The Enduring Popularity of Tans

Around this time each year—usually a hair later, but, hey, climate change!—I enter the same debate with myself: to self-tan or not to self-tan? After years of studiously avoiding the sun, fervently evoking old-timey movie stars with porcelain complexions as my reason for doing so, I spent time in the tropics a few years ago and returned with a deep allover tan that made people around me say, “Wow, you’re tan.” I freakin’ loved it and promptly spent a small fortune on Jergens Natural Glow. It lasted through the summer, but then the following summer I was faced with a conundrum: I’d adored having a natural tan and didn’t mind keeping it up artificially, but healthwise I couldn’t afford to do it again—I tick nearly every box on the list of skin cancer risk factors. (I’d initially done my best to avoid the sun in Vietnam but when that proved impossible, I threw off the towel and sunbathed for all it was worth.) Did I actually want to start from scratch, building up a “tan”—a tan made up of what amounts to skin dye, I might add—for no particular reason? Did I really want to invest the money and time in a fake tan, for a capitulation to vanity?

So here we are, leg-baring season quickly approaching, and I’m in the same spot again. And as I go back and forth with myself about whether I want to appear tanned this year, I'm asking myself a question that, surprisingly, I haven’t wondered before: Why do we want to look tan in the first place?

Part of the answer, as with many things fashionable, is Coco Chanel. Prior to the designer’s rise to prominence, clothes covered so much of women’s form that a body tan was impossible, and a tan on the face and hands signified what it still does in developing nations: that the tanned person is an outdoor laborer, most likely of low social status. Lily-white skin remained a sign of a lady even after industrialization, but legend has it that when Chanel was accidentally sunburned during a trip to the Riviera and developed a tan shortly thereafter, her new hue took fire as a symbol of all she herself embodied: modernism, luxury, and independence. The episode “coincided” with a shift in the medical approach to sunlight, as the medical field went from regarding the sun as dangerous to seeing it as a cure-all within a span of 30 years. In 1905’s The Effects of Tropical Light on White Men, Dr. Chas Edward Woodruff wrote that “The American girl is a bundle of nerves. She is a victim of too much light,” but by WWI “heliotherapy” was readily used to treat wounds, rickets, tuberculosis. Whatever the case, according to Vogue, “The 1929 girl must be tanned,” and so she was.

But here’s the thing that’s sort of flummoxing: That was 83 years ago. We haven’t let up since. There have been plenty of developments that have kept tanning popular—the bikini in 1946, the foil blanket in the 1950s, a plethora of tanning aides from “gypsy sun tan oil” in the 1930s to the perfunctory Coppertone baby—and there have been fluctuations in the fashionability of suntans. But since their arrival, tans have never truly gone out of fashion. Even through the enormous rise of awareness of the dangers of UV rays, tanning is, if not a cultural imperative, something we don’t necessarily question. We might swat wrists of friends who bake in tanning beds, but we don’t really blink an eye at self-tanning creams even if we don’t use them ourselves (and up to 46% of us do). Plus, judging by the number of people who complimented my tan after my return from Vietnam, it still holds a good amount of cultural cachet. Since 1929 we’ve given up spit curls, drop waists, and breast binding, but we cling to the tan.

We cling to it in part because its significance hasn’t changed all that much, sure; it’s affluence, luxury, and even though we all know better, health. The idea now isn’t so much that we’re acting as if we’ve spent two weeks at Saint-Tropez but rather that we’re not desk-bound. It’s also the perfect accessory: A tan hits the sweet spot between conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption. It visibly shares that you’ve done something we still connect with leisure and affluence, but without the bourgeois connotations of furs, Jaguars, and jewels. Once tan, you cannot help but be tan; it’s literally a part of who you are. It’s the ultimate expression of “Oh, this old thing?” The dearth of tans among hipsters supports this: In a community definitively marked by inconspicuous consumption, the standards for visibility change, stigmatizing any visible consumption, i.e. tans, more than they would be elsewhere. The activities prized by the hipster community—not that such a thing exists, mind you!—with the possible exceptions of fixed-gear bicycling and rabid picnicking, are largely indoor: art, music, Tumblr. The less tan you are, the more easily you can create the appearance of partaking in these activities. Certainly I don’t think hipsters are avoiding the sun to act as if they’re not secretly weekend warriors. But taking the step those weekend warriors might—applying self-tanner or bronzer to advertise one’s proclivities to the outdoors—would send the wrong sort of social message at Chloe Sevigny’s tea party.

Beyond the idea of material luxury, a tan represents that we have the luxury to be connected to both nature and culture simultaneously. Tourism boards use tanning in their materials: “The bourgeois on their Mediterranean beaches can entertain the illusion of learning to love their bodies again as they did in childhood,” writes K.K. Sharma in his overview of the history of tourism. A tan is a message, and the message is that its bearer is a child of nature who has returned to one’s filing-cabinet life bearing proof of the nature connection. The idea of tans returning us to a state of nature makes tanning less stigmatized where more tangible icons of luxury might be sneered at. 

But even with all these reasons for tans sticking around for more than 80 years, it’s still counterintuitive. I’m having trouble thinking of anything that we know full well is bad for us but that we do anyway, for vanity—rather, that we encourage the mimicking of. We might go on diets, wear high heels, quaff martinis, puff smoke rings, or any number of other things that have been glamorized that aren’t so hot for your health—but we’re actually doing those things, not pretending to do them. With self-tanner, it’s like we’re all standing around puffing on electronic cigarettes even if we’ve never touched real tobacco. We all know tans don’t actually represent health and that there’s no such thing as a “healthy tan,” but we don’t really believe it. Rather, plenty of us believe it but covet the tan anyway, and turn to products to help us regain what has been taken from us with our banishment from the sun.

And, as with so many things about the intensely personal choices we make, it just might come down to this: There is an enormous financial amount at stake in keeping us sunny-side up. Sunblock is a good-sized segment of the skin-care industry (it’s projected to hit $5.2 billion globally by 2015), but so are its cousins: sunless tanning products, spray-on tans, and cosmetic bronzers totaling $516 million annually, not to mention the indoor tanning industry and low-dose sunblocks marketed as "tanning creams." I’d initially thought that the cosmetic approaches to tanning were developed as a “healthy” alternative to natural tans and tanning beds, but actually, various lotions and dyes have been around as long as tanning has been fashionable, for the very reason that a suntan is sought after in the first place: Most of us don’t have unlimited time to lounge around Biarritz (or, today, to lay complacently in tanning beds—which ain’t cheap, even if you’re willing to take the health risks). Mantan, a sunless tanning lotion popular in the 1950s, promised dual action with its “moisturizing” action that “lasts for days without touch-ups!”; even in an era when women were being supposedly liberated from housework with the modern kitchen, time was at a premium.

And we can’t look at tanning products without at least glancing at their counterparts: lighteners. Skin lightening creams are wildly popular in Asia; the idea isn’t to look white but rather to look sophisticated and wealthy—an elevation from the peasant class that works outside.The politics and implications of skin lightening call for deeper examination than I can give them here; for now I’ll just point out the obvious: Both self-tanners and skin lightening creams are class in a bottle. Asian women using skin lighteners don’t want to look white any more than I want to look Hispanic when I put on self-tanner; we want to look lighter or darker, sure, but both of those are a route to looking what our cultures deem better. Skin lightening creams are making in-roads in the North American market, with claims about “radiance,” “brightening,” and “illuminating—but the truth is, those adjectives are similarly applied in Asia as well (as I found out when I bought a “radiance” face wash in Vietnam that didn’t strip away my tan but made me look chalky immediately after washing). These are the same formulas, mind you, but being packaged to apply to the inner desires of each culture: paleness in Asia, radiance in America, youth and “rejuvenation” in both. As this excellently reported piece on the rise of skin lightening creams in North America shows, "a brightener is whatever we want it to be."

In The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf writes about how the beauty industry attempts to package the radiance each individual brings to the world. “The Rites of Beauty offer to sell women back an imitation of the light that is ours already, the central grace we are forbidden to say that we see,” she writes. If radiance can be bought and sold, in a consumer society that sends the message that the “real” radiance is what comes in the package, while the homemade stuff gets moldy. Add to that the reality that the homemade tan—that is, a tan acquired from actually being in the sun—is damaging to your health (and eventually to your vanity through a leathery appearance), and suddenly the stuff in the bottle becomes even more appealing than run-of-the-mill makeup that just promises to make you look “better.” Eyeliner makes you look more awake, but self-tanner (or lightener, depending on the culture) promises to give you back that light that was originally yours, and it does so in a way that lets you play by the rules. Good girls stay out of the sun, but good girls also look like they get plenty of the stuff regardless. The tan in the bottle—that “Radiant,” “Natural Glow,” that “Sublime Bronze,” that holy protection of the “Bronzing Veil”—gives us an out, allows us to have our radiance without the harm the real deal would inflict. The beauty of it for us is that we’ve figured out how to get that “healthy tan” after all. And the beauty of it for the industry is that we’re paying $8.49 for each opportunity to do so.

Nutricosmetics, Part II: Morality, Capitalism, and Selling Us Ourselves

"Apples' soluble fiber helps your body eliminate nasty toxins that could show up on your skin.
It's nature's beauty bar!" —Cranach the Elder, subtextually

When I first learned about Renaissance beauty ideals in high school—or rather, the idea that physical beauty was then widely understood as an indicator of moral superiority—my first thought was that we still sort of think that way. We’re just not as blatant about it as Castiglione was in 1528 in his Book of the Courtier: “Beauty springs from God, and is like a circle of which goodness is the center. And hence, as there can be no circle without a center, there can be no beauty without goodness...outward beauty is a true sign of inward goodness.”

Today I think we still do make that equation, but the myriad variants on female beauty—the femme fatale, the beautiful damaged soul, heroin chic, the gorgeous bitch whose looks could kill—complicates it a good deal. We’ve introduced more archetypes, more ways to be prototypically feminine and beautiful, than just our walking angels. Morality still comes into play in our discussions of beauty—for example, we still use terms like “good skin” and “bad skin” that reflect our conflation of morality and beauty—but we’ve largely shifted away from openly and directly equating morality and beauty. Instead, we readily talk about another sort of “inner beauty” that manifests itself physically. Radiance, confidence, allure, je ne sais quoi, “a special quality,” or simply “it”—we freely talk about “inner beauty” as something that can’t be faked, as something that has to come from within. And in that sense, I’m wondering if nutricosmetics are being touted as a route to a sort of “inner beauty,” serving as a modern-day extension of Renaissance ideals of beauty and inner goodness. Nutricosmetics promise more than good skin; they promise inner beauty. Not the sort of inner beauty we’re referring to when we talk about radiance or confidence, of course—but I’m pretty sure nutricosmetics companies are banking on consumers making the connection between their product and confidence-as-inner-beauty. And given the ways that we moralize what women put into their bodies, nutricosmetics marketers are probably wise to take that bet. Nutricosmetics attempt to commodify an intangible spiritual quality, using words like glow, energy, balance, and replenishing, by linking it to something similarly intangible (health) via something highly tangible (a pill, a tea, a tonic, a beverage).

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say that we equate health and morality (certainly the “war on obesity” and the intense vitriol it brings speaks to that), and that in particular what women choose to put into their bodies becomes a moral issue. (The success of many a trite diet-food campaign—hell, the success of an HSBC ad campaign from several years ago—depends upon it.) Putting the right things into your body is near the top of the pyramid of morality for western women. We link health and morality, and we certainly link health and beauty (I challenge you to find a beauty guide of any length that doesn’t address nutrition and exercise; certainly if I were to write one I’d include health). So nutricosmetics, in linking health and beauty, become a representation of the ways we still link beauty and morality. The pills and potions become the linking object that allows beauty, health, and morality to combine in ways that become difficult to consciously untangle—which is exactly what makes it ripe for capitalist culture, where such elisions and difficulties become the basis for effective marketing.

Capitalism works in part because it takes our private, intrinsic qualities and makes them extrinsic. With nutricosmetics, capitalism takes our abstract ideas about goodness and beauty—specifically “inner beauty”—and transforms them into products we can buy. Nutricosmetics marketing works specifically because it takes our most abstract and intrinsic of qualities—radiance, vitality, glow, “a certain quality,” whatever you wish to call it—puts it into a capsule, and sells it right back to us. Is there a more tangible manifestation of “inner beauty” than a pill that promises good skin?

We talk about how the makeup industry does this, and certainly there’s a moral component to face paint and topical skin care, but throwing health and ingestible products into the mix complicates matters. Where cosmetics enhance and correct, nutricosmetics purport to transform us, literally from the inside out. Cosmetics try to cover our flaws; nutricosmetics try to make us flawless. And specifically in American markets, they do so while allowing us to skirt our old-fashioned Puritan ideals. With nutricosmetics, we don’t even need to do the work of sticking to a “good” diet or eat “right.” All we need to do is buy.
_______________________________________________

For part I of The Collected Thoughts and Writings of Autumn Whitefield-Madrano on Nutricosmetics, click here.

Beauty Blogosphere 12.2.11

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between.

Indian Woman With Red Bindi, Ginette Fine Art (no word as to whether model was great with child)

From Head...
O Calcutta!: The Indian Institute of Technology is proposing distribution of nutrient-rich cosmetics to pregnant women in hopes of reducing infant mortality rates. And here I thought bindis just looked cool!

...To Toe...
Well-heeled: Because the "lipstick index" still isn't good enough, now we're wearing the economy on our feet. "Examining the trends alongside economic patterns led researchers to theorize that a shakier economic situation correlates with the popularity of similarly shaky high heels." The reporter sort of calls BS, though, thus giving me a girl crush on her. (Which doesn't take away from my girl crush on you, m'dear.)

...And Everything In Between:
They are the 1%: Step-by-step read on how the Lauder family has sheltered hundreds of millions of dollars over the years through skilled use of tax breaks. We're hearing so much about the 1% but it remains a vague idea to the 99% of us; this piece illustrates exactly how the 1% stays the 1%, and shows how it has nothing to do with our favorite bootstraps stories—like, say, a plucky daughter of Hungarian immigrants who cajoled her chemist uncle into helping her make a face cream to sell to her friends and eventually becoming one of the world's most influential cosmetics magnates. Sounds a lot more romantic than short sells on the stock market in order to maintain a neutral position under IRS rules and savings $95 million in capital gains taxes, eh?

