Sistah Vegan’s Cosmetic Beauty Secrets
Dr. A. Breeze Harper. September 2015. Muir Beach, CA.
Some folk have asked me about my vegan cosmetic beauty tips and favorites over the years. I kind of cringe when asked to talk about ‘beauty’ tips because of the love/hate relationship I have with the expectation that women are supposed to naturally have (or be inclined to have). I’ve been trying to avoid this topic for years because of the amount of emphasis in the ‘health and beauty’ world that values women for how ‘beautiful’ they can look…and those standards are white fat-shaming, cis-sexist, racist, colorist, ableist etc for the most part and doesn’t embrace that there is not one way to ‘do beauty’. But, I’ll try to offer my personal experiences .
Well, it’s probably not going to be what you expect: I don’t know anything about cosmetic beauty arts. I tried it a long time ago– that is, to do make-up and ended up on sometimes using lipstick that always seemed to taste bad. That was about 20 years ago.
I don’t regularly remove the hair that comes out of my chin and my 4 year old daughter has asked me why I have hair coming out of my chin if I’m “not a man”. “Why do you have a beard, mama?” I have then explained to her multiple times that hair (or lack there of) does not determine one’s gender identity.
As an adult, I never went to a salon to ‘get my hair did’. Never been to a spa. The other day I finally gave myself a much needed manicure by clipping my long toe nails (6 months worth of growth that I only noticed after I realized my shoes were uncomfortable because the toenails were pressing against the front) the other day and slapped some shea butter on my ashy toes and feet that have never seen a pumice stone.
I shaved my legs last month after 10 months and probably won’t do it again for another 10 months. I think I’m the only person I have ever seen with a two piece bikini at the beach, wearing a bikini with ‘sideburns’ (i.e., won’t shave or wax before I put a bikini every single time) The picture above is me with ‘sideburns’ but it’s kind of hard to tell since this is a tankini and not a bikini.
But, I have a confession: I cannot and will not leave the house without wearing a pair of huge earrings (preferably my Angela Davis, Malcolm X, or Nina Simone earrings) and shea butter and castor oil applied to my face and body!
In terms of cosmetic art expression (is that the right way to phrase it?), what can’t you leave the house without?
About Dr. A. Breeze Harper
Dr. Harper’s most recently published book, Scars: A Black Lesbian Experience in Rural White New England (Sense Publishers 2014) interrogates how systems of oppression and power impact the life of the only Black teenager living in an all white and working class rural New England town.
Dr. Harper has been invited to deliver many keynote addresses and lectures at universities and conferences throughout North America. In 2015, her lecture circuit focused on the analysis of food and whiteness in her bookScars and on “Gs Up Hoes Down:” Black Masculinity, Veganism, and Ethical Consumption (The Remix) which explored how key Black vegan men us hip-hop methods to create “race-conscious” and decolonizing approaches to vegan philosophies. Her latest book project is Recipes for Racial Tension Headaches: A Critical Race Feminist’s Journey Through the ‘Post-Racial’ Ethical Foodscape (2017).
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