Beauty Blogosphere 12.7.12

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

Hair brooch, most likely used as a mourning memento

From Head...

Hairy history: Next time you're in Missouri, swing by Leila's Hair Museum, featuring centuries of ornaments and jewelry made from human hair, which is awesome and creepy in equal measures. There's also a Victorian Hairwork Society, if you want to get social about it. (via Makeup Museum)

...To Toe...

Ms. Fix-Its: Taking the "blowout bar" service one step further, Fix Beauty Bar has mani-pedis that you can get while your hair is blown out—the sheer glamour of which did not go unnoticed by Deep Glamour, which features an interview with the cofounders this week.


...And Everything In Between:

Get your claws out: Vice president of Ask Cosmetics, a nail-care company, accused of defrauding the company of CND $700,000 over a four-year period.

Big gamble: Rajat Gupta, the Procter & Gamble board member convicted of insider trading, will remain free on bail while his appeal is pending, ruled a federal appeals panel.

Lose inches overnite!: The Ministry of Health in Dubai issued a public health warning about unscrupulous health and beauty social media advertisers (think weight-loss spam), including skin whitening products.

Rihanna and subversion: These two posts make nice companions to one another. First up, this blogger takes a good stab at answering what cuteness might look like when used as a tool of subversion: "Because women of color (excluding East Asian women) are scripted as inherently sexual, it may bring the subject/voyeur (read: society) into a troublesome gaze when they cannot view the objects (brown and black women of color) as sexual because they are non-sexualized when they perform cuteness." Then philosopher Robin James looks at one particular case of a woman of color toying with personae and subversion: Rihanna, and her use of lyrics and styles that mimic the violent dynamics she had in her relationship with Chris Brown: "As Angela Davis repeatedly demonstrates in her book on the blues, black female singers often use lyrics that superficially portray their victimization to critique the very racist misogyny that would victimize them. Why aren’t people at least granting the possibility that Rihanna is participating in this tradition?" 

"Wherever Seth Rogen conceives with Katherine Heigl, the dream lives on": We're not quite done yet with the Richard Cohen/James Bond "sexual meritocracy" bit, are we? Good. Then allow me to point you toward Ta-Nehisi Coates's piece on "democracy and the inalienable right to hit that."

Holy moley: Excited for Salon's new rotating "Body Issues" column, which promises to bring "a series of personal essays about obsessions with our own bodies." First up: Sarah Hepola, always a treat to read, on how she felt about her dusting of moles. I'm mole-y myself so particularly appreciated this piece, though it's funny: Unlike Hepola, I was never self-conscious about my moles until an acquaintance playfully started counting the moles on my arms, and even after that it's just something I'm aware of, not ashamed of—I wear sleeveless shirts a lot, and short skirts. I was excruciatingly self-conscious about pretty much every other part of my body, but never my moles. Funny what our brains decide to zero in on, eh?

Game-changer: Deep Glamour takes a look at Gordon Parks, who effectively changed the course of fashion photography singlehandedly by taking models out of the studio and planting them on the streets. 

This dude is trying to sell you nail polish but it's okay because there are ladies in the background so he's not, like, gay or anything

Strong enough for a man: As someone who firmly rolls her eyes at nail polish lines for men—not because I think men shouldn't wear the stuff but because it's not like, oh, every single shade in their collections doesn't already exist—I was intrigued by this interview with the CEO of Alphanail. "Q: If girls' products are good enough for gay men, why not for straight men? A: They should be. Honestly, it’s a marketing strategy." Yessir, it is!

Meow!: Zara tells us about the pin-on mood-indicating kitten tail that's hitting—where else?—Japan, and I die.

Women, food, and the therapeutic narrative: Charlotte Shane argues that the social narrative around food is disordered, and we're not talking in a Michael Pollan way either: "To have moderation in all things except immoderation echoes the close-fistedness of my most manic restrictions." I'm still wrestling with this provocative, laser-sharp piece, which in part makes a case for the semi-normalization of behaviors that are conventionally seen as troublesome in women, because it soundly echoes my own (disordered) eating history—a history that has troubled me, and that isn't "over" even though I've publicly gone through my own therapeutic narrative (the concept of which I discuss here about body image, but which applies to disordered eating as well).

Meat lovers: So wrong it's right (right?): Pizza Hut perfume.

"Like": This Jessica Valenti piece on women and likeability has a roundabout connection to beauty—yes, women want to be pretty because that has a singular value, but there's also a component of conventional beauty that's about placating others. Still wrapping my mind around this one (I'm very much a honey-not-vinegar type, and I can't help but feel like I'm being a little scolded for that—but I also know my niceness has been a detriment at times).

Wish list: Makeup artist (and fantastic blogger, and if you enjoy my roundups you should absolutely be reading hers as well) Meli Pennington at Wild Beauty has an impeccably curated list of beauty books that serves as a nice tip list if you're holiday shopping.

On what we don't look like: These two entries complement one another: Kate, with her characteristic elliptical grace, on giving herself permission to occasionally feel disappointed about the way she looks: "But I have all of these other images of what beauty looks like stuck in my eyes, so that they waver, floating, translucent, over my face. All of these other faces taunt my own. And they’re the pretty ones. They are how I should have looked, might have looked, if I were luckier. And I think it’s fair to think that way...there is so much belief in beauty as something critical for girls and women." Sally arrives at a similar conclusion, through examining the ways we're encouraged to treat celebrities—with their personal trainers and stylists and makeup artists and a job in which looking flawless at all times is a requirement—as role models isn't helpful, but can be liberating: "I’ll never look like that. And acknowledging that fact is actually quite freeing."

Infidels: Phoebe Maltz Bovy muses on the role of male beauty in infidelity. "[Women involved in betrayal], I'd imagine...follow certain scripts, and conform to a narrative about wanting to be found beautiful themselves. Well, perhaps so, but why by whichever man in particular? Might it have something to do with his looks?"

Beauty and Infidelity, Part III: The Other Woman

"The camera served Tereza as both a mechanical eye through which to observe Tomás's mistress, and a veil by which to conceal her face from her." —The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera (film, 1998)

Several years ago, I found myself overwhelmingly attracted to a colleague, and, despite the existence of his long-term girlfriend, we wound up kissing at a party. Affair is too grand a word for what ensued in the following weeks, nor is it wholly accurate, as he soon told his girlfriend about our liaison. She promptly broke up with him and then called me, wanting to talk. We agreed to meet at an ice cream parlor, of all places.

What struck me upon seeing her sitting at a corner table was her beauty: wide-set eyes, honey-colored curls, creamy complexion. I’d met her once before, so it wasn’t that I was only then seeing what she looked like, but rather that I was seeing her in relation to myself. In my mind there was an algorithm of attraction whose full components were a mystery to me; I just knew that two parts of it were her appeal, and my own. Sitting face-to-face with another part of the messy equation made me question the math I’d come up with: I’d talked myself into believing I’d overestimated her allure the first time we’d met, for if she were really as pretty, charming, and vivacious as I remembered, what was her boyfriend doing kissing me? At the time I was inexperienced enough to believe that the fellow had betrayed her because of some magnetic pull between us, instead of what I now see was the case: He was bored, and I was willing.

“I know it’s weird,” she said, trying to explain why she’d called. “My friends were like, Why do you want to meet up with her? But—” She looked up, her face flushing for the first time since she’d seen me walk through the door. “You understand why I wanted to, don’t you?”

I did. At least I believed—and believe—I did. She had an algorithm to question too. For as I watched her eyes occasionally brim with tears, her head bow and bob with a mixture of sadness and defiant optimism, I began to understand exactly how off my math had been. Despite a bearing I interpreted as confidence, she might have had an algorithm with the naivete of mine: Maybe he went for her because she’s just all that. I saw in front of me someone beautiful, earthy and ethereal in equal measures, capable and grounded, and the thought that she might be questioning her own appeal burned. I wanted her to see herself as I saw her, and it occurred to me that if she was doubting her allure, she might be doing so because I helped her doubt it.

As neutrally as I could, I answered her questions, which began as you’d expect but eventually moved into the territory of a first date. Where are you from, what did you study? Who are you? Easier than you might believe, our conversation began to flow. We both made jokes that probably weren’t very funny, but we were both easy laughs so it didn’t matter. We stayed long after we’d finished our cones, long enough to get sodas because we got so thirsty. At one point she said, “I’m actually having a better time with you than I did on my first date with him.” “Me too,” I replied. It was the truth. We lived in the same neighborhood, so we walked home together. When we parted, we hugged. 

Four days later, I saw her again, as I was walking down the street hand-in-hand with her ex-boyfriend. As we passed her, I could see that her steely expression belied a map of tears. He and I broke up a month later. I heard through friends that he tried to get back together with her, but she refused him, just as she refused me when I tried to contact her a few weeks after our ice-cream outing.

*     *     *

I have been the other woman. I could chalk up my indiscretions of this sort to youthful impudence or an “exploration” of sexual ethics or falling for the same old lines, but the truth is I was just plain selfish. Would it help if I tell you that it is a selfishness I have outgrown? Today fidelity is more appealing to me from every angle than its opposite, or even its shyster cousins—inappropriate emotional investment, Olympian flirting. But that is now, not then, when I’d mentally say I was sorry and mean it, just not enough to stop.

What strikes me now about this weakness is not the way I felt toward the men involved, but toward the women. The spritely live-in girlfriend of a man I longed for and did not resist when he told me he shared my longing; the sloe-eyed designer whose partner told me had lost interest in sex with him years ago (of course!); the husky-voiced business major whose date slipped me a note at a party saying he wished he were there with me instead: These women intrigued me, and not competitively so. It would be easy to chalk this up to my own tendency to cast a golden light of admiration onto women in general. It would also be easy to chalk this up to being the other woman, not the—woman-woman? The girlfriend, the partner. The beloved, supposedly. When I tried to explain my bizarre reverence to a friend, she rolled her eyes. Of course you get to feel that way, she said. You won.

I’m resistant to attribute this sensation to “winning,” though, even under the faulty logic of other-womanness as winning, for it's happened when I’ve been the betrayed one too. I once discovered a stash of messages sent to my then-partner by a woman whose name I didn’t recognize, but who clearly knew who I was. Most of the content was your typical affair nonsense, but this was a woman who was thoughtful about me in the same sincere, curious, and egregiously self-involved manner that I’d had in past liaisons.

She’s prettier than I imagined, one of her messages went. My first thought was to wonder what she’d imagined me to look like, and whether my boyfriend had given her clues: She’s medium build/she’s brunette/she’s gotten thick in the waist. But her note continued: It makes me insecure. The admission had the effect of both a stab and a caress. A stab because as much as I hated the existence of this woman, I hated that she too used other women as mirrors that reflected back her doubts. I’d have preferred that she be superhuman, for then I’d have a receptacle for my vitriol that might have allowed me to stay with my boyfriend, whom I loved. And a caress because reading that she shared my own reaction—insecurity, shaky doubt, a plea for affirmation—did allow me to use her as a mirror, did let me see that whatever the reasons for his betrayal, it wasn’t because I wasn’t enough. If she was made insecure by my looks, and I by hers, that canceled each other out, right?, so the reason for the betrayal logically had to be something else. (Because logic and love go hand-in-hand so often, I know, I know.)

In tales of infidelity, we overlook a central fact: Two people share another. She and I already had two things in common—the man himself, and being the kind of women who would pique his interest. In another time, another place, another life, our begrudging sisterhood could have been sisterwives. We would live together, create a home together, prepare food together. I might braid her hair. And secretly, each of us would worry that the other would forever be more alluring to him, therefore—in my grief-stricken, abjectly depressed reasoning of the time—more alluring to all men, everywhere. How could I not be fascinated by her? I looked her up. She was beautiful.

There’s a particular way that someone you become intimately involved with knows you: They know a side of you that remains hidden to not only the public eye, but most private eyes as well. My best friend may know me better than most of my lovers have, but she’s never felt me grasp for her touch in the middle of the night, or seen me through the shaky moments that come after an act of, quite literally, naked vulnerability. What that means is that there are dozens of women roaming around who know those same things about the men who have entered my heart. Ex-girlfriends, ex-wives, yes, and I’ve been fascinated with them as well. But it is the other woman—the woman who knows not the man at age 19 or 27 or 38 or whatever age he has long passed, but the person he is now, the person who may have had dinner with you mere hours after a kiss good-bye with her—that you are actually sharing a person’s affection and attention with, in real time.

That’s what makes betrayal sear so acutely, of course. It’s also what links the women together.

*     *     *

Beauty cannot exist without fascination. Unless something captivates us enough to hold our interest for more than a fleeting moment, it’s pretty or pleasant or maybe lovely rather than beautiful. It’s why people we love become more beautiful to us the longer we love them; it’s why we find “flaws” beautiful on others. When I love someone, I’m quick to become fascinated by what fascinates them. Soccer, Slovenia, antipsychiatry, Montaigne, urban gardening. The other woman. It’s fascination once removed, but it is fascination nonetheless. I want to keep looking; my attention is held. This is part of what defines beauty. Is it any surprise that when I look at the various women I’ve been triangulated with—some against my will, some against my better judgment—I find beauty at every turn?

When I’ve been cheated on, occasionally friends have taken the tactic of beauty assassination in an attempt to assuage my grief. Girl could use some Clearasil. You’re pearls before swine, she’s pig slop. Or just: What was he thinking? I mean, look at her. I’m quite certain the same has been said of me when I’ve played the other role. You see the problem, don’t you? That using beauty as a lever in infidelity displaces the exquisite pain of betrayal? That Clearasil was a beauty in her way, and that Pig Slop was too, and that this is entirely beside the point? That to lament my own loss of appeal served only to prolong the lamentation of my loss of trust?

I’d like to think that my preternatural, private devotionals to the women I’ve been triangulated with are reciprocal in some way. Not that I want them find me pretty per se; it’s more that I want a sort of confirmation that I’m not the only one attempting to divert the pain of betrayal away from the accomplice and toward the betrayer, whatever side of emotional treason any woman might be on. But just as “girl talk” is a route to female connection only when each party is open to it, I now have to admit how much of my visual admiration of other women is one-sided. How much it’s about wanting them to see me: I wanted to stay in that ice cream parlor with my new boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend because I had nothing to offer her other than myself, and if she stayed there with me despite my rotten actions, it meant she saw something worth sticking around for. Inherent in being the other woman is a deep cynicism of men: You believe they always want something other than conversation, and this belief is played out with clandestine brushes against your knee beneath the dinner table. Women, though—at least women in these triangulated roles—have no such motivation. 