I get so emotional: More insight into the emotions-cosmetics link, from a cosmetics marketing report being pimped out to companies. Manalive, I always like to think I'm one step ahead of companies, but that's foolish: "Beauty Attachment shows that for certain consumers, beauty is extremely important and they’d rather skip breakfast than skip their morning routine; while for others, it’s simply a utility that meets a need, like a front door key.... Simply put, some women see the aisles at Sephora and their head spins with anticipation; while others see these same aisles and become incredibly anxious." Girl, they have got your number.

Hungry lies: Lionsgate, the studio putting out Hunger Games, is being sued by a cosmetics company for breach of contract surrounding an exclusive Hunger Games nail polish line.

Not so kawaii: I didn't realize until reading this piece about Shiseido vice president Kimie Iwata that Japanese professionals were even more imbalanced than Americans: Women account for less than 1% of top-level Japanese business executives.

Everyone I Have Ever Bathed With: Unfortunately late on this, but Tracey Emin soap!

Playing dirty: Beauty/body product chain Lush is taking action against a UK politician whose environmental policies have been deemed lacking. In the States it's relatively rare to see a company so specifically target one politician, much less a "softball" company like a cosmetics purveyor. I've got to hand it to Lush—this doesn't really seem like a publicity stunt to me (or is that the point?).

Political wrinkle: Australian prime minister Julia Gillard under fire for accepting anti-wrinkle creams as gifts, even as she refused other designer wares. (Really, the buried lede here is that the prime minister has a partner, and has never been married. As an American, to me this seems like some future-world sci-fi Ursula Leguin utopia. A woman is leading the country and we all know she has sex without the legal bond of marriage?!)

Reached a compromise: Historic depictions of ugly muscular babies. Vermeyen, Holy Family

Can't decide which is more awesome: Collection of historic depiction of muscular women, or collection of Ugly babies in Renaissance art. ("I love you both, just in different ways!") (Thanks to Lindsay for the tip) 

Photoshopped: With a new tool that allows us to tell how much a photo has been digitally altered, is it possible that we'll someday have "retouch ratings" like we do movie ratings? "Rated three points for rib removal and jawline trimming."

Framed: Bitch magazine has two particularly interesting "In the Frame" entries this week: A photo of noted photographer Nan Goldin one month after being battered, in which her makeup contradicts the idea of the hidden, cowering victim, and then the art of Ingrid Berthon-Moine, showing women wearing their menstrual blood as lipstick. (And here I thought I was a hippie for trying out beets as lipstick, as per No More Dirty Looks.)

The importance of being intact: Oscar Wilde's restored tomb makes its debut in Paris, covered by a glass partition to protect it from "being eaten away by lipstick," as is tradition.
 
Paging Don Draper: South African fragrance line Alibi is designed for cheating spouses to wear to literally put suspicious partners off their scent trail. "I Was Working Late" smells of cigarettes, coffee, ink, and wool suits; "We Were Out Sailing" features sea salt and cotton rope. I am not making this up. (But they might be; I can't find anything about the company elsewhere. Hmm.)

Sweet smell of success: The odiferous history of "perfume" versus "cologne" in regards to becoming a comment on a man's sexual orientation, and what the headily scented Liberace had to say about it.

Neat and clean: Half of the men in Britain don't think it's necessary to be clean-shaven to look well-groomed. (I heartily agree, as a fan of a bit of scruff on a feller.)
 

Inventor Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler

 
This week in dead movie stars: Why Marilyn Monroe is still a beauty icon, and did you know that Hedwig Eva Marie Kiesler—aka Hedy Lamarr—invented a telecommunications process that's still used today in much of our wireless communication?

Newly inquired: If you enjoy my more academic-ish posts on here, you should definitely check out The New Inquiry. I'm proud to be associated with them, and prouder still of their profile in this week's New York Times! (Quibble: I wouldn't call any of these minds those of "literary cubs"; all parties involved are far too insightful and thought-provoking for that.)

Attention Sassy lovers: Former Sassy editor Jane Larkworthy, now beauty director at W, is featured on Into the Gloss this week. "I do think [beauty products] should be done in an accessible way, though—I don’t ever want beauty to be intimidating."

Hair mayonnaise: Hysterical beauty bit from comic Sue Funke, courtesy Virginia.

Fight for the right: This piece at Rookie about cultural stereotyping is worth reading in its own right, but of particular interest to me is the collection of vintage photos of "black and brown and yellow girl gangs in American history" on the second page, all from Of Another Fashion. The photos of beaming, well-dressed Japanese women heading off to internment camps during one of the most shameful episodes of U.S. history raises questions about expectations of femininity, and of fashion's true role in our lives: "Even during internment, these girls were determined to look cute. And though that may sound like the height of triviality, it’s not. As the late, great civil-rights activist Dorothy Height once said, 'Too many people in my generation fought for the right for us to be dressed up and not put down.'"
 
Honored: I love Sally's concept of "honoring your beauty," and I'll throw in that once I learned that the way to accept a compliment was to look the person in the eye, smile, and say, "Thank you," I felt like I'd learned something small but important. It also made it easier to give a compliment too; I stopped worrying that every compliment I gave was loaded somehow. There's no hidden motive. I really just like your hair.

Push it good: This post from Fit and Feminist on the myth of the noncompetitive female made me (and her, as evidenced by her Mean Girls reference) wonder why we embrace totally contradictory views of women and competition. C'mon, patriarchy: Are we all cooperative sweethearts who aren't so great at team sports because we just want to hold hands and make daisy chains, or are we vindictive bitches who love to tear one another apart? Just tell us already, my best bitches and I are getting tired of this sewing circle-Fight Club jazz.

On Trust

I cleaned out my bathroom cabinets last weekend, prompting yesterday’s post with the absurd list of products I’ve been hanging onto even though I haven’t touched them in months—or years. (Okay, a decade in some cases. Did I ever look good in glitter eye pencil?) The impetus came from this study claiming that women wasted £964 million on products they never used, and I immediately recognized myself among the one in seven who had products up to three years old. But it wasn’t the money angle that interested me so much as the reasoning for hanging onto them in the first place. I moved apartments last year and got rid of loads of products—yet these products, soap scraps and all, managed to survive. These, my friends, were the survivors.

There’s the expected reasons, of course, namely buying into promises I don’t actually believe, and allowing my insecurities to get the better of me. But given basic principles of marketing, that's hardly a surprise. What surprised me more was to learn how little I trust myself. There were a good number of products I held onto despite not particularly liking them, because I kept thinking some version of It’s not you, it’s me. I didn’t like the smell of the body mist, and I didn’t like how it made my skin feel, but I held onto it because it sounded so luxurious and I really thought maybe I just didn’t “get” it, that it was an acquired taste like whiskey. The L’Oréal Touch-On Color didn’t do anything for me—you literally could not tell that it was on my skin—but I kept thinking that surely I would learn how to use it correctly someday, even though it lived in a makeup pouch at the bottom of my cabinet. I kept waiting to feel “detoxified” with the Galenic Elancyl Corps Ultra Hydrating Detoxifying Cream, to no avail, and it took me a couple of weeks of regularly shaving my legs with the horrible Target razors before I finally admitted it was the razors, not some new flaw in the way I was shaving—even though my first thought when I noticed my leg rash was that I’d tried a new razor.

And listen, people, I’m pretty careful about this stuff—I really don’t buy tons of products, and I don’t usually fall for gimmicks (as the “anonymous” commenter pointed out in comments yesterday, the detox foot pads were a stocking stuffer, and I am an ingrate of a daughter SORRY MOM). And still: The doubt, even when it’s not experienced as insecurity per se, can win so easily. It reminds me of the time a story crossed my desk at a women’s magazine, with the headline “How to Wash Your Face,” and the story was about...how to wash your face. As in, “then splash with warm water.” The beauty editor was horrified that she had to write this piece of junk, but there it was: We were telling readers that they needed our guidance to learn how to wash their face. I laughed when I learned that colleges used to have entire class sessions devoted to face-washing within a credited course on grooming—but that’s just a formalized version of the lack of trust I had in not tossing the body mist the minute I realized the smell grossed me out.

We’re not exactly encouraged to trust ourselves when it comes to evaluating any product, and the premise of beauty products means that our trust as consumers is doubly negated: Because we have such a hard time truly seeing ourselves, it can be near-impossible to tell if a product really “works.” (Arguably this is less true with color cosmetics; as beauty editor Ali once told me, "It's easy to tell if mascara works; are your lashes darker? Yes? It works.” But some of the products I held onto were colors I knew didn’t do me any favors, and yet I still told myself they’d come in handy—as if makeup that doesn’t make me look good could ever come in handy.) The whole idea of the placebo effect is that you have such faith in the product that it will spur the desired outcome even if it it has no actual effect—perhaps even if you know it has no actual effect. Remember, I did a month-long experiment designed to test if wrinkle creams “really” worked, and concluded they sort of did, barely, a little; a skin specialist told me it was causing irritation and suggested I stop using the cream. But not only did I keep on using it, I bought two additional brands with a similar formula. I absolutely knew better than to spend my money on them, and bought them anyway—not because of the minimal effect they’d been proven to have on my fine lines. I bought them because I thought, Maybe this one will do the trick.

Trust as described by sociologists can involve what’s known as “expert systems,” or technological or professional systems that organize specific areas that experts are best posed to establish. “Abstract systems” are, well, abstract—we have faith in the system itself, even when we ourselves don’t exactly have access to the workings of the system. For that access we depend on certain experts who can interpret expert abstract systems to let us know what’s what: A good auto mechanic can let us know what’s wrong with our car even if we went into the shop not knowing what a carburetor does. We don’t need to know the abstract system of the engine; we can just trust the translator.

When we’re talking about products designed to make us prettier, we still rely on translators: magazine beauty editors, salespeople, even makeup artists who can tell us what shade works best on us even if they don’t tell us exactly why, knowing that our knowledge of color wheels is pretty minimal and that’s why we’re wearing the “wrong” lipstick in the first place. But at a certain point, we abandon the translation and simply have faith in the abstract system. This is necessary when we're talking about expert systems like, say, mammograph, as Norwegian public health expert Marit Solbjor found in her study of the development of women's trust in effective mammography processes. "Trust in abstract systems takes shape as faceless obligation when knowledge of that system is unknown by lay participants yet faith in the knowledge system is maintained,” she writes in Researching Trust and Health. It applies to face cream as well: I'm giving faceless obligation to the knowledge system, continuing to give it my faith even when I don't exactly know how it works. And this isn’t some personal failing; it’s how systems work: “The modern human being lives with the duality where...we respect and trust systems, and...we feel a certain skepticism,” writes Lars Bo Kaspersen in his introduction to the work of sociologist Anthony Giddens. “We seldom give up the entire system, but instead choose a new system representative.” That new “system representative,” as it turns out, was CVS Advanced Deep-Set Wrinkle Therapy. Even that “How to Wash Your Face” piece was a ladymag attempt at becoming a layperson in an instance when none was needed. If you make yourself an expert convincingly enough, people will eventually outsource their trust to you.

I’m not entirely sure how to shift the balance of trust to make the expert system a little less powerful. The sociological idea is that in modern societies, we come to trust abstract systems more because our personal trust systems—our families, our communities, our intimates—are more and more dispersed, more and more fragmented. It makes sense, then, that part of the solution would lay in changing that balance rather than trying to force myself to become my own “expert”—which I’ve tried, and which one can’t do merely by deciding to do so. I’m not sure if the route to not buying more face cream is to join a bowling league/sewing circle/call my grandparents, but perhaps it’s the route to try.

What do you think? Have you had trouble trusting your authentic reactions to beauty products? What do you do to maintain your level of trust in the people you want to trust instead of outsourcing trust to “expert systems”?


*Had to verify w/cool friend that Pitchfork Media was cool.

A List of Beauty Products I Discarded Upon Thoroughly Cleaning My Bathroom This Weekend, Arranged By Category

I’ve Got About Half an Application Left of This And Have Already Moved On To the New Bottle But Hey I Should Keep This One Too Just In Case
• Jergens Natural Glow Daily Moisturizer
• Prescriptives Traceless Skin Responsive Tint (three bottles)
• Up & Up (Target brand!) Facial Scrub
• Maybelline Blush Bronzer 

I Don’t Have a Flat Iron Or Colored Hair But Maybe This Will Come In Handy In An Alternate Universe
• Silk Result Instant Flat Iron Protection Smoother
• Goldwell Color Definition Conditioner

Loved It When I Was 25 And Have Held Onto It For 10 Years In An Effort To Cling To Vestiges of My Girlish Youth Even Though I Know I Am Far Better Off At This Age In Part Because I Can Now Drink Whiskey Without Making a Face, A Feat That Escaped Me 10 Years Ago
• Kake After Shower Gel Hydrator Fortune Kookie
• Nolita Grit Gel (“Beach Hair, City Style”)
• Girl Cosmetics glitter eye pencil
• Mysterious number of Sharpies (trying to be a riot grrrl? I don’t remember)
• Neutrogena Rapid Clear Acne Defense Face Lotion

Super-Duper Insecure About Having Shiny/Red Skin And Will Buy Any Amount of Product Designed To Conceal These Characteristics
• Origins Zero Oil Instant Matte Finish
• Jelly Pong Pont Teint Sublime Complexion Cheater
• Eucerin Redness Relief Tone Perfecting Creme

I Spent a Month Using Wrinkle Cream On Half My Face And Know This Shit Doesn’t Really Do Much But Damn If I Didn’t Feel Like I Was Doing Something “For Me!” When I Plunked Down $25 On Each Of These Bottles
• Neutrogena Rapid Wrinkle Repair
• CVS Advanced Deep-Set Wrinkle Therapy
• Olay Regenerist Deep Hydration Regenerating Cream

No Idea What This Is Supposed To Do
• Benefit Powderflage (on the bottle: “Lesson Inside!”)
• Paves Professional Flawless It’s a Wrap Defining Finishing Cream

Know For a Fact This Doesn’t Work But Held Onto Anyway (Reasons Unclear)
• Mudoku Detox Foot Pads (“As Seen on TV!”)
• Target brand razors (rashes! terrible! never use these! kept nine of ‘em for a year)
• Lush Coconut Deodorant Powder
• Paula Dorf Cake Mascara in Raven*

But They Gave It To Me For Free!
• Kiehl’s Deluxe Hand & Body Lotion in Coriander
• J.R. Watkins Hand Soap in Lavender (sample size; when would you ever think to use a sample of hand soap?)

