesting something that falls under the same category as mustard gas and ultraviolet radiation.

From an environmental stand point, the pill also has harmful effects on our eco system. Transmitted to the main water supply through women’s urine, ethynylestradiol or EE2 (the main component of oral contraceptives), has had a negative impact on fish and several species of amphibians. The fish living in the contaminated water show signs of irregular fertility. Male fish have lower sexual arousal and have been found carry eggs in their testes (something that definitely doesn’t belong there!). Fish have also demonstrated signs that, when exposed to EE2, they are more susceptible to disease.

If the pill is having such negative affects on fish, shouldn’t we be a little more concerned about what it’s doing to our own bodies? There’s more at stake here than winning a feminist vs. conservative argument. This is about personal health. If we’re willing to take a stand and say it’s important that our food is chemical free, why aren’t we willing to set the same standards for ourselves? Whether you’re on the pill or not, it’s time to be an active participant in your health. Ask questions, do research and take control.