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At 6 a.m., Bonnie Marin begins another day cooking over a hot grill. Breakfast orders pour in, but as always her mind is elsewhere. She daydreams of giant storks standing on wet floors.

Back in its heyday, I performed in a local production of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. I performed the monologue called “Hair,” in which a woman tells her story of being pressured by her husband to shave her pubic hair. After shaving, she feels “puffy and exposed and like a little girl.” Her husband is turned on. After she refuses to keep shaving, he is unfaithful, they attend couples’ therapy and ultimately, they divorce.

Take a look around your bathroom. The average North American woman uses 10 or more personal care products every day.

From toothpaste and soap to antiperspirant and moisturizer, personal care products are made from 10,500 chemical ingredients that are as much a part of our daily routine as sitting down to breakfast.

And like most things that happen before a mug of morning coffee, it’s easy not to think about them too much. But researchers and women’s health activists are sounding the alarm bell about the makeup of makeup.

When Patricia Roe was 46, her 20-year-old son, Adam, died while mountain climbing in Guatemala.

Several of Adam’s friends got tattoos to mark the loss of their friend. A few weeks later, Roe got the same design tattooed a few inches above her knee, while Adam’s father had the tattoo applied to his shoulder. The design is an impala—a type of deer—surrounded by a sun. The deer was an important symbol for Roe’s son, who loved speed, movement and freedom; he also loved the sun.