#saynotohunbots

So, about 4 months ago, someone on my Facebook friends list started selling for doTerra essential oils. Where we live on the Sunshine Coast, there are many people who live alternative lifestyles, so the essential oil market up here is big business (probably a factor which she is counting on). Let me just get it out there and state that I loathe MLMs (multi-level marketing companies), primarily because they prey on vulnerable people (like stay-at-home mums, the unemployed, the debt-ridden, etc.), and also because 99.6% of those who invest in an MLM lose money. In fact, you are more likely to profit from gambling than you are to succeed in an MLM. To tell you the truth, all of this just scratches the surface of my annoyance. Those who get involved in an MLM scheme are mostly women, and they get guilted into them by those already involved in the company telling them that they aren’t a good mother if they don’t want to quit their 9-to-5 job and become a “more dedicated” mum who “has a business from home.” Some of these MLMs, such as LuLaRoe, have initial start-up prices at around the ballpark of $10,000, so to invest that amount of money into something that is extremely likely to only leave you in more debt is not really a risk anybody should be taking.

But I digress. I mentioned essential oils at the outset of my post for a reason. I have had other people on my friends list that post about Mary Kay, for instance, but it doesn’t draw the same ire from me as essential oil posts do, for a number of reasons that I plan to get into. First and foremost is the sketchy background of the two major players in this arena, Young Living and doTerra. Young Living was founded by Gary Young (who calls himself D. Gary Young, most likely so consumers of the product, as well as his sales representatives, assume that he’s a doctor (which he isn’t)).

In fact, Young has been fined and jailed in the past for practising medicine illegally, and in 1984 even killed his newborn daughter in a botched water-birth which had the newborn submerged  under water for an hour. He even purports that Young Living are made from pure, natural ingredients (a justification for why they are so expensive), but those who have tested his oils have found synthetic properties and chemicals in them.

doTerra, on the other hand, have the same issues with their oils, calling them “certified therapeutic grade,” which is meaningless, because they are the ones who coined and copyrighted this term. Their website claims that there is scientific evidence that their oils have healing properties, but site no empirical studies on the matter (because there aren’t any).

Both of these companies are responsible for giving their representatives a guidebook, claiming that each oil cures anything from depression, to Ebola, to cancer. The latter is a particularly insidious claim (I wonder how many people have died from believing this nonsense? The blood is on your hands, doTerra and Young Living). The FDA cracked down on both Young Living and doTerra for these claims, as there is no scientific evidence that any of these oils do any of what they are claiming they do. For them to expound that their oils cure these diseases is reckless, dangerous, and downright predatory.

Despite the ban placed on them by the FDA, I recently had the pleasure (not) of attending a Young Living party that my friend invited me to (I didn’t know it was such until I arrived. I was annoyed, but I didn’t have a ride home, so I reluctantly stayed), and the host was still saying things like “it can cure cancer, it can cure a lot of things - but I’m not supposed to talk about it,” a sentiment which made most of the guests nod their head in agreement. The thing is, a lot of the women that were present also were anti-vaxxers, and believed in a lot of New-Age philosophy, which is largely anti-science. Anti-science rejects the scientific method for testing things, which is ludicrous, and often masquerades as scientific (see Deepak Chopra’s use of words borrowed from the field of Quantum Physics for an example of this). It is pseudoscience, a field that I vehemently believe needs to be expunged. 

The fact that Young Living and doTerra state that their oils are a cure-all for all illnesses and diseases perpetuates and supports these women’s firmly-held beliefs that “conventional” medicine, and trained doctors who go to university and complete 5-year degrees, are not to be trusted. It’s a conspiracy theory that only the ill-informed or wilfully ignorant would buy into. In particular, using these oils to treat children when they are sick, as most of these essential oil representatives do, is completely irresponsible and fool-hardy. The second picture in this post is an example of this on my Facebook news feed. Some people just shouldn’t have kids.

The other dangerous practice that these essential oil companies promote is creating recipes for sales representatives and customers to use the oils in their food and meals. doTerra actually have a cookbook with recipes for representatives and customers to try. Due to this, there has been an increase in people being placed in hospital with high toxicity levels from ingesting essential oils as part of food they have cooked or baked. These oils have been touted by essential oil companies to be a “healthy alternative” to spices and herbs that are used as part of everyday cooking. The reason for this is primarily because representatives and customers do not go through the oils at a fast enough pace, so someone at these companies came up with the idea, “why don’t we get them to ingest them??” It’s stupidity at it’s finest.

Furthermore, for your information (and this goes for all MLMs, even if I am singling out essential oil companies): You’re not a “girl boss,” “entrepeneur,” or “boss babe” with your own company if you sell these products - you are a sales representative for a company that scams a lot of money off of you. You are not somehow “less” if you are a sales representative - just don’t make it out to be more than what it is. There is no shame in staying home to take care of your kids if that’s what you want to do. Don’t let these companies shame or tempt you into “working from home,” with the promise of making you fabulously wealthy. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Also, the terms “boss babe,” and “girl boss” are incredibly sexist. Why not just be a boss, if that’s what you want to be? Why bring gender into it? It not only discounts those women that actually are managers and and CEOs of legitimate companies, but also carries with it the implication that women cannot be bosses, or are significantly less likely to be capable of being bosses.