What Price, White Face?

Finally, we may perhaps be about to have a much longed-for backlash over skin whitening creams and, if we do, it’s not before time. An article in the Guardian last week [find it here] put this grossly misguided notion of vanity firmly where it belongs – in a spotlight that questions the appropriateness of a global preference for white skin, along with the ethics that drive it, AND exactly what goes into the body - bleaching products that seem to be even more popular in countries where white skin is a desirable commodity for reasons far more culturally sinister than mere vanity. 

My initial feeling that anything that promises to bleach human skin cannot be good for our bodies was reinforced by the paragraph that reads “... skin-whitening products promising to be anti-melanin are now on sale, with worrying consequences. Dr Bav Shergill, consultant dermatologist and trustee of the British Skin Foundation, explains: "Melanin is produced by melanocytes to protect the DNA of our skin from sun damage. Excessively reducing this concentration of melanin may increase the risk of skin cancers." Other creams have been found to contain dangerous chemicals, such as hydroquinone and mercury. The British Skin Foundation advises that hydroquinone can cause intense irritation and uneven bleaching of the skin, and mercury can cause increased pigmentation and severe itchy rashes. Both these chemicals are banned in the EU though not elsewhere, and batches of under-the-counter creams are routinely confiscated by the UK authorities”.

Okay, let’s park vanity, cultural menace and a disturbing desire for armpit and genital whitener and “fairness baby oil” for a minute or two, and take a look at hydroquinone. Guess what? It’s used as a developing agent in photography and as an antioxidant in rubber, and is released in the effluent from those products after use.  Is that enough to put you off smearing it all over your own or your baby’s body?  NO?  Well, let’s dig a bit further, then.  How do you fancy being a candidate for tinnitus (ringing in the ears), dizziness, headache, nausea, vomiting, dyspnoea (shortness of breath), erosion of your stomach lining, the swelling of your internal organs, cyanosis (impaired circulation), convulsions, delirium, and collapse?  NO?  Well, throw away the jar of pale promise then, because all of these things have been proven to be a human result from large amounts of this horrible ingredient being ingested and absorbed.  Add eye irritation, corneal problems, and impaired vision to the mix as potential side effects from repeated exposure and you have in your bathroom cabinet something a little more obnoxious than a socially repugnant genital or armpit whitener.  Try a bomb, literally waiting to detonate your lymph nodes, over time. 

Our skin is porous.  That’s the whole point of these creams, and the whole point of why nobody should be touching them with a barge pole.  No information is available on the reproductive, developmental, or carcinogenic effects of hydroquinone in humans, but that’s not to say the potential isn't there.  After all, there has been evidence of carcinogenic outcomes for orally-exposed rodents, and skin-treated mice showed an increased risk of skin tumours. Rats chronically exposed via the chemical being experimentally placed in their stomachs suffered from tremors, convulsions and death at the highest levels, as well as experiencing negative effects on their kidneys and stomach, with stomach lesions being reported in mice.  Rats exposed to hydroquinone in their diet ate less, lost weight, and developed aplastic anaemia.  Those that consumed the chemical in their water gained weight more slowly, developing changes in their blood composition and tissue degeneration in their intestines, liver, kidneys, and hearts.  Those poor, desperate little creatures also had enlarged liver and kidneys.  They didn't stand a chance, did they?

I think all that puts hydroquinone neatly in the non-desirable box.  So let’s look now at mercury, which is a common ingredient in both skin whitening creams and in many “run of the mill” ones out there for general use.  Allegedly banned in the EU (though still appearing in various cheap products that do leak into the market from elsewhere), mercury is easily absorbed through the skin, and in high concentration causes heavy metal poisoning resulting in a whole raft of deeply disturbing emotional and psychological symptoms [see here] and a string of scary physical ones.

Apparently in small doses mercury’s not toxic.  But my question is this: who gets to decide what level is a small, “safe” dose?  My guess is that it wouldn't be the people with the symptoms of mercury poisoning, or anyone at risk by virtue of having an already compromised immune system for any number of reasons.