Made Me Look Terrible Every Time I Tried It But Hey Maybe It Was Me Not The Product
• Maybelline Wonder Finish Clean Powder-Finish Foundation
• L’Oreal Touch-On Colour
• Lord & Berry Eyeshadow Supreme in some weird frosted plum shade
• Bain de Terre Scalp Massage Scrub

Packrat, No Real Excuse
• Soap dish with two soap scraps
• Sephora makeup brush, matted from overuse

Smelled Gross But Wished It Didn’t Because It Sounded So Luxurious So I Kept It Anyway And Hoped I’d Change My Mind
• Galenic Elancyl Corps Ultra Hydrating Detoxifying Cream
• Portico Amber and Olivewood Body Mist

 
*Sub-category, Guilt: Wrested out of boss’s hands at a beauty sale in 1999 and feel guilty to this day because she really wanted it but I became uncharacteristically fixated on it and justified the transaction as payment for making me listen to stories about her pet bird

Beauty Blogsophere 11.11.11*

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between.

From Head...
Thin Mint lips: Girl Scout Cookie Lip Smackers! But what's with this "Coconut Caramel Stripes" flavor? You already yanked the rug out from under me with that "Samoa" jazz. Caramel Delight 4-eva!

...To Toe...
This little piggy went to fashion week: Fashionista's slideshow of models' feet on the runway is a lightly grody reminder that fashion ain't always glamorous (and that you're not alone in having fit problems).

Pediprank: Indiana governor Mitch Daniels went in for surgery on a torn meniscus and wound up with a pink pedicure. Dr. Kunkel, you old dog you!


...And Everything In Between:
"It's angled, like a diamond baguette": The rise of the $60 lipstick in the midst of a recession. Not sure about the "pragmatic" part of the term "pragmatic luxury," but what do I know? I just drink red wine, smack my lips together, and hope for the best.

Dishy: The flap surrounding the Panera Bread district manager who told the Pittsburgh-area store manager to staff the counter with "pretty young girls" was reported as a racist incident, since the cashier he wanted replaced was an African American man. But as Partial Objects points out, it may have been more motivated by sexism. To that I'd add that it's not just sexism and racism, but the notion of the "pretty young girl" that's at the heart of the matter here.

Give 'em some lip: American Apparel is launching a lip gloss line, with colors that will be "evoking an array of facets of the American Apparel experience." Names include "Legalize L.A.," which references the company's dedication to immigration reform, and "Intimate," an echo of the company's racy advertising aesthetic. Other shades on tap include "Topless," "Pantytime," "In the Red," "Jackoff Frost" and "Sexual Harassment in Violation of the Fair Employment and Housing Act Govt. Code 12940(k) Shimmer."

Music makers: Boots cosmetics line 17 commissions up-and-coming musicians to write and perform songs that align with the ethos of 17 products. As in, "You Might Get Stuck on Me" for their magnetic nail polish.

"Let women of sixty use 'beautifiers,' if they think they need them. But you, who are young, pretty, and have a complexion like a rose-leaf—you should avoid such things as you would a pestilence." 

99% marketing: For its 132nd birthday, Ivory soap is unrolling a new ad campaign, which hinges upon it being A) nongendered, and B) soap. Revolución!

Baby fangs: Intellectually I should be against about the practice of yaeba, in which dentists in Japan artificially enlarge their lady patients' incisors to create a childlike appearance. But as someone who is genetically blessed with noticeably sharp and semi-crooked incisors, I'm basically all, I am gonna be huge in Japan.

Vaniqua'd: The active ingredient in Vaniqua—you know, the drug you're supposed to take if you have an unladylike amount of facial hair—is also an effective treatment for African sleeping sickness. Of course, the places where African sleeping sickness strikes can't afford to buy it. But hey, our upper lip is so smooth! (via Fit and Feminist) 

La Giaconda: The Mona Lisa, retouched.

Beauty survey: Allure's massive beauty survey reveals that 93% of American women think the pressure to look young is greater than ever before. Am I a spoilsport by pointing out that every person who answered that question is also older than they ever were before? (Of course, the "hottest age" for women according to men surveyed is now 28, compared with 31 in 1991, so there may be something to it.) Other findings: Black women are three times as likely as white women to self-report as hot, and everyone hates their belly.

Gay old time: Jenelle Hutcherson will be the first openly lesbian contestant of Miss Long Beach—and she's going to wear a royal purple tux for the eveningwear competition. The director of the pageant encouraged her to sign up, and Hutcherson has been vocal about how she's reflecting the long tradition of diversity and acceptance in Long Beach. (Thanks to Caitlin for the tipoff!)

Miss World: In more urgent beauty pageant news, British women protest Miss World, and somehow the reporter neglects to make a crack about bra burning.

The freshman 2.5: Virginia debunks the "freshman 15," and then Jezebel reveals that the whole thing was an invention of Seventeen magazine, along with the notion that every single New Kid on the Block was supposed to be cute.

Ballerina body: Darlene at Hourglassy examines the push-pull between embracing and dressing large breasts (which she does beautifully with her button-front shirts designed for busty women) and her love of ballet. "By the end of the performance I wasn’t paying attention to anything but the movements. There was nothing to distract me from the dancers’ grace and athleticism. Would I have been distracted by large breasts on one of the dancers? Definitely."

(Still taken from SOMArts promotional video)

Subject/object: Prompted by this intriguing Man as Object exhibition in San Francisco, Hugo Schwyzer looks at the possibilities for desiring male imperfection. He's the expert here, both because of his research and his male-ness, but I can't help but wonder how much men have internalized the notion of male perfection. I have zero doubt that the focus on the body beautiful has impacted men, and certainly the tropes of masculinity are a reasonable parallel to the tropes of femininity. But there's always been more room—literal and metaphorical—for men of all varieties to be considered sex symbols. Everyone gawked when Julia Roberts paired up with Lyle Lovett, but even then there was talk of how he had "a certain quality." Save someone like Tilda Swinton—who, while odd-looking, isn't un-pretty either—when have we ever spoken of women in that way?

Am I the only one who thinks gigolo should be pronounced like it's spelled?: Tits and Sass has been looking for voices of male escorts, and lo and behold, Vin Armani to the rescue!

"Did my son inherit my eating disorder?": There's been some talk about how a mother with food issues can transfer that to her daughters—but Pauline wonders if she's passed down her eating disorder to her son. A potent reminder that boys internalize ED factors as well.

What you can't tell by looking: And along those same lines, Tori at Anytime Yoga reminds us shortly and sweetly that eating disorders of all forms come in a variety of sizes. This is enormously important: I'm certain that there are many women with eating disorders who don't recognize it because they don't think they fit the profile.

In/visible: Always glad to see celebrities acknowledge that looking they way they look actually takes work, à la Jessica Biel here: "My signature style is a 'no-make-up make-up' look, which is much harder than people think." Well, probably not most women who do no-makeup makeup, but whatevs.

Touchdown: This BellaSugar slideshow of creative makeup and hairstyle from NFL fans in homage to their favorite teams is a delight. I could care less about football itself (I finally understand "downs," I think) but I think it's awesome that these people are showing that there are plenty of ways to be a football fan, including girly-girl stuff like makeup. (IMHO, football fans could use a PR boost right about now. Seriously, Penn State? Rioting? You do realize your coach failed to protect multiple children from sexual assault, right?)

Face wash 101: Also from BellaSugar: There were college courses on grooming in the 1940s?! 

She walks in beauty like the night: A goth ode to black lipstick, from XOJane.com. 

Muppets take Sephora: Afrobella gives a rundown of the spate of Muppet makeup. Turns out Miss Piggy isn't the first Muppet to go glam.

Love handle: The usual story is that we gain weight when we're stressed or unhappy because we're eating junk food to smother our sorrows—but Sally asks about "happy body changes," like when you gain weight within a new relationship.

Locks of love: Courtney at Those Graces on how long hair can be just as self-defining as short.

_____________________________________

*Numerology field day! More significantly, Veterans' Day. Please take a moment to thank or at least think of the veterans in your life—you don't have to support the war to support soldiers. It's also a good time to remember that not all veterans who return alive return well: The Huffington Post collection "Beyond the Battlefield" is a reminder of this, particularly the story of Marine widow Karie Fugett, who also writes compellingly at Being the Wife of a Wounded Marine of caring for her husband after his return from Iraq; he later died from a drug overdose.

While most combat roles are still barred to women, there are plenty of female veterans—combat, support, and medical staff alike. Click here to listen to a collection of interviews from female veterans of recent wars, including Staff Sergeant Jamie Rogers, who, in When Janey Comes Marching Home, gives us this reminder of the healing potential of the beauty industry: "I went [to the bazaar near Camp Liberty in Baghdad] often to get my hair cut. They had a barber shop and then they had a beauty salon. It was nice to go in and it was a female atmosphere. It was all girls. You could put your hair down, instead of having it in a bun all the time, get it washed. It was just something to escape for a while, get away from everything. And it was nice to interact, and the girls were always dressed nice and always very complimentary: 'You have such beautiful...' and I don't know if it was BS, but it felt good that day. That was a good escape."

Siobhan O'Connor, Journalist, New York City

Siobhan O’Connor’s journey into natural beauty began with formaldehyde. Whenever she and her best friend from back home in Montreal, Alexandra Spunt, would travel cross-country to see one other, they’d do “girly things”—including a foray into Brazilian blowouts. Their hair looked great for a month, but when O’Connor’s strands started breaking and Spunt’s hair turned into a “French-fried mangled mess,” they did some investigating and learned that they’d gotten a formaldehyde treatment. (Brazilian blowouts are now officially on the OSHA hazard alert list.) Those investigations turned into a book, No More Dirty Looks, and a thriving blog of the same name. Their goal was to break down the lingo of the beauty industry so that readers could understand exactly what they’re getting when they buy products—and to empower them to make safer, greener choices. (They’re why I started using coconut oil as a moisturizer, so I owe all my dewiness to them.) Both the book and blog are a delightful combination of thoughtfulness and sheer fun—as was talking with O’Connor about beauty buzzwords, the transformative possibilities of clean cosmetics, and chasing the beauty dragon. In her own words:

On Seeing Through Transparency
While I was learning about all the chemicals in the products I was using, at a certain point I had to go through my bathroom and throw out all the stuff that didn’t fit in with what I was learning. One of the craziest things I found was this green tea soap, and I looked at the ingredients for the first time—and there was literally no green tea in it! Green tea isn’t even desirable in a cleanser, but I didn’t know that then; I was just thinking it was semi-natural and so it must be desirable. Alexandra and I both had those sort of playful moments that were like, “Wow, get a load of this!” It’s sometimes hilarious—and sometimes a letdown. There’s been more consumer consciousness in the past few years, but then companies do things like make “natural” soaps that aren’t, and that definitely hurts. It creates an accidentally uninformed consumer. You think you’re making at least a semi-informed decision, but you’re not. There was some research last year about the natural beauty market, and the number-one thing they found across the board was massive consumer confusion. People just did not know what was what. That’s why we wrote the book—here are the ingredients, here’s where you’ll find them on the bottle, here are the different names ingredients have.

There was a New Yorker cartoon—normally I hate those, but I thought this one was awesome: I can see through your transparency. Transparency became an industry buzzword, and it’s bullshit. A lot of the big companies are “transparent”—they give you the ingredients, but it’s not really any clearer, or it’s incomplete. Companies that are radically transparent, though, will always answer e-mails from people who have questions about the ingredients. They’ll use organic, high-grade ingredients, which is why the products are more expensive. And, you know, those products can be more expensive. That’s part of why we do our Friday Deals; it’s a way of giving people things that we think are awesome in a way that’s more affordable and more comparable to what you’d buy at a drugstore, or at least Sephora. But not everything is priced prohibitively in the first place: If you use coconut oil from the grocery store, that costs seven dollars and it lasts for months, and it’s incredibly skin-compatible and moisturizing. If you leave your hair alone, maybe you don’t need shampoo or conditioner. With the exception of a few fancy eye creams, which companies send to me, I buy the products that I use, and I don’t like to spend a lot of money. But you need to figure out what works for you. I have it down to four products that I consider necessities, and the rest are fun incidentals. Using fewer things is better; you can then buy the high-quality stuff and use less of it. Like if you use a concentrated serum, you’re using a drop on your pinkie for your entire face. It lasts. People often spend more in total on less expensive products. I think Alexandra did the math at some point: She’d been using a fistful of regular conditioner every single day, and then she’d feel like it wasn’t working, so she’d cast off a half-used bottle and get something else. When you use something that actually works for you, you don’t need to do that.

On Challenge
There’s definitely a political element to natural beauty: I think it’s wrong that the government is structured so that it can’t actually safeguard consumers from the beauty industry. That makes me angry, so there’s some fire there. But beyond that: Going natural made me realize I was chasing certain beauty ideas in this unconscious way. There’s this cycle of using products that don’t work and then buying more products to try, and then those don’t work so you try others that don’t work. There’s this idea that you can buy beauty in a bottle, and that that’s what has the power. Alexandra calls it “chasing the beauty dragon,” and I just love that phrase. And as it turns out, not chasing the dragon feels really good. Things that feel good become sort of self-perpetuating as habits, so if something feels good you want to do it again. That’s how it is with not chasing the beauty dragon: It feels really good, so you want to keep doing it. A few times a year I start to wonder, Am I missing out on something by giving up all of that? But then I remember how I was before and I remember, no, it’s fine—it’s great.

I used to wake up every day and touch my face to see if something had happened overnight. First thing in the morning—that was literally the first thing I did every day. My skin has done a 180 since I went natural—it’s crazy. So obviously that was great, but it went beyond that. Something inside both of us transformed over the course of writing and constantly thinking about beauty and our relationship to it—every woman’s relationship to it. We’ve seen a lot of people fight their natural look. And it’s cheesy to say, but you know what it’s like when you see a really healthy woman, regardless of the shape of her nose or her body, and you’re like, whoa. There’s health and joy, smiles and truth—it’s one of the most beautiful things in the world. Natural beauty can go beyond products; it’s about stripping all that other stuff away and just taking joy in the natural curl of your hair or the natural glow of your skin. It’s about not hiding.