Since beauty functions as a code of connection between women, I turned to it as a sort of pass key to intimacy in times when my faith in the true nature of intimacy was shaken. After being betrayed myself, finding the other woman beautiful was a way of finding (concocting?) a trust that had been taken from me. And after helping someone else betray another woman, finding her beautiful was a misguided way of trying to reconcile the selfishness that landed me there in the first place with the way I wanted to relate to these women. I knew that somewhere inside me was a person with more respect for other women than my actions indicated, but at the time I didn’t have the character to allow that better instinct to thrive. The halo of beauty that I created was a paltry symbol of that instinct. It wasn’t enough.

With age and maturity (and therapy), I’ve learned to avoid situations that might find me turning these mental somersaults. This piece isn't a mea culpa; such opportunities are long gone. Opportunities for refocusing my efforts at emotional intimacy with other women remain, though, and it’s in the name of those opportunities that I’m trying to figure out why I’ve repeatedly returned to a different sort of gaze in the midst of infidelity. Perhaps when I felt so tethered to the male gaze myself, creating a female gaze and projecting it onto women I’d hurt (or been hurt by) was the only way I knew to express a true apology (or forgiveness). But apologies are only good if both parties speak the same language. And I don’t want anyone to be fluent in the tongue I was speaking back then.

Not long ago I discovered that Google logs all your searches, and that you can summon a historic tally of everything you’ve searched for when logged in. It’s been more than a decade since I last saw the woman I shared ice cream with, but in the seven years since I got my Gmail account, I’ve searched her name often enough that it’s the sixth-most-Googled term in my personal history. I have fantasized repeatedly about running into her. Each time, I look her in the eyes and say, I am sorry. Each time, a litany of excuses tumbles out: I was young, I was insecure, I was selfish, I was stupid. And each time, even in my fantasy, she walks away.

This is the last of a three-part series about appearance and infidelity. Part I, on using beauty as a scapegoat in infidelity, is here; part II, examining social science research on looks and betrayal, is here.

"You're Gorgeous": Invited Post

Claire Napier is a midlands-based, commissionable illustrator and comic artist whom I met through the now-defunct Feminist Fashion Bloggers group. I saw bits of her visual work on her blog, but was largely struck by her thoughtful writing, whether that be things like her musings on conventional femininity, or something out of our shared sphere entirely, like her awesome gift guide for the unemployed. So when she reached out to me about my series on compliments with some ideas about visually expressing her own complex feelings toward unsolicited compliments from men, I jumped at the chance. Enjoy!

Beauty Blogosphere 11.30.12

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

Photo by Rémi Thériault

From Head...
Whip my head back and forth: Marie-Camille Lalande at WORN Journal on—well, I'd say "suffering from alopecia," but given the tone of the piece, that would be mighty presumptive of me. "Being a bald woman and embracing it was just another way of flipping a proud middle finger to the rigid constraints of accepted commercial taste."

...To Toe...
Twinkie toes: Amid America's collective freakout over the Hostess situation, let's take a moment to learn how Twinkies got their name.

...And Everything In Between:

Fumble & Bumble: The founder of Bumble & Bumble was arrested for a wee oversight on his 2006 taxes, when he failed to notify the IRS about the $29.6 million he raked in after selling part of his company to Estee Lauder. Oopsie!

Rinse and repeat: In an effort to trim 10% of its non-manufacturing workforce, Proctor & Gamble is slashing its marketing team. Of interest here is the company's strategic shift to develop fewer ads, since the breadth of messages were diluting the brand.

Laws schmaws: Know what's annoying? When a company that supposedly exists to serve women has a crappy record of discriminating against pregnant (or black, or disabled) employees, à la Sisley Cosmetics.

The big O: Could there be an Oprah makeup line?

Like, Detroit?: L'Oréal is buying Urban Decay in an effort to increase its presence on the somewhat higher end of the market, which is ironic given that, as my aunt puts it, "Who would buy it with that kind of a name?"

Garment worker tragedy: It's one thing to read about unsafe working conditions in the abstract; it's quite another to learn that 123 garment workers were killed in Bangladesh, in a fire in a building that had inadequate safety exits. As Bim Adewumni writes at the Guardian, "It's not enough to feel bad (and then promptly forget) about the workers who have died in Bangladesh this week. It seems clear that even as we buy cheap clothes with dubious provenance, from an ethical standpoint, people want to do better. But even if we end up with something as obvious as a FairTrade stamp for fashion, it still comes back to consumers to take a stand and make a decision. Will we?" Will we?

Fairy tales: More troubling news from Bangladesh: Authorities shut down a cosmetics factory that was producing skin-lightening creams containing mercury, a practice that was outlawed in 2006. But on the flipside: TV actresses in India are breaking out of the "fairest of them all" mold, with darker-skinned performers like Mitali Nag bringing in major ratings. To put this in perspective of how big a shift this is, here's a quote from a television writer about seeing a "dusky" actress onscreen: "When I first saw [Rajshree Thakur], I was quite surprised because I had never seen such a dark complexion before, but her features were remarkable and she looked really nice on screen."

Lesson learned: Hong Kong's latest glamourpusses: tutors. "If you want to be a top tutor, it definitely helps if you are young and attractive. Students look at your appearance," says one of the "tutor queens" in this article.

Glasnost: After the Soviet beauty queens came 1989's Russian beauty queens.

Peer review: Expect a wealth of upcoming studies about how much happier people wearing makeup are, thanks to the development of a L'Oréal-backed questionnaire that will scientifically (scientifically!) prove how people feel about their quality of life in conjunction with physical appearance. See, now that peer-reviewed science is involved, I'm fully expecting beauty products to come labeled with a quality of life score on the package. Mascara = 6! Toner = 2!

Face it: A glimpse inside the life of the woman who received the world's first face transplant: "When I look in the mirror, I see a mixture of the two [of us]. The donor is always with me." 

Role models: By now you may have heard about two unconventional fashion models: Casey Legler, a woman who models men's clothes, and Liu Xianping, the 72-year-old man in China who models women's clothes for his granddaughter's online boutique. Worn Through gives the buzz around these two a thoughtful treatment that goes beyond the "whoda thunkit?!" factor.

On "sexual meritocracy": Let's take a look at the hullaballoo surrounding Richard Cohen's Washington Post piece on Skyfall, in which Cohen mourns the loss of Cary Grant-esque debonair sophistication alone as a marker of desirability in men. (Daniel Craig's muscularity in the film serves to telegraph attractiveness, thus diminishing the subtler sex appeal of Bonds of yore, Cohen's thinking goes.) Max Read at Gawker then pointed out not only the sexual double standard at play here (when was the last time you saw a female romantic lead who looked as aged as Cary Grant?) but Cohen's own lasciviousness toward pretty young coworkers, and Alyssa Rosenberg, Jill Filipovich, and Phoebe Maltz Bovy all delightfully dissect Cohen's argument with their own twists on male body image, "nice guy" syndrome, and catering to the female gaze.

Nakedness and the Talmud: If you're interested in the historic roots of head and hair covering, follow along with Maya Resnikoff's exploration of the Talmud and how its language plays out centuries later.

"Why am I called black?": I overuse the word fascinating, okay? But can you trust me when I say that this Into the Gloss interview with Iman really is?

The technical term is adorbs.

Written on your face: You wouldn't think that Andrew McCarthy would prompt a meditation on the gift that naiveté inscribes upon our faces in an irretractable manner, would you? Let Masha Tupitsyn prove you wrong. She's writing here specifically of celebrity, but it's true of many of us, particularly women: "Hollywood pushes for and instigates in its stars and in its screen faces what it does not want to see happen and that it punishes for when it does: the loss of the very thing it wants to capture and capitalize on."

Spanx Watch 2012: Should we be feeling relief that celebrities are being called out for wearing shapewear, or pissed off that they're being mocked for not being more perfect than perfection?

"It was never our intention to cause offence": Australian cosmetics line Illamasqua had an ad featuring a model in blackface. In response to a flurry of criticism, the company released a statement clarifying that the creative director "has emphasised that this campaign is about colour ON the skin, not colour OF the skin." Oh, well, thanks for clearing that one up.

Fat talk: Absorbing study published in November's Social Problems from Kjerstin Gruys about "fat talk" and emotional labor among employees at plus-size stores. (Full PDF here.) Gruys found that thinner employees were privileged with special tasks, and that managers and white customers—but not black or Latina customers—used "fat talk" to draw out responses from employees. 

Tip of the month: Every so often there's a beauty tip that's too good to pass up, even for a decidedly tip-free beauty blog like this one: how to make your own makeup remover wipes. Doubly useful for those among us who use oil on their faces, since the wipes call for coconut oil! (via Gala Darling)

Weighty matters: I participated in a HuffPo Live segment about overweight children, along with other adults who were fat as kids. You can watch it here, and along with that I also recommend reading Ragen Chastain's takeaway from participating in the segment. I wrote the essay that sparked the conversation from a purely personal point of view, and because of the online company I keep, my point of view is pretty heavily informed by fat activism and Health at Every Size. Now, I'm not 100% on-board with all tenets of Health at Every Size, for reasons I'm still learning to articulate, but I think there's a lot of wisdom there. Point is: I tend to forget how controversial—radical, even—the concept of HAES is to most people, and how much of a threat it is to the established way of thinking. Participating in this panel was a fascinating exercise in seeing firsthand exactly how radical HEAS is to a lot of people, and what kind of feelings it can provoke in people. All participants had worthy contributions, and I'd like to see more conversations like this taking place, but they're only going to be productive once people opposed to the idea that fat doesn't have to equal unhealthy get used to that notion. From there, we can begin some real discussion.

Pucker up: Loving the Red Lipstick Challenge at Those Graces, designed to develop the chutzpah one needs to pull off red lipstick: Five out of seven days each week of this month, Courtney is wearing red lipstick, timidity be damned.

'Tis the season: Beauty Redefined gives out a "Holiday Survival Guide" that serves as a counterpoint to all the ladymag guides about choosing apple cider over eggnog or whatnot. Navigating body policing, buying nonsexist gifts for kids, and food moderation—excellent advice all year, but particularly so in the season of seeing family and friends en masse.

Yer Cheatin' Heart: The Relationship Between Beauty and Betrayal

The Fête of the Order of Cuckoldry Before the Throne of Her Majesty, Infidelity, France, c. 1815

Looking at appearance and infidelity vis-à-vis the Petraeus household made me curious about what role beauty actually does play in betrayal. Most of us know from casual observation that it’s fully possible for a person to cheat with someone who isn’t as physically attractive as that person’s primary partner—but is there any sort of pattern there? Are people likelier to cheat with someone who’s conventionally better-looking than one’s partner?

I was surprised/relieved to find that there weren’t any studies available that delved into that particular question. (Not sure how that would work in a lab setting anyway: “Please send photo of mistress to...”?) But there’s a wealth of research looking at other intersections of appearance and infidelity. Some of the more interesting findings:


1) Women reported feeling more threatened when “the other woman” was particularly attractive—but only in cases of emotional infidelity. In sexual infidelity, the other woman’s appearance had no effect on the wife/girlfriend’s feelings about the betrayal.

I was surprised by the findings of this study at first. On the surface, our culture tends to equate beauty with sex appeal more than it connects beauty and lovability. (The frowsy girl in movies never gets laid, but someone’s gonna see her heart of gold, right?) So wouldn’t a woman feel more threatened by an attractive rival when the betrayal was sexual more than emotional?

But with a closer look, it makes perfect sense. Sexual infidelity can be as meaningless as a drunken, regrettable one-night stand; emotional infidelity implies not a fleeting crush but something with a deeper current that develops over time. In other words: Someone cheating sexually could just want one specific part of a person (ahem)—but someone cheating emotionally is entranced with the entirety of the third party. And in a culture that likes to make-believe that a woman’s value as a person lies in her beauty and feminine charms, it’s logical that a beautiful woman—i.e. a valuable woman—is going to pose a greater threat in situations of emotional infidelity. When your partner becomes emotionally invested in another person, it stings regardless of who that person is. But when it’s someone whose value is evident, the threat is greater because your own value diminishes comparatively. With sexual infidelity, the value of the person isn’t called into question as sharply as it with emotional infidelity, so a beautiful “rival” poses less of a threat.


2) Women are more likely than men to end a marriage after their own infidelity—and the more attractive the woman as compared to her husband, the likelier she is to do so.

To put it plainly, attractive women are likelier than men to use infidelity as an opportunity to “trade up,” in the language of this study. The lesson here seems clear: Beauty increases a woman’s “market value,” while infidelity (including the person’s own infidelity) lessens the value an individual gets from her or his partner. Put the two together and it’s not hard to see how a woman might feel as though the algorithm of the relationship has changed after infidelity, to the point where ending the relationship makes sense in a way that it might not if she weren’t confident of her “market value.” By the way, I’m putting that in quotes because it makes me a little queasy not to.


3) Women were twice as likely as men to endorse “the other person makes me feel attractive” as an acceptable reason for infidelity.

Endorse is a strong word here but it’s the word used in the study so I’m borrowing it here; the participants weren’t necessarily saying infidelity was hunky-dory under any circumstance. With that weakened use of endorse in mind, take this in: 20% of men endorsed cheating if the other person made them feel attractive, while 42% of women said the same. In addition, women were 6% likelier to endorse infidelity when the cheating party wasn’t attracted to their spouse. (In fact, the only reason for cheating that men endorsed significantly more than women was “Opportunity presented itself,” with 32% of men signing on.)

Read cynically, this confirms the wretched stereotype of women as hopelessly vain, forever needing to be fawned over and then getting huffy enough to cheat if that fawning stops. But I interpret this rather as a sad comment on what all these studies are driving at: Plenty of women still internalize their value as lying in their looks. Feeling beautiful under someone else’s gaze can be intoxicating—and so validating that it might trump other values one might hold dear. Bathing in that gaze is often construed as such a foundational condition of a relationship that it might be easy for some women to quietly substitute in that feeling for commitment and fidelity. Indeed, so much advice given to women about how to “catch his eye” is geared toward maximizing physical attractiveness that if you squint hard enough, catching his eye can appear to be the grand prize that women are supposed to shoot for—not the relationship itself. Little wonder that under that paradigm, plenty of women might be willing to excuse infidelity with “but he makes me feel beautiful.” Plus, since attractiveness is often seen as the way one “earns” sex (only the beautiful get to do the nasty, you know), it makes sense that having your appearance highly valued by another lays the groundwork for beauty’s payoff.


4) Men married to women they believe to have a high infidelity risk are likelier than other men to use “mate retention tactics” to keep their wives from straying. Women, on the other hand, were no more or less likely to deploy such tactics regardless of whether they thought their husbands might cheat. 

