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LET YOUR NATURAL BEAUTY SHINE THROUGH

THERE ARE SOME DAYS WHERE I WAKE UP IN THE MORNING
and I have to pinch myself. I’m 31 years old, and I get to play make-believe for a living! I feel so blessed that my creative outlet is also my career. I love acting because it’s this space where dreams can be realized, fantasy comes to life, and there are no limitations on what’s possible.

And makeup is a big part of that.

Because makeup can be pure fantasy—it can transform you into any kind of magical creature, whether that’s a superhero or a retro Hollywood icon or just a more fun, fresher version of yourself. Looking like a stress-free, well-rested working mom? That’s some kind of magic to me.

Growing up, my style icons were my grandmother and my mom—and they could not have had more different takes on beauty and makeup. My grandmother (who, by the way, could have been my identical twin) was a one-product woman. It was all about her matte orange-red lipstick. Before applying the one product all over thing was big, she was doing it. Every day, she’d do her lips with that lipstick, blot and dab the excess on her cheeks, and swipe it across her eyelids. And she looked so glamorous! She was also forever pinching her cheeks—and mine!—to bring the color in.

My mother, on the other hand, never left the house without her face on. I’m pretty sure that’s still true to this day. She was raised in the South with a house full of women and went to cosmetology school while I was growing up, so we always had a lot of makeup around. Back then, her daily look included two colors of eye shadow, an angled rouge on her cheeks, lip liner, and frosted lip color. Now her style is a bit simpler, but she’s always hip to the “look of the moment” and loves to experiment, something I’ve always admired.

I’m a mixture of them both. I like an easy, convenient routine (see “
My 10-Minute Face
”), and I don’t do a full face of makeup every day. But I’m not a one-product woman either. I have boxes of cosmetics in my bathroom, all organized and labeled so I can play around and get creative when the mood strikes.

For me, makeup is about being your best self. If I wake up in a foul mood and have to deal with temper tantrums and an exploding diaper—I know taking 10 minutes to get my game face on will reset my stress levels. It’s a chance to check in and remind myself,
you got this
—whatever your “this” happens to be. When I look good (and not tired), I feel good. It really is that simple.

But having been such a non–girly girl as a kid, I know that there’s also a lot about makeup that can be super intimidating. When I was 12, my idea of makeup was some Bobbi Brown eyeliner—except I could never get it to go on smoothly, so I’d just smudge it everywhere (and I’m not talking, like, artfully smudged). Now, since I’m lucky enough to get my makeup done by some of the best professional makeup artists in the world, I’m constantly grilling them for their best tips and tricks. Like, how do you get mascara not to clump? How do you do a glam red lip . . . that doesn’t end up on your teeth or bleeding beyond your lipline like a hot mess? How do you pull off a smoky eye . . . that doesn’t look broke-down and tired? Why do some foundations cake and others flake?

I mean—these are the serious questions of our time, right? Or, at least, of our morning routine! And with the help of my dear friend and makeup artist Lauren Andersen (we’ve known each other since we were 14), I’ve uncovered the answers—but more on that in a minute. Because first we need to talk about what, exactly, is
in
all of those waxy sticks and powdery cakes. As you might expect, all of this gets a little more complicated when you add the need for safe, healthy cosmetic formulations to the mix.

I
F YOU’VE BEEN FOLLOWING ALONG
in Chapters 1 and 2, you know where this is going. A lot of the makeup we put on our faces every day is filled with toxic crap. It’s pretty hard to argue that this is an unavoidable toxic exposure, like, say, air pollution—because there is no law that says you have to wear any makeup at all.

But what if you just want to, dammit? I honestly mean no offense to my friends in the environmental movement with what I’m about to say, but this is where they lose a lot of us—by acting like you’re a bad person for getting a pedicure, when maybe you had a tough day and you need a treat. This shouldn’t be about pointing fingers at each other for our personal decisions, though. The point is that wanting straight, shiny hair is not supposed to cause cancer. Period. End of story.

But until we get some decent chemical industry regulations passed in Washington, we consumers have to get educated and make some smarter shopping decisions. Just as I’ve done with my lotions and body washes, I’ve had to learn how to navigate the world of cosmetics to avoid allergic reactions. Once, when I was in Paris for Fashion Week, I had my makeup done for a party and woke up the next morning to find my eyes had crusted shut—disgusting! I had less than two days to get the situation under control before I was supposed to attend a Dior show, and it was a nightmare, trying to hunt down prescription eyedrops in a foreign city so I didn’t look like a boxer who’d just been handled. To this day, if I use too much liquid liner or any shadow with a lot of red pigment, I get a serious rash.

Since so many brands of makeup irritate my skin, I’ve tried just about every eco- or natural line out there. When it comes to cosmetics, I’m here to tell you that this can be an epic pain. Think about everything we demand from something as simple as mascara—we want it to volumize, curl, lengthen, and, oh yeah, be waterproof—and that’s only for our eyelashes! Now you want cosmetic companies to do all that
without
using any potentially toxic chemicals?

Well, of course you do, and so do I.

But a lot of the eco-friendly cosmetic brands I’ve tried have been . . . disappointing at best. Forget volume, curl, length—most natural mascaras clump. The lipsticks don’t glide and the eye shadows rub off after about an hour. That’s because it’s hard to make color cosmetics without a whole jumble of synthetic ingredients. We can’t just crush some organic berries on our lips and call it a day—we need chemicals that will hold the formula together, make it glide on nicely, prevent bacterial growth, and so on. There’s a reason mascara today does about 50 million more things to your eyelashes than the mascara your mom used when she was our age—the beauty industry has added hundreds of new chemicals to all of their cosmetic formulations to improve performance. Now the pressure is on to find safer alternatives for the chemicals we know may work great—but aren’t so great for our health.

N
OW THE FUN PART
!
I’m going to give you all my beauty secrets and tips to help you achieve your own version of Honest Beauty.

The good news is that a lot of beauty brands are starting to get there. I’ve seen a huge improvement in the quality of products offered even in just the past couple of years. In this chapter, I’m going to share some of my favorites so you can make over your makeup bag. And Lauren and I have also downloaded our best beauty tips and tricks to help you find the magic—and maybe even a bit of that make-believe!—in makeup.

Note
: The vast majority of the products that I use are free of all the Dishonest Ingredients I warn you about throughout this chapter and have a safety score of 0 to 2 (the best you can get) in the
Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetics Database (
ewg.org/skindeep
)
. Remember, Skin Deep is awesome but not perfect—it can’t stay on top of every new product, particularly some of the great brands I’ve discovered on my travels in France or Japan—countries with much stricter safety standards than the USA. But I’ve consulted environmental health experts like Christopher Gavigan to make sure they meet our safety criteria.