R.I.P. Anita Roddick

Dame Anita

I first became aware of Anita Roddick when she was featured in the PBS series, Millennium, about the relationship of Indigenous peoples to the environment and to our social evolution. She was the inspirational founder of the Body Shop in England, combining entrepreneurial skill with ecological and global social commitment. She tried to do it through her products as well as with her money, and not just products with an ecological style but made with the ecology, sustainability and health as important considerations. Further, she tried to involve disenfranchised cultures and people in making products she would then sell. It didn't always work out, but sometimes it did.

Then her Body Shop shops began showing up in U.S. cities and airports, and I started getting the catalogues. They sold a great blue corn wash for awhile, made by an Indigenous concern in the American southwest, and a nice coconut shampoo. I still have the last dregs of a tube of 'face protector' in their Mostly Men line, which they haven't made for years. Then, when they dropped most of their men's (or even gender-neutral) products in favor of a hard emphasis on marketing to women, I lost interest.

But Anita Roddick continued to do good work, like financing a publication by and for the homeless, and setting up Children on the Edge, a charity for young victims of violence, disabilities and HIV/AIDs in eastern Europe and Asia. She was a voice and a force for good.

Dame Anita was the daughter of Italian immigrants. She was much honored in the UK and around the world. She died shortly after a sudden brain hemorrhage. She was 64. Rest in peace.