You’ve gotta love these “tactics” too: punishing the woman for whatever it is that makes him think she might stray, putting down competitors, submission and debasement, and “concealment of mate,” whatever that means (the study didn’t say). Of course, that’s better than the tactics used by men who perceive their wives to be more attractive than they themselves are: emotional manipulation, derogation, sexual threats, and violence against rivals. And once again, women who perceived their husbands to be more attractive than they themselves are weren’t more likely to use those tactics.

These tidbits are just randomly dispiriting until you look at another finding of the study and see exactly how dispiriting it really is: There was no correlation between how hot a guy thinks his wife is and how likely he thinks she is to cheat on him. Yet a woman’s perceived beauty and her perceived risk of infidelity are not only punished, but are punished in much the same way. (Not all the “mate retention tactics” measured in the survey were negative ones; love and care were considered tactics, for example.) So basically: Women are groomed to maximize their attractiveness, in part because that’s supposed to snag you a higher-quality mate. Yet getting into a relationship with a man who thinks you’re better-looking than he thinks he is carries risk. Talk about feeling cheated, eh?

*     *     *

These findings are hardly conclusive, largely because some of them relied upon hypothetical infidelities, and also because the conclusions drawn from the studies are rather oblique. (Plus, I’m skeptical of beauty studies to begin with.) Intellectually, what I gather from them is what popped up plenty of times above: As long as we see women’s value as lying largely in their appearance, there will be a relationship between beauty and betrayal, even if that relationship isn’t as straightforward as some people would make it seem.

Personally, though, I take something else from this data: Since there’s no pattern here as far as actual behavior, there’s little use fretting about one’s own appearance in conjunction with infidelity. I know that when I’ve been cheated on, my instinct (after seething rage) is to wonder why I alone wasn’t enough for my partner. And, yes, to wonder whether the betrayal happened because I ceased to be attractive in the cheater’s eyes. (I didn’t say it was a healthy instinct, people.) But looking at all these studies, they’re...fuzzy. Weird little conclusions come up, none of which explain the only thing I’ve really cared about when I’ve been betrayed—or, for that matter, when I’ve had the poor judgment to betray a partner myself: Why. The why of betrayal sears and smolders, and at least in my case, it never fully burns out, even years later. I don’t feel anger when I think of my high school boyfriend telling me he kissed his ex during a snowball fight, but the why still flickers, even if the only emotion it provokes in me is nostalgia for the time when that was the most complicated thing I could imagine happening in my intimate life.

These studies don’t provide a why. And as satisfying as it would be to have something concrete we could turn to in times of the heartbreak of betrayal, it’s fitting that no why emerges. Can we ever know why? If “opportunity presented itself” is one of the more popular reasons for cheating, there really isn’t a why. It might be cold comfort to see that beauty isn’t really a part of the why—or it might not be comfort at all, depending upon your relationship with beauty, and with infidelity, for that matter. But only when we learn to take our own perspective on appearance out of the equation can we begin to see “opportunity,” disappointment, and the chaos of love and desire—the unsatisfying but undeniable components that are likely a part of the why—as the real flame-throwers here.

This is part two of a three-part series on appearance and infidelity. Part one is here; look for part three next week.

The Petraeus Affair: Infidelity, Beauty, and Scapegoating

The sex lives of public figures bore me. Rather, the sex lives of public figures interest me no more than that of, say, my dentist. My view on sex is generally pretty solipsistic: If it’s not me having the sex in question, I don’t particularly care about it, and I don’t understand why anyone besides those directly affected would.

So I didn’t pay much attention to the David Petraeus scandal—at least, not until I read this excellent piece by Meghan Daum that questions the mandate of beauty in high-profile women. The article draws upon Petraeus’s wife, Holly, and the flurry of nasty comments in the “chattersphere” about how one could hardly blame Petraeus for sleeping with his attractive biographer, given that Mrs. Petraeus dared to look like a middle-aged woman who doesn’t pay homage to the beauty industry at every opportunity. "If it's no longer shocking that a powerful man would have an affair with a younger, worshipful woman,” writes Daum, “it is a little shocking that the wife of that powerful man, nerdish as he is, would thwart the beauty industrial complex quite so vigorously.”

Daum’s larger point—that we need to eliminate the double standard dictating that accomplished women like Olympia Snowe, Dianne Feinstein, and Nancy Pelosi must pay attention to conventional beauty standards while their male counterparts can eschew them—is one that needs to be made, repeatedly, until things change. (Remember the hubbub when Hillary Clinton had the audacity to speak at a news conference without makeup?) But what’s interesting to me is something Daum acknowledges in her article: Save for a smattering of comments-section trolls, nobody is publicly suggesting that Holly Petraeus’s low-key, glamour-free looks are to blame for Petraeus’s infidelity. Yet the piece hinged upon that very idea, and the piece gained traction because we all quietly understand the game of pin-the-blame-on-the-gray-haired-woman. Save for an ugly little post from Mediabistro, a bizarro article about how all the women involved in the scandal could use a makeover, and the aforementioned comment-section trolls, the only mention of Holly Petraeus’s looks I could find by poking around online comes from...well, Meghan Daum, and people rightfully echoing her point. Few people are trying to suggest that Holly Petraeus’s gray hair is responsible for her husband’s dick falling into another woman—but we get the idea anyway, even when it’s not spoken aloud.

If we’re collectively too kind to snark at a pained woman who has been publicly humiliated, we’re not above raising our eyebrows when the betrayed wife is conventionally beautiful. “If Tiger Woods could cheat on Swedish model Elin Nordegren, what chance do other women have?” cried the Examiner. “Beauties and the beasts,” blared the New York Post after Tony Parker cheated on Eva Longoria. There’s a certain freedom to say it when a beautiful woman has been betrayed, because we’re ostensibly championing the woman; we’re reassuring her that the dude must be cray-cray to cheat on her, because she’s hot, and it’s too bad that her insurance policy of being good-looking had a loophole for infidelity. A loophole that an estimated 22% of married men have exploited at some point, sure, but never mind the 1-in-4 odds at play, right? Those odds are “supposed” to fall in the favor of the Eva Longorias of the world—at the expense of the Holly Petraeuses—and though both parties gain our sympathy, only one of them garners a head-scratching “huh?”

There are all sorts of problems with that mind-set, starting with the insulting idea that good looks are all that wives can count on to keep their husbands faithful (note that while plenty of pieces on Holly Petraeus highlight her striking accomplishments on behalf of military families, none of them suggest her husbands is nutso for cheating on her because of those accomplishments). But deconstructing the idea doesn’t answer the fundamental question of why we’re so eager to tie appearance to infidelity.

I can’t help but think that maybe we want beauty and cheating to be linked. Because if they’re not, the statistics on infidelity are just too depressing. I remember confiding in a friend after a man I loved cheated on me. She was sympathetic, but a part of her response continues to flit around in my mind years after the fact: That’s just how men are, she said. She wasn’t trying to say it was “natural,” but rather that in her experience, men were simply eager to cheat, so I couldn’t take it personally. Let’s say for a moment that she was right—that men just cheat, end of story. It’s awful to think that a man might cheat on you because someone more attractive came along. But it’s worse to think that he cheated just because. Because then the logical fallout is that since he cheated just because, every man cheats, so you’d better learn to either adopt a laissez-faire attitude about the whole thing or get used to losing your dignity on a regular basis, because this is just how it’s going to be.

Accepting that notion would undermine the entire idea of monogamy, which, in this culture, is how we construe commitment. So we refuse it, and we seek a scapegoat for infidelity—and what better scapegoat than something that has already instilled in plenty of people a sense of insecurity, futility, and self-abasement? Beauty, along with its surrounding pressures and expectations, comes in mighty handy here. It makes me think about how often beauty and appearance are used as a scapegoat for other issues, and indeed how rigid we are with the narrative arc of women’s relationship with our looks (woman feels bad about body, woman works to come to peace with it, all is well—which is a fine tale, except it sets an expectation that women are displeased with their bodies, leaving little room for those who might not fall prey to that narrative).

It’s not often that I’m going to argue in this space that beauty is irrelevant; the entire thesis of this blog is that personal appearance becomes relevant to pretty much everything. And that’s not what I’m arguing, not exactly, not least because none of us have any way of knowing exactly why David Petraeus slept with Paula Broadwell—or why any person, anywhere, has cheated on someone they’re ostensibly committed to. (It’s something you often hear from philanderers themselves: I don’t know why I did it, I don’t know what came over me, The whole thing was stupid.) But I will argue that beauty is more relevant to the discussion of infidelity, and to how we make sense of infidelity, than it ever is to infidelity itself, which is why, as Daum points out, “assiduous gym rats with nary a gray hair get cheated on.”

In fact, there’s further evidence of this in the Petraeus case: Since I only paid cursory attention to the story yet kept seeing photos of Jill Kelley everywhere, I assumed that she was Petraeus’s lover. It actually wasn’t until I started researching this piece that I saw a picture of Broadwell, his actual paramour. As a long-haired Lebanese-American socialite usually photographed in bright, tailored dresses, Kelley has more photogenic glamour than an academic from Bismarck who favors a severe hairstyle. Bluntly put, Kelley looks the part of the stereotypical homewrecker more than Broadwell does—which is, I’m guessing, a large part of why her visage, not Broadwell’s, has become one of the iconic images burned into the public mind in regards to this affair. We want a fall gal, and Kelley makes a good one (especially given that she committed adultery as well, just not with the main figure involved here).

The sooner we stop gaping, wide-eyed, when we see men have affairs behind the backs of their beautiful wives, the sooner we can truly start leaving the low-maintenance betrayed wives like Holly Petraeus alone. And the sooner we can do both of those things, maybe we’ll come just a hair closer to understanding why we place such importance on an institution so many people flout—with lovers beautiful and plain, glamorous and mousy, younger and older. Perhaps with practice we’ll even come a little closer to fixing it.

Beauty Blogosphere 11.16.12

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

From Head...
On pride: Brittany Julious on beginning to lose what others call women's "crowning glory": "I wrote about how my mother began to lose her hair at the same time that I began to lose mine. ... My professor said it was not deep enough, or raw enough, or critical enough. I thought, how can you tell me what is relevant in my life? What is tragedy if not the pursuit of value through vanity?"


 ...To Toe...
Pedi crime: A Wisconsin pedicurist was arrested for disorderly conduct after allegedly slamming a customer's foot into the pedicure bath when she complained about his techniques.

 Zara the Greek

...And Everything In Between:
Opa!: I always assumed clothing chain Zara was named for, um, someone named Zara—but the truth is hilarious.

Regulate, mediate: How Obama's reelection could affect the cosmetics industry. The piece was written on election day so it's a hypothetical of Romney's win as well (psych-out!!!), but in any case looking at larger questions of regulation is helpful here.

Democracy gossip: Leonard Lauder voted and got to bypass Martin Scorsese in line. (Side note: Voting in New York City is fantastic. No Lauder-Scorsese glamour at my polling place but I loved hearing my neighbors' myriad accents—my zip code is one of the most ethnically diverse in the nation—and knowing that whether by birthright or by the long, sidewinding road to citizenship, we'd all come together to exercise our right as Americans. /patrioticsentimentalism) 

Hey baby: Yes, yes, "minorities" (funny word in context) ensured Obama was reelected—but the real news is that the new Gerber baby is Latina.

Objection: Students from the National Law School at India University are filing 10 lawsuits in Bangalore against cosmetics companies with misleading ads. I haven't read anything of false advertising claims being filed anywhere other than western nations, so I'm not sure if this is common or not—but either way it adds some intrigue to the paper chase.

Sub-Saharan beauty: Most of the press on emerging luxury cosmetics markets focuses on Asia and South America, so it's refreshing to read about the long view on Africa—especially given that focus groups show the average Kenyan woman is willing to spend up to 20% of her salary on beauty products.

Index this: More proof that the "lipstick index" just might be consumerist bullshit: Nobody is crying "Chapstick index" when it turns out that the men's grooming sector is recession-proof. Plus, it doesn't appear to apply in China. How could this be? It's an innate part of womanhood for us ladies to want pretty shiny things that attract men to us in times of fiscal downturns, right?!

The sweet scent of regulation: The EU is considering legislation that would require perfumers to identify potential allergens on its label. Perfumers freak out; Scent of Self responds with candor and reason (doubly remarkable because candor alone would have been enough—witness the photos of her perfume-induced allergic rashes).

Oh, snap!: I'm mighty uncomfortable with the idea—blatantly stated in this article—that gay men as a whole objectify women's bodies, as I know plenty of gay men who don't fit this description in the slightest. That said, I've also met plenty of gay men who do: Most recently, a salesman insulted my breasts, and when it was clear I was embarrassed he said, "Oh, don't worry, I'm queer," as if that made his words less hurtful. So I'm glad that someone wrote about this phenomenon intelligently: The conflation of gay (male) culture with fashion (female-ish) culture means that it can be mighty easy for gay men to cross lines of objectification and harassment, mistakenly thinking that because they're not out to harm women, whatever is said or done in the name of fashion or faux "sisterhood" is fine.

Say what you will, but Oedipus was a do-er.

We are family: Men want to marry women who look like their mothers, says a study finding that men are more likely than women to have paired off with someone who resembles the opposite-sex parent. Cue ewwww. 

Body images: Science (science!) has verified what any woman who has spent time in a single-sex spa knows: Exposure to different types of bodies makes you more comfortable with...different types of bodies. Maybe even your own!  

Gee your pits smell terrific: Skin care and deodorant are poised to overtake shaving products in the men's grooming sector for the first time; equal parts shagginess and men giving a damn about their skin are driving this trend.

Beauty capital: Subashini, in her characteristic style, manages to make a set of film reviews about so much more: "Thinking about singleness and marriage, stewing over it, often means that I start thinking about beauty. Because it’s beauty that I’m struggling with at this point in time. ... Romance is a marketplace, and you are one of the many images on sale, and if you’re not the right image you are, essentially, shit."

Put a ring in it: I'm guessing that if you're an academic who reads this blog because it relates to your discipline, you also read Worn Through. (And if not, hop to it, sister.) But just in case: Call for papers (and performances) on feminism and body modification.

Headdesk: I'm shocked—shocked!—that a company as committed to diversity as Victoria's Secret, well known for hiring Latinas such as Alessandra Ambrosio and Gisele Bundchen, and African-American women like Tyra Banks, was so insensitive as to have their models walk down the catwalk in ironic headdresses. 

Sandy shades: Makeup artist Scott Barnes on why beauty post-natural-disaster needn't be frivolous: "I’d argue that remembering to take care of yourself in the face of tragedy — whether it’s a hurricane or any other personal loss — is extremely important. If you feel great, you automatically convey confidence to the world. It’s one small step toward picking up the pieces and getting back into life again." (Though I vehemently disagree with his pick of eyelash curler as a beauty essential. Does nothing for me.)

