The Fabulous Forager

Recently, Jason and I were wandering through REI looking for a birthday gift for Mike when we stumbled upon a book called Let’s Get Primitive: The Urban Girl’s Guide to Camping by Heather Menicucci. It looked to be a clever, irreverent guide to back-country camping designed for women not so used to the outdoors. I thought it might be perfect for me (my camping excursions have up until now remained solidly in the front-country, and I have yet to go camping without some sort of Port-A-Potty somewhere nearby), but I was suspicious. Mainly because some months ago, Jason and I got really excited about this other book that promised to be a clever, irreverent guide to Dungeons & Dragons designed for women not so used to role-playing, but ended up being a condescending parade of stereotypes. With that in my recent memory, I flipped through Let’s Get Primitive suspiciously, looking for any reference to cosmos, Manolos, or mani-pedis. I couldn’t find any and liked what I did see, so I bought it. And I’m glad I did.

If you’ve been paying any attention at all to makeup ads in the past few years (and if you haven’t, shame on you! Bad consumer! Bad!), you’ve probably noticed that “all-natural” mineral makeup has been growing in popularity these last few years. It’s gotten so popular that major brands are producing cheaper knock-offs that contain many of the skin irritants and carcinogens that people generally buy mineral makeup to avoid.

What I’ve been wondering ever since I first heard of mineral makeup is, could I make my own from scratch? It is certainly possible to make it from home using purchased ingredients. But could you gather the basic ingredients from the wild and make it completely from scratch? That’s a bit trickier. 

Spring is in the air, and we’re ready to get back outside, but sunshine ain’t what it used to be. Primitive living involves spending a lot of time outdoors, but people nowadays have much more to worry about vis-a-vis the sun than our hunter-gatherer ancestors, especially those of us with skin the color of unbaked cookie dough. “Since the 1930s, the global incidence of skin cancer has been increasing by 4.2 percent a year. Back then, the risk of developing malignant melanoma was one in 1,500. [By 1996, it was] one in 128.” (E Magazine)

It’s a well-known truism that people (usually teens or young adults) going out of their way to dress differently all end up looking the same. People commonly point that out to mock punks, or Goths, or emo kids, or whatever the new “sub-culture” fashion is, but that completely misses the point. These people generally aren’t dressing differently to differentiate themselves as individuals from the greater culture; they’re dressing differently to mark themselves as a member of a larger group that differentiates itself from the greater culture. This serves several purposes: for people who support the status quo, it’s instant, silent, unmistakable cultural shorthand for, “I don’t share your values.” For people who don’t support the status quo, it’s instant, silent, unmistakable cultural shorthand for, “We’re members of the same tribe.”