The saddest thing here is that cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies don’t just pander to the growing number of people who believe that anything less than flawless white skin makes them socially inferior, or even ugly.  They ACTIVELY PROMOTE the notion that the only kind of beautiful is bleached.  What kind of human tragedy is this, that beauty or social desirability hinges on such a radical departure from what’s natural for anyone who doesn't already have snow white skin? Ironic, when you think that for so many years (while we were just as ignorant over the dangers of over-exposure to the sun as we now appear to be about skin bleaching creams), we baked our faces and bodies under a film of a rapid accelerant otherwise known as coconut or baby oil, in order to achieve brown faces!  Far too many people have paid the melanomic price for that, and still will for years to come. My face is full of sun-exposure scars, and I live in constant hope that the spectre of skin cancer doesn't steal forth to exact a high price for my folly, as it has for so many other vain young women of our teenage time.  Now that the pendulum is swinging the other way, how long will it be before we know what the real price of a "nice white face" might be?

For anyone researching the new skin-lightening wonder ingredient ChromabrightTM, it’s not easy to find any evidence of harmful effects from using products that contain it, with most of the positive commentary coming from the manufacturer and its champions.  Prima facie, that’s good news, but since it hasn't been around very long, my feeling is that it has yet to prove its worth as a risk free component of something we apply directly to our skin.  The fact that it appears to produce such radical results is disturbing enough, as is anything else that strips the skin of the vital melanin it produces to keep us safe from skin cancer.  Human and animal biological systems are miracles of science, designed to protect us from harm.  It’s why a graze scabs over.  It’s why we feel the need to take off a layer when we get hot, or put one on when we get cold.  It’s why we get hungry, thirsty, irritable or sleepy. The body is programmed to maintain homeostasis (equilibrium), and that includes producing melanin to go where it’s needed, to protect us from the harsh rays of the sun. 

What needs to change is NOT what we look like, in our naturally beautiful state - it’s cultural and social attitudes and expectations about what’s beautiful.  As long as women are sneered at and socially rejected in countries where having dark skin precludes them from eligibility for marriage, as long as western society relentlessly promotes young, white, impossibly beautiful (and all too often airbrushed) women to sell its products to the masses aspiring to the same unachievable status, and as long as women themselves remain preoccupied with vanity to the level where they become slaves to a beauty industry annually worth around $US 80Billion globally, nothing will change.  The industry feeds us and we feed the industry, and some of the prices we pay for what can either passively or actively compromise our health are truly staggering.  This most vicious of cycles is endlessly perpetuated, and the kind of sea change that would be needed to stop it is incredibly complex to achieve, and probably neither realistic nor achievable within our lifetime.  

So what can we do?  We can choose not to buy into the kind of promises created by the manufacturers of some leading brands (Including the one above), whose products contain irritants such as Tri-Ethanol Amine (TEA - used as an organic additive in cement production and in photographic processing, and Aluminium Starch Octenylsuccinate. A cosmetic ingredient review expert panel regard ASO as safe when used in any company's cosmetic formulations provided that established limitations imposed on heavy metal concentrations are not exceeded, meaning we may just have to trust the integrity of the manufacturers and the regulators that "fifty times better" results don't involve compromising too far in the wrong direction on the heavy metal content.  We can instead try some of the excellent evolving natural skincare alternatives that are currently on offer, and eschew those products that are seething with parabens, metals, bleaches, petroleum-based ingredients and other horrible chemicals that can end up in our cells and lymph nodes.  Scientists are producing some wonderful blends of natural products that are earth kind, skin kind and health kind, for companies that are thankfully emerging as the front-runners of a safe and sensible natural skincare and cosmetics industry.  There are even some natural alternatives for skin whitening, so if you really must do it, at least do some research into what kind of natural products are available, and find out exactly what is in them before you slather them into your skin.

I think it is a monumental human disgrace that women in certain cultures are regarded as inferior and are socially outcast because of their dark skin.  I also think it is a monumental human tragedy that the producers of skincare across the globe cannot adopt and portray some reality about what - and who - is beautiful. Currently they are driving the market and calling the tune.  The only way we can flip the tables and take control is to vote with our wallets, with our sensibilities, and with our commitment to maintaining our own health.  If WE drove the market, they would have to dance to OUR tune.  Imagine that!

