Beauty Chat: Margot White, Founder of The Choosy Chick + a Giveaway!

Get ready green beauty lovers, there’s a new chick in town: The Choosy Chick, that is! This new online store is yet another lovely addition to the internet’s finest purveyors of green beauty goods. The Choosy Chick features a carefully curated catalog of well-known organic and natural skincare, hair, and beauty brands many enthusiasts already trust like Josh Rosebrook, Badger, Acure, Honeybee Gardens, and MUN. What really caught my eye is that the store focuses on intriguing and perhaps lesser-known brands with a special emphasis on fun and healthy products for children. It’s great to see a store that selects great overall brands for everyone in the family!

I chatted with The Choosy Chick’s founder and very cool Chick-in-charge, Margot White about her thoughts on green beauty, the story behind her business, and more. Read on to learn more about this inspiring entrepreneur, teacher and mother.
After the jump, enter the giveaway to win an amazing sampler bag from The Choosy Chick! 

Tell us a bit about yourself and your connection to safe beauty and skincare:
I have a B.S. in Community Health Education and an M.S. in Education. As an educator for the last 15 years, wife and mother of 4 of boys, I understand fully that we need to do everything possible to help the next generations live healthy, sustainable lives.

I had always been an advocate of reading food labels and teaching my children what to avoid, but was absolutely horrified the day I learned that so many of the personal care products I had trusted and used for so many years contained toxins. We got rid of about 50 products that we had been using daily and replaced with safer, cleaner alternatives.  My family noticed a significant decrease in acne, dandruff and skin irritation. I have personally noticed a significant decrease in my chronic headaches. We all get compliments on the condition of our hair and skin. We will never go back to the old stuff!

What inspired you to create The Choosy Chick?
Over the last 3 years I have watched many of my friends, family and neighbors fight cancer.  As a teacher I have also witnessed a rise in the increase of developmental and neurological disorders in children. This, coupled with my utter frustration with the lack of regulation in this industry and the lack of readily available safe, personal care products, I was inspired  to create The Choosy Chick.         

What can consumers expect from The Choosy Chick?
At The Choosy Chick, we believe “Toxins have no place in personal care products.” After discovering that stores really do NOT have standards, we developed The Choosy Chick Standard by which we determine a product’s safety. We will not be DUPED by natural looking packaging or natural/organic false claims. Our mission is to provide our customers a “one stop shop” with safe and effective beauty products.  We are dedicated to educating consumers about this vastly unregulated industry and the harmful ingredients in many personal care products saturating the marketplace today.

Reading and understanding ingredient labels is a confusing and time consuming task.  We want to make shopping for safe products easy, by doing the research for people and offering them products that are far more effective than their toxic counterparts! We hope that our commitment to finding pure products affords our customers a true sense of security for themselves and their families.

What is the process like when choosing the brands and products sold at The Choosy Chick?
Phew! Time consuming! First, we evaluate the product and see if it meets the points listed in our standard – It must NOT contain ANY of our Big Baddie ingredients. Sometimes we need to contact manufacturers (probably driving them crazy at times) about their processes, as ingredients can become hazardous when mixed with others, or in the manufacturing process itself.  We then make sure the manufacturer does NOT test on animals and has sustainable/green manufacturing processes. Then, we test! We have a team of about 8 people (children included) all with a variety of different skin/hair needs. We look for superstars – products that stand up to what they claim!

What are your most recommended brands? Why? Your favorite beauty and skincare products?
Oh boy – we love them all – really!  We represent 35 brands all with an outstanding reputation for putting the safety of the consumer first.  I personally use a variety and switch back and forth…                 

Do you have any advice to give consumers who are looking for safer beauty and skincare alternatives?
Yes, if you care about your health and that of your family, you have to become a Choosy Chick. Understand that most of what you put on your skin is absorbed by the body, and that most personal care products on the marketplace today are saturated with ingredients that cause cancer, infertility, developmental and neurological disorders and disrupt the endocrine system. This is especially concerning for pregnant women and children (whose body systems have not yet fully matured). Toxins from personal care products are found in urine and cord blood.  This has been allowed to happen because the FDA does not regulate the cosmetics industry.  The cosmetic industry does what it wants and fights for their right to keep it that way daily. SO FRUSTRATING!  Our advice is learn, learn, learn all you can, read labels and shop smarter!

What is your perspective of the current state of green beauty and products available?
I do think that there are more and more smaller companies coming out with great products.  YAY!  However, you won’t find these products in your local drug stores and supermarkets and often have to dig deep.

We want people to get involved, too. There are organizations out there working so hard to get toxic chemicals out of products. Please join forces with Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, The Breast Cancer Fund, The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, the Environmental Working Group and The Coalition for a Safe and Healthy CT.

What do you hope The Choosy Chick will provide for the green beauty community and beyond?
Our goal is to spread awareness. When I tell people what we do – they are absolutely SHOCKED to learn that the products they are using contain toxins. So many people assume that because a product is on the shelf in the US – that somehow-someone is overseeing things and it must be safe. Visit our LEARN section at The Choosy Chick, and stay in touch via Facebook and Twitter to get the latest information about this serious issue.

Be a smart chick and head on over to the newest green beauty shop on the web: The Choosy Chick

Want to try all the products featured on The Choosy Chick but can’t decide where to start? Enter to win an amazing The Choosy Chick Sampler Bag! (Open to US entrants only)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This bag contains a generous amount of travel-sized and trial-sized products from a handful of the stellar green beauty brands offered at the online store. Enter to win this Sampler Bag (value: $29) which features some really nice goodies to try, all in a sustainable jute makeup bag:

1. Solavedi – DNA Repair  Day Cream (travel size)
2. Schmidt’s Natural Deodorant (.5 oz) scent may vary depending on stock
3. Badger Mineral Lip Tint and Shimmer (full size) color may vary
4. Graham Gardens Soap (sample size) scent may vary
5. Tsi-La Organic Perfume tester (.65ml .02 fl. oz) scent varies on stock availability
6. MUN No. 1 Aknari Skin Brightening Serum for Face (sample size) (.03 fl. oz)
7. DN-UNIK Anti-aging Day and Night Cream (sample size) (.34 fl. oz each)
8. And… an assortment of sample sachets based on stock availability