As you may recall, this cartoon was written with considerable help from “Alas” readers. I originally had nine lines written and was hoping to get “Alas” readers to help me out with the last one; but your suggestions were so good, I ended up using only five lines of my own.
I apologize for not crediting folks whose lines I used; to tell you the truth, I was so tired by the time I finished drawing this, I couldn’t even concieve of trying to go through all the posts to try and figure out who wrote which line. So I just sent it out without any credit at all, not even my usual credit line.
But now I’m more awake. So: Thanks to everyone who contributed a line, whether or not I used it. And thanks in particular to the folks who wrote the five lines I used: Thank you, Yami. Thank you, Richard Bellamy. Thank you, Omegapet. Thank you, Barbara Preuninger. And thank you, Steven Pierce.
Hey, I’m deci-famous!
This is pretty cute.
Although I am feeling like I totally missed out on some momentous news – which chemicals in cosmetics are supposed to be the dangerous ones? Are we talking hair dye here?
Another reason for your list: If we start to regulate ingredients in cosmetics it will be a slippery slope to regulating the contents of supplements. Why should we have to prove that herbal supplements are safe and effective? Moreover, why is quality control and batch-to-batch consistency even necessary? Don;t you just trust us?
It kills me that the FDA is taking so much flak for its failure to regulate the drug industry adequately while supplements aren’t regulated at all (entirely due to industry pressure). The FDA needs improvement, but at least it’s doing something with the drug companies. It’s all about businesses abusing their power.
Anyway, I totally agree with your point. I’m allergic to a common ingredient which has no business in anything applied to a living body. There are several other ingredients that I’m not personally sensitive to which fall into the same category. The total lack of regulation in the cosmetics industry leads to abuse of the public trust and feeds the fears of people who don’t like those awful unpronounceable names. It defames honest people in my profession and lends additional credence to the other charlatans (also unregulated) who make “natural” personal care products. There are fewer harmful “natural” formulations, but I get the squicks when I see the big bottles of DMSO in the “health” store for good reason.
The EU has the right idea about regulating supplements. An incredible number of them don’t even contain what is touted as the “major” ingredient, or they have a miniscule amount of the major ingredient.
The irony in the reglulation of the cosmetics industry is that thousands of animals are still be tortured by some of the major cosmetics companies, to no avail. If all the women who are complaining about insufficient regulation would also complain about the torture of cats, rabbits, and mice, we might get somewhere.
You can buy DMSO in health stores? Golly, I might as well throw my Aldrich catalog away.
OK, and now I understand – there is no regulation, which is why I missed the point at first. I wonder why I thought there was.
“Und alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras.” = GRAS (ha, ha).
My screen’s kinda small and my eyes are blurry . . . are those _nails_ in the bunny?? Yikes!
I picked up a can of shaving cream the other day and noticed one of the last ingredients was . . . kerosene. ” You . . . light up my . . . arrrghh!” (or “C’mon baby, light my face on fire”?
Which is less weird than the other odd shaving cream ingredient – nynoxynl-9(sp?!) – the common spermicide. Well, I suppose . . .
But as a guy, I get off *easy* in terms of things applied to my skin . . .
Above all, I love the scientist hand-puppet. 8)
I liked #2 the best. #4 was a riot and fits so many everyday things.
I didn’t really get #1. Bunnies are used in testing, but they don’t nail them down. They use restraining collars for Draize eye testing and they shave/abrade portions of the body for skin tests. Other tests include the LD50. The LD50 test (Lethal Dose 50 percent) is administered by introducing the ingredients under investigation into the animal via the mouth or intravenously. The animal is fed up to 50 percent of its body weight and the aim of the test is to find the dose which will kill half the animal sample.
So the image of the bunny with nails in it’s feet didn’t really conjure up an image of animal testing for me.
This is funny beyond belief. It will be published where?
Lee, I haven’t looked at the purity of the DMSO I’ve seen in health stores; I’ve just shaken my head. It’s probably less pure than what you’d get from Acros or Aldrich. Which is another concern with people putting it on their bodies.
Why not just forget cosmetics altogether? I quit using makeup and dyeing my hair years ago. I figure if a man doesn’t understand that I’m not twenty anymore and have a lot of gray hair, well, screw you. It seems that the cosmetics industry is mainly catering to the idea of the female attracting the male anyway. If you don’t put all this glop on your face, you’ll never land a man, because your natural skin and hair color isn’t good enough.
Susan:
It was published a couple of months ago in an issue of Dollars and Sense, a left-wing economics magazine.
Mousehounde, I plead artistic license.
I love the look in the bunnies eyes. And the line “feel my pain” is hilarious. Other than that my favorite panel is the “huzzah” in #8.
And the rabbit conjures up a sort of Berke Brethed imagery, who, to my knowledge, is the only other cartoonist to offer talking test bunnies in a comic.
Bonnie wrote:
Well, for strarters, there was that case mentioned on Alternet not long ago in which the Court ruled that employers can fire women who don’t want to wear makeup to work. >:
I can’t stand makeup, either. Never bother with it except on Halloween, but if I needed to keep my job, I’d have to do as I was told, right ? Grrrr….
Great toon. The Rabbit one is the best. Twisted but make a strong point about deadily chemicals used to make women more beautiful. Another illustration you could do (not as funny) could show all the horrible things women have been subjected to throughout history (torture shoes, plate lips, ect) for beauty and end with todays toxic makeup.