Its worth considering that even if the ingredients in face whitening creams and other skincare products are NOT in fact harmful in some way, are they really necessary?  The general rule of thumb is that the longer the ingredients list, the more questionable the product - especially if its one that claims to be "pure" - as in not mixed or adulterated with any other substance or material, and without any extraneous and unnecessary elements.  When researching the ingredients or benefits of anything that comes in contact with our bodies, we need to be wary of accepting and trusting material that is published by the manufacturers and sellers themselves. Scientific Analysis of such ingredients and Independent Reviews of the promoted benefits will yield a much clearer picture of the origins, alternative uses and risks associated with the ingredients of whatever it is we're considering using. There are lots and lots of choices out there.  For the sake of our own health and well-being, we need to make sure that the choice we make for ourselves (and our families) is an INFORMED one!

In the end, no matter how beautiful, youthful or pale we all might look, none of it will matter if we don’t have our health. Except to the most deranged and obsessed of people, nothing, not even the whitest and most perfect of faces, can compensate for the worrying implications or the brutal reality of being poisoned.  

  

Paying it Forward...

What are our children being taught about health, safety, growth and sustainable living?

We routinely teach our children and warn them about the consequences of certain behaviours and of their responses to the behaviour of others.  Stranger danger, for example, is something we are driven to advise on, as early as our children are able to understand the ramifications of having contact with people they don’t know.  We also teach them, as soon as is practicable, about road safety; things like looking right, then left, then right again, and never assuming they are safe simply because they might be on a pedestrian crossing with the right of way.  We show them what is appropriate and safe behaviour, we point out what is risky and inappropriate, and we fight to protect them in every way we possibly can, because that is our job, both as parents and as moulders of the thinking and behaviour of coming generations. It’s the responsible, practical and nurturing thing to do.

But how many people in key positions in children’s lives (and I’m not just talking about parents) miss vital opportunities, when it comes to teaching them about personal and environmental health and responsibility?  That is equally important, as the realisation dawns that the earth’s resources are not all renewable and more must be done to ensure the planet’s long-term survival and health.  What will planet Earth look, feel, and smell like in 100 years? Will there still be forests to provide the oxygen we need to breathe clean air and to regulate the earth’s climate?  Will nature reserves still exist that haven’t been destroyed in the relentless quest for more fuel sources?  Will the water we need for survival be of good quality?  The answers to these and many more environmental and health questions largely depend on the actions taken now and in the coming years, to preserve, enhance and prolong the life of the planet and its dwellers.  It is up to the coming generations to carry that forward, and while they will have to do it out of necessity, there is an opportunity RIGHT NOW, to instil a culture of caring and passion that will ultimately act as the conduit between necessity and a true and positively felt commitment to sustaining life and health.        

Many parents involve their children in this vision for the future, and schools are certainly doing more than they ever did before, to raise awareness.  I know parents who make the weekly recycling into an instructive game that involves the children and through that process a wonderful culture of automatic and unquestioning sustainable behaviour is being well cemented. School science projects involve considerations to renewable energy sources, regeneration, and other forms of sustainable functioning that get brains thinking and creating, and education across the board is better than it has ever been before.  Many years ago, when I was at school, recycling was something only hippies did, with used rope and goat hair!  We threw away what we stopped having a use for, and lurched forward into a culture where people forgot how to fix things, opting instead for replacement at low cost.  Just one of the unhappy consequences of a whole generation who thought that way is bulging landfills full of defunct appliances and litter, leaching deadly chemicals into the earth, and plastics that don’t break down.  There are plenty more, like sea birds and other marine creatures dying from ingesting bits of plastic that condemn them to a slow death through starvation because their brains cannot differentiate between their stomachs being full of un-digestible plastic and not food. 

Collectively, as a species, we are finally learning what the bears and other, wiser beasts have always known; that you don’t defecate where you sleep.  But let’s not kid ourselves that we’re anywhere close to where we really need to be, in ensuring the ongoing life of the earth and the health of future generations.  There is still far more work to be done than we once ever dreamed would be necessary.  Currently, we’re really just teetering on the tip of a melting iceberg!

Teaching the coming generations about health and sustainability is about more than just recycling and finding new sources of clean, renewable energy.  It’s about learning to be responsible in as many areas as possible on a personal level.  My main hobbyhorse is household chemicals.  The “Roll of Shame” on my website pulls no punches about the effects of what people use to clean their own environments, but that’s deliberate.  Why dress it up?  It is what it is – a hideous and totally unnecessary dice with death for the sake of a clean oven or toilet. 