We love doing challenges—someone I work with was like, “In your head, is life like summer camp?” and I’m like, You know, kind of. Challenges are fun. We did a no-makeup challenge, where readers sent in pictures of themselves without makeup. Then we did a glamour challenge, where we asked readers to do the most glamorous look they could do, preferably with natural products, and send us their photos. And it’s funny—going glam was really hard for people. If you do your makeup in a dramatic way it’s like you’re saying to the world: I want to rock this look right now, and a lot a people aren’t comfortable doing that. We had people privately e-mailing us and saying, I just can’t do it. It was interesting that doing no makeup was easier for people. I guess the mentality was, Well, if I look bad with no makeup, no big deal. But if you look bad with makeup—it’s like you’ve said to the world, This is the best I can do, and then if it doesn’t work out you feel foolish. People can be shy about the sense of showiness and playfulness that accompanies glamour. The challenge turned out fun—some people went really wild. But I was shocked at how hard it was for some people.


On Resistance to Natural Beauty
A girlfriend of mine is thinking about opening up a natural beauty store, and she was like, “It just feels so superficial.” I flashed back: Up until two months before the book came out, I would avoid talking about it because I thought that people would think I was fluffy or wouldn’t take me seriously. Isn’t that weird? Alexandra had the same thing, like, “Oh, people are going to think this is silly, we’re just girls talking about makeup.” I remember having a conversation with the guy I was with at the time, and he was like, “You need to own this.” And I was like, “Oh!” Somehow hearing it from a dude made me think about it differently.

It’s funny—I feel like guys are easier to win over with this stuff than women sometimes. Men and women are both like, “Whoa, that’s crazy!”—but then women are the ones using the products. There can be a feeling of embarrassment. My friends will say, “Siobhan, I use...” and it’s some toxic product, and I’m like, “I’m not gonna judge you. I’m really not.” It’s like there’s some shame around beauty. Sometimes we feel a certain shame in using products that we know aren’t the best for us—it’s like the guy you shouldn’t have kissed two years ago. You know you shouldn’t be doing it, but you’re doing it anyway. But we’re all about being aware of what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it. Stripping away the physical toxins can sometimes show us the reasons we really want to wear makeup. Because toxins or not, for women there’s often a certain amount of: I need this. But you don’t. You really don’t. That feeling of need keeps you from having fun with your makeup. I love makeup so much more now than I used to, because before there was no sense of joy in doing it. It would be like, Oh, I can’t do this to my face, or for Alexandra, I’d never do that to my curls. Now it’s like: Oh my God, this is so much fun! From the beginning Alexandra and I wanted what we were doing to be fun and friendly. We both feel this joyfulness about it, and I think we pride ourselves on bringing that to what we’re doing.

___________________________________________

For more beauty interviews from The Beheld, click here.

Beauty Blogosphere: 11.4.11

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between.

Clockwise from top left: eyeshadow app or police brutality?; the tiny tiny woman who lives inside Beyoncé;
fears of a clown; what did ever happen to Baby Jane?

From Head...
All made up: Meet the man responsible for all those makeover apps. Here's to hoping he wasn't behind the Beyoncé matroyshka effect that serves as the pièce de résistance in writer Lindsay Goldwert's photo collection of makeup apps gone wrong.


...To Toe...
Tootsie: Another reason to show off your pedicure with bare feet: You won't be mistaken for a mama cannibal. (Not that cannibalism would do anyone any good anyway.)


...And Everything In Between:
Land of smiles: Thailand is well-posed in the beauty industry because of its biodiversity and the growth of the call for natural products—it's expecting a 10%-15% increase this year alone. Here's to hoping a beauty boon can help offset some of the damage caused by recent massive flooding.

Avon not calling: Between corruption charges in its Asian arm and tumbling sales, Avon hasn't been doing so hot, and the New York Times questions whether it's time for CEO Andrea Jung to hand over the reins.

Occupy skin cream: A small skin-care line is urging us to "occupy" the beauty industry by supporting small lines started by women "who were fed up with products that didn't work" instead of the Citibanks of the beauty industry like Estee Lauder and Revlon. 

Lipstick philanthropy: The Helena Rubinstein Foundation, after nearly 60 years and $130 million in charitable distribution, is closing its doors.

A peek inside cosmetics law: Apparently product names can takes years to clear, trademark-wise? Wondering how Lancome got the Bureau of Consular Affairs to approve Shimmer Mocha Havana.

Can men handle being ogled? Well, women have been handling it with aplomb for centuries; surely the old boys are up to the challenge?

Apple man: Did Steve Jobs have disordered eating? Certainly his habits point toward yes—an apples-and-carrots diet for weeks on end, for example—but reading about his peculiarities makes me wonder how exactly we defined "disordered eating." Does suffering need to be a component?

"How do you spell 'Ms.'"?: Wonderful oral history of Ms. magazine, collated by the daughter of one of the founders. A personal note: Ms. was the first magazine to issue me a paycheck, making the 23-year-old me just about die when I found myself sitting in a real-life honest-to-God meeting with Gloria Steinem, who is just as awesome as you'd expect her to be. This article, in the same issue of New York, about the feminist blogosphere ain't bad either. Ladybloggers represent!

Boxing day: Speaking of Ms., they're the ones who bring us this piece about the Amateur International Boxing Association recommending its female competitors wear skirts, to distinguish them from the men. I think this is bollocks (though at least it's not the Lingerie Football League, which Fit and Feminist beams her laser focus at this week), but there's also a part of me that thinks the fact that women aren't otherwise distinguishable from men sort of proves that "not bad for a girl" might be on its way out? High hopes, people, high hopes.

East meets west: The communist-era Prague metro is now a "virtual drugstore."

Prague officially the land of the future: Commuters in Zlata Praha can buy shampoo, razors, and other goods at the "virtual drugstore" in certain metro stations by scanning codes with their smartphones; the wares are then delivered to their door by mail.
 
Skweez me: Karen Duffy reviews shapewear, and isn't afraid to name names. (Spanx may have the highest brand equity, but it's far from the highest quality, it seems.)

Fair fashion: One of the earliest makeup lines for women of color, Fashion Fair, is revamping its image.

Bathroom bounty: British women have £964 million of unused skin care products in their bathrooms. Unsurprisingly, the number of failed products dwindles with age, making me want to act like a 60-year-old and clean my bathroom shelves already.

Equal-opportunity eating disorders: Adios Barbie on the LGBT community and eating disorders: Gay and bisexual men are at increased risk for eating disorders, while lesbian and bisexual women suffer at the same rate as hetero women.

Calling all angels: Beauty Redefined questions Victoria's Secret tagline, "We are redefining what it means to be sought after." I'm not sure which is more upsetting: the possibility that the tagline is wrong because VS is obviously not adding anything new to the conversation, or the possibility that the tagline is right and there's more redefinition to come.

How little is enough? Verging on Serious examines the Minimum Effective Dose—of exercise, of makeup, of blogging, all of which are dear to my heart, and all of which I do just enough of to be able to live my rightfully slothful life.

By the numbers: I'm usually a tad wary of "here's what I weigh" information, though I understand the arguments in favor of transparency, and enjoy My Body Gallery. In any case, the way Already Pretty presents her measurements is done in such a way as to show why the measurements tell us nothing, even when they're all laid out as they are in her post. "This post shows how little you know about someone just by looking at them, and how body stats actually provide scant additional, relevant information.... And even though you’ve now got a whole bunch of details about my body, you still don’t know everything. ... You know the stats, but you don’t know the story." 

About face: The Jaunty Dame follows up her inspirational "photo philosophy" post with photos not just of herself completely bare-faced, but with her Halloween-ish alter ego, reminding us that we all "perform for a live audience nearly every day." Is your costume comfortable?  

Girl army: Virginia questions the underlying message of the potential Army ban on French manicures and ponytails: "So what does it mean when the strongest woman in the US military agrees that displaying overt signs of femininity might impact a female officer's perceived strength as a leader?"

Nose jobbed: Dress With Courage looks at the connection between body dysmorphic disorder and nose jobs. Much of the talk about BDD surrounds the body, but in fact it's a fixation on any part of one's physical presence. Sadly, I'm unsurprised by the findings Elissa expounds upon here—43% of rhinoplasty patients have BDD.

MAC, Transformation, and The Authenticity Hoax

Like any child of the late '70s might be, I was tickled by MAC’s recent choice of Miss Piggy as spokesmodel for the brand. It was the final step in winning over skeptical little moi, I thought: With a history of choosing unlikely models and collaborators—Johnny Weir, Cindy Sherman, hell, Cyndi Lauper—I’d been gradually warming to MAC despite initially being turned off by its flash. By the time they rolled around to featuring the porcine glamour of Miss Piggy, I was on board. “Its brand managers have a keen appreciation of the fantasy aspect of makeup,” I wrote when the news came out a couple of weeks ago, “and I like that MAC isn’t asking me to buy its product to make me a better version of myself.”

I particularly liked the MAC campaign in opposition to the “better version of myself” ads I was referring to. From Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign in 2004 to Bare Escentuals’ “Pretty is what you are, beauty is what you do with it” commercials, I’ve critiqued these ads as being only a step removed from “Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline.”

By associating natural or inner beauty with their products, companies get to have it both ways, selling us potions as well as self-esteem. I saw MAC as presenting a more authentic alternative, one that acknowledged the metamorphic possibilities of makeup and that didn’t try to pretend it was selling us inner beauty. By selling us not our natural (but prettified) selves but our made-over, over-the-top fantasy selves, MAC emphasizes the very fact that it’s selling us transformation. All makeup sells transformation; MAC was just being more honest about it. Therefore I’m being more honest about it when I pay my $14 for its lip pencil, right?

What I didn’t see is that that’s exactly what MAC wanted me to do. I fell for what journalist Andrew Potter dubbed The Authenticity Hoax with his 2010 book of the same name. The idea is that since authenticity is the ultimate sell (who wants to buy something fake?), it makes an easily fetishized buzzword that can transform pretty much anything into profit—and that when we chase authenticity we’re seeking not truth but identity and status. And if that status is something that brings us a sense of being terrifically individual, even iconoclastic? All the better. By selling us transformation into our wildest, most creative, most individualized selves, MAC slips in through the back door to sell us authenticity.

I had been thinking that the role of authenticity in cosmetics marketing was unique because cosmetics are inherently inauthentic: Their entire purpose is to alter us into prettier or more glamorous versions of ourselves. In truth, though, both the “natural beauty” campaigns and the MAC approach are selling beauty authenticity, just different versions of it. Bare Escentuals (and Maybelline, and Revlon, and every other makeup brand that has relied upon the girl-next-door aesthetic) tries to sell us us an authentic version of our best selves; MAC tries to sell us a more authentic version of makeup. In fact, the MAC ethos wouldn’t work unless we were already souring on the peddling of “natural beauty”; as Potter reminds us in The Authenticity Hoax, “the notion of cool only ever made sense as a foil to something else.” We like MAC not only for its products but for its cool.

It’s not that I don’t like what MAC is doing, or that I don’t appreciate the inspired sensibility and tone of irreverence that led it to feature Miss Piggy as their latest model. I like that it openly acknowledges the crucial role gay men have played in the beauty industry. Hell, I like its products. But at its heart, we must remember that MAC is part of a major company, and that major companies are known for their abilities to find what resonates with their consumers, including uppity feminists who think they’re too savvy to buy into ads targeted directly toward them (ahem). MAC pushes the line of supposed subversion because it’s in the company’s interest to do so (and when they realize they’ve gone too far with their subversion, as with last year’s line inspired by Juarez, Mexico, aka “the capital of murdered women,” they scale back—as well they should). It’s not actually goodwill for MAC to acknowledge that drag queens use makeup, and it’s not actually more authentic for MAC to posit itself as the truest route to transformation—or for me to buy their lip liner because I feel like their ethos somehow fits with mine.

There’s nothing wrong with selling products or making money, of course—full disclosure, at various points in my life I have both earned and spent the stuff. But I for one need to check my tendency to not cast scrutiny upon a brand just because I prefer its flavor of false authenticity to that of another. We need to remember that MAC’s fortune is in its appearance of irreverence, not makeup. I disliked the Bare Escentuals campaign because I immediately recognized the ways it was preying upon our yearning to see a broader definition of beauty, and I felt manipulated. I didn’t feel manipulated by the MAC campaign because I deemed it “authentic.” Both companies make things that go on your face to make it look better, but each campaign would have you believe that they’re doing far more—that they’re giving us a long-awaited answer to legitimate complaints about the beauty industry. Bare Escentuals gives us acknowledgment of the other factors that make us beautiful—our activities, our diversity, our personalities. MAC tells us makeup is for fantasy and play, taking pretty much the opposite tactic as Bare Escentuals, but leading to the same place: sales.

MAC’s reputation as an edgy, alternative brand neatly obscures the fact that it is owned by a beauty behemoth. Estee Lauder Companies sold $8.8 billion in 2011 and is one of the biggest prestige personal care companies in the world. MAC began with an alternative vibe—two men named Frank, one an entrepreneur and the other a makeup artist, collaborating on a line designed to pop on-camera and to match a wider variety of skin tones than was available on the market in 1984. Today, though, MAC is not edgy. MAC is as corporate as it gets. Estee Lauder’s individual branding strategy—that is, marketing MAC distinctly separately from, say, Bobbi Brown, which is marketed separately from Clinique, Origins, and Aveda, while all of them belong to the same company—shows that Estee Lauder understands the value of positing MAC as living on the edge even though it’s anything but.

With any beauty product—with any product, period—what we get when we plunk down our money isn’t merely a mixture of petroleum and Red #7. We get whatever set of qualities the company imparts to us simply by bearing its own label. If I wear Chanel lipstick I get a nice shade and the satisfaction of knowing I am treating myself to a luxury good; if I wear Wet ‘n’ Wild I get a similar hue plus the 99-cent smugness of almost believing I’ve gotten essentially the same product for a song. It’s what is known in marketing circles as brand equity, or the value a brand has opposed to the actual product the brand represents. Every time we wink at MAC for being cheeky, irreverent, and driven by fantasy, we increase its brand equity. By buying into our fantasies about ourselves by believing the feedback loop a company sells us, we may increase a brand’s value without spending a dime.