Next up, leasing chewing gum: But let's not forget that beauty can go beyond frivolous into the absurd, with what is surely the stupidest beauty idea of the year: nail polish rental. What, you wanna try glitter polish and you're too good to buy Wet 'n' Wild like the rest of us?

Too sexy for this blog: It's interesting to read these two posts on dressing sexy as companions to one another. Daisy at XOJane has a piece about how she doesn't like to dress sexy (or is that "sexy"?), but then lists the ways in which she feels sexy wearing clothes that aren't seen as conventionally sexy, like plaid shirts. In my mind, part of the whole joy of sexiness is that it can take a zillion different forms and really has jack to do with how much skin you're showing. Which is why I love Sally's post on concepts of dressing sexy, which acknowledges the ways intimacy and sheer variety can help us privately decide what's sexy.

Permission: Tori looks at the intersection of permission and social pressures around food, specifically pressure to eat more: "I'm wondering now if this isn’t somehow—secretly, unspoken, unconsciously—predicated on the idea that all the members in a communal eating group have a shared desire to eat all the food."

Accustomed to her face: Meli's series on Makeovers in the Movies is fantastic, and this week she looks at the flick that basically serves as a template for the convention: My Fair Lady.

On Veterans Day

"Nicky," Here Are the Young Men, Claire Felicie, 2009–2010

When I write here of beauty, most of the time I’m actually writing of convention—of what we as a culture have given our stamp of approval in the realm of beauty. The point isn’t any person’s actual appeal; the point is the standards and parameters we create around beauty.

But the way I experience beauty in my day-to-day life is personal, not sociological. When I register someone as beautiful—that is, when a person shows up on my radar as you should continue to look—it’s because of a quality the person has. A flicker in the eyes, a smirk, the way the person moves. That sounds vague because it is vague, it has to be vague, because if it were charted and fully understood, it might lose its properties of fascination. Beauty’s ineffability is part of what makes it register to us as beauty.

It's that elusive transcendence—which may or may not be beauty—that comes to mind with Claire Felicie’s remarkable photographs of soldiers taken before, during, and after their tours of Afghanistan, titled Here Are the Young Men. If you saw these photographs absent of context, some of them might have that sort of unclassifiable but intriguing quality about them to you; others wouldn’t. But when you learn that these were taken before, during, and after a life-changing experience that most of us will thankfully never know for ourselves, other qualities leap forward. Aversion, deadening, patience, cynicism, hatred, weariness, reluctance: The photos reflect something more complex than a mere loss of innocence. The phrase “the fog of war” refers to the shrouding of facts, evidence, and ability to determine the best course of action that something as extraordinary as war brings. I think of it here because of these men’s faces: You can’t look at them and draw any sort of universal conclusion. Some men look like the grew into themselves during their tour, a sort of adultness settling across their face. Other men, afterward, are unable to look into the camera. There’s no one way to know how war will change any individual, or any nation.

These photos also call into focus the fluctuating gap between what we really see and what we expect to see, both overshadowed by our knowledge that predetermination will change what we see. As Heather Murphy writes on Slate’s photo blog, “[T]here is something else in that third picture; a dullness to the eyes, a stiffness to the jaw. Isn’t there? What’s interesting about this project is that you can convince yourself that someone changed dramatically from middle to right, only to compare right to left and talk yourself out of it. It must just be angle or lighting, you say.” Yet Murphy reaches the same conclusion I do: “But even after you’ve concluded that wrinkle isn't really any bigger, it's undeniable that there is a difference. … It's not about the obvious clues like a frown or matted hair, but something far more nuanced.”

This can be applied in a far broader context: How our assumptions regarding people’s experiences color how we visually perceive them. Those broader applications are worth looking at, but today, for once I’m not thinking of how to make these questions bigger. I’m thinking of the soldiers—the veterans—and their before, during, and after. Whatever any of us may think of the war in Afghanistan, these people were there fulfilling their duty—as many of our parents did in Vietnam, our grandparents in WWII, our great-grandparents in the Great War that made the eleventh day of the eleventh month a global call for peace, and a global remembrance of those who served. I don’t want to glorify war or its participants by commenting upon Veterans Day. But an honoring needn’t be one of glorification; it can be an honoring of experience. And today, we honor just that.

Beauty Blogosphere 11.9.12

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

 Self-Portrait (Dedicated to Leon Trotsky), Frida Kahlo, 1937

 

From Head...
Art brow'd: My first thought upon learning of the Art Gallery of Ontario's publicity stunt—the museum circulated fake unibrows, which patrons could wear to receive reduced admission for the institution's Frida Kahlo exhibit—was that it was essentially harmless. Like it or not, Kahlo's unibrow is part of what distinguishes her in the contemporary mind, and if that's a portal to people learning more about her work and the passionate radicalism behind it, so be it. This open letter convinced me otherwise, for people wearing the unibrow "[tell] us that they are wearing the unibrow not in an earnest tribute to the artist and her work, but with a cool and distant irony." (via Feminist Philosophers)


...To Toe...
Tootsies: Hurricane + power loss + communal men's shower at YMCA + transgender blogger + bright red pedicure = delightful story of gratitude from ShyBiker.

Adidas altar: There are greater ideological points made in Pop Feminist's short and elegant treatise on gender and shoe worship, but it may be neatly summed up in her last line, "Never be friends with people, only be friends with shoes."


...And Everything In Between: 
Khromadone: Khroma, the Kardashian sisters' cosmetics line, may soon be facing not one but two trademark infringement lawsuits. First came Chroma, a high-end brand that took pains to distance itself from the "low budget cosmetic products that will be sold in mass retail outlets" from the Kardashians—and now another line, Kroma, is looking into legal action after the Khroma team essentially ignored their cease-and-desist letter.

Osiao growth: Estee Lauder marches forward with its wide-scale promotion of Osiao, the company's newly developed line for Asian consumers. Since 70% of the company's online sales in China are in cities without the brand's physical presence, Lauder is planting the line in stores throughout mid-tier Chinese cities in an effort to keep brand recognition strong. 

Java time: With all the talk about the growth of cosmetics in China, Indonesia—the world's fourth most-populous country—has been overlooked. (Guilty.) But no more!

Baring it: Perhaps taking a cue from Movember, the BBC is asking women to go without makeup for a day to raise money for scholarships via sponsors.

Backlash: UK consumers are backtracking on organic products; a new survey shows that only 38% of those who use organic cosmetics think they're actually healthier, and about 60% find them overpriced.

"No guys, really, it’s just for my skin": It takes a nuanced, clear-eyed woman to be able to talk about the complexities surrounding food without lapsing into everything we've heard a million times, but Edith Zimmerman does it in this Into the Gloss interview about the diet she went on to clear up her skin, and Phoebe Maltz Bovy does it in her take on the interview. For as Maltz Bovy puts it, "Gluten intolerance, vegetarianism, mild food poisoning, stress- or busyness-related under-eating, and, evidently, a diet that's about clearing up acne, none of these need be about weight, but—as Edith Zimmerman certainly conveys, and as a less seemingly self-contradictory post wouldn't have managed—it's never a value-neutral thing when a woman does. This is never not part of the equation, precisely because of the (internalized and usual) societal validation women get for losing weight."

Culture clash: The press has gotten somewhat better about not painting eating disorders as strictly a "white girl problem"—but attention to eating disorders internationally, outside of Europe, has been pretty much nil. (That is, except for the odd report about how the arrival of television in, say, Fiji ushered in the disease—which always went back to being a statement about the west, of course.) So this report about eating disorders in the Middle East, specifically United Arab Emirates, is interesting. As with so many other areas, the relationship between the west and east is both definite and uncertain, with western imagery embracing the thin imperative being tagged as one reason for the disease's rise—but with region-specific media concerns, like the glorification of hunger-strike protesters, adding to the pot. (Thanks to Rahel for the link.)

"Half of myself": About Face gives a rundown on the work of photographer Julia Kozerski, who, through documenting a 160-pound weight loss, shows the untold side of immense physical change. "Interior pain is not eradicated by transforming ourselves physically, and often altering our bodies, even if it is in the name of health, can bring about confusion and questions of identity."

Featuring one of my Simone favorites, "Turning Point"

Little Girl Blue: Zoe Saldana, a light-skinned actress of Puerto Rican and Dominican heritage, will play Nina Simone in an upcoming biopic, and writer Akiba Solomon (among others) questions the appropriateness of this, given the importance the singer placed on her own physicality. "At a time when 'black is beautiful' was a revolutionary concept rather than a marketing campaign, Simone adorned herself with African garb and intricate plaited updos. Sometimes she posed nude. As a songwriter and performer, she created a space for black women to grapple with ideas of beauty, privilege and sexual desirability." Is Saldana's casting an erasure of Simone's blackness? 

Brought to you by: This interview with an herb farmer in Uganda who produces essential oils for the cosmetics industry provides a glimpse into the lives of people who are literally on the ground making the products that boast of being "all natural."

Uniformed: Janelle Monáe has an interesting story as to why she always wears her black-and-white "uniform" of sorts: "When I started my musical career I was a maid, I used to clean houses. My parents—my mother was a proud janitor, my step-father who raised me like his very own worked at the post office and my father was a trash man. They all wore uniforms. And that’s why I stand here today in my black and white and I wear my uniform to honor them." Similarly interesting is how she links this to being a Covergirl model: "I want to be clear young girls, I didn’t have to change who I was to become a Covergirl." Not sure what to make of that—she's honoring her background with her fashion, but it's a highly stylized look that isn't actually, you know, a maid uniform, so didn't she...change who she was? Am I being dense?

"Be a Man": A group of Egyptian men are dealing out vigilante justice to street harassers, spraying them with spray paint to visibly "out" them. It's an interesting tactic, and I like the idea of giving out a sort of retribution that lasts as long as a nasty comment might linger in a woman's ears, but obviously there are potential complications here. I'd be interested to know what women of the region feel about this—any Egyptian readers out there?

Lindsayisms: A surprisingly complex collection of encounters with Lindsay Lohan, culled by Sarah Nicole Prickett, in the latest issue of The New Inquiry. (Which of course you're all subscribed to, right? Right??)

Beauty ≠ health: Why the fresh hell do Groupon's "Here's to Your Health" packages include tanning and laser hair removal but nothing to do with, oh, health? Caitlin Constantine takes a look at the conflation of health and beauty.

Make mine a double: Baze at Beautycism muses on the implication of "makeup bars," where women pay for pro makeup jobs outside of the usual context (weddings, photo sessions, etc.): "Social media outlets like Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr have convinced women that they too are brands—pseudo-celebrities who want to make sure that every photo that hits the internet is in line with their message."

Gag me: Perfumes Without Pity's take on the Eat, Pray, Love scent collection. Bwah! 

Painted ladies: Filmmaker Liz Goldwyn gives a bit of history on extreme 19th-century beauty practices beyond the stuff we already know. Painting on veins with grease pencils to appear more translucently pale?! Also check out Goldwyn's new short, The Painted Lady, "a poetic internal monologue of a young girl as she recalls a passing encounter on the street with a 'painted lady' (a slang term for a 19th century prostitute). She romanticizes an overt sexuality so foreign to her—while imagining her own transformation from adolescence into womanhood." (Thanks to Sarah Nicole Prickett for the link.)

Ditto that: Beth Ditto talks skinny privilege, and how growing up in a fat-phobic world made her resilient and better able "to find ways to become useful to myself." And I'm honored to be featured in the accompanying slideshow of "body image heroes" alongside Lady Gaga, Ashley Judd, Lena Dunham, and Kjerstin Gruys.

(via)

Baked beauty: I've already grumbled about food-scented beauty products, but am getting an enormous kick out of the reverse, with Glamour's collection of food shaped like beauty products.

It's got legs: Elizabeth Nolan Brown takes an appropriately tongue-in-cheek look at "the secret to shapely legs." (Turns out being Barbie, a Greek statue, or a lamp is step #1.)

Let's call it a tie: Not sure which bit of auto news is more disturbing: Honda has a new car "just for women!" replete with an A/C system designed to keep skin soft, or Nissan's attempts to create an interior upholstery that feels like human flesh.

Ugliness, flow, and the creative process: Insight-filled interview with Heroines author Kate Zambreno: "To be a woman writer I think you have to partially overcome, or at least wrangle with, the desire to be the object. Zelda [Fitzgerald] came into writing when she got out of the first institution—that picture of her haglike & free in that sailor suit—Cured! she scrawled across the bottom. I like to imagine she’s being cured from being the muse-girl. I think ugliness or enforced isolation in a woman can be perceived of as depression—the antidepressant advertisement, and yet it’s also essential to the creative process, to burrow under, to work not thinking of one’s appearance. Think of Edna Pontellier painting every day drained and yet more alive than ever and not receiving callers in The Awakening. Her doctor and husband chose to pathologize it—only because that behavior was unacceptable. And today we still have behavior that is perceived of as unacceptable, that stands in the way of women being artists, like the fear of ugliness, in so many ways – and the fear of nakedness, which I think is a fear of judgment and reprisal." And this woman writer whispers Yes.

If you see something, say something: Sally on visibility and visionaries: "Part of me rebels against, 'If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.' I mean, there have been so many women throughout time who have plowed forward with ABSOLUTELY NO EXAMPLES AT ALL, and changed the face of history with their visionary bravery. And I struggle with the idea that we, as women, require others to go first before we can follow along... [But] we are communal creatures, and we are influenced by what we see."

Strikeout: Female inmates at a South African prison have threatened to go on strike, stating that the new head warden was taking away, without explanation, privileges such as meals with families, exercise hours—and the right to as many cosmetics as inmates want. Prison spokespeople say nothing has changed since the change in regime.

Quadraboob Study #8: What the Louvre can teach us about body image. Finding well-tailored clothes isn't just a 21st-century problem, it seems!

On Being a Fat Child

I was a fat kid. I haven’t written about this before, telling myself it’s because this blog is about beauty, and I’m wary of conflating weight and beauty. That’s true, but the real reason I haven’t written about having been a fat kid is that—listen, I know writers are supposed to “show, not tell,” but how can I show you the scar the ever-present question of fatness has etched onto my heart? I can’t, and so I will just say: I haven’t written about being a fat kid until now because it was too painful. Being a fat kid hurt me then. Having been a fat kid hurts me now.