Until labelling laws change to make us aware of and capable of researching exactly what we’re hauling into our houses, we have two choices:  blind faith or responsibility.  Most thinking people would agree that blind faith can be a very dangerous thing.  It’s not a logical strategy for survival, and this is not to condemn the religious, because religious faith is an entirely different thing from relying on some money-grabbing pharmaceutical giant to convince you that what they’ve offered you to clean your house isn’t going to destroy your health or the environment you expect to continue to thrive in.  And they are money-grabbing giants.  They throw ridiculous sums of money around at different “experts” who can vouch for them, to ensure the law doesn’t turn around and expect them to start declaring what’s REALLY in those bottles of pretty coloured but potentially lethal liquid.  The warning labels on those bottles are not there for fun.  They are the minimum compliance requirement, and a tacit acknowledgement that there is potential for serious harm. Okay, in heavily diluted form, most of what’s in them is purely an irritant.  But at what point does dilution become concentration, in an already compromised waterway?  At what point does a minimal respiratory irritant become toxic to someone with an underlying respiratory impairment they may not even be aware that they have?  Asthma can be triggered at any point in a person’s life, and I have a relative who developed it very late in life simply as a result of breathing normally in a heavily polluted city, while on holiday.  Why would any of us assume that we’re any less at risk from inhaling the fumes from a so-called safe, oven cleaning aerosol?  

Blind faith doesn’t work for me, because I’ve done more than enough research to convince me that the only road to sustainable salvation is responsibility.  I’m actively encouraging others to do the same, by offering an informed choice about what to do when it comes to household cleaning.  Some may say that it’s a drop in the bucket and, prima facie, that may be the case.  But consider this – what kind of vessel would we really be looking at, if we ALL decided to go for natural alternatives to cleaning agents that strip skin, cause blindness, impair respiratory function and contribute to the pollution of our waterways?  I think we’d be looking at something a lot more substantial than a bucket with a drop in it, and THAT is where personal responsibility can start to make a significant positive change to a bigger and much more worrying picture than the microcosm of any individual family’s universe.

Because we have to start somewhere.  It’s true that on many levels we are already making progress.  Renewable energy is no longer a dream, recycling is achieving new milestones (who ever thought, ten years ago, that you could buy an item of clothing made from recycled bin bags?) and there is much being done to preserve rainforests and endangered species, find cures for diseases, produce good organic food, and find alternatives to hard chemicals in all walks of life.  So we have woken up to the fact that the human race HAS been actively sabotaging our own health and world, and that significant changes are needed.  But the coming generations have an even bigger, longer and more intense fight to face (particularly when it takes a decade or more to fully activate or implement some of the more complicated “green” initiatives) and they need all the help they can get.

Responsibility has the wonderful chance to begin at home, and continuing to educate and encourage children and young people to be more responsible about sustainability is the only realistic way forward.  But before we can be effective in teaching and encouraging others, whatever age they may be, we have to believe in the concepts ourselves.  So we have to understand and appreciate the legitimacy and effectiveness of alternative cleaning methods, for example, before we can expect our children to embrace them and take them on board. The great news is that attitudinal change is well within the grasp of most people. So if you’re already doing great and positive sustainable things, carry on, and see what else you can incorporate into your way of life that enables you to act as a role model who promotes a positive, empowering message to your family and friends.  If you have a ways to go with that, start now.  Think about what you are doing, and how children may interpret what they see you doing, and make some positive changes towards happier health, and a sustainable planet.  Exploring ways together of doing that is a powerful way of encouraging children to think about it for themselves, develop sustainability as a personal core value, come up with innovative ways to maintain health and cleanliness, recycle, regenerate, and carry that knowledge forward into careers that incorporate sustainability as a core component.  I am always excited by the thought of how creative and wonderful the future might be at the hands of the coming generations, because I’ve always been excited about young people themselves, their vision, their potential, and the power they have to shape an extraordinary future.  Why wouldn’t we all want to help them, by planting good seeds from the earliest opportunity?  What kind of legacy do we really want to leave?

For most of us, it’s too hard a stretch to imagine that any one individual can make a significant global difference by revolutionising his or her domestic cleaning habits, but that’s not enough of a reason to avoid the responsibility.  Individual behaviour is a valuable contribution, made more impactful by instilling positive and responsible habits in those who will later take on the mantle of protecting life and health. That paves the way for a revolution of the best possible kind, led by future generations who otherwise have everything still to lose after we are all long gone.   

