Is It Natural? A Series — Part 1
The Natural Series is all about the ingredients in products that promise to beautify us or remedy an irritation we’ve been experiencing. And it’s about how the word ‘natural’ is key to the promises and seemingly magical formulations, the ingredients in a product.
Consumers are often pursuaded to purchase products based on things like how a product looks, whether the label seems to offer a solution that fits our need, or, at the very least, when the word ‘natural’ appears somewhere on the product, we’ll agree to its purchase.
The Natural Series aims to provide you with the concepts you need to find your way through the maze of products and promises you’ll encounter when looking for specific help with self-care routines for your skin or hair.
What’s in the Natural Series?
- An explanation of the word natural—what does natural mean when it comes to products for topical use? See below in this post!
- The art of reading labels on products, a skill that’s easy to learn. It will help you get the most for your money. The post is Reading the Labels, and features this skill. Click here for this post.
- Lifestyle changes can make all the difference to your quality of life. If you decide to make changes, your creative and resourceful point of view is bound to extend beyond choosing products for the skin. The third post in this series, Engaging a Nature-Centered Lifestyle, is about considering a new point of view and can be read, here.
Natural in Human History
Under the layers of history and information on the meaning of the word ‘natural’ is a basic human need to feel grounded and safe. Such ancient beliefs of Western culture stemmed from such basic needs, and are still respected currently.
We can trace these beliefs to the philosophers of Ancient Greece and Rome who gave us the first ideas about ‘nature’ and ‘natural’. We are indebted to them for coming up with the meaning of the word ‘nature’ or ‘that which is born’, referring to the existence of all things on earth.
That the concept of nature or natural defines us, all beings, and surroundings, is basic to our understanding of the cosmos, at least in the West. There is also the idea that as we come from nature, it is nature that best nurtures and restores us. And an inseparable bond exists between what we call nature — the greater surroundings of our life on this planet — and ourselves. Thus we have written into our DNA that ‘nature’ and ‘natural’ are very basic, very good, qualities.
Advertising and the Word Natural
Below I examine the ideas we assign to the word ‘natural’, along with some of the ways it entices us to buy products for self-care. Read on, since it’s best to be ‘in the know’ … !
Scope and Promise of ‘Natural’ in Self-Care
In some ways advertising is very clever. The word ‘natural’, coming from the word ‘nature’, represents the notion of origin or original. Consequently the purity we associate with such an essential quality is inserted into our conversations, emails, substack posts, advertisements, and offers. Whatever we are talking about or focused on, if the words nature or natural are affixed to the topic in some way, we are easily hooked. We will automatically agree to buy products that seem to be based in the idea of nature or natural.
I think this means we’re longing to communicate with nature and the natural. Because we believe in it as a source of all that is good.
But actually, deep down, we realize that nature is our own origin, defining us as well as other living beings. We come from some distant association with all that began life on this planet. We identify with nature, in at least some small part of our being. This planet and its living beings represents the totality of home, or the one we are familiar with now.
The word ‘natural’ is trendy and is used as bait for our attention. However, in our daily affairs we are allowed to reflect on anything but nature. Instead, ‘Nature’ in the media has been appropriated for industrial use and marketing goals.
Defining Natural in Personal Terms
The best argument I’ve seen online is this. Each person who is concerned about beauty and health* needs to have their personal definition of natural. Ingredient labels may or may not include the word natural but the word is not recognized by cosmetic label standards. Therefore, a customer must conclude after reading the label whether it describes natural products or not. This requires a bit of sifting through often mysterious-looking names. If you’d like to see more on cosmetic label-reading, please see this post.
Values For Beauty and Health
Are values for beauty and health matched in the products you purchase? Do these values support each other?
‘Natural’ is a descriptive word that seems to be stretched to cover a range concepts. Often used as an abstract term, it calls attention to the product.
The meaning of ‘Natural’ can be defined as:
“coming directly from nature, an actual slice from the source”
Another meaning of ‘natural’ can be defined as:
“having a nature-like quality, perhaps a cameo of nature, without actually having natural properties”
A ‘Natural Product’
Somewhere in between natural and nature-based is a thing called a ‘natural product’, which has properties from both the actual source and the nature-cameo. One example would be hand-soap. A bar of soap is made of ingredients that produce foam or lather and is mixed with other ingredients that deodorize or provide anti-bacterial actions. Any of these ingredients could be nature-based (i.e. ‘natural’) or could be a ‘natural product’, combining both a botanical and a lab-created ingredient.
Another example is perfume. With an alcohol base, the character of perfume comes from the scent of plants plus derivatives of plants that have been re-constructed in a laboratory. Such a scent that has been laboratory-created is modeled after a natural scent, but is basically built on the main compounds responsible for the smell of a flower (for example).
Looking For Natural in Products
I believe that a definition of what is natural in products we put on our bodies should be generally known. And the reason is that despite the vagueness of the word’s meaning, it is used often anyway as an adjective. However, adjectives are not acceptable cosmetic terms! See my next post, Reading the Labels on Natural Cosmetics for more.
A Natural Series on this topic in 3 posts:
- An explanation of the word natural—what does natural mean when it comes to products for topical use? See above in this post!
- The art of reading labels on products, a skill that’s easy to learn. It will help you get the most for your money. Reading the Labels and Looking for Natural Cosmetics is posted, here.
- Lifestyle changes that make all the difference to your quality of life. So, the third post in this series discusses adopting a new point of view.
*Concern about one’s health is a whole topic by itself. I am writing about the use of a concept about products and to give examples of quality, show how products are labelled, and give information that you can use to make your purchasing decisions.
Resources: “What does ‘nature’ mean?” by Frederick Ducarme and Dennis Couvet. Published in Palgrave Communications at https://doi.org/10.1057/41599-020-0390-y
Copyright, LotusLadyAromatica, 2024
This post is for informational purposes only and is not intended as advice, medical or otherwise. This post is the opinion of the author, who actively seeks out, researches and formulates with natural materials which have been minimally processed.