And to be perfectly clear: I just may continue to do exactly that on occasion. Despite the mini-Marxist in me, I blog about beauty and am enthralled with many of its trappings, and sometimes that means being enthralled with colored bits of petroleum I smear on my face. But while I’m smearing, playing, smudging—while I’m transforming—I want to be as clear as I can about understanding what I’m doing.

Beauty Blogosphere 9.30.11

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between.

(via Makezine)

From Head...
Totally rhombic: Math haircut!

But what about the log lady?: Portrait of Twin Peaks' Audrey Horne (née Sherilyn Fenn) done in cosmetics for the biweekly "Beauty Myth" feature in Toronto Standard, in which the newspaper commissions artists to do portraits using makeup as the medium.


...To Toe...
The littlest libertarians: The Hartford Courant profiles an unlikely champion to make a case for industry deregulation: fish pedicures.


...And Everything In Between: 
Pacifica discount: If you're still mourning the fact that you didn't win my August self-care giveaway, fret no more! Pacifica—a company I've loved for a while, both for their delightful lotions and transporting candles—is giving readers of The Beheld a special deal: Just use the code pacifica5r9 at checkout on www.pacificaperfume.com for 10% off any order. And you can get a taste of the other part of the giveaway, Beautiful You by Rosie Molinary, through her meditative blog. 

Pink think: Two interesting bits on the pinkification (word?) of breast cancer this week. First, an interview with "pinkwashing" activist Barbara Brenner, who takes on Avon's breast cancer research and questions not only its efficiency, but its possible hypocrisy. Second: New research indicates that heavily gendered breast cancer awareness ads might not be as effective as gender-neutral ads. When female study volunteers were shown pink-heavy ads with female faces, they rated their own personal risk as lower than volunteers who were shown non-pink ads with no photos of women. Obviously breast cancer is overwhelmingly a female disease, but I'm happy to see people looking at how pink kitsch might backfire. (Unless it means I have to give back my pink Kitchen-Aid "Cook for the Cure" mixer, which is adorbs.)

GenX beauty today: How GenXers are shaping the beauty industry—and indeed, fragmenting traditional markets on several levels. "Like baby boomers, [Allure editor Linda] Wells says, Gen-Xers have grown up not accepting the status quo. That can translate to wearing long hair even past a certain age, eschewing 'mom jeans' and participating in music, sports and other interests once reserved for 'younger women.'" Basically, we are still totally radical.

Digital beauty: L2, a think tank for digital innovation, rated beauty brands on their digital and social media savvy. Unsurprisingly, cool-girl club MAC tops the list—and with three other Estee Lauder brands not far behind, the brand is proving itself to be a digital leader. The report also shows that "digital IQ" correlates to heightened shareholder value.

Root for the little one: Procter & Gamble takes on a small soap company for trademark infringement. Willa, a soap company named for the 8-year-old daughter of an entrepreneur who created the suds after hearing her complaints of the "babyish" soap offerings available, is uncomfortably close to Wella, P&G's hair-care line that has nothing to do with soap, children, or the g.d. American way.

What's the buzz?: The making of a hot new brand in China: Burt's Bees.

Lighter shade of pale: Business-side look at skin-lightening creams, which make up 30% of the skin care market in China.

Ripoff down under: Australian retailers appear to be pocketing makeup profits; Aussie women are paying up to twice what U.S. women are for the same products, a disparity not explained away by duty taxes or currency differences.

Cosmopolitan's role in bulimia treatment: Bio of psychiatrist Chris Fairburn, who "discovered" bulimia after working with a patient who exhibited symptoms of anorexia but was curiously of normal weight. Fascinating bit of ED history: Because bulimics tend to be secretive, Fairburn couldn't find enough patients to allow his research to be comprehensive, so he rallied the editors of Cosmopolitan to write a short article about this "new eating pattern"--and got more than a thousand responses (most of whom thought they alone suffered from bingeing and purging), enough to begin treatment research.

Abercrombied: The "look policy" of Abercrombie & Fitch employees, and what that means for women with textured hair. (Thanks to re: thinking beauty for the link.)

"From where I come from, you holler at a girl": Nice look into what actually happens in the teen groups moderated by Men Can Stop Rape, beginning with a deconstruction of street harassment.

Fame game: Lady Gaga is suing Excite Worldwide for branding makeup under the Lady Gaga name. The buried lede: She did the same to a London sweets shop selling breast milk ice cream under the name Baby Gaga.

Hotel humanitarian: Two of my favorite things, flight attendants and travel shampoo, come together here with Karen Duffy's story on Nancy Rivard, a flight attendant who started Airline Ambassadors after persuading her colleagues to donate their tiny hoarded hotel bottles to refugee camps.

 Cynthia!

Gaba girl: Thanks to Autodespair for turning me on to Lester Gaba's Cynthia, the first "realistic mannequin," who had her own radio show in the 1930s. It seemed pretty awesome à la Ruby until I actually saw Cynthia, and now it seems more like Real Doll territory, but maybe that's just my damage from this documentary talking.

Mais oui!: French feminists are rallying to get rid of mademoiselle, which denotes one's marital status à la miss. I'm all for this, but the fact is I get a kick out of using miss. I also like and use Ms., but sometimes Miss feels more appropriate because it allows me to simultaneously poke fun at and utilize its old-fashioned gentility for my own purposes. La hypocrite, c'est moi.

X-ray specs: Which underwire bras work best for airport security? Chime in over at Hourglassy!

Ladies of the press: Anna Kendrick, Seth Rogen, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt briefly chat about the different ways men and women are treated by the press, with Kendrick reporting that she's always asked about her beauty routine. Besides the overarching idea that what a woman looks like is more important than she does, there's another thing at play here: You know all those beauty pages in magazines? Editors are desperate to fill those pages with something other than straight-up shilling, and so there's always a need to get celebrities to say what they like. Anytime a ladymag reporter goes to an event, she's armed with questions about facial care and exercise routines in the hopes that the celeb will throw off a quick answer. (There's an amusing bit in Laurie Sandell's wonderful graphic novel The Impostor's Daughter on this, from when she interviewed Ashley Judd for Glamour. Laurie: "So, what's your biggest beauty secret?" Ashley: "Serenity." Laurie: "OK, um, what's one beauty product you never leave the house without?" Ashley: "My higher power.")

Smells like cream spirits: Pastry chef who has made his name concocting desserts with notes of famous perfumes is reversing the equation. You know, another thing I did in the '90s was just wear vanilla extract behind my ears, but whatevs.

Fashion vs. beauty: Feminaust—an excellent site geared toward Australian feminists but of great interest to us Yankee feminists too—on delineating fashion from beauty in ways that go beyond neck-down versus neck-up. I don't necessarily agree with the conclusion (I'd put "attraction" closer to the end of the beauty spectrum than the fashion end), but it resonates with me because while I'm somewhat interested in the ways we style ourselves, my true interest lies in what draws us to one another—the "animating spirit" as the writer here puts it.

"A new haircut is a butch accessory." —Kelli Dunham

"Why Is the Fat One Always Angry?": If you're new to The Beheld, you may have missed my interview this spring with boi comic Kelli Dunham, who had some fantastic insight into gender roles, butch privilege, and where to find a barber in this damn town. So check it out, and then if you're in New York join me this Saturday, 10/1, at The Stonewall Inn for her new show, "Why Is the Fat One Always Angry?" She's a great performer, and she's also promising cookies, I'm just sayin'.

Compliments, competition, and public living: From Nahida at The Fatal Feminist: "What do I care to impress strangers on the street, who couldn’t know? Who couldn’t possibly know that sometimes–sometimes–I’m still afraid of the dark?"

What's wrong with ugly?: Parisian Feline on being an "ugly girl": "When you’re conditioned to believe that ugliness is bad and prettiness is good, well, most people will do anything to show you how 'good' you really are. But here’s what I’m here to say: being ugly isn’t a death sentence, it doesn’t say anything about your character (any more than being pretty does) and it’s not mutually exclusive from being awesome." It's a point well-taken—as evidenced by me not being able to bring myself to remove the quotes around ugly girl. It's hard to use that word without judgment, for the very reasons Ms. Feline outlines.

The science of shopping: Elissa from Dress With Courage on shopping studies: "What so many studies on shopping seem to discount or even ignore is the intimacy this activity creates." I don't particularly like shopping, but I can't deny the powers it has to bond people—and much like the bonding of beauty, it's often dismissed, and that's a shame.

There's an app for that: Virginia—who, admittedly, is a body image blogger whose work resonates with me, whose work is sometimes categorized as body image blogging—on the iPhone body-image app: "I'm not sure we need any more websites, blogs, and apps about body image!" Hallelujah, someone said it! I'm grateful for the work that's out there but I worry that the intense focus on body image might drive us away from the point, which is to feel liberated from being preoccupied with our bodies.

Beauty Blogosphere 8.12.11

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between.

From Head...
Tooth and nail: I'll be blatantly honest and say that I really, really don't understand Japan. Does that make me xeno...not phobic, I'm not scared of Japan. Xenobephuddled? Xenokonfused? In any case: People are getting all matchy-matchy with their nail polish and their teeth over there.

Rise and shine: It's one thing to read beauty routines magazines suggest we follow; it's quite another to read what women actually do in the morning. No More Dirty Looks is starting a new series that looks at women's routines, which I always find oddly hypnotic to read about.


...To Toe...
Lady financiers: Lo and behold, a pedicure story makes the Financial Times.


...And Everything In Between:
A legal wrinkle: In an industry about-face on false advertising, cosmetics company B&P is suing Kris Jenner (the mother of the Kardashian clan) for getting a face lift, after they'd hired her to be their rep for Beautiful Eyes in a Bag. To me this is actually a logical extension of the airbrushed-ad ban in Britain: WOW you mean I won't look like Kris Jenner, who has been a wealthy woman for a good long time now, just by using your product? Color me shocked. 

Bad week for beauty and Israel!: First Nivea seems to have left Israel off its main buying site (which the company says is because the Israeli page was under construction), and then Hudson New York questions why Lush won't open stores in Israel. The company reportedly has said, "We want everyone in the country where we are trading to be on an equal footing as far as basic human rights go." You know, like Saudi Arabia.

Nature's masseurs: Speaking of Israeli, a spa in the holy land is offering snake massage, in which a variety of large, heavy snakes (great for deep-tissue work!) and smaller, wrigglier types (for the fine "fluttering" effect) are dumped upon your back while you...relax. Fish pedicures are so 2010.

(via)

Ms. Toxic Beauty: Filipino activists hold a "toxic beauty parade" to call attention to the dangers of skin whiteners.

Feminista: Fascinating historical look at the links between fashion and feminism over at Final Fashion. (Thanks to Terri at Rags Against the Machine for the link!)

Peas in a pod: Fun piece about two friends with different attitudes toward cosmetics swapping beauty regimes for a day. 

Go, Glo!: Fantastic interview at, um, Interview with one of my personal heroes, Gloria Steinem: "I have to say that I was not considered beautiful before I was a feminist. I was a pretty girl before, but suddenly, after I was publicly identified as a feminist, I was beautiful. So, many people were really commenting on what they thought feminists looked like." (Also, she wants to live with the elephants, but I'm not telling you more because you really should read the whole thing.)

Pretty smart: Sally at Already Pretty takes on the case of smart vs. pretty in a way I haven't seen before—examining how we got to that point in the first place. I'm pretty much always game for any rant about how it's treated as an either/or question, but to see a reasoned consideration of the question is even more engaging.

Love it}: Jill at Feministe calls for a friendly punctuation mark that is decidedly not an exclamation point, given that they're disproportionately used by women to soften our meaning. I suggest that we colonize }. Also, I know this has nothing to do with beauty, but it's so rare that the punctuation geek in me gets to come out} (Original study here. Enjoy})

Hemlines and defiance: Decoding Dress's three-part series on hemlines is a must-read: She covers privilege, defiance, age, and triumph. I've only recently begun to worry that I'm getting too old to show as much leg as I used to, and this series came my way just in time.

Carry on: London salon chain co-opts, then gives the most hilarious apology ever for co-opting, the "Keep calm and carry on" slogan during the riots. "in all honesty, before today we hadn't done any historical research on the popular slogan that has been popping up on coffee shop posters. we simply thought it was a really cute phrase & worked well in describing that our rosewater calming gel helps calm the skin & that it is travel-friendly so you can even carry it on a plane." (Lower-case theirs.)

Talk about a bombshell: Chances are that the breast-implant bombs, which the TSA recently issued a warning about, will not actually ever happen. WHEW.

Black beauty: The Atlanta Post examines the current state of beauty companies targeting black women. Lots of issues raised here: The growing focus on serving the needs of multiethnic women, the ever-present and major gaps between many customers' needs and the products on the market, and how the industry can better serve its customers even when once-black-owned lines are being snapped up by cosmetics giants.

Beauty Blogosphere 8.5.11

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between.

"I feel I'm anonymous in my work. When I look at the pictures, I never see myself; they aren't self-portraits."
—Cindy Sherman (Right, because sometimes they're ads.)

From Head... 
MAC's newest spokesperson: Oh, MAC! You ever-loving high-concept owned by one of the world's biggest cosmetics companies (Estee Lauder) but appearing to be so indie and edgy! You've done it again, with a Cindy Sherman ad campaign. 


...To Toe...  
Barack Obama will personally paint your toenails: Or so says Fox News contributor Sandy Rios, because that's clearly the next logical step after mandating health insurers to cover birth control. "Is the White House out of their mind? ...We’re $14 trillion in debt and now we’re going to cover birth control, breast pumps, counseling for abuse? Are we going to do pedicures and manicures as well?" 


...And Everything In Between:
The beauty biz: 2011 beauty trends from the business end—masstige, time-savers, online retail, green beauty, and heavily engineered products. (Like magnetic hair.) 

Hilton head: How hotels wind up with the shampoo/conditioner/soap brands that they do. (Also: Hilton once had its own brand of wine??) 

