The Story of Cosmetics Critique: Fiction in, fiction out

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – C.S. Lewis

It might seem odd to start a blog post with a C.S. Lewis quote, I feel this one in particular demands it. I have spoken about “Little Annie Lunatic”, Annie Leonard, before and it is because of the hard work of HowTheWorldWorks’ Lee Doren that I can once again discuss her lunacy. I have to applaud Doren for his work on this new video as the content of it is well outside his realm of expertise (as well as Leonard’s as she obviously has no clue what she is talking about). As he points out, “Little Annie Lunatic” is using irrational fear to push for new regulations to strangle the cosmetics industry. Why would she do this? As mentioned in the above quote, for the “good” of the people who use cosmetics.

Not being an expert on cosmetics, there isn’t much I can say about Doren’s research here. While my economic and historical knowledge allowed me to comment further on what was discussed previously, I will have to say that this subject isn’t within my scope of expertise. What I can say is that this woman is a “Luddite,” someone who is opposed to industrialization and technological (and in this case chemical) advancement. As Doren highlighted in this critique, Leonard’s entire argument is focused on irrational fear as she purposely misquotes research findings to further he own twisted agenda. Her political beliefs further twist her argument as she paints the leading cosmetic manufacturers as greedy businessmen who don’t care about the health of their customers. Seeing how unsafe products would scare off customers and ruin a business’ reputation, this argument is nonsensical.

“Little Annie Lunatic” also makes a very hard push for “organic” cosmetics, a product she tries to convince her viewers to purchase because they are apparently safer than the more popular brands. What about their chemical make up Leonard? Have those products been thoroughly tested? Just because something is “organic” it doesn’t mean it is safe to use. You wouldn’t rub poison ivy all over your body because it is organic would you? This is what her and people like her fail to realize, that just because it is organic, doesn’t mean it is safe. There are dozens of examples of this, like tobacco, but I think I made my point.

As we see again, “Little Annie Lunatic” wants to control industry. As she indicates in her video, she wishes to do this for the “good” of those who use cosmetics. All this talk about making the “safe and healthy choices” is all nonsense as the entire purpose for this video was to push for government regulation to strangle the cosmetics industry, as Doren points out. It would be one thing if she made an argument based on solid scientific findings, but, as with the last video, Leonard bombards her audience with ill-informed nonsense and outright lies to push a perverted agenda. Would anyone really want someone as ideologically twisted as this woman having any power over industry? No one rational I would imagine…

As C.S. Lewis stated, those like “Little Annie Lunatic” would “torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience”. Because of this, I don’t think we have heard the last of this twisted “Luddite”. Disturbing…