Wild Beauty : Wisdom & Recipes for Natural Self-care - by Jana Blankenship (Hardcover)

Cringeworthy all the way through. Blankenship opens with an attempt to be relatable that quickly segues into her reminiscence of playing lab scientist with designer perfumes and spending vacations at the family villa. This isn't enough to tank the book (after all, we can't help the background we are born into), but her obvious privilege taints almost every page. For example, when decrying commercial soap ingredients she chose to single out CeraVe--a staple to many people on a budget. She freely admits she grew up in the world of couture, so why target a brand that serves the working class? Surely Chanel is equally culpable (and she may actually have some personal experience with it--something I sincerely doubt she has with CeraVe). Still, I kept reading. Her formulations are basic and mostly repetitions of the same thing with different essential oils in each, so 5-10 pages of each section are filled with that could easily have fit on one page (questionable for someone purporting to be environmentally conscious). But again, I kept reading. The final straw was her recommendations for facial skin care. My eyebrow raised when I saw her recommendation to use walnut scrub on the face (an ingredient so infamous for causing premature aging that St. Ives faced a lawsuit over its use), but I shut the book when she claimed that lotion moisturizers should be skipped entirely because they contain water (and therefore a preservative) and replaced with oil. While the first recommendation was suspicious, the second made it clear to me that Blankenship does not know or does not care about the fundamentals of skincare. Oils are moisturizers (which seal moisture in) but cannot replace humectants (which provide the moisture itself). I am also suspicious of preservatives in skincare, but there are several natural alternatives (such as leucidal liquid, which is derived from radishes) that make the essential (yes, ESSENTIAL) use of a moisturizer possible without absorbing parabens or other nasties. Even if she is dead set against the natural preservatives, a homemade lotion will keep for several days refrigerated without a preservative. I fear her readers will fall prey to her walnut-shell-and-oil gospel and end up looking more like the portrait than Mr. Gray. In sum, please do not waste your hard earned money on this self-serving garbage. There are many great natural skincare resources out there that are credible both in their naturalism and their effectiveness. This is not one of them.

Absolutely beautiful book! You can practically smell the photos. Highly recommend