Where Did You Get That Hat, Where Did You Get That Style?

I've just become an ambassador for the charity Dress for Success, which provides professional clothing, interview training and a support network to disadvantaged women getting back into the workforce. The aim is to help the women believe in their own ability to succeed, build up their practical and intrinsic resources and equip them for the job or career attainment process. One in every two of the women Dress for Success supports in those ways gets the job they have gone for. The way these women are encouraged to dress is a major component of that self belief, and it’s the area I am assisting with, in requesting and accepting good work clothing on behalf of Dress for Success, and ensuring they receive it.  My involvement has prompted me to share something that is dear to my heart about sustainability, and is linked to the issue of wanting to do one’s human best with very limited resources.  

Many years ago, at university, a friend asked me to bunk off lectures for the afternoon to go shopping with her to find a dress for a party.  Two nanoseconds’ consideration between that and the total brain death otherwise known as a riveting afternoon of statistics had me throwing my coat on, stashing my folder into my rucksack, and heading for the door. To this day, she laughs at how little persuading it took and how fast she had to run after me to the bus stop, even though she is fully aware of my horror of all things numerical, and that virtually anything would have served as a good enough reason to swerve “stats”. Little did either of us know at the time, that opportunity would change my entire perspective on shopping for clothes.

Most of us have a friend who can look great in a bin bag; tall, slender, with a depressing list of genetic enhancements that we've missed out on ourselves by a country mile, but so nice with it that we just can’t begrudge her stunningness in any way, shape or form.  My friend is quirky, sartorially perfect, and unbelievably kind, and she never buys a scrap of brand new clothing.  After an unexpectedly hilarious afternoon in charity shops, that I look back on as one of the best of my life, we decided to take the next day off lectures too (and a statistics tutorial!), and go back for more. It’s probably the reason why I scraped through stats with a barely respectable C, but that’s another, far less interesting story. By the end of that day and a half, my friend had not only bought a dress to die for, for her party, but she had radically transformed my attitude to style.  Looking back, and thinking about my leggings, slouch jumpers and Doc Martin boots, I probably needed it.

I already had a hankering for retro clothing, having discovered that my less than conventional body-shape was quite well suited to the flared and fitted ‘50’s rock n rollers, but the genuine ones were becoming increasingly hard to find.  Getting creative wasn't a bad substitute however, so that is what we did.  It turned me into a passionate convert to recycled clothing to establish what most people describe as my unique sense of style.  To be fair, I've always been a bit of a “junkshop junkie” in any case, a trait I inherited from both parents who always loved a bargain.  They were never too busy to pop into the nearest second hand store to see what interesting things they could find, so the notion of recycled clothing wasn't that much of a leap for me. 

What WAS significant was having my mind opened to a whole new world of creative possibility.  Through one of the most fun processes I've ever experienced, I developed a complete attitudinal shift, and it turned me into a total recycled clothing convert. Nowadays, when passing a charity or retro shop. I simply have to go in for a quick nosey at what little nuggets of gorgeousness might lie waiting to be discovered among the racks of relics long outdated, and wacky accessories that only those unfortunate souls still stuck in hideous sartorial time warps could ever really love.  It’s interesting that the vast majority of people think, when you ask them, that buying stuff from charity shops is okay for a bad taste party but it’s the terminal road to style oblivion in any other, half-serious context.  The overall assumptions are that the clothes will be horrible, someone might recognise what they are wearing and where it came from, or the thought of wearing something an unknown person has once already worn is just too repulsive.   As one who is repeatedly tapped on the shoulder by random strangers who sometimes even feel compelled to cross the street to compliment me on what I’m wearing, I simply can’t agree. It might shock a lot of people to learn that probably 70% of the clothing in my wardrobe is something someone else has fallen out of love with, and rarely do I ever go anywhere without being complimented on what I’m wearing.  I've learned over the years to be a bit more responsible with clothing and what I spend on it.  Creative giggle-time in off-beat shops with like-minded friends has taught me what suits me, what colours work for me, and how to put things together to create an overall look that is somehow just inherently “me”.

