“The Business of Beauty is very Ugly”

When you put on the highlighter that's popping on your cheeks, you only admire the glow you get and the trendy comments you receive in turn. But you never question whose blood and sweat was offered to give you the shine that makes you gleeful. When you buy makeup products, you never check the labels to ensure which ingredients and elements have been used in those products to provide you the desired shiny outcome.

A silicate mineral called mica is used in most beauty products to provide a shiny pop which is a key component to the universal beauty industry. Although China is the global producer of mica, our neighbouring country India is known to be the home of the largest deposit of it owing to its cheap labour and existence of exploitation of desperate, illiterate, and unemployed people by way of illegal mining.

The Indian states of Jharkhand and Bihar produce the largest amount of mica through mining operations that are illegal due to restrictions on mining in forested areas. This restriction contributed to the emergence of the so-called 'mica mafia’, the black market of this booming industry.

As a result, people living in poverty are forced into working in an unsafe environment contributing to colossal health hazards as well as fatality. Children as young as 5 years old are involuntarily employed in such intensive illegal mining work for extended hours and in return, they earn 20-30 Rupees for 1 kg. Yes, these 5-10 years old children are the primary workers for the mining of mica.

This illustrates the low-cost labour the ultra-rich cosmetic industries are unscrupulously enjoying and articulately exploiting whether knowingly or unknowingly. It further entails human rights abuse and the degradation of environmental resources.

I am not asking you to stop using makeups but the least you can do is stand against this inhumane process of mining mica. You can do so by rejecting products which use organic mica and accepting products which use synthetic mica. Some of them are: LUSH, Clove + Hallow, Aether Beauty, Red Apple Lipstick, Fat and the Moon, Jane Iredale, Elate Cosmetics etc.

I was inspired to write this post from the following videos from "Voice of Dhaka" and "Refinery29". But you can always Google to learn more. Thanks.

Voice of Dhaka: https://youtu.be/qwgSw-OlZnk
Refinery29: https://youtu.be/IeR-h9C2fgc