Things I remember about being fat: Not being able to wear jeans (there was no such thing as jeans for fat girls in 1983). Not wanting to participate in any games at the school fair except the cake walk; wanting those cakes so badly that I moved faster than I ever had in my life to repeatedly get the last seat, thus winning five cakes; understanding the implicit humiliation of being the fat kid who wanted five cakes but wanting those cakes more than I wanted my pride; doing my best to be gracious when my parents insisted we give away three of them. Faking sick on the day we were supposed to do height-weight testing, only to find out upon return that it had been postponed a day; jiggling my leg incessantly until I had to step on the scale in hopes of losing “enough” weight by midmorning. Immense disappointment at learning that the three scoops of ice cream I’d piled on my plate at the Bonanza buffet weren’t scoops of ice cream but of butter. Pretending to twist my ankle at age 7 in the 50-yard dash at track and field day to spare myself the embarrassment of being the fat kid who came in last; doing the same at age 8, and 11. Stealing bags of brown sugar from the pantry to eat in my bedroom, alone. Secreting away boxes of cereal, to do the same; denying to my mother that I’d done so, even when it was clear she knew I had.

There is a theme here: absence, and falsity. I couldn’t wear jeans; I didn’t want to play games that wouldn’t get me cake; I faked sick; I pretended to twist my ankle; I denied secret eating. Being a fat child wasn’t so much about the fact of being fat as it was about couldn’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t. There is a counter-theme too: Love—of food, exquisite food, food, füd, phood, food, the panacea to whatever free-floating stresses there were in my life as an intellectually mature but emotionally not-so-mature 8-year-old girl. I didn’t have a difficult childhood by any means, but it was a childhood; it came with bumps and dents and scratches that I didn’t really know how to handle. Lucky for me, I didn’t have to learn, because I had food right there, every day, making it all okay. It worked—until it didn’t, but that’s not the story I’m trying to tell here. Food felt like it worked, and in a child’s mind, that’s enough.

*     *     *

Things I do not remember about being fat: Being teased. Being bullied. Having my weight remarked upon by strangers; being laughed at or taunted. I remember exactly three instances of shaming from other people about my weight: a neighbor suggesting I not enter her family’s trailer because I was fat and might somehow damage it; my grandmother telling me in the JCPenney’s dressing room that the problem wasn’t that the pants were too small but that I was too big; a third-grade classmate gasping when she saw my three-digit weight listed on my weight-height chart, when most kids weighed in at around 65 pounds. But when I try to fish deeper for the other memories—the memories that are surely there, for what fat child escapes a landslide of teasing from cruel classmates?—I come up empty. I remember being lightly teased for other things—my name, my glasses, my ponytail, my lack of athletic coordination—but my fatness, the singularly most visible thing about me, remained uncommented upon.

When I look at my own experience of being a fat kid, I don’t see a problem with society, or cruel children, or unlimited soda refills. I see a problem with—how do I put this without appearing to be swatting the wrist of my 8-year-old self?—I see a problem with me, and with the way I understood my size. There was very little fat-shaming in my life, but I still felt like being fat was wrong, bad, unfeminine, shameful—all those things fat activists say are erroneously attached to weight. They’re right to say that; those feelings should be separate from weight. Yet they weren’t separate, not for me. I filtered any feeling I had—about my fatness or anything else—through food, and my chronic overeating was what kept me fat. My feelings were my fatness; my fatness, feelings.

I wouldn’t have been better off had I been basically bullied into losing weight, or into feeling worse about being fat. But I would have been better off had I learned ways of coping with stress that didn’t center around food; I’d have been better off had I understood the joy of moving my body. I’d have been better off if clothes shopping weren’t an exercise in futility; I’d have been better off if any of the well-meaning sweatshirts and tees that were given to me as gifts had fit without revealing the immovable fact of my belly. I’d have been better off if I hadn’t had the hurdle of weight to constantly run up against. What I’m saying is: I’d have been better off if I weren’t fat.

I’d also had been better off if the world around me didn’t disperse shame upon overweight people—had my grandmother not told me I was “too big,” had my classmate remained nonchalant whatever the number on my height-weight card, had my neighbor not insinuated I could singlehandedly topple over a trailer designed for far greater stress than a fourth-grader’s frame. The world needs to change in its attitude toward fat people, and that is unquestionable. But it wasn’t only the world around me that inscribed my fatness upon my identity to the point where I still sometimes cannot recognize myself in photos because I’m looking for someone bigger than I actually am.

Yes, I wish the world around me had been different. I wish I’d been different too.

*     *     *

Being a fat kid wasn’t easy. But the reasons being a fat kid wasn’t easy had little to do with what body-positive bloggers such as myself usually cite. I wasn’t teased, I wasn’t bullied, few people ever tried to make me feel like I was lesser-than because my body was more-than. I don’t recall looking at “aspirational” images of thin women and feeling like I didn’t live up to them, though of course it’s impossible to determine how much of those messages seep into our brains. Sociological reasons alone cannot account for the shame I felt about my fatness. The problem went deeper than that. The problem—to a point—was me.

I keep wanting to baldly state some sort of vaguely political point, but then I find myself stymied as to exactly what I want to say. That maybe childhood obesity is something we should be “fighting”? (Yes, but then there are those billboards in Georgia.) That there’s a way to instill good eating and exercise habits in children without shaming them? (Yes, but who on earth is arguing the opposite?) That maybe when we say fighting childhood obesity is about health, it’s not some fat-shaming conspiracy but is truly about children’s emotional, physical, and mental health? (Yes, but that doesn’t mean that concerns about “health” aren’t also a veiled way of talking about children’s looks.) That maybe plenty of fat kids aren’t built that way, aren’t “big-boned,” aren’t victim to some sort of “fat gene” or environmental hazard but instead have bodies that are suffering from too much food and too little exercise? (Yes, but there are children whose set point is higher than what’s recommended, and I don’t want to advocate anything that would see a child beginning a lifelong battle that she’ll never be able to win. Those children—all children—deserve dignity that gets slighted when we stick too heavily to the traditional way of thinking about weight.)

I suppose the closest I could come to having a larger “issues” point here is this: The emphasis on childhood obesity is a convenient scapegoat for the deeply conflicted relationship pretty much our whole society has with food, comfort, bodies, and conformity. And we as a society have a responsibility to not only take a cold, hard look at that relationship for our own benefit, but, yes, “for the children.” We need to help children on a physical, mental, emotional, and sociological level be as healthy as possible. And sometimes being as healthy as possible includes losing weight. I’m not a public health expert, I’m not a psychologist. I don’t know how to help children reconcile the ostensibly dueling messages of You are good just the way you are and You might be better off if you took certain steps that will make you healthier—and, as it happens slimmer. I just know that we need to.

I don’t like feeling like I have to choose a side: That I’m either a body-positive blogger who looks at weight as entirely separate from health when I know from my own experience that it’s not always separate, or I’m one of those body-shaming fat-phobes who thinks it’s fine to put chubby kids on a billboard as a warning and example. I only have my own experiences to go on, and when it comes to something as intensely personal as our bodies, going on personal experience alone can be dangerous. My experiences as a fat child can’t be superimposed onto the life of every fat kid in America, and I might be even more hesitant to quietly suggest that plenty of kids would benefit from losing weight had I been the childhood equivalent of those adult powerhouses who eat healthfully and mindfully, exercise aplenty, and remain fat. But that wasn’t me. Had I eaten the way my parents tried to teach me to eat, and not been so terrified of moving my body, I would have been well within recommended height-weight guidelines. As an adult, that’s where I fall, though my relationship with food is still conflicted enough that I may never know how much I’d weigh if I were able to be an intuitive eater. (Indeed, that’s another reason I haven’t written much on this; it’s hard for me to know how much of my feelings about childhood obesity inhabit the same space as the part of me where disordered eating thrived for years. Can we ever know?)

Nobody should be made to feel bad because of how they look, or because of the size their body takes up in the world. Does that even need to be said here? I’m saying it anyway, for good measure. But not all fat-phobia comes from outer sources. Yes, I’m tired of the idea that weight loss is unequivocally a good thing; I loathe the bumper-sticker wisdom that inside every fat person there’s a thin person waiting to get out. Nobody wins when we assume fat people must be unhappy. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t fat people—including children—whose size does make them unhappy, and who don’t have a vocabulary for articulating that unhappiness without falling down the rabbit hole of self-loathing. Had I such language as a child, I might have found more satisfaction from what came out of my mouth than what went into it.

Tuesday

The "fugly feminist" trope didn't begin in the '70s, folks. Anti-suffrage postcard, early 20th century (more).

It wasn't that long ago that women didn't have the right to vote. If you're American, get out there today—if not for yourself and your country, then for our foremothers (some of whom have fascinating oral histories here).

On Hurricanes and Beauty

This week has been unusual, to put it mildly. Thank you to readers who inquired about my safety and well-being. I'm fine. My city is not, but New Yorkers are a resilient bunch, and the same goes for our neighbors in New Jersey, Connecticut, and other affected areas.

The beauty community was not untouched. Lauren "Lola" Abraham, 23, was one of the 40 residents of New York City who perished as a result of the storm. A makeup artist who was simultaneously enrolled in beauty school and higher education to eventually become a social studies teacher, Abraham was described by friends as "a beautiful girl, very carefree," according to the New York Times. May she, and all those who fell victim to the storm, rest in peace.

Of course, beauty is a business as well—a big one, and one that, like so many industries, has its epicenter in New York. With an estimated 70 percent of the American beauty and personal care industry located within a 200-mile radius of the city, cosmetics companies large and small will undoubtedly be affected. In fact, one beauty giant has already been affected, though in a different way than one might imagine: Jane Lauder, granddaughter of Estee and a board member of the company, owned a beachside cottage that has been destroyed by the storm. Yet she's only one of the more high-profile people in the industry who have been affected, and one with ample resources. I don't have statistics, of course, but I'm guessing that the majority of beauty workers who have been impacted by Sandy are more like the hairstylist whose sudden three-hour commute illustrates the up-and-at-'em attitude New Yorkers have about getting back to the swing of things. (Note also the tidbit in the piece about nail salons giving mani-pedis in parts of the city that have lost power—you can take away our power but you can't take away our polish!) In any case, the Professional Beauty Association has a relief fund for beauty professionals who have been affected by natural disasters.You can contribute to the fund—or apply for relief.

On the lighter side—sort of—leave it to the inimitable Gala Darling to write something both poignant and wry about Sandy's aftermath, jumping from images of sodden mattresses on the street to muse on "hurricane glamour." (I'll add to the list: As one of the many who defiantly drank their way through the storm, my conviction that red wine makes for a fantastic lip stain is only strengthened.)

*  *  *

There was plenty else that happened this week in beauty. The Kardashian girls might be sued by makeup company Chroma for naming their own line Khroma; Drew Barrymore may add makeup mogul to her list of business pursuits. Yet even typing out those names feels—not quite right. I'm all for humor alleviating the intensity of natural disasters; I don't think throwing out all the things that may seem trivial in times of duress is any way to help ourselves get back to normal.

Not that I find beauty trivial. I don't, and if I did I wouldn't be writing this blog. It's not in the realm of loss of life, no, but if we start thinking that way exclusively, we lose sight of the ways the seemingly trivial and the seemingly important intersect. And we begin to point fingers in an effort to seem more legitimate than those silly people who care about silly things. We're seeing this with post-Sandy talk, actually, with the controversy over this set of Sandy "glamour shots" from Brazilian model and actress Nana Gouvêa. Disaster trumps glamour, right? So exploiting disaster for glamour, is wrong, correct? Yes, it is. But as M. Monalisa Gharavi points out on Twitter, the eye-rolling being done over this (the photos have officially "gone viral," as per HuffPo) doesn't show nearly as much white when "shock contrast" shows up in other areas, such as when the fashion industry exploits the global south in their own imagery. Imagery that is considered legitimate and not mock-worthy, I might add. But "If one lone, expatriate non-American model embrace the calamity trope (without the dark natives, and likely without profit) so help her God."

I don't want to make the mistake of trying to hierarchically organize what's Important versus what's Not Important, nor do I want to forget that beauty itself can play a vital role in preserving the idea of normalcy. That's part of why many of us wear it in the first place: It gives us a routine, it gives us a sense of control. And in a time when it's clear that no matter how hard we plan, there's only so much we can really control, the concept of beauty work, no matter how illusory it might be, becomes particularly potent. So yes, regardless of the chaos going on downtown and in the region as a whole—the elderly and disabled people trapped in high rises, the gas shortages, the neighborhoods completely ravaged, and, of course, the still-rising number of people who have died as a result of Hurricane Sandy, not only in the U.S. but in the Caribbean and Canada as well—beauty still matters.

I believe in the importance of beauty. But this week, its urgency feels far lesser. The news I usually spotlight here can wait. And so, it will. 

Beauty Blogosphere 10.26.12

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

From Head...
Hair art: Love these stunning pieces of hair sculpture, and now want Nagi Noda to do a pony/tail. Ba-da bum.

...To Toe...
Steal my fantastic idea, svp: Nonplused by this Clos du Bois set that includes a nice pedicure shade, but am in mild shock that as far as I can tell, nobody has created a Beaujolais Nouveau pedicure. You've got three weeks, people! Go!


...And Everything In Between:
Bad gamble: Rajat Gupta, former Procter & Gamble board member, was sentenced to two years in prison (and $5 million in fines) for insider trading. 

Cheek swab: A London salon is offering DNA tests designed to help users find a cosmetics regime that's compatible with their genetic makeup. Finally, a way to tell what makeup looks best on your skin! 

The house that soap built: An Ohio court rules in favor of a developer who wants to tear down the 1830s mansion of James Gamble, son of the Gamble in Proctor &, and the inventor of Ivory Soap. The city of Cincinnati had tried to stop its demolition due to the house's historic significance. And in happier historic preservation news, the synagogue Josephine Esther Mentzer—better known as Estee Lauder—attended as a teenager has gotten a loving restoration; ribbon cutting was this week.

Model citizens: Two lawsuits involving models, including a class-action suit suing major agencies for using models' images long after the workers' contracts had expired. Lead plaintiff Louisa Raske is charging that in a similar suit in 2007, the agencies intimidated the models into dropping their claims—something that we're hoping won't happen this time,

Quick exit: The CFO of Ulta, who had been on the job for nearly six weeks, has resigned "effective immediately" and by "mutual agreement," which doesn't even qualify as code for "fired," does it?

Pinkwashed: Don't forget that October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. And don't forget that one of the major sponsors of the month's pinkification sells products that have been linked to cancers of all forms, mmmkay?

Hairy situation: Students of body-hair history (raise your hands! I know you're out there!) will recall the engineering of "ew, hairy pits!" that took place after sleeveless dresses became the fashion in the 1920s. Something similar is happening now in China, and—what's that you say? Genetically speaking, Chinese women tend not to be terrifically hairy in the first place? Just shush, you! (Thanks to Willa for the link!)