Shiseido staying afloat: Even after the March disasters that disrupted domestic production, Japan-based Shiseido nearly broke even in Q1, with a $3.6 million net loss. The prescient company had recently expanded its overseas markets and acquisitions, including Bare Escentuals, which performed well and was able to absorb some of the losses from the catastrophes in Japan. 

Chinese prestige: Business-end review of the Chinese relationship to high-end beauty brands, namely Estee Lauder. The analysts even say that they don't anticipate Chinese women or men to withdraw from the market despite the brand's recent 10% price hike. 

Beauty school: Manhattan College to launch an American first—a master's program in cosmetics engineering.

Reading Letterman's own fat jokes back to him, after whipping the list from her cleavage. Magic!

Letterman's big fat zero: I've never been a big Kirstie Alley fan, but her classy callout of David Letterman and his jokes about her weight is a winner.

Wine as sunscreen?: I can't tell if we're supposed to drink wine or apply it to our skin, but I know which one I'll do. Side note: I once befriended an elderly Sicilian gentleman who insisted that he'd been using beer as sunscreen all his life, and indeed poured a 12-ouncer all over my back when I realized I'd forgotten my sunscreen for a day at the beach, and indeed I did not burn. So! 

"I do not have an eating disorder": Fantastic comics-style graphic series about developing and beginning recovery from anorexia. 
 

The vagina monologue.

Summer's Eve and its anthropomorphic vajerge: Stephen Colbert takes a long-awaited stand on vaginal puppeteering and marketing to the ladies. It's particularly irksome to the women of color some of the ads were targeting, which Wise Latinas breaks down, complete with a group photo of the trainees entering the branding sector of the agency that created the ads. (Guess how many of them appeared to have firsthand experience being brown?)

Just can't get enough: Speaking of vaginas, Tits and Sass goes to a Vagina Pageant. Meet Miss Beautiful Vagina 2011!

Fucking-a: Y'all know I love a good word post, which is why I'm into Hugo Schwyzer's challenge to his students: Start using fuck to mean sex, or fuck as an expletive of anger, but not both. "If 'fucking' is the most common slang term for intercourse, and 'fuck you' or 'fuck off' the most common terms to express contempt or rage, what’s the end result? A culture that has difficulty distinguishing sex from violence." I'm a fan of fuck as expression of emphasis or anger, and so I'll take option B, and the rest of the time I will stick with befriend the beast with two backs.

Run, Tori, run!: Tori at Anytime Yoga just wanted a pair of running shoes for her underpronation—but salespeople kept pushing her toward the "adorable" shoes. I really hate to say it, but this has happened to me too, and I've overwhelmingly found that running shoe salesmen are less likely to do this than saleswomen. Maybe there's a difference in training? Maybe female sales staff feel like bonding with female customers over "cute shoes" can give them an edge that their male colleagues wouldn't necessarily have? I don't know. I just know that men tend to point me to the ugly shoes that feel good more often than women. C'mon, ladies, step up!

Mind/body: Cameo at Verging on Serious had to give up aggressively working out because of a rare muscular disease...that she might not have had all along. The official diagnosis is still in the air, but "I might have 'loathed myself' into a metabolic myopathy as a result of (years spent) disordered eating and over-exercising." A compelling read that speaks to the intersection of mind and body.
 
Instant perspective: Rebekah at Jaunty Dame gives a lesson—however unfortunate—on indifference, gender, and vulnerability. With her just-shaved head, she was mistaken for a man twice in one day, then attacked the next.

Body image billboards "lack newsworthiness": Beauty Redefined's billboard campaign in northern Utah that promotes bodily self-acceptance is the first of its kind that I know of—but their work was deemed unnewsworthy after a news organization had sent out a reporter to interview members of the team behind the billboards. And, you know, I get it—"rah rah" news stories aren't my cup of tea either. But the way Beauty Redefined breaks down the messages the rejection actually sent shows what's really going on here. (A news story that ran the week the billboard story was supposed to: yoga for dogs.) 

"Manufactured discontent": Sally at Already Pretty on that underarm-beautifying deodorant that Dove "love your body until we tell you not to" products invented, because there's not quite enough products out there for us to be buying yet. "I use concealer on my zits and dark circles....I shave my legs and paint my toenails and someday I’m fairly sure I’ll dye my gray hairs. And I’m generally pretty grateful for the products and procedures that I utilize to gently alter my appearance. But I try to keep an eye out for manufactured discontent, stealthy marketing that targets my body confidence."

Workout Spanx: You know, one of the very few downsides of reading all the fantastic blogs on my Google Reader is that sometimes, because of all the spot-on feminist critique my favorite writers do, I learn about the existence of things I wish you hadn't known of. I was able to introduce mandals to a handful of readers here (apologies all around), and now Virginia lets me in on...workout Spanx, which will look great paired with my glamorous armpits.

Beauty Blogosphere 7.29.11

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between.

Neodymium magnetic blow-dryer (via)

From Head... 
Hair magnet: Styling products using magnetic fibers to create a fuller, thicker appearance are being developed in Israel. This is sort of brilliant, and a possible plot point in espionage films, when the femme fatale with a luscious mane walks by the supercomputer and erases all covert files.


...To Toe...
Ice cream pedicure: Okay, so they don't soak your tootsies in melted ice cream, but the fact that there is such a thing as a pedicure inspired by ice cream flavors pretty much proves the study we talked about yesterday. You know, the one about cosmetic use being primarily driven by emotion?


...To Everything In Between:
Thieves!: 41% of British men surveyed borrow their wife's or girlfriend's beauty products, with moisturizer leading the pack of stolen goods, followed by razors. 12% of women argued with said British men about this habit.

Eirebrush ban: The Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland has banned two L'Oréal ads for retouching them beyond what the product advertised would be able to achieve. You know, as much as I don't like airbrushing, this claim actually seems sort of hollow to me--am I oversimplifying here? Am I optimistic or cynical for thinking that while these ads are manipulative, the mere act of using Julia Roberts to advertise a product means that we as consumers sort of understand that the ad doesn't represent what the product is capable of?

Mea culpa or greenwashing?: Proctor & Gamble has vowed to go green: using 100% renewable or recycled materials for all products and packaging, creating zero consumer waste in landfills, and designing products that maximize the conservation of resources. Sounds good, but is it just a more elaborate form of greenwashing?

But do they use coupons?: Sixty-four percent of women surveyed earning $100k-$149k a year would continue buying a store-brand beauty product if they were pleased with the results, as opposed to only 50% of women making $50k-$74k. My question is, who wouldn't continue buying a store-brand beauty product if they were pleased with the results? Of course, I'm so rich I replaced all my teeth with rubies, so.

Did the beauty myth kill Amy Winehouse?: I think addiction is far more complicated than what Andy Martin posits here in the Times, but he makes some excellent points: "[H]er devastating — and finally lethal — self-critique tended to home in on her body."

U.S., U.K., and body image: American women report more body confidence than British women, but also want (and get) more plastic surgery, reports Allure. "We love our boobs and we love our butts, but we still want plastic surgery? What do you think is going on?" Allure asks. Well, since you asked! Maybe hyperfocusing on the body, even in a positive sense, leads to the sense that we have and should have total control over our shape? Or that hyping up our body's good points ("I love my butt!" say 30% of American women) just leads to a greater gulf between our ideal selves and our reality? Maybe we shouldn't be focusing so much on "loving" our bodies (for love can invite hate, as anyone who has ever shouted at a lover who would never shout at a friend can attest) and instead focus on caring for them?

Of corsets complicated: On the heels of Decoding Dress's post about shapewear comes a WWD piece (subscribers only, but the gist is that shapewear is now more acceptable, and the market is doing well). "It’s affordable and there isn’t the stigma of cosmetic surgery and the paranoia. It’s like, ‘I put on my lipstick, my perfume and my shaper, and I can take it off whenever I want.'" says stylist Phillip Bloch. Makes sense to me. Of course, so does the concluding quote by psychologist Jennifer Baumgartner: “When people have extra weight on, they don’t like the feeling of their flesh jiggling and shapewear often eliminates that,” she said. “Shapewear can offer a sense of security, but it’s a crutch and a quick fix. It can actually become addicting.”

Hair-care regulation in Ghana: The Ghana Hairdressers and Beauticians Association is lobbying for state licensing. This could have trickle-down effects in the States; unlicensed (and unqualified) hairstylists can flood the African/African-American hair-care market and spread misinformation that can lead to traction alopecia.

Not in favor of unsafe cosmetics, mind you: And in regulation news closer to home, not all small beauty companies are reacting to the proposed Safe Cosmetics Act with joy.

Is it really the makeup that needs to be how-to'd here?

"Ancient Chinese secret" not so ancient: Chinese cosmetics brands are reinventing their images to compete with global brands for Chinese consumers...by touting natural ingredients and traditional Chinese ways. I know, I know, we all thought the Chinese women applied their makeup by correctly channeling their chi. But this is an interesting look into how traditional production can be fetishized even within the country of origin.

Body-image sovereignty mad libs!: Allyson at Decoding Dress takes on questions of bodily ownership when you want to lose weight but don't want to feel like you're falling prey to the beauty myth in doing so, prompted by Virginia's earlier take on the matter in response to a reader question. (Also, if you liked my post on "dressing your figure," check out her post on the myth of horizontal stripes.)

"I woke up as a man today": Holly Pervocracy on gender performance ("Butt-ass naked and half-asleep, in a completely "default" state for a human being, I was about as masculine as a person can get"), and her gracious clarification when she realized she might've gotten it wrong. (She usually doesn't. Get it wrong, that is; she's a lucid writer on gender, though there are many places where I disagree with her.) "I, personally, feel like femininity is something that requires me to make effort and make changes, and masculinity is just how I am when I wake up. I, personally, am not everyone." 

On seeing, and being seen: Oliver Seth Wharton on a run-in with his neighbor that would have been unremarkable, were it not that it marked the first time he'd seen her without her chador. He questions his own complex reaction in light of seeing her outside of her usual proscribed role: "The smile disconcerted me more than her presence. It felt both like a gesture of neighborly kindness and a confession. Well, you caught me. This is what I look like. ... Maybe we just can’t bear the raw power of seeing each other."

"You are capable of much more than being looked at": Congrats to Beauty Redefined--their media-literacy and body-image billboards have hit northern Utah, and they are fantastic. Take a peek!

Musings of a recovering woman: Rachel Hills on her eating disorder history, and the ways it plays (and doesn't play) into being a feminist. "Having an eating disorder didn’t make me a feminist. I was a feminist a good few years before I started starving myself and throwing up meals. But I do suspect that the emotions and general sense of confusion that led to me doing those things might be the same emotions and confusion that led to my fascination with gender issues."

Independence Day: American Beauty Trivia

Happy American Independence Day!!! A few bits of trivia about the largest beauty industry in the world for you to chew on along with your tofu hot dog (or, for non-American readers, while you patiently wait for Americans to come down off this weekend's nationalist high; we apologize for our absence but can't help ourselves).

1) Estee Lauder (whose birthday was July 1, incidentally) got her start in high school, helping out at her chemist uncle's stop after classes. She worked with him to develop the Super Rich All-Purpose Cream; when the owner of the salon where she got her hair done complimented her on her skin, Estee returned with samples of the cream and gave demonstrations, and a business was born.

2) San Francisco-based BeneFit Cosmetics developed one of their most popular products, BeneTint, at the behest of a stripper who requested a potion to make her nipples look more pink.

3) Madame C.J. Walker is known for being the first self-made female millionaire in America, but her inspiration is less touted. Suffering from stress-related alopecia, she tried a variety of products to prevent her hair from falling out. Then she had a dream in which "a big Black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up for my hair. Some of the remedy was grown in Africa, but I sent for it, put it in my scalp, an din a few weeks my hair was coming in faster than it had ever fallen out."

4) Nail guru Deborah Lippman used to be a pro jazz singer. Guess that's why she knows the blues.

5) Legendary Charlie perfume was named after Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon. Why Revlon and not Revson? He partnered with a chemist, Charles Lachman, to develop the line's first product, a nail polish.

Beauty Blogsophere 7.1.11

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between.

I think I'll try crushing up some Zoloft to use as eyeshadow.

From Head... 
Put on a happy face: Physicians Formula bothers me for two reasons. 1) There's no apostrophe in the brand name, which—speaking as someone who has spent 12 years correcting incorrect apostrophe use for ladymags—drives me bonkers. 2) They're putting made-up antidepressants in their "Happy Booster" face powder. Harmless enough, but the clinicizing of makeup adds to the "hope in a jar" concept—and when we're talking mental health, that's a little icky to me.

Beauty on ice: Celebrity as makeup models normally make me yawn, but I'm tickled by Johnny Weir for MAC. (Via Bellasugar.)

...To Toe...
Home pedicure: 'Tis the season, after all. You can read a zillion of these in a zillion magazines. But why would you do that when the fantastic Jane Feltes will tell you in her trademark fashion?

...And Everything In Between
B.S. in beauty: Scientific breakdown of the "DNA CryoStem™ Skin Therapy System" and its ilk over at Forbes. 

Marilyn myth: Please, God, let the myth of Marilyn Monroe being a size 16 die already. It started out nicely enough but I really don't think all this size talk is helping anyone anymore, is it? 

Sunglasses made from human hair: Why is it that I think "momsicles" are hysterical and these are hideous? 

Fly fishers vs. fashionistas: "For someone to use them as a fashion statement is just sacrilegious," says a fisherman in this piece about the fly fishing feathers that are now popular as a hair accessory. I wouldn't go so far as to call it sacrilegious (it's no hipster headdress, that's for sure) but it is...odd? My mother gave me a fishing tackle box to organize my makeup when I was 13, so it seems this particular cross-section has wrestled before.

Cheryl may have been subject to a ridiculously sexist ad campaign, but at least she didn't have to stuff her beauty kit into 3-oz. bottles.

Fly me: An entire online boutique devoted to TSA-friendly beauty products. I'm happy just buying a bunch of little containers and transferring products as need be, but this store is well-curated and if I weren't as frugal as I am with my beauty products I'd be shopping here.

Smile, baby: Male participants in a study on sexist behavior were less likely to identify "benevolent sexism" even after being instructed on exactly what it was. I don't think this is because men are clueless oafs; I think it's because it can indeed be confusing for even a well-intentioned man (or woman) to navigate. There are a lot of mixed messages out there--including from many women who actively welcome instances of benevolent sexism. Including, at times, me.

