When spread over our faces and bodies, or dyed in our hair and clothes, our color-forward beauty rituals create our own forms of expression. The shades play into natural features, like how a swipe of blue across the lids can make brown eyes pop, or when a green headband provides direct contrast for a redhead. We’re always finding balance between our own body’s tones and the colors of the world around us.

Yet, the way we color ourselves and our belongings has shifted from natural to synthetic. For most of history people used natural pigments, but synthetic dyes quickly took over the market due to their low cost. Take beets for example. Beetroot extract once stained lips with vibrant pink hues, and the ancient Greeks associated the tender vegetables with Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. Today, the same color is recreated in labs, stabilized for shelves, stripped of its ephemerality, similar to the plight of the indigo plant, which creates rich shades of blue. The synthetic pigment industry is especially polluting, posing risks to the vibrancy of the environment around us.

Diving back into the pigment practices of our ancestors, we see that some are still being uplifted by modern cosmetics producers that are looking into using botanical pigments that come from fruit, plants, and minerals.

Yet, natural beauty rituals aren’t exactly peaceful. The process of creating a bright red lip or blushing cheeks can be quite violent, as the guts of tens of thousands of beetles are needed to create just one pound of carmine dye. It’s definitely not “an eye for an eye” when it comes to our exchanges with the environment, so it’s vital to be mindful about how much we take from our plant and animal brethren and know when we have enough to fill our vanities. In other words, maybe you don’t need 30 lipsticks.

Regardless of how we’re coloring ourselves, our beauty palette is unique to each and every one of us. That transforms us into the artist of our own imagination. When we color ourselves, we inherit centuries of desire and invention. Each shade carries its own history, whether we choose to see it or not.