The wild east: If you're at all interested in Estee Lauder's new line in Asia, Osiao—the first major cosmetics line from a western company developed specifically for Asian consumers—read this piece from the Wharton school analyzing the cultural and business factors that will likely play into Osiao's success (or lack thereof).

Little, late: In the wake of a series of women dying of septic shock as a result of "beauty treatments," China is going to make stricter divisions between beauty procedures (like, say, microdermabrasion) and medical procedures (like, say, anything that would leave someone dead of septic shock).

What the doctor ordered: Of a different sort of beauty/medical concern elsewhere in Asia is the news that obstetricians in Vietnam have been accepting kickbacks to "prescribe" cosmetics for postnatal patients.

Spot-on Iman: This Q&A with Iman at Beautycism is revealing, not just of Iman's sharp business sense but of how the beauty industry works. "I’ve been told by retailers that black women don’t shop online. They said, ‘We can’t put your whole line on the website.’ I said, ‘Just test it.’ It became the #2 brand on walgreens.com—they were clueless. So while all these companies rush to Asia, we’re trying to grow right here at home."

I get so emotional: Probably no news to any reader here that cosmetics have an emotional component—but how do companies learn beyond self-reports exactly what emotions their products evoke? 

DSM this: This op-ed at the Brown University paper makes a point about eating disorders that dearly needs to be made: Chronic undernourishment can be damaging to your body, even if you don't fit the diagnostic criteria for a full-blown eating disorder. There is so much mythology around eating disorders, even from those who only mean the best, that it's refreshing to see a writer get it right: No, skipping meals and swapping meals for smoothies do not constitute an eating disorder, but depending on the person, those behaviors can also constitute a legitimate problem that needs addressing. [Edited 10.26; see comments.]

Unseen consumers: Interesting post at Muslimah Media Watch from a Muslim woman who worked as a makeup artist and at a cosmetics counter.

Talk it out: What does "The Hottest Professor in America" have to say about beauty privilege? Interesting to have a male perspective on this; men are definitely rewarded for being good-looking (and, I'd add, tall), though I'd argue the penalties for being not-great-looking are fewer. But either way, beauty privilege remains incredibly difficult to talk about, and the only way to change it is to, well, talk about it. Which is something Rachel Hills does here on thin privilege. "The price of looking like Alexa Chung...is that you can’t talk about what it’s like to look like Alexa Chung."

Go Babs!: I love that a group of natural hair enthusiasts is taking dark-skinned Barbie dolls and giving them textured hair (and better yet, then donating them to girls living in Columbus public housing), but I have to ask why Mattel hasn't done this first. I mean, Afro Barbie would just look cool, c'mon.

Heady politics: This video is from June, but I missed it then and it's fantastic: MSNBC round-table discussion with Melissa Harris-Perry of black women's hair. "Why tackle such a hairy topic on a political show? Well, there are few follicles more politicized than the ones that grow out of a black woman's head."

Philosopher queen: If you read one link I've ever suggested here, make it this essay by artist Molly Crabapple on her days as a "professional naked girl." Crabapple is best known as a painter and illustrator, but she proves here she knows her way around a sentence: "A woman's beauty is supposed to be her grand project and constant insecurity. We're meant to shellac our lips with five different glosses, but always think we're fat. Beauty is Zeno's paradox. We should endlessly strive for it, but it's not socially acceptable to admit we're there. We can't perceive it in ourselves. It belongs to the guy screaming 'nice tits.' Saying 'I'm beautiful,' let alone charging for it, breaks the rules."

"I've never heard of a beautiful witch before." —D. Gale, Kansas

Halloween special: Really hoping Wild Beauty is going to launch a regular series from this "Beauty Archetype" post on witches.

Bargain binned: Onceuponatime I was of the belief that all beauty products were basically the same, regardless of price or brand. Then I started having to pay for my own beauty products (working at ladymags sure spoils you for free stuff) and, lo and behold, there really are some things worth shelling out for. So I loved reading Sally's thoughts on the same, and will echo her thoughts on haircuts. Long hair = not worth it. Short hair = get the best cut you can afford!

3-D beauty: Digging these digitally printed cosmetics packaging.

On wigs as a superhero costume: "[T]he wig made the guy at my kitchen table uncomfortable. 'I want to be with the real you,' he said, rubbing his hands along my thighs. I lit a cigarette. 'What if this is the real me?' I asked. We never saw each other again."

Charmed, I'm sure: What is the intersection of beauty and charm? Charlie Glickman (inspired by moi, I'm pleased to report) looks at the cultivation of each. I'd add to his thoughts that they're part of a package of femininity: To be beautiful and not charming is to invite scorn, as though you're not delivering on some aspect of womanhood that's falsely advertised through your looks. And I'd suspect that people who fall outside the realm of what's considered reasonably attractive on a physical level get femininity's itty-bitty perks from charm alone. (Of course, most people are reasonably attractive, so there's that.)

Hair of a certain age: On the hair of Connie Britton, a luxuriantly tressed fortysomething actress currently starring in Nashville: "The Hair asks us to think about a heavy ponytail at forty. Let’s not dismiss this as a joke, or as the same question as Botox or artificially plumped lips. If Botox is always about youth obsession, Connie Britton’s Hair is not always–or even ever–an attempt to look like Lyla Garrity or Hayden Panettiere. It might actually be about the specific pleasure of forty-ness."

Lather up: I'm pretttttty sure that blind people have figured out a way to avoid shampooing their hair with body lotion (so ignore the opener of this piece), but I'll still say that a product line with Braille labels is a neat idea. Wondering what blind women think of this, though; is it perceived as a cheap marketing trick, or a genuinely progressive move, or...? If any visitors here are visually impaired, I'd be very curious to know what you think of this.

Poppy: The Makeup Museum has a thorough rundown on the Andy Warhol NARS collection, sort of the perfect collaboration.

Scent of a woman?: Disney is banking on women—not girls—contracting a serious case of princess syndrome, what with its release of its higher-end "Reigning Beauties" cosmetics collection. If you're going to spend $175 on Cinderella-branded perfume, let's hope it at least begins to smell like pumpkin at midnight. 

For everyone's eyes only: Splendid post at Eat the Damn Cake about how the whole beauty thing isn't for men...yet it's not really for other women either. As Kate puts it, "It was always about the whole world."

Half-Baked Thoughts on the Debates, or Curls and the Patriarchy

#nodads

It would be a stretch for me to try to connect the U.S. election to beauty, or personal appearance, or anything truly germane to my focus here. There's plenty of research out there about height advantage in presidential elections, and how candidates' facial looks don't matter as much as we might think—which is better for democracy and a fair vote, given that Mitt Romney's "high-quality face" is apparently in the 99th percentile of attractiveness, making him, as Zoolander might say, really really goodlooking. (Presumably Obama is too familiar for study respondents to accurately rate his face, though that hasn't stopped us for, say, George Clooney, so.) But really, so much of the research is contradictory and can be spun in pretty much any way you'd like—and, I mean, we're talking about two conventionally attractive candidates here, not JFK and Nixon, knowwhatimean?

So I'll leap from my usual soapbox onto another and say something that has little to do with the issues (which overall are of greater importance than my bone here) but everything to do with the debates: Was it just me, or did the candidates respect the rules and format more with Bob Schieffer moderating than they did with Candy Crowley, or than the veep debate with moderator Martha Raddatz? (And do I need to point out what makes Candy and Martha different than Bob?)

Granted, they both also ran over Jim Lehrer in the first debate, which probably set the stage for the following go-rounds, so it's not just that they sit up and obey for the distinguished white man while trampling all over the ladies. But given the disregard for the rules displayed in every debate until last night, I don't think the candidates reined it in just to tone down the levels of rabidity. I watched them both essentially obey Schieffer, and then I looked at Schieffer—his grandfatherly eyes, his dignified manner, his tone that commanded respect. I contrasted it with the way they appeared to regard Crowley in the town hall debate, and then I looked at her.

And at this point, I realize that this does have to do with looks, at least a bit, for I went back and watched part of the town hall debate to accurately report on what I myself saw in Crowley, and here it is: full, maternal cheeks dotted with bright blush, arched eyebrows, curled hair. That is, I saw the signs of conventional femininity more than I saw a moderator. It pains me to write this—it pains me to think that after a year and a half of arguing here of the desire to reconcile hallmarks of conventional femininity with hallmarks of power, even I still have these thoughts, but there it is: I saw her bouncing hair and wondered how much of an invitation that was to the candidates to talk over her. I'm not blaming Crowley for this, or her hair; I'm blaming...hell, I suppose I'm blaming the centuries that came before us, whispering and yelling and ruling and singing that women—you know, the people who curl their hair and wear ribbons and darken their eyelashes and all that jazz—are better seen and not heard.

Listen, I'm voting Obama; I could expand on why but the fact is I'm pretty much a cookie-cutter liberal as far as this election is concerned. But one of the core reasons I'm happy to be voting Obama is that I find him to be a president who appears to have listened and internalized and understood the larger context of women's rights, reproductive and otherwise, in the U.S. and beyond. But that doesn't mean that he, or anyone, is immune to the subtle and insidious ways that sexism creeps into our day-to-day lives. Talking over Candy Crowley and then reining it in with Bob Schieffer certainly wasn't reflective of any conscious dismissal of Crowley, but rather something akin to what I notice happen to myself when I'm in a room dominated by men: Even when I know what I'm talking about, even when I feel confident, even when I'm fairly certain I'm better-educated on the topic than the men in the room, sure enough, I hear my voice dwindle. I'm a feminist who "knows better," and I do it anyway; I try to stop myself from piping down and playing good girl, but it's difficult enough to recognize it in the moment, and even more difficult to summon the voice to continue once my mental self-admonishments of be polite and honey not vinegar and maybe you've got the facts wrong anyway begin to kick in. It's not a stretch of the imagination to think that Barack Obama, despite his genuine dedication to women's rights and opportunities, despite what appears to be a genuine understanding of gender issues, might have internalized the inverse of the messages that find me silencing myself. (And yes, it is often me silencing myself; there have been plenty of times that I've been shushed by a man, yes, but they're outnumbered by the times I shush myself. I'm guessing that much of the time, men around me would be chagrined to know how often I stay silent.) It's not a stretch to think that he—and Romney too, though his record on gender equality is more questionable—subtly felt more within protocol to interrupt or ride roughshod over Crowley, not because they wish to dismiss her but because talking over women when they have something that feels urgent to say...well, that's just how conversations go. (And they'd be right to think that, as far as lived experience; linguistic studies have repeatedly shown that men interrupt women more than women interrupt men, and that when women do interrupt men it's likelier to be in the context of a supportive interruption, not a competitive one.)

I had several thoughts last night watching the debate, but only one as definitive as this: Judging from their behavior toward the moderators, both candidates long for a patriarch. That doesn't mean Obama has governed like one, nor does it necessarily mean Romney would. It's not like our political arena has done a stellar job of offering alternatives to patriarchs in leading roles—and judging from my own niggling thoughts about Candy Crowley and her hair, it's not like all of us feminists always do a stellar job of looking elsewhere for leadership either. Maybe right now this is the best we're going to be able to do. That doesn't mean I'm not going to question it. And it certainly doesn't mean I'm not going to question my own complicity in upholding the signals of patriarchy as what I myself unconsciously obey.

Emotional Work and Cultural Capital à Deux

Years ago, I dated a bona fide good dresser. Actually, it wasn’t so much that he was a good dresser as it was that he knew what look he wanted to embody: a 1950s career man, one who wears a suit to the office and definitive leisurewear on the weekends. (He may actually have worn a non-ironic fedora, though it’s also possible I’ve mentally superimposed it onto him postbreakup.) He had rules that seemed like someone my grandfather’s age might have—shorts were for boys, not men; always wear an undershirt; single-breasted sportscoats were for hoodlums, etc.

His rules gave me something more than a good giggle: a template. I wanted to be seen as a part of a team—his team—and by styling myself to look the part, I was hoping to become a naturalized citizen of his psychic nation. If I looked like I belonged with him, perhaps I might actually belong with him. It wasn’t only that I wanted to look conventionally good for him (though that too); it was that I wanted us to match. I wanted us to be on the same page of the catalogue, so to speak, so I tailored my own presentation in order to allow both of us to better envision a life in which we were on the same page in other ways. (My page, unlike his, did not include maintaining an active online dating profile while we were together. Must I spell out that part of my eagerness to look like we belonged together was because it was so clear we had no business being so?)

To be clear, this was about me, not him. When I dated an artist whose most recent project had been an installation piece juxtaposing nuclear warheads with My Little Pony, I favored a tousled, spiky haircut and artfully ripped ironic T-shirts; coupled with a wordsmith who wore a uniform of pressed slacks and neutral button-downs, I cultivated a more tailored look that sent a broad, nonspecific signal of ladyhood. Even when spending a week with my skater ex, with whom I’ve developed a siblinglike relationship, I gravitated toward the jeans-tees-sneakers triad that composes his entire wardrobe.

On the surface, what I was doing was matching my styling to that of my various partners. But you don’t have to actually dress alike in order to do what I was actually doing: absorbing responsibility for the public image of our “team.” The clothes I wore may or may not have mattered to the men in my life, but my willingness to perform the “women’s work” of emotional work probably did. “Emotional work”—the management of emotions in relationships—can be as simple as choosing your words carefully during an argument, or evoking a sense of importance in others by purposefully asking questions about their hobbies. Wearing certain clothes or adopting a particular hairstyle might not seem like emotional work at first glance: After all, what we wear has been framed in our current culture as a mode of personal expression. To shift our styling to adapt to a partner seems retrograde. But in a world where women have long been seen as creatures of beauty—and, just as importantly, where both women and men are increasingly being surveyed through social media—women’s longstanding expertise in presentation becomes a form of capital for the couple. Just as the stereotypical “trophy wife” boosts her husband’s social capital, the more plebian version—say, me in kitten heels and a pencil skirt to match my beau’s gabardine suit—boosts the social capital of the team. Dressing to look like Mrs. Him might be retrograde, but dressing to strengthen the notion of a modern dual-income couple seems downright savvy. (I'd be curious to know how this might work in same-sex relationships.)

When we discuss the benefits of beauty in practical terms, we often speak of it as a form of currency—a woman’s beauty in exchange for a man’s wealth. That mind-set is still around aplenty, but I wonder if one fallout of women’s increased independence is that instead of beauty coming into play as currency, it’s more like a form of cultural capital that manages to be both embodied and transferable. Under Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital—the non-financial assets we bring into the world at large, including the workforce—the social goods we bring to the table are largely non-transferable. That is, a wife can’t give her husband her Ph.D., and he can’t give her his ability to speak German. But beauty, as individualistic as it may appear, becomes transferable in romantic relationships: “She must see something we don’t,” we might say about a homely man who snags a beautiful woman. He then becomes elevated in our eyes: What are we missing?