Scale vs. mirror: On Day 96 without mirrors, Kjerstin Gruys asks if wanting to lose weight is at odds with feminism. Looking forward to reading her part II; in the meantime, it might be a good time to revisit this pondering over at Beauty Schooled.

Androgynous dressing: Sally at Already Pretty on her erstwhile fears about the androgynous look and body acceptance. This resonated with me; I never feared looking boyish, but I believed I was "curvy" (even when I was rather prototypical-teenage-girl-shaped, which is to say not terribly curvy but it sure felt like it) and even back then the magazines were all about "embrace your curves"! To this day I don't know if I prefer certain fashions because I have a genuine aesthetic preference for them, or if it's that I've coded certain items as "good for my figure" and have made myself like them.

Public eating disorders: Eating disorder awareness is lacking in some areas, exercise addiction among them. I try not to project my thoughts about appropriate behavior onto others, but someone who is not a professional athlete (hell, someone who is) working out 14 hours a day seems like exercise bulimia to me. Charlotte Andersen, guest blogging over at Never Say Diet, asks why we haven't questioned Heidi Montag's public eating disorder yet.

Domo arigato, Mrs. Roboto: Japanese pop star is computer-generated. It's easy to point fingers and laugh because O Japan! ("This must happen every day in Japan," snarks Gawker), but does anyone else remember the Mirabella stunt—a computer composite model on the cover, which was clearly labeled inside the magazine as a composite—which garnered representation offers for the nonexistent model?

Beautiful people: I'm far from scandalized by BeautifulPeople.com and their PR stunts, but still got a kick out of this peek into the site, courtesy a writer who submitted a picture of Ryan Reynolds and gained entry that way (his perfectly normal-looking real face was rejected). I'm particularly glad to see him point out a factor that is far too often overlooked in studies of attractiveness, even if the "study" is just one lone reporter: They rely on normative ideas of beauty, not any one individual's idea of it.

Edited to add: Hollaback has an interesting support program going; check it out and support it here. As a bonus, it "stars" the badass subway woman from this video that went viral when she called out a subway groper on his behavior.

Beauty Blogosphere 6.24.11

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between.

Uncomfortably numb.

From Head...
Because every girl wants to be a vampire: Am I old-fashioned for being freaked out by lip balm with Benzocaine, designed to "leave your victims’ lips numb and their hearts racing"?

...To Toe...
This case has no legs: New York man sues SoHo pedicure outlet for not complying with the Americans With Disabilities Act guidelines. His disability? He lost both legs in a car accident. (Interesting piece on him in Blackbook a ways back.)

...And Everything In Between:

BUSINESS
Men in the cosmetics industry: Fast Company asks if LinkedIn is a gender equalizer: Men thrive in the cosmetics industry, according to LinkedIn's analysis of user data. Yawn, yawn, male CEOs, blargh. But! Women rule ranching and tobacco! (Go cowgirls!) My initial hunch would be that the novelty factor of women in those fields might give them an advantage, though I'm hesitant to say the same for men. If that world is anything like another female-focused industry I'm familiar with—women's magazines—the business side is likely run by men while the day-to-day operations and development is run by women.

More pink Cadillacs: Mary Kay still going strong, signing up 165,000 new representatives in April—the largest monthly amount in a decade. These are independent sellers, meaning these workers may still be underemployed, but Mary Kay's endurance is a testament to the ability of woman-driven businesses to attract a work force looking for flexibility. (Per the above item, though, it's worth nothing that the Mary Kay CEO is a dude with an MBA, not a lady with a dream.)

Dollar stacks on the left are ad dollars from 2009; on the right, from 2010. Each bill represents roughly $50 million in ad budgets. (Via Ad Age and Marketing Degree.)

Ad budgets: Interesting graphic from Ad Age detailing ad dollars for various beauty companies. The buried lede here is Axe's ad cuts, though I suppose given the onslaught of, what, 2006, you can only go down from there. (The entire cross-industry graphic is here. Of note: Weight-loss companies went up, quelle surprise, as did Proactiv and Yoplait. Good to see the latter company can afford to swallow the cost of their pulled eating-disorder-littered ad. While jogging in place.)

Those hormones paid for your yacht, lady: Evelyn Lauder makes a good point in an unfortunate way at the Elly Awards Luncheon: "Older women should be on boards." Agreed! "There's just less hormones, less crying." Oh! I'd really like to see a broader conversation about women and aging happening (Naomi Wolf's piece in the Washington Post was a start, but am I alone in finding it a little dismissive of younger women?), and I suppose these sorts of fits and starts are a beginning? Maybe?

Holy house: Estee Lauder's synagogue in Queens gets a makeover. (Why am I so obsessed with Estee Lauder real estate? Between the casino and the graveyard I'm a one-woman watch.)

INTERNATIONAL

Behind the veil: A young Saudi-Canadian woman on feeling liberated from the beauty myth by wearing the hijab. "When I cover myself, I make it virtually impossible for people to judge me according to the way I look.  I cannot be categorized because of my attractiveness or lack thereof."

Characteristics of the Chinese beauty market: Chinese women as demanding cosmetics consumers. Interesting bits about how even though China is rapidly becoming more westernized, there's still a very strong Chinese ethos to cosmetics--hair-dyeing, for example, is rare except to cover grays.

Faux cosmeceuticals: False claims in cosmetic advertising increased five-fold in Korea last quarter, with products fraudulently advertising use of "stem cells." (Ew!)

NATURAL BEAUTY

More false advertising: Center for Environmental Health sues Kiss My Face and Hain Celestial (Avalon Organics, Alba Botanical) for falsely labeling cosmetics as organic when they're not. Say it ain't so! I love Alba lotions!

BEAUTY BLOGOSPHERE

Still from Dark Girls, which, from the preview, looks to be startling and poignant.

Help kickstart Dark Girls: Via Ashe at Dramatis Personae comes an alert to help fund a documentary that sounds incredibly promising about women's skin tone in the black community.

Wax on, wax off: Sally at Already Pretty on feminism and body hair, which has been a sticking point for me personally. I shave my legs, etc., because I feel more comfortable that way; I tried challenging that, and just felt unappealing to myself. Ironically, the way I came to peace with this was to start shaving all the time, not just when my legs would be available for public viewing. I realized that I truly do take my own pleasure in having smooth legs. As Sally writes, "Does this mean I’m willingly bowing to the patriarchy on this issue? I guess you could see it that way.... Everything we do to change how our bodies look, feel, and smell is a nod to societal norms. And I’m willing to nod occasionally."

Hup!: Allyson at Decoding Dress questions the symbiosis of fashion and the military—it might not be just a one-way conversation.

Reflections: Y'all know I'm a sucker for mirror talk, and Kate at Eat the Damn Cake goes in for it: "People say, 'This mirror makes me look weird,' but they only half believe themselves. The other half is saying, 'I think I might actually look like that.'"

Socrates' sister: Feminist Philosophers questions whether philosophy itself is gendered, and of course the answer is a flaming YES, which points to why questions of personal beauty haven't received their philosophical due. "The self of feminist philosophy...often knows that Descartes was wrong...to hold that the human mind is whole and entire unto itself. She cannot be the whole respository for the normativity that is needed for a theory of concepts, for example. Her intellectual thriving is dependent on social inputs, corrections and co-constructions."

Mentoring: Not beauty-related, but enough young women have contacted me through here for this to be pertinent: Australian feminist writer and blogger Rachel Hills has some excellent posts on women and mentoring for her recent Mentoring Week (well, weeks) project. Here is but one of them, with links to more at the bottom. You read a lot about the importance of mentors but this series explores unexpected angles, like mentoring and media and male/female mentoring styles.

BEST OF THE REST

Yes, I'm exploiting this bunny for its sheer cuteness, but I'm not going to pinch its ass, so we're all cool, right?

Bunny hop: This story at The Good Men Project about being a Playboy Bunny in 1978 is revealing about the effects of being in a highly image-conscious environment: "I was getting a thorough training at work in just how much looks mattered if you were female." Aw, hell, it's really just an excuse for me to recommend Gloria Steinem's classic essay "I Was a Playboy Bunny." (I can't find it online, but here's an excerpt.) The Good Men Project piece isn't as insightful, but it's more personal, as the writer's reasons for being a Bunny weren't journalistic.

Sweet smell of success: Between Mercedes-Benz perfumes and The New York Times-scented candle, can't wait to catch a whiff of the bourgeoisie!

Portrait of a perfumer: Better fragrance chat here, with Bella Sugar's Annie Tomlin interviewing fragrance legend Frédéric Malle.

Beauty exhibit skin-deep?: Thoughtful Tom Teicholz review of the "Beauty Culture" exhibit in L.A., asking the pointed question: "Is this exhibit really a conversation?" So much beauty talk isn't talk at all, but presented images. I still want to see this exhibit, but am eager to keep the beauty conversation going.

Five Beauty Sale Finds For Which I'd Gladly Shell Out Retail Price

I rarely write about products on here, in part because so many other people do it so well, and with more genuine enthusiasm than I have even at my most enthused. But after last week's post on ladymag beauty sales, I took a look at my collection and realize there are some damn good products I never would have tried had I not gotten them for a dollar—and that I'd be willing to (or already have) purchase at retail value. So in the name of beauty sisterhood, I present: beauty sale finds worth their actual price.

1) MAC Mineralize Skinfinish Natural in Sun Power: Um, so I didn't realize until I read the product description that this isn't necessarily a bronzer. That's how I use it, though. I like that it's a hard powder, not a loose one that gets everywhere, and that it's not particularly shimmery. Honestly, bronzers are really all about whatever tone happens to work with your skin, so maybe I just lucked out here. But in any case, it's palm-sized so it feels more luxurious than some brands. Because big = luxury, because I am American.

2) Hard Candy Sheer Envy Primer: When I interviewed a beauty editor, she told me that one of her must-haves was primer. I've always been skeptical about primers, as it seems exactly like the kind of thing cosmetics companies would create just to make you buy more stuff. But! Primers are awesome! This one creates a nice base, giving the illusion of a smoother skin texture, and even though it's not billed as a mattifier, I notice I don't get shiny as quickly as I normally do when I put this on. It takes 15 seconds and the face-feel is nice and smooth, and even though I hate that this product uses "envy" in its title, I do love wearing it.

 

Um, this image has nothing to do with body cream! But the scent of the body cream I got is discontinued, so instead of picturing a product I don't actually own I'm turning you on to Tatterhood, a collection of traditional fairy tales by The Feminist Press featuring strong female protagonists. Awesome gift for a young reader. And thus, I have ameliorated the utter lack of intellectual heft in this post.

3) C.O. Bigelow Body Cream: One of the downsides of the beauty sale is that your risk of finding a product you love and then having it discontinued is higher, because the companies are throwing everything at you, and so few products wind up sticking around in the long run. So my preferred fragrance, Ginger Mentha, is sadly discontinued (though they have other Ginger Mentha products). But what I really love about this moisturizer is its perfect mix of creaminess without greasiness; it's light enough in summer but strong enough for winter, and basically I am in love.

4) Jergens Natural Glow Revitalizing Daily Moisturizer: In theory, I think it's a terrible idea to dye your skin orange. In practice, though! I love looking tan! I'm too lazy to use this all the time, but when I do use it, it gives a natural, gradual glow that doesn't make you look orange and that won't make you regret using it if you miss a spot. The smell isn't quite up to par yet but it's miles better than that tanning stuff we used in the '80s. All the magazines say this is the best gradual self-tanner, and though I haven't tried others, I can't see what would make one better than this.

5) Lush Coconut Deodorant Powder: Truthfully, I don't use this often, because my morning routine always involves me putting on deodorant after I've gotten dressed, and since this is a powder it would get everywhere. But every so often I remember its existence and put it on before I get dressed (in something light-colored, mind you), and it's fantastic. It's surprisingly effective for a powder, feels nice to put on, and smells like coconut, which, combined with the Jergens Natural Glow, will have to suffice until I can spend six months on a beach in Thailand.

On the Birthday of Anne Frank

Sixty-nine years ago this Sunday, Anne Frank turned 13 years old. The most famous of the gifts given to her on June 12, 1942 was, of course, a diary bound in red gingham that would become one of the world's most widely read books.

There's another item which makes an appearance alongside that diary less than a month after this milestone birthday that intrigues me. On the morning of July 5, 1942, Anne's sister received a call-up notice from the SS, and Otto Frank told his daughters of a long-fomented plan. The family was to go into hiding; July 16 had been the target date, but with Margot Frank's sudden call-up notice, there was no time to spare. "Margot and I started packing our most important belongings into a schoolbag," Anne wrote on July 8. "The first thing I stuck in was this diary, and then curlers, handkerchiefs, schoolbooks, a comb and some old letters. Preoccupied by the thought of going into hiding, I stuck the craziest things in the bag, but I'm not sorry."

Let me highlight what stands out to me here: Anne Frank packed curlers.

Yes, curlers were more de rigueur in 1942 than they are today; it was probably less like packing lipstick and closer to packing, say, dental floss, or the comb she also tucked into her bag. Yes, she was probably in shock and automatically packed as she might for a sleepover at a friend's house, not for going into hiding for an indefinite period during wartime. Yet in a way, that's exactly what hooks me about this small bit of reportage: In the midst of a waking nightmare, in the midst of one of the greatest horrors this world has seen, this particular 13-year-old reached not for "the craziest things," but to something that could potentially provide familiarity, routine, a pastime, and some semblance of normalcy. She reached for an emblem of beauty.

At best, it would be disingenuous to claim that perspectives on beauty form an essential lesson that Anne Frank's diary gives us. At worst, it would be so dismissive of her legacy as to exit the realm of integrity. Please rest assured that I'm making no such claim. What I am saying is that her instinct to grab her curlers pays testament to the anchor that beauty rituals can become during times of chaos. Whether, given more time, she would have categorized curlers as an essential item worth bringing along in one of the two bags she toted to Prinsengracht 267, we don't know. We only know that with mere hours of notice before going into hiding—during which she had to select which clothing she could layer without attracting too much attention on the streets of Amsterdam, say good-bye to her cat, try not to distract her parents from the crucial tasks at hand, and begin to process the notion of living a life hidden away—curlers were instinctively deemed indispensable enough to take the journey with her. After her diary, they were the second thing she listed packing.

