 By Sarah Haufrect
Journalism is my worst enemy; not for all writers, or even most writers, just for me. Journalism is the art of calculated and articulate indifference. It's not about the writer or the writer's relationship with the subject. To be a journalist, you remove yourself from your work, and do the best you can to let the facts unfold themselves with clarity and truth. It's noble. It's necessary. I'm so glad there are other writers who do it.
This makes me a selfish writer. My writing, in one way or another, is about me and my relationship with the subject. I choose to write about questions I want answered and people I can't figure out. So when I met a rocket scientist at JPL, a Dreamworks assistant producer, and an art history instructor/master's student who all quit their jobs to start making sugar scrubs out of their kitchen, I thought, “I need to get to the bottom of this.”
What I found was Anti-body Skincare, a project started in 2005 that now operates under the ultimate goal to mainstream the concept of fair trade. "People will be buying better products whether they know it or not,” says co-founder and co-owner Shelby Moser. With her husband Steve and her twin sister Tamara, the trio has taken this home-grown operation and expanded it into a full-fledged fair trade skincare company offering a range of products, including shea butter and hemp hand lotion, peppermint lip balms, bath and body oil, sugar scrubs, even fair trade fizzy bath bombs. Anti-body's products contain, as stated on its Web site, “no weird stuff,” no preservatives and no chemicals. Instead, they are rife with natural ingredients, such as unrefined shea butter and virgin coconut oil; both of these are produced by a women's co-op in Togo, Africa, which employs about 60 women and is a member of the African Fair Trade Council and the Fair Trade Federation.
Anti-body's goal to mainstream skincare wasn't immediately clear however. “We just started to brainstorm about ways to make money that would be pretty fast and sugar scrubs seemed doable. It was a totally ignorant idea really,” says co-owner Steve Moser, whose only claim to previous interest in skincare was a fascination with reading the labels on bath products and pondering what hexo-polyglocoside might be. “We had no idea that we'd be partners, business owners and activists in a fair trade skincare company. In fact we're still surprised," Tamara remarks. In six years Anti-body's goal is to have new fair trade co-ops up and running throughout several developing countries. This way, not only is it supporting existing fair trade co-ops, but actually creating jobs and, in doing so, affecting change.
Shelby, Tamara and Steve started Anti-body well below the age of 30, in fact they're all still under 30. They haven't received any non-profit grants. They haven't been funded by financial institutions or private interests. Anti-body is a business built from the ground up by three dedicated and talented individuals who all work incredibly hard and approach every day with enthusiasm and resolve. It hasn't been easy owning a business. All three owners agree that it has been a lot more work than they ever anticipated, but on the other hand, Tamara believes that “success is sweetest in the throws of sacrifice. Challenges can make you stronger, braver.”
I wonder if it's worth it? Quitting their great jobs, making less money, and never having weekends (which they don't). “The payoff ," Tamara answers, "is working with the people you love everyday, making your own idea a success and having a part in social justice. We never dread Mondays.” If this incredible work ethic and drive to give back to the world isn't inspiring enough already, there is another element to this threesome's story that makes an even bigger impression.
In late 2004, Tamara's fiancé was hit by a car and died a few days later. His name was Matthew and he was 27 years old. A close friend of Steve and Shelby's as well, Matthew's death was tragic and life-altering for all of them. “We started to look at life differently and how we were filling our days. Even though we all loved our careers, the meaning of all that changed,” says Tamara. She gave her two-weeks notice a few days later.
Tamara's fiancé, Matthew was a photojournalist. His goal was to photograph different churches all over the world. Most of all, he wanted to go to Ethiopia, but during his travels through Europe he got stuck in Beirut on 9/11 and subsequently returned home. Upon Matthew's death a fund was created by the nonprofit organization World Vision to construct a school in Ethiopia in his name. Tamara, Steve and Shelby knew they wanted to contribute to Matthew's legacy, but they just weren't sure how: “We wanted to donate the proceeds of whatever we did to the school that was built in Ethiopia for Matthew and that gave us our 'purpose,' but once the school was built and once it was efficient we wanted to do something more."
So they did.
Since then, Anti-body products have come to be featured in fair trade stores and local boutiques all over the west coast of the U.S. Anti-body even has a distributor in Canada. Tamara has traveled to Togo to visit the women Anti-body helps to employ and all three plan to go back in the future. For all of their sweat and tears, Steve, Shelby and Tamara are living proof that people have the capacity for resilience and humility. Shelby: "Anti-body has taught us so much, about African culture and about appreciating what you do have."
Anti-body makes good things for the body that do good things for the world. In science, an antibody is made in part from its enemy, from the poison it is intended to fight. The same is true of this company; born in part from an unjust loss, a tragedy of circumstance. What Anti-body skincare fights to revive is not simply justice and fair labor practices, but hope; that when the world around you is cruel and life seems unforgiving, there are deep wells inside of us, of strength and compassion that never run dry. They give us all the ability, sometimes in the most unexpected of ways, to build ourselves and even help to put the world back together.
Meeting people like Shelby, Steve and Tamara are the reason I write, and ultimately the reason I still have faith that the world is taking a very long and treacherous path in the right direction. We've all heard that the road to hell (if it exits) is paved with good intentions, but if there is a road to heaven, I'm sure it is paved with honest, heartfelt choices like the one Tamara and Steve and Shelby made when they began this company.
It's possible that God is in charge of everything that befalls us, testing us, asking us to elevate ourselves with a purpose. It's also possible that shit happens. I don't know. What I do believe is that we always have choices, to be better versions of ourselves, to be defeated by our enemies and still forge ahead. The trick is finding whatever Steve and Shelby and Tamara found, or had all along. Because if you can't find it, your worst enemy won't ever be an opponent, or death, or even journalism. Your worst enemy will be yourself.
To Find out more about Anti-body please visit www.anti-body.com. To find out more about fair trade visit http:transfairusa.org.
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