At this point I’m wanting to protest that I’m arguing that, like it or not, beauty and style are a form of embodied cultural capital—not the “erotic capital” that serves to keep true power stratified along sex-based lines. That is, not the erotic capital that I’ve argued against before. But I'm now wondering if I’m just better able to acknowledge the role appearance plays in romance than it might in the workplace—where the bulk of the “erotic capital” rhetoric has been focused—because it seems less distasteful to “use” beauty in personal relationships than in professional ones. In the same way, it’s easier for me to look at my own “emotional work” within intimacies as opposed to professionally because even when it’s difficult on me personally, at least I can acknowledge it’s my own choice, to a degree.

And at this point, I’m wondering if I’m defending my personal history of playing matchy-match with terms like “embodied cultural capital” because I'm seeing exactly how powerless it has made me in the past to eagerly take on emotional work within intimate relationships—and how doubly powerless it can feel when that work takes on the form of not only emotional work but beauty work as well. So I’m shutting up with the Bourdieu and asking all of you: Have you found yourself purposefully using your appearance as a tool within intimate relationships? That is, have you used the tools of conventional femininity or masculinity as a way of communicating deeper desires within a relationship—a desire to be closer, perhaps, or a desire to display your unity to the outside world. (On the most basic level it’s impossible to avoid using your looks in the arena of romance—I mean, who wouldn’t primp before a date?—so I’m not necessarily talking about the actual attention you’d pay to looking and feeling alluring.) It’s only in retrospect that I’ve been able to understand the times I’ve done this in the past (and of course if you asked me if I’m deploying my appearance within intimate relationships now, you’d get nothing but doe-eyed innocence), and I know this is sort of an abstract question, but I’d love to hear people’s experiences of how your looks have played out within your relationships, either privately or in your public life as a couple.

Beauty Blogosphere 10.12.12

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

From Head...
Rachel redux: As the Wall Street Journal reports, Jennifer Aniston has been spokesperson for notoriously few products, so it's interesting that she chose a little-known hair product company to make her debut into beauty product endorsement. The science-driven company says it's all about "beauty and brains," making Aniston a natural choice; as for her part, she says, "You want to be part of something that's exciting and authentic [emphasis mine]. You can't get more interesting than these scientists." What's intriguing here is her reliance upon authenticity as a point of pride (and sales); her image has been successfully cultivated as being authentic, and now she's able to monetize that directly.

Debate: As a vice-presidential debate special, I offer you Biden and Ryan with switched hair.

...To Toe...

Crash course: An SUV crashed into a Dallas nail salon and didn't stop until it blasted into the hair salon next door—dragging along a pedicure chair and the client seated in it. The client was hospitalized but is okay; no news as to whether the pedicure had a chance to get a dry finish.

Kiddie pedicure: Woman kidnaps goat from San Diego petting zoo, returns it with hot pink pedicure.

Magic at your feeet: Virginia Postrel interviews Manolo the Shoeblogger on why people love to talk about shoes, beginning with, "Because shoes have magic in them." Indeed—who didn't love-and-or-become-utterly-terrified-by "The Red Shoes" as a child?


...And Everything In Between:
End of an era: Avon's transition out of the Andrea Jung era is nearly complete, as the chair and former CEO of the company will step down entirely at the end of the year. Jung left her post as CEO in April in the midst of a bribery scandal involving Chinese officials; she stayed on as chair to help the new CEO, former Johnson & Johnson exec Sherilyn McCoy, transition into the role.

Final farewell: RIP George Friedman, a longtime exec with Estee Lauder who helped create both Clinique and Aramis, at one point the world's best-selling men's fragrance. Aramis was the first prestige men's fragrance to be sold in department stores, paving the way for the sexier, more youthful fragrances that followed (Obsession, Drakkar Noir) the lead of Aramis, which was known for lending its wearers an image of wealth, dignity, and ultimate gentlemanliness.

Ronnie boy: Revlon agrees to pay shareholders $9.2 million after investors claimed controlling shareholder Ron Perelman played a sort of shell game of stocks in order to acquire even more of the company. Ronnie, Ronnie, what's gotten into you this year?

Global beauty: Makeup artist Meli Pennington of Wild Beauty joins a psychiatrist, cosmetics consultant, and the CEO of a green skin care company in this Huffington Post video about globalization and the beauty industry.

Little luxury: The focus of this article on recent spending slowdowns in China is ostensibly luxury goods, but most companies mentioned are beauty and skin care companies, making me wonder if we're asking the right questions here.

Can't judge by the package: You probably already know that the word "natural" means jack squat on beauty products—but did you know that "hypoallergenic" can be just as empty a claim? (I didn't.) ShopSmart's latest issue decodes 15 cosmetics terms.

"Seal boy": Forgive the clip's reductive title—"Can Prosthetics Be Art?"—and instead focus on the inordinate charms of performance artist Mat Fraser, who takes us through a video tour of an exhibit focusing on the aesthetics of prosthetics (which he himself seems to use only in a performance setting; he was born without fully formed arms). Usage, aesthetics, creativity, and "human adaptation"—they're all covered here. Worth a watch.

White Girl, Sarah Maple (via)

Stealth hijabis: As a non-Muslim in a neighborhood with a sizable Muslim population, I've made plenty of assumptions upon seeing a woman whose head is covered and whose feet are sporting killer stilettos. My assumptions are positive—rebel grrrl, way to claim your space, artful cultural navigation—but as Nahida points out about these "stealth hijabis," who wear headscarves along with things that might label them as "immodest" by some, those assumptions are short-sighted. "The approach of the stealth hijabi to life is a careful and restorative one, and not the irresponsible 'damaged beyond redemption' state that Muslims suppose or the simple 'rebellious child' that non-Muslims perceive."

Puppy love: Portuguese researchers have developed a skin allergy test that has the potential to significantly reduce the use of cosmetics animal testing even further.


Showbiz: I am fairly certain web series The Sisters Plotz—starring Eve Plumb, Lisa Hammer, and Lisa Ferber, and written by Ferber (whom you've met plenty of times on The Beheld before)—qualifies as madcap comedy. The second season is now online. (And yes, kittens, it also serves as my film debut; you can hear my warble at 1:06.)

#notgettingit: Just when I finally get #nodads (hint: "What could you give to this country, as a man"), #sorryfeminists creeps up. The idea is to make fun of people who cling to stereotypes about feminists—specifically, that we can't take a joke—by marking supposedly antifeminist things plenty of feminists do with the #sorryfeminists hashtag. ("Just got back from Pilates class #sorryfeminists.") But I dunno, the whole thing requires a sort of gymnastics humor that I'm not getting? And then I feel made fun of by people saying that it's funny that people don't get it? Am I old/out of touch/not in the clubhouse, or am I just that deep down the irony hole of #sorryfeminists by writing a pink-heavy beauty blog? I don't think it's offensive, but I don't think it's particularly...funny either. (#sorryfeminists) Thoughts? I want to get it but suspect that like any humor, having it explained sort of kills it.

#thighstilidie: Lena Dunham tried on the tap pants trend, the world stopped, and her response to her critics is nothing short of fantastic. "I don’t think a girl with tiny thighs would have received such no-pants attention. I think what it really was . . . ‘Why did you all make us look at your thighs?’ My response is, get used to it because I am going to live to be 100, and I am going to show my thighs every day till I die."

In yo face: Is bar soap's reputation as being too drying to use on the face outdated? (Since I haven't washed my face with anything but water since 2010, I'm wholly unqualified to comment—or perhaps inordinately qualified when I say that if you have normal skin, any soap is too much for your face?)

Exhibit P: An Ohio district attorney race took a turn for the weird when the challenger to incumbent Laina Fetherolf was accused of spreading rumors about the way Fetherolf handled a courtroom "wardrobe malfunction." The facts: Fetherolf did suffer a "malfunction" of some sort and had to leave the courtroom to fix it. The rumor: That upon learning the jurors were snickering at being able to see her dark underwear through her light dress, she left the room, removed her panties, and placed them on the judge's bench, saying "Problem solved." Judge John T. Wallace hastens to Fetherolf's defense, telling a local newspaper, "No panties have ever been placed on my bench by anyone, including her."

Bagel mods: Feminist Figure Girl gives a defense of the bagelhead: "They question rather than reinforce the beauty myth, especially the billion dollar face puffing industry, by displaying an anti-beautiful facial addition." Plus, she brilliantly ties it in with her field of expertise—bodybuilding—to ask why some body modifications are seen as discipline while others are seen as, well, weird. (I have a few thoughts on that matter but like the contrarian defense here.)

All the pretty girls: Literary project All the Sad Young Pretty Girls of Color is looking for a graphic designer—and is still accepting submissions. You don't have to be sad! Or conventionally pretty! If you're a young woman of color with a story to tell, this outlet could be for you; it's edited by three whip-smart women (all of whom I ran into separately online, so I was particularly delighted to see they're working together on this) and I'm terrifically eager to see what comes next from the project.

The clothes we keep: Lovely essay from Rebecca Howden on keeping clothes she never wears: "Like most people, I’m an emotional shopper. I buy clothes when I’m feeling sad, and when I’m feeling happy. I buy clothes when I’m feeling lonely, stressed, vengeful, excited. But most of the time I’m not really buying for myself; I’m buying for one of my possible future selves."

Peace out: Two of the best body image writers out there have some great offerings this week. Mara Glatzel of Medicinal Marzipan is launching an e-course that serves as a companion to her Body Love Homework book, which I can attest is a worthwhile read. And Sally McGraw gives concrete tips on what to do when you're having a nasty body image day. (The first pointer is my favorite—as much as I want to disappear into black flannel when I'm feeling bad about my body, I always, always feel better if I suck it up and wear something bright.)

Beauty Privilege: Can We Talk?

Illustration by Steph Becker

Just like me—in fact, just like pretty much every woman who has ever written about beauty in a public forum—the coauthors of Beauty Redefined have been critiqued as being both A) too pretty to understand the challenges surrounding looks bias, and B) so unpretty that it's no wonder they're writing about body image and self-esteem issues, the poor jealous things. What's that I hear you saying? Something along the lines of: But those statements are totally contradictory? Why yes, they are. That is, they're contradictory in their sentiment, but they're identical in their value, which is: Whatever this woman—or any woman—is saying about appearance must be evaluated by her own beauty, or lack thereof.

Lindsay and Lexie at Beauty Redefined have some excellent talking points at their post on this matter, and if I could cosign the entry, I would. Their entry also got me thinking about one of the more elusive aspects of beauty privilege and looksism, which is: It’s really difficult to talk about.

I mean, we can talk about beauty privilege—or negative beauty bias—in the abstract, and we can talk about things we witness. But you think it's difficult to prove something like the subtler forms of ageism or racism or sexism? Try just discussing looksism. Not only is looksism even more amorphous than plenty of other "isms," but think of how you sound if you talk about it openly: It can seem hopelessly narcissistic to own up to one's "beauty privilege," and hopelessly affirmation-seeking to talk about suffering at the hands of looksism. Unlike privilege that comes from being white, able-bodied, male, thin—and even, to a lesser degree, being heterosexual or middle class—beauty privilege is something that's both physically evident and seemingly impossible to deconstruct from a personal point of view, which is a key way that privilege (and lack thereof) comes to be understood and taken seriously.

I'm guessing that as a woman who is nominally attractive but in no immediate danger of launching a thousand ships, I've received some benefits from looking the way I do but have been spared both the grander forms of beauty privilege (I'm fairly certain I've never been hired as set decoration) and the major drawbacks of beauty (nobody assumes I’ve coasted by on my looks). But here's the thing: I'll never really know to what degree I've experienced beauty bias, in either direction. Few of us do. It could be that the small perks I've been attributing to being a nice-enough-looking lady—say, getting slipped a free cookie now and then at the deli—are just people being kind, and that they'd do the same if I were homely, or a man. I'm sure that is indeed the case sometimes, but I've been smacked down by my own naivete in this regard enough times to know better than to get all Pollyanna here. (One of the free-cookie men suddenly stopped giving me cookies after I stopped by once with a male friend. It was the illusion of availability that he liked—and once that fell to the wayside, so did my supply of white chocolate-macadamia treats.) We can have our hunches, but for the most part that's all we have.

I think of the "click" moments I've heard time and time again of women discovering, without a doubt, that they were feminists; much of the time it's an instant recognition of and reaction to sexism. I'm left wondering what sort of "click" moment it would take for a woman to discover, without a doubt, that she was receiving or being denied a form of beauty privilege. Receiving privilege is particularly difficult to tease out, in part because privilege functions by being unspoken, and unrecognized. (Sitting at the front of the Montgomery city bus in 1954 wasn't what we'd now term "white privilege"; it was the law. Beauty privilege may be encoded in a handful of circumstances, but for the most part it's not.) And since looks are painted as being an ineffable part of a woman's essence—particularly in the case of women considered conventionally beautiful—it becomes even murkier than other forms of privilege. How can you have a "click" moment about something that's supposedly transcendent?

I don't write a lot about beauty privilege, and this isn't the only reason why (mostly I just feel like there are more interesting things to write about). But yes, it's a reason. Not only is there a fear of being called a narcissist if I write about whatever forms of privilege I might have experienced, there's a fear of being called delusional if any given critic doesn't find me...privilege-worthy, shall we say. Maybe this fear is rooted in my personal reality of being an attractive-enough but not stunning woman. Or maybe it's rooted in the reality of being a woman, period. (And, as it happens, I've been called both a narcissist and delusional just for writing about appearance at all, so there you have it.) As much as women are punished for not measuring up to some amorphous beauty standard, we're punished just as much for thinking we're "all that."

“When we dismiss someone’s words due to our assessment of their appearance, we’re minimizing them to their body,” write Lindsay and Lexie at Beauty Redefined. That’s absolutely true, yes. Yet unlike Beauty Redefined, a good portion of The Beheld is expressly written from a first-person perspective. Much as I’d like my words to speak for themselves, I can’t say it’s necessarily wrong to take the looks of people writing personal essays about appearance into account when reading their work. My experience of beauty is undoubtedly different than, say, Charlize Theron's, just as Charlize Theron's experience is beauty is different than it would be if she wore her Monster look 24/7. Readers who assume after looking at a photo of me that they know something unwritten about my perspective might not be entirely wrong—but as the disparate evaluations of my looks from various commenters has shown, they can't all be "right."