When I reread that diary recently, in addition to being struck by the sheer skill of her writing, I found myself on high alert for her other perspectives on appearance. She writes of emulating the hairstyles in the movie-star magazines that Miep Gies, one of the people helping the family hide, would bring to her, and reports that she could "read the disapproval" on the faces of the other residents of the Annex when she'd model her creations. She writes of a cross-dressing episode she concocted with Peter, a boy two years older than she is who also lives in the Annex, for the evening's entertainment. "We made our appearance, with Peter in one of his mother's skin-tight dresses and me in his suit. ... The grown-ups split their sides laughing, and we enjoyed ourselves every bit as much."

In time, she'd muse on the effect her growing romance with Peter would have on her appearance. 1944: "I saw my face in the mirror, and it looked so different. My eyes were clear and deep, my cheeks were rosy, which they hadn't been in weeks, my mouth was softer. I looked happy, and yet there was something so sad in my expression that the smile immediately faded from my lips. I'm not happy, since I know Petel's not thinking of me, and yet I can still feel his beautiful eyes gazing at me..." She evaluates the charm of herself and others, dubbing fellow Annex resident Mrs. van Daam a "coquette" and later damning herself as the same, when she reflects on how popular she was at school before going into hiding:

You're probably wondering how I could have charmed all those people. Peter says it's because I'm "attractive," but that isn't it entirely. The teachers were amused and entertained by my clever answers, my witty remarks, my smiling face and my critical mind. That's all I was: a terrible flirt, coquettish and amusing. ... Would all that admiration eventually have made me overconfident? It's a good thing that, at the height of my glory, I was suddenly plunged into reality. It took me more than a year to get used to doing without admiration. —March 7, 1944

It's precocious, insightful, mature. And, of course, heartbreaking.

"How did they see me at school? As the class comedian, the eternal ringleader, never in a bad mood, never a crybaby... I look back at that Anne Frank as a pleasant, amusing, but superficial girl, who has nothing to do with me. ... I'd like to live that seemingly carefree and happy life for an evening, a few days, a week. At the end of that week I'd be exhausted, and would be grateful to the first person to talk to me about something meaningful. ... My serious side is always there." —March 7, 1944


I'm aware that much of what stood out to me upon rereading this book as an adult who writes about the concept of personal beauty was a result of my eyes being primed for her thoughts on appearance, not an integral part of her experience in the Annex. Perhaps that detail of Anne Frank packing curlers is much the same; it could be utterly insignificant even after establishing that we're talking about relatively trivial aspects of her story. But the very power of Anne's diary is in its normalcy: I recall reading it as an adolescent and feeling ashamed of myself for being enraptured with her romance with Peter when I knew full well what the larger scope was. The Diary of a Young Girl is used to instruct students on the horrors of the Holocaust because she's a protagonist we like, feel a kinship with, and perhaps, if we're her age, begin to feel like we can relate to. It's an absurd claim, of course, but that's the paradox that makes the diary so resonant: Her ability to communicate what a gifted but basically normal teenage girl was feeling in extreme circumstances led me, an 11-year-old girl in South Dakota, to feel like I related to Anne, wanted to befriend her, except--oh yeah, she was a Jewish girl in hiding from the Nazis during WWII. So in honor of what would have been her eighty-second birthday, I'm meditating on the documented aspects of her life that embodied the normalcy that aided her work in becoming so compelling. I'm meditating on the moment of confusion, fear, and necessity that prompted her to instinctually reach for her diary above all other possessions, and on what shade that instinct took when she then put her hand on her curlers, put them into her schoolbag, and moved on.

Beauty Blogosphere 4.29.11

The latest beauty news, from head to toe.

From Head...

Falsies, clearly, are the answer.

Eyelash magic beans recalled: The FDA has issued warnings to three brand owners of eyelash growth products. RapidLash Eyelash Renewal Serum, NeuLash Eyelash Technology, and NeuveauBrow Active Eyebrow Technology were all making claims that went beyond the scope of the Cosmetics Act, promising physiological changes that would classify a product as a drug, not a cosmetic. They also contain unapproved new drugs. A sad, sad day for the sufferers of eyelash hypotrichosis, an ailment pretty much invented by Latisse.

Blushing beauties: A blush indicates that you're trustworthy, indicates research published in Emotion. "Cheeks," my junior high nickname, has been vindicated.

Conditioner, how do I love thee? It's not often that beauty products get their own poem, so Hannah Stephenson's poem "Conditioner" is a particular delight.

...To Toe...
Foot washing: Notorious lady-hater Mel Gibson says he'd give Jodie Foster a pedicure "every day of the week if I could." I sort of like the notion of him playing Mary Magdalene to Jodie-Jesus but this comment still weird me out...

Fish pedicure goes to court: Any day now the Arizona Court of Appeals will rule on the legality of fish pedicures. I don't care what you say, I still want one. 

Random shoe company pair-ups: Which one is weirder: Payless ShoeSource getting into beauty products, or Manolo Blahnik execs getting into designer milk?

Haute Cowture

...And Everything In Between

The perfume you can't smell: As a former Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab addict, I can attest to the transformative power of scent, and this profile of master perfumer Christopher Brosius is a good read. Still, I'll go on record here: If you're trying to make a perfume nobody can smell, you're kind of an asshole.

Nail polish sales expanding: UK nail polish sales have increased at twice the rate of other color cosmetics in the past five years. Increased professional visibility, longer-lasting returns than makeup, and, of course, the classic "little indulgence" in low economic times are all viable theories. Is nail polish a better economic indicator than the "lipstick index"?

Nine weird beauty inventions: Play-Doh perfume, fine. But sleep support for your breasts just seems kooky.

Psychology Today still hates feminism: A ridiculous sexist-apologist Psychology Today story on how people need "to accept the not-so-pretty fact" that some people are better-looking than others. You don't say! ("Here's the TRUTH! Finally!" wrote the friend who initially e-mailed this to me.) Do yourself a favor and don't read that piece without reading Holly's awesome takedown of it.

Standard sizing, please?: Anyone with two X chromosomes knows that clothing sizes are bullshit. So until the fashion industry finally gives up on vanity sizing altogether and comes up with a different system (waist girth? hip girth? even the numbers we have would kind of work if they made any sense), we can all make do with the body-scan technology profiled in this NYTimes article. It's come to a body scan, folks.

The beauty upsell: Great piece at Marie Claire by the always-excellent Virginia Sole-Smith of Beauty Schooled, about how budding aestheticians are groomed in the art of the salon upsell. Click on through and read it: It's rare to see a piece that's remotely critical of the beauty industry in a mainstream women's magazine (beauty ads help keep most mags afloat, even more so than fashion), so this is a win for Marie Claire, its readers, and all beauty consumers.

Korea is the new Delaware: That is, external factors make it a landing spot for people who want cheap, good plastic surgery. Chinese patients make up a third of the Korean plastic surgery market.

Shiseido sales plummet: Down 62% in net profit this quarter, the Japanese company is at least making wise moves, increasing its overseas presence to tap markets that are more stable than the domestic one.

Lauder business strategy: William Lauder, former CEO of Estee Lauder (and grandson of the grande dame herself), talks at Wharton; the edited transcript reveals its dips into masstige while still maintaining authority over customers, and how the company still tries to touch every customer—as Estee did—even if that touch is more technological than it had been previously.

Damn you, Lara Croft!: Study participants endorsed stereotypical gender roles more heavily after watching Angelina Jolie kick butt in Tomb Raider than after watching Kathy Bates kick butt in Primary Colors. So not only is it not enough to be competent and conventionally beautiful, but being both might backfire? Grody gross!

Tina's fail: I love Tina Fey. Love! Do people still say lurve? I lurve her. But she's not above criticism, and sex worker blog Tits and Sass points out that she makes some assumptions about sex workers that aren't kind (and in fact can be nasty; see "stripper bones" reference). 

Men on street harassment: From reading comments, it seems like my conclusion in yesterday's piece about complex reactions to street harassment struck a chord: We're eager to refocus the attention back to the harassers instead of keeping it on ourselves. Luckily, some men feel the same way. Hugo Schwyzer at the Good Men Project and Ben Privot of the Consensual Project give tips on how to responsibly admire a woman without objectifying her. It seems odd that we need guides to these sorts of things, but there you have it.

And, of course, the requisite royal wedding bit: Didn't we fight a war to get away from all this? Still, if you can't resist, here are three feminist-beauty-blog-approved options: 1) A totally non-snarky rundown of why we shouldn't call Kate Middleton a style icon, at Illustrator Claire; 2) What happens when adults fall for princessmania, at Never Say Diet, and 3) Designers at Estee Lauder and Jo Malone are among those who made wedding cakes inspired by today's event. 

Beauty Blogsophere 4.15.11

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe.

Princess Arthchild Gourielle-Helena Rubinstein, Salvador Dalí, 1943

From Head...
Helena Rubenstein portraits: The lady sat for Dalí! (She commissioned him to design a compact for her collection as well.) Twenty portraits of her by various artists are on view at Sotheby's.

Mermaid beauty: Mermaid expert extraordinaire Carolyn Turgeon (author of the enchanting novel Mermaid) interviews makeup artist Rona Berg on mer-beauty. And now that your appetite for fishwomen is whetted, check out the second ad on BellaSugar's roundup of most bizarre beauty ads ever made.

A colorful history: Nice writeup of lipstick's history by Sam Correy. Cleopatra also engaged in mermaid beauty, it seems, adding fish scales for shine to her "lipstick" made of beeswax and crushed ants.

Oily skin win: I love a good beauty experiment! BellaSugar again, this time with an intrepid reporter trying the oil-cleaning method--that is, washing your face with oil.

Barbarella beauty: Die-cut false lashes, printed hair extensions, and nail stamps at this vaguely futuristic beauty show.

Blowout blowup: The Department of Labor has issued a hazard alert on Brazilian blowouts—you know, that hair treatment that dumps formaldehyde (which even some morticians won't use anymore) on your head. I'm pleased but baffled as to why this issue, of all issues, is what is making the government sit up and take notice of the complete lack of regulation in beauty treatments. Is it the scary f-word of formaldehyde? What about the lead, the parabens, the sulfates, the tar—not startling enough? Or is it, as indicated by the action being taken by the Department of Labor, not the Food & Drug Administration, because every time a woman gets formaldehyde poured on her head, there's a salon worker who's handling the stuff too?

...to Toe...

Fancy footballer: Between Detroit Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh, comedian Tommy Davidson, and Josh Freese from last week's roundup, the pedicure is shucking its cloak of femininity. All the more reason for A Certain News Network and other reactionaries to tone down their freakout over this 7-year-old boy's cotton-candy-colored Essie pedicure.


...and Everything In Between
Johnson & Jobbery: The maker of Neutrogena and Clean & Clear, Johnson & Johnson, was fined for paying kickbacks for contracts under a UN relief program in Iraq. We're talking drug corruption, not an acne scrub scandal, but still, yikes. 

Criminal beauty: Between the teenager being fined $1 million for setting fire to hairspray at an Illinois Walmart, and a curious vandalism of a Florida anti-choice display involving boxes of unopened Mary Kay products, beauty products are playing accessory to crime this week.
 
Fair Pay Day: Virginia at Beauty Schooled examines the gender gap in beauty work, in honor of Fair Pay Day (April 12). It's particularly interesting in light of Inc.com's report on the fastest-growing industries for startups, which highlighted beauty salons and barber shops.

In the red: Also as a part of Fair Pay Day, Mrs. Bossa nicely runs down the symbolism of the color red in connection to women's labor--paid, unpaid, and paid-in-kind.

Sears & Your Bucks: Sears is ramping up its cosmetics department, in most cases creating a department where there was none. Why should you care? Because Sears is seriously struggling (when was the last time you went to one?), and we as women are a part of its revitalization plan. It's an illustration of our market power, and it's easy to forget that we really do have that market power when we think of the beauty industry as something that merely exploits women's insecurities. It does, to be sure--underarm beautification, anyone?--but let's not forget that the market is a two-way street, and that businesses rely on our dollars to do their work. (Another reminder: Spa-going ladies basically own Groupon.)

Plus-size yoga: The new, cleverly named Buddha Body Yoga studio caters to a heavy-set clientele. I'm all for an environment that allows all participants to honor their bodies...but isn't that what yoga is all about in the first place? Yay for Buddha Body, but boo on the "yoga lifestyle" that has created the need for it in the first place. We've lost the plot, folks, when yoga has become so much about cute Lululemon pants and adorable printed mats, and less about its focus as a mind-body practice that would naturally lend itself to a heavy person wishing to find peace, just like all yogis.

Frankenbarbie: College student creates life-size, correctly proportioned, utterly grotesque Barbie. (Thanks to sustainability blogger Fonda LaShay for the link, even if it'll give me nightmares.)

Beauty in one's Seoul: Japan has long been the Asian leader in the cosmetics market, but Korea is joining the game full-force. With the events in Japan leading to concerns about contamination of Japan-produced cosmetics (which the Japan Cosmetic Industry Association refutes), could Korea make giant leaps in the next year?

Six beauty procedures that qualify as torture: Interesting stuff at Cracked (face slimmers?), but there was a tone here that I found disturbing--there was zero examination or sympathy of why people might choose to do these torturous procedures. An Asian woman doesn't spend two hours a day gluing her eyelids to create a fold because she's vain or has nothing she'd rather be doing; she does it because of the class connotations (including increased job opportunities) it can confer upon her.

Cosmetic genital mutilation? Ghanaian human rights activist Nana Oye Lithur draws a connection between western cosmetic surgery on one's genitals and female genital mutilation. I don't equate the two—but FGM is an abstract reality for me, not a daily reality of my countrywomen, which isn't the case for Ms. Lithur.

The three graces of Hearst? Mediabistro points out WWD's somewhat sexist treatment of three powerful fashion EICs under one roof at Hearst, once the Elle acquisition goes through. How belittling is it to assume that there can only be one top dog at Hearst simply because there are three (very different) women's fashion mags? Nobody's doing a cutesy Condé Nast chart of Daniel Peres of Details versus GQ's Jim Nelson.