Recycling has of course been one of the hottest trends in recent years and rightly so.  We make a significant contribution to the sustainability and healthy survival of our planet for future generations by responsibly using and re-using whatever we can.  When we think of recycling, we almost immediately think of the kerbside kind, where we separate our glass from our plastics, and scrape our leftover food into a different bin, to make it easy for the council to come and collect and take away and sort. We also think about compost heaps, the re-use of garden waste and harnessing the sun’s energy for solar heating.  Some people live off the grid and a few actually get paid for contributing to it by producing more energy than they need for themselves and selling it on to the suppliers.  It’s a wonderful thing, and it’s a shame that more of us can’t do it.

But how many people really take recycling any further than that? 

For people with limited means it’s a real challenge to sustain a love of nice, good quality things, or the fundamental human desire to do the best they can for themselves and their families on a half a shoestring budget.  For me, as a student with a tiny disposable piggy bank, I still wanted to dress nicely and have what I needed for my house, so I developed my fun-filled hobby and started taking a more serious trawling approach to “pre-loved” things.  I learned something fundamental in that process: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with appreciating something someone else has fallen out of love with.  Just because someone doesn't want that hot pink skirt anymore, doesn't mean it’s not still lovely, with a lot of fun and life left in it.  A simple wash and iron, a bit of creative vision, and you can transform something that really does deserve to be loved into a serious “popper” when you team it with a lime green cardi and a pair of matching shoes.  The human race is a fickle species. This season’s hottest handbag is next year’s charity shop bargain, and it helps you to acquire such lovely things that really suit your personality if you've never been a trend slave, following what’s “hot” in any given season.

Developing a unique, personal style is something I’d encourage every woman to do, because its sensible, it makes us feel fantastic, it reduces that “impulse-buy disaster” scenario that so many of us are all too familiar with, and it stops us from having wardrobes bulging with those "what the hell were we thinking?" things we spent good money on but haven’t worn for years and maybe never will again.  Fashion slavery is not only miserable and expensive; it actually takes the focus away from what’s really RIGHT for someone. Who’s impressed with a £1000 jacket, if it makes the wearer look like a Russian tree puller with arms like a sumo wrestler? Especially when a £25 designer cast-off from the Oxfam shop (who have recently done a great deal with M & S on charming things like their Per Una range, by the way) makes them look sensational, as if they did actually spend a grand on it.

In a post-recessional environment where cash is still in short supply for many people, getting creative and savvy about where the disposable income goes is critical for ensuring the school fees can be met, the mortgage and ever increasing utilities get paid on time, and there’s food on the table.  Those who can routinely afford designer wardrobes at face value are lucky indeed, and decent people begrudge them not, but the rest have to do what they can with what little they have.  The great thing is that although kitting ourselves and our families out beautifully on a budget is something of a challenge, there really are more options than simply buying from cheap chains who offer clothes that fade or fall apart after half a dozen washes as they leach dye and other chemicals into our waterways in the process, along with contributing to unnecessary, slow-decomposing landfill, and perpetuating the continued exploitation of the third world child labour that brings it to our shores.

Being responsible about recycling is vitally important to sustainability, and recycling clothing is another powerful weapon that we have at our disposal for sustaining and preserving what we already have for re-use.  There will always be people who simply couldn't bring themselves to wear what someone else has worn, and that is fine.  After all, someone needs to keep the fashion industry alive and kicking, but for those who are at least prepared to consider pre-loved opportunities (and some of them are truly golden!), having a rummage through the racks with a mate can be a real revelation, as well as lots of fun!  Remember too that not only does trying things on with an honest creative friend encourage us to create a unique style, it also supports worthwhile charities who need all the help they can get.  Charities are fully aware that people have largely pulled their belts in, and are increasingly wanting to get something  in return for their charitable giving, so most charities who run shops have exponentially raised their game in recent years to offer good, clean, quality, desirable product.  Much of what they have to offer is extraordinary and unique.  It’s a great opportunity go beyond the fascinating sorting of your glass from your plastics and take recycling to a whole new, fun and glamorous level!  It doesn't mean foregoing ever buying a lovely new frock again, because most of us love to do that.  It just means we don’t have to spend a fortune every single time, in order to look and feel fabulously glam and unique with our own special style.

Give it a go ... there’s nothing much to lose, and you might surprise yourself!

And if you  have something in your wardrobe that you've fallen out of love with, give someone else a chance to feel fab in it buy donating it to a worthy cause.  Please do contact me if you have anything suitable for Dress For Success.