The Closest I've Come to Being in a Cult Was Taking a Shower in New Jersey

When I was little, I had to constantly be reading.  When I was eating my breakfast, I was reading the cereal box.  And the milk.  Later, I'd start reading the paper, or a book, or a magazine.  When I was in the shower, I'd read shampoo bottles.  This took an interesting turn when I visited my aunt and uncle's house in New Jersey, because they used Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap, which has a label like this:

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I took really long showers when I was in New Jersey.

For those who don't have 20 minutes to read this, let me say this: the passage "For one God's Spaceship Earth, with Bomb and Gun we're all-One or none!  All-One!  All-One!  All-One!  Exceptions eternally?  Absolute none!" happens, and it's not even the most frantic thing on there.  Dr. Bronner was an interesting guy, and the company is still run by his family following his death in 1997.  The soap, incidentally, is really good.  It rinses cleanly and it doesn't dry out your skin.  Plus, it's a culty-fun adventure for the whole family!

I grew up with this soap, and as I got older, I realized that Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap was the kind of thing hippie-type folks were prone to having on hand, which makes sense given my context for it.  I recently read about coconut oil being great for your skin (and a million other things; Jenna Marbles sums it up nicely), and wanted to try it - regular readers of this blog may remember that I usually clean my face with olive oil - and someone suggested that Dr. Bronner's was the best place to get coconut oil.  I was disappointed to discover that there is no pseudo-religious babble on the coconut oil container, though it does say "Dr' Bronner's MAGIC 'ALL-ONE'," which I suppose is pretty good.  It IS fair trade and organic, which in reality is probably better than having a bunch of rambling on the label, so it has that going for it.  However, I'm sitting here, having used some Dr. Bronner's coconut oil on my face and some of it in my morning smoothie, about to take my multivitamin and "Women's Treasure" herbal supplement with my nettle infusion as recommended by my herbalist (the fantastic Melanie St. Ours), and I'm kind of realizing that hippie is genetic and there's just no escaping it.  And you know what, I'm cool with that, because since taking my herbs my hair and nails have been super strong and luxurious and my whole life is more balanced, and right now guys my face is as smooth as the most angelic little cherub's butt.  I embrace the hippiedoodlery.

Note on the coconut oil: barring any weird skin freakouts, I will be switching over to coconut oil for everything.  I find that the olive oil still removes makeup a little better.  However, there was always the "smelling vaguely like a salad" aspect of using olive oil, and now I can instead smell like a coconut, which is preferable by far.  Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I bet you could add in some other essential oil to make a scent you might prefer, as long as you chose something that wouldn't irritate your skin.  The main challenge would be blending it properly; the coconut oil is a solid at regular room temperature, so I guess you could warm the oil in a pot of water (i.e. put the open jar in a pan of water), mix the additional oil in, then let it set up again.  I'm going to try it!  I will report back soon.