Not So Pretty in Pink: Marketing Toxic Makeup to Young Girls

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While the physical changes of puberty are diligently noted (especially by classmates), the changes that take place within the brain often go without remark. In order to accommodate new powers of abstract thinking and adult socialization behaviors, the brain becomes less flexible. As that happens, it becomes harder to learn complex skills such as playing a musical instrument, speaking a foreign language, or mastering a sport.

“Girls now have, on average, a year and a half less to learn these things,” says biologist Sandra Steingraber, who has published extensive work on environmental links to cancer and reproductive health. “Over the course of just a few decades, the childhoods of U.S. girls have been significantly shortened. This has huge implications.”

The implications don’t stop at learning skills. Girls who enter puberty earlier are at higher risk for breast cancer and depression, and are more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors such as drinking and unprotected sex. The situation has many parents wondering what, if anything, they can do to slow the onset of puberty.

One answer, Steingraber says, might be found in eliminating the chemical-laden products girls use to look more grown-up.

Take Assaf’s old beauty routine. According to an analysis from the nonprofit Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database (www.cosmeticsdatabase.com), the 15 products in her routine—from shampoo and deodorant to lotion and makeup—contained more than 100 chemical ingredients. Her daily dose included several carcinogens and more than two dozen hormone-disrupting chemicals, such as parabens (a common preservative) and phthalates (often found in fragrance).

While cosmetic manufacturers argue that each product contains only a small amount of any given chemical, chronic exposure from multiple products—especially during sensitive developmental years—has scientists concerned. “We have to worry about the windows of exposure: exposures when mom is pregnant, when baby is born, in early childhood, and throughout puberty,” says Maryann Donovan, scientific director at the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. Donovan is particularly concerned about products, such as hair pomades, marketed to African American girls, and worries that toxic chemical ingredients found in many of them might contribute to early puberty and high rates of breast cancer common among young African Americans.

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