We’re so used to viewing women as objects (I include women in this) that we may forget they are subjects too, particularly when discussing looks. Most of the time we talk about beauty, we understandably talk about it in terms of how we look at people, not about the subjective experience of looking beautiful, or plain/cute/weird/misshapen/hot/ whatever. Certainly we don’t usually talk about it in terms of how we believe we’re seen. And if we want to understand the labyrinth of beauty in a richer manner, that might be the most revealing perspective of all.

Beauty Blogosphere 10.5.12

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

From Head...
Shades of gray: Turns out not as many people go gray as is commonly believed: One in 10 people over the age of 60 don't have gray hair, as reported in a study funded by...L'Oréal, which for once actually seems to legitimize the findings instead of casting doubt upon them. (Wouldn't L'Oréal want to report everyone turning silver at 60 on the dot?)

...To Toe...

Tights and YOU: Finally, someone answers all the questions you've wanted to ask about tights (but were afraid to ask). "Q: How do you make sense of the weirdo tights-sizing charts on the back of tights packaging? A: Just ignore them. The ones in your hands are probably the right size."


...And Everything In Between:
China mini-roundup: Aha! I've never understood why some American-produced goods are cheaper in overseas markets with low per capita income, while others cost just as much as they would in the States. This article sheds some light on why luxury goods benefit from keeping prices high even when the corporation could easily afford to slash prices (though the hook of the piece is that Estee Lauder recently did cut prices in China). Another piece calls into question the effectiveness of Osiao, the new Asia-specific brand from Estee Lauder—this really is untested waters, and it could go either way in China. The timing is particularly iffy, as the products are made in Japan, which is currently sparring with China over an archipelago of islands; strong branding has prevented sagging sales of Japanese-made products, but an entrant into the marketplace doesn't have that security. Plus, new research is revealing a psychological portrait of the emerging Chinese consumer, who tends to be younger, more brand-loyal, and more likely to make purchases based on emotions—which could go either way for Osiao.

Remember my name: A branding study shows that mass market cosmetics have stronger brand equity than high-end cosmetics. This seems surprising at first, given the way the power of the interlocking Cs of Chanel can induce sensible people to spend $45 on lipstick, but really, isn't brand equity just another way of saying "recognition"? And even if you're Miss Hoity Toity, you probably head into a drugstore at least as often as you head into Saks. (But the minute Saks starts carrying disposable razors...)

Color of sin: Revlon-owned nail polish line Sinful Colors is laying off more than 100 workers, expected to mostly come from the Maryland facility.

Eau de Pussy Riot: This interview with a mass-market Russian perfumer is unexpectedly charming ("Perfume isn’t something you buy every day. It’s not like bread or vodka")—and politically revealing. On the impossibility of a Pussy Riot perfume: "Don’t hold your breath. Support for the opposition is critically weak. You can’t base a brand round it. Maybe 10,000 people on a public square make a newspaper story—but those numbers just don’t stack up for us." (via Scented Salamander)

Hot mods: Beauty Redefined knocks it out of the park yet again, this time turning their critical view onto modesty. There can be power in modesty, but the "modest is hottest" mind-set puts the power exactly where we don't want it: back with the male gaze and its evaluation of women as objects. The piece is written from a nondenominational perspective, but it was interesting to read it through the lens of knowing the importance coauthor Lindsay Kite ascribes to her Mormon faith in regards to her work at Beauty Redefined.

"From the outside, my eating disorder looked a lot like vanity": Carrie Arnold, whose wonderful blog ED Bites continually updates and expands our understanding of eating disorders, has an essay in Slate that ideally would end the equation of "eating disorder" with "image-focused," though that's probably an optimistic hope, oui?

The fame of eating disorders: Finally, someone says something about the recent spate of celebrities revealing their eating disorders other than, "Lookee here!": Eating disorders are often linked to perfectionism, which is also often linked to the drive to succeed in one's given field. Like, say, journalism, or music, or fashion.

Love your selfie: Ann Friedman's piece on the power of the "selfie" (the digital self-portrait, à la Lady Gaga's simple yellow-bikini shot that has caused a media firestorm) is worth a read, though I'm not sure I agree with her main takeaway here—that the ability for us to see imperfect celebrity images has the potential to bring in a lesser level of self-critique. I think we're so used to equating women's bodies with sex that neither nudity nor poor lighting sends the subversive message this piece implies. That said, I do think there's potential here in the "selfie," for as Friedman writes: "The selfie says, I’m here alone. It says, Here’s how I want to present myself. This is why Gaga’s nudes are so powerful. They’re poorly lit; they’re self-staged. Not only is there no airbrushing, but there’s no flattering lighting, no strategic body positions. They underscore the message of her accompanying words. They say, Here’s me. Just me." (I also love Friedman's piece on why we should bring back the slip, not that I needed convincing, mind you.)

On in/visibility: The best thing I've read on the Lady Gaga "bulimia and anorexia since I was 15" picture comes from Crunk Feminist Collective. "We, as the social creatures we are, long to see and be seen. ... I am routinely pissed off about the way beauty is defined and described so as to exclude me, and so, so many others. And I certainly derive strength from that rage. But then, I also have to pause. I notice my discomfort begin in earnest whenever we have conversations about beauty and body image that do not include in intentional analysis of beauty as something that lives right at the intersection of race, age, ability, gender and sex. It’s not an expendable luxury here, to name these things. For women of color, the notion of embracing and seeking the upside of ugliness is a complicated task in the fight against invisibility on one hand and hyper-visibility on the other."

Take it from a pro: The professionalization of the beauty industry helps create safety and training standards, and it also serves to legitimize a profession that is often undermined. But as this beauty-school blogger writes, it can also lead to an overdose of TPV: The Professional View, aka riding roughshod over clients' actual experiences in favor of a professionalized view of what "should" work.

Move over, Willy Loman: Any readers in the Birmingham, UK, area want to check out the hilarious-sounding play Death of a Beauty Saleswoman and report back to me?

Beauty myth: Turns out feminist sex writer Clarisse Thorn has a hand in fiction in addition to her insightful, provocative nonfiction books and essays. The End Of An Age: A Ramayana tells the tale of exquisite beauty and its consequences, through clear-eyed prose in the style of the Sanskrit Ramayana, an epic tale of relationships and their duties. Check out the story now—it'll soon be behind a paywall, though it'll only be 99 cents to read once it's gated.

Two sides, same coin: You know those studies that talk about how facial symmetry signals evolutionary health? This collection of digitally symmetrized portraits—a combination of lovely, spooky, adorable, and just plain weird—makes me wonder about the truth of that claim. (via Monalisa)

Melissa the Great: "Breasts and females, there’s a subject we could talk about for a long, long time. How our place in the world and our sense of self is shaped by the size, shape, tone and texture of our breasts. Mine worked really good. They fed my infant." I love Melissa Leo. (Okay, really I've only seen her in a couple things so clearly what I mean is: I love Kay Howard. Homicide represent!)

Pitiless perfumes: Given that perfume ads, by their very nature, have to rely almost entirely on marketing, branding, and emotional connection in order to make their sales, it's a wonder nobody created Perfumes Without Pity—a Tumblr parodying (with love! sometimes!) perfume naming and branding techniques—before now.

The other limitation of the MPDG: I haven't seen New Girl, in part because I was resistant to the whole gee-ain't-Zooey-Deschanel-quirky thing—but if anyone could convince me to give it a whirl, it's Lili Loofbourow and her piece that gives a different take on the manic pixie punching bag. "[I]f you have a proclivity toward selectively seeing sameness and ignoring difference, you’re missing the stuff that makes characters and comedy great. ... Fixing this bad habit, this blindness to variety, requires that we, as an audience, be re-trained. New Girl more or less announces in the title that this is what it’s trying to do with the '____ Girl' trope. It’s insisting on the possibility of a new girl, and chooses for that 'new girl' one of the most typecast film actresses of our time. Not just typecast—archetypecast."

On silvered glass: How private Roman peepshows, conquistadors, and 4-H shaped the way we gaze at ourselves—loving Wild Beauty's social history of mirrors.

Getting highlights: Sally might have titled this post "Highlighting Your Face Without Earrings," but for the most part it also serves as a guide for how to highlight your face without makeup (quelle horreur, I know, but I understand not everyone loves the stuff—but that shouldn't mean you don't know a few strategic tips here and there regardless).

Thoughts on a Word: Fine

Fine is dignity, elegance, class. Fine is edges that manage to be clean yet soft. Fine is a low, respectful whistle emitted under one’s breath. Fine is manners, fine is taste—but if she’s so fine, why is there there no telling where the money went? Fine is the root of refined. Fine is delicacy, fine is restraint, fine is thin. Fine is balanced on the palate, hints of tannin and leather, aged in oak barrels. Fine is please and you’re welcome—and, depending on who’s speaking, wham bam thank you ma’am too.

Fine—unblemished, pure, of superior quality—stems from the Latin finis, meaning end, for once you’ve reached the end you can’t get any better, can you? Used since the mid-15th century to express admiration or approval, it quickly became applied to women’s appearances. From Jeremy Collier’s Essays Upon Several Moral Subjects, published in 1700: “Why should a fine Woman, be so Prodigal of her Beauty; make Strip and Waste of her Complexion, and Squander away her Face for nothing?” First Lady Elizabeth Monroe was repeatedly described as fine by newspapers of the time; a 1798 report of a woman’s travels in France describes une femme as “A fine-looking woman, evidently above the vulgar class.” Indeed, class, refinement, and elegance were tethered to the quality of being fine: A woman in the underclass might be plenty pretty or beautiful or even handsome, but fine? Hardly. Manners and affect of fineness mattered just as much as looks, and occasionally writers would delineate being fine from being pretty: “The elder was a fine-looking woman... Yet no one would call her a beauty” (McBrides, 1898).

It would be a mistake, however, to think that fine is always used with wholehearted approval. Even fairly early on, fine could be used as a double-edged sword. For all the elegance implied with fine, the word can also reek of She thinks she’s all that. When applied homogeneously among members of the same class, fine tends to be a straightforward compliment; in the hands of someone with lower socioeconomic status than the person labeled fine, it can turn sour. That fine little number needs to be put in her place—and the one sneering fine knows just the fellow for the job. “She's so fine that she thinks no one that comes up-stairs in dirty shoes worth speaking to” (1860). “Why, she's so fine she can't eat eggs outen chickens that costs less than maybe a hundred dollars the dozen" (1918). “[S]he’s so fine herself. That sort of a woman always finds her happiness in making some unworthy sort of a devil happy” (1911). And filed under U for “uppity women,” we find this entry from a 2001 Ebony: “There was a time where...all you needed to do was turn on the charm, whisper a few sweet nothings and that fine woman was yours.”

Its appearance in Ebony is hardly incidental. If fine tends to be a compliment when uttered by someone who considers himself to be of equal class to the fine lady, it can also be inverted by someone wishing to create class differences within members of the same group. Historically speaking, plenty of black men have been eager to diminish black women—motherhood may be held in reverence, but one glance at the catalogue of misogynist rap and hip-hop lyrics shows that black women aren’t necessarily held in high esteem by their male counterparts. It was actually a rap song that first alerted me to the subverted use of fine—“She’s So Fine She Can Ride My Face,” by C-Boyd, aka “Mr. Ride My Face.” (Argue all you want for a song about cunnilingus to be a positive turn for women; the lyrics include gems like “I’m gonna take her home if she’s wasted”—presumbly not for a glass of Alka-Seltzer—so I’m sticking with my initial distaste to the phrase “ride my face.”) Then there’s hip-hop artist Akon’s take on fine women. “See that girl think that she’s so fine / I must believe her ’cuz I’m losing my mind / Look like the type that love to wine and dine / But I plan to get it without spending a dime”: Akon may have plenty of problems, but treating this bitch like she’s fine ain’t one.

Yet the turnaround use of fine is hardly the word’s dominant usage in the black community: “She’s so fine, I’d drink her bathwater,” exclaimed a Halle Berry fan in a 1999 Ebony. “‘Damn, all that fine body going to waste,’” quoth a black lesbian of what men sigh upon finding out she’s gay, in a 2005 report in Atlanta magazine of black women living on the down low. Going back to the word’s original meaning—that of class, elegance, and visibly “good breeding,” a fine woman is something to behold—that is, she is something to be seen. It’s an (unintended?) nod to the controversial idea of conspicuous consumption within black communities—that black and Latino populations spend more on visible goods (clothing, cars, jewelry) than white populations of comparable income. It’s been disputed by plenty who cite racial stereotyping (“rims!”) as the root of this theory; the 2008 study that examined race and spending concluded there was something to the notion, and that stereotyping does play a role—that conspicuous consumption in black communities comes from the need to prove one’s middle-class status when you’re assumed to not be middle-class by dint of race. Whatever the truth of race and spending, the prevalence of fine in regards to black women is notable: One of Google’s “related searches” options for the search term “fine women” is “fine black women,” while black women remain absent from suggested searches for beautiful, pretty, cute, and lovely women. And image-wise, none of the top 10 searches for those others sorts of ladies yielded a single woman of visibly African descent—while three appeared in the top 10 for “fine women,” including the lead result.

Hip-hop aside, the sheer number of songs about fine women is initially perplexing. Bruce Springsteen, Jimi Hendrix, Clarence Garlow, The Easybeats, Flash Cadillac, Big Boy Myles, Roscoe Dash—all of these artists have recorded a song entitled “She’s So Fine,” and none of them are the same. Compare that with the single entry of him being so fine (“He’s So Fine” by The Chiffons), and something seems askew—something, that is, besides the oodles of tributes penned to women in general, automatically tipping the balance in favor of fine ladies. For a word that has the potential to be applied evenly to the sexes—after all, men too can be elegant, classy, reeking of quality—the overwhelming number of times fine is tacked onto women makes not only the class aspect of the word clear, but the possession aspect as well. (It’s worth nothing that in the black community, the word appears to be more equitably applied, if things like the Fine Black Men Tumblr and Flickr pool are any indication.) Fineness in women is a good, a commodity; much like the fineness in material goods, in women the quality is something to be detected, pursued, and won over. It takes knowledge and discernment to distinguish something—or someone—that’s fine from its more common sisters. And if you have the skills to make that distinction, why wouldn’t you want to possess so fine a good? The songsters tell us this over and over. Lucky for them, fine rhymes with mine.

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For more Thoughts on a Word, click here.

Invited Post: Pretty/Funny

Eve Plumb, Lisa Ferber, and Lisa Hammer in The Sisters Plotz and Their Afternoon of Will-Reading and Poetry

When I interviewed artist, writer, and “highly productive bonne vivante” Lisa Ferber last year, she shared how two of her childhood heroines were Lucille Ball and Gilda Radner, because they managed the supposedly impossible feat of being both funny and pretty, and how as an adult she came to admire Fran Drescher for the same reasons. Lisa’s no