Do you, Samuel Anderson, take Jennifer Ford to be your lawfully wedded wife?
[Sniffle. Sniffle.]
I do.
And do you [SNIFFLE. SNIFFLE.] Jennifer Ford, take Samuel Anderson to be your lawfully wedded husband?
You might think that this is the poignant story of a friend’s wedding. You wouldn’t be totally wrong. However, what follows is an embarrassing [SNEEZE!] resounding throughout the country-lovely Virginia chapel where Sam and Jenny were becoming man and wife.
While my friends were uttering the most important words of their lives, I was trying not to ruin the ceremony with cacophonous coughs… all because I’m allergic to artificial fragrance. I can’t keep the lid on my sneezes during church when the woman beside me waves her No. 5 in my face, and even a scented face wash will irritate my delicate complexion. I am so sensitive to every synthetic odor that when I was a child, using some perfume-y bath bubbles caused red itchy hives to cover my entire body.
Of course this was hard when every girl in middle school was going through the Bath & Body Works phase—I couldn’t very well slather fake flowers all over my body, even if it was a Secret Santa gift. As an adult, I’m glad I’ve avoided all of those phony pheromones. The composition of conventional perfume, after all, is almost entirely derived from petroleum. I’m surprised more people aren’t sneezing.
Luckily, there’s no real reason to use synthetic fragrances when nature abounds with luscious fruits, herbs and flowers just begging to be squeezed into soaps. All of Bausc’s products use delicious scents that do not irritate my skin in the least (even when I get overly excited and use my Tickled Peach Body Wash AND Garden Party Body Scrub at the same time).
My absolute favorite, and thus feature for this week’s blog is the Cherry Scrub. Because our faces are extra sensitive and reactive to any chemicals we put on them, my mom and I would scour the supermarkets looking for face soap made without synthetic fragrance. Most ‘unscented’ face washes still use something called a ‘masking fragrance’ to cover up all of the gross stuff the soap is actually made of (link to something). And even this masking fragrance was enough to bring out the hives. Don’t even talk to me about irritating exfoliates on top of it.
jam n scrub
Bausc’s sour cherry face scrub is not only mouth-watering, but the micro walnut-shell scrubbers are like a massage for my face. Not to be taken lightly coming out of these summer months when my tan is started to peel away, preparing my complexion for a fall color palate. You’d never believe it, but my roommate decided to make sour cherry jam this week, and I honestly can’t tell which smells better, the jam or the face scrub. Sour Cherry Heaven, without the itchy hives.
