The worst product ever...

Before our three-week vacation, as I ticked down my (obsessive) prep list, I picked up a new mascara at Long's. I wanted to replace the expensive Dr. Hauschka's mascara I had been using, which was not tested on animals and did not contain cancer-causing chemicals, but which had the unfortunate regular tendency of turning me into Alice Cooper. Figuring I'd just buy something, whatever, hoping it wasn't too poisonous, I managed to buy the worst product ever manufactured: Cover Girl Marathon Waterproof Mascara Hydrofuge.

OK, so the Cover Girl mascara didn't give me Alice Cooper stripes down my face (not a good look at my age) if I so much as teared up over something. But amazingly I managed to swing from one extreme - a gloppy mascara that wouldn't stay on - to the other - a mascara that wouldn't come off. The Cover Girl mascara stayed on my lashes, no kidding, for a week. No amount of make-up remover would get it off. In a panic , I asked my esthetician for help. She soaked my lashes with four different products, then painstakingly cleaned each individual eyelash (or so it felt) before the stuff was off me. I think it took her 40 minutes in total to get me free of the hydrofuge...

Of course, I had to look the mascara up. Cover Girl Marathon is not specifically listed in the Skindeep Safe Cosmetics Database, but every other Cover Girl mascara in the database ranks a 7 out of 10 for toxicity (the one exception is a 5, moderate hazard). I'm not even sure if it's right to put something this toxic in the trash - should I try taking it to the local household hazardous waste drop-off point?

I should really know better than to just grab something off the shelf, but it still pisses me off that I have to worry about cancer-causation when I'm just trying to doll up my eyes. And of course, I should be able to figure out - duh - that if something is waterproof and called "Marathon," it's gotta be chemicals, and probably nasty ones, that make it so.

And "hydrofuge"? A zoological term, mostly, referring to structures on animals that shed water. Whatever...

Now my eyes are au naturel for a few days, while I let my lashes recover from their recent armature. If anybody has a suggestion of a good product which won't kill me, I'd love to hear it!