The Great Aluminum Oxide Witch Hunt
Two weeks ago I attended the local monthly Avon sales meeting. I sat in the middle of the gray room, in the second to last row, next to a petite Hawaiian woman with a severe black bun like a helmet and a missing canine tooth. She smelled of Odyssey and I opened my eyes wide in shock when I realized I identified a stray Avon fragrance.
"Pardon me," I leaned toward Bun Lady and extended my hand, "are you wearing Odyssey?"
I smiled and raised my eyebrows, just one knowledgable Avon Lady to another.
"No ma'am."
Bun Lady's ears wiggled as she shook my hand and I tried not to look at the hole in her gums.
"It's Timeless, honey."
Darn. I started shuffling the handouts in my lap and pretended to be fascinated with the Anew Clinical Mico-Exfoliant details while my face felt like it was sunburnt.
The busy women sit up front. They volunteer small facts and laugh at every beauty joke and wear the most Avon cologne and always get the good door prizes. I sit in the back with the new representatives. We don't quite know what we're doing and we're not about to volunteer copious amounts of information.
Each meeting begins with the month's recognition prizes. Three women celebrated Avon anniversaries and received potted plants wrapped in yellow ribbons. Another woman, tall and chic in a retro navy blue sailor suit, accepted the coveted Unit Leader rank. She gave a nervous laugh and stood at the front, facing District Manager Sherry instead of the rest of us. One couple won an all expenses paid trip on a tropical cruise. They sold one hundred thousand dollars of Avon last year. The wife attended the meeting and smiled, bowing her head toward us. I clapped for each recipient and checked my watch six times in the first hour.
Sherry discussed the exciting (her words) Bug Guard promotion. Buy one get one free! She sent a bottle of the new Smile perfume around the room so we could each spray and sniff. She showed us new products in the Wellness catalogue. I brought a purple spriral bound notebook and a rollerball pen, but didn't take any notes except for the cryptic words "get those cards." I have no idea why I wrote that.
I almost fell asleep during the Anew Clinical Micro-Exfoliant lecture. Sherry stood by an easel covered in statistics and pie charts. She pointed to numbers of women using the product and correlating numbers showing facial improvement. I closed my eyes and pretended I won the Avon cruise, imagined sleeping on a deck chair on a pretty white cruise ship under tropical sun, blessedly free of children.
"I won't sell this product. It contains aluminum."
A gruff man's voice jarred me back to the room. I looked to my right to see the only male in attendence leaning back in his folding chair, arms crossed over a blue plaid shirt.
"They did studies on this stuff. It gives you Alzheimer's Disease."
The room grew still as all eyes shifted to the unhappy man. His wife sat next to him, soft and round in a flowered print mumu, lips turned down in unease, matching her husband's drooping mustache.
Sherry shifted her weight from one foot to the next. Another voice chimed in.
"Avon is coming out with products too soon! They're rushing things! Every two weeks it's some new Anew product. We can't keep up with this! I don't want to sell this either."
Angry murmuring followed. I heard snippets of shadow conversation worrying about aluminum, promising not to sell the exfoliant, threatening to return demo tubes to the warehouse. Sherry's eyes were wrinkled with concern, and she studied the charts on her easel as if they would speak an answer to her, tell her how to quiet the crowd.
"Uh, pardon me?" I raised my hand and squeaked out the words.
"These papers say that the ingredient in the Anew Clinical Micro-Exfoliant is aluminum oxide. This is the same exact stuff that dermatologists use. It's not the same kind of chemical as was in those studies. Weren't they disproven anyway? Have you guys tried the product yet? I did, and it's super gritty. Those balls of aluminum oxide can't get sucked into your pores. I'm sure it's safe. Look, they did all those clinical trials on Sherry's chart. It's just a fancy pants pricey face scrub."
I stopped speaking. Twenty surprised faces were pointing in my direction. Sailor Suit Chick nudged the biddie in pink in the ribs and they both surpressed a laugh.
"Thank you Birdie! Now let's move on to the next topic."
Sherry steered the group toward the new fall quarter line-up. The angry man kept his stare in my direction until I met his eyes. I rolled my eyes and shrugged my shoulders like only a mother of four can do. He looked away.
5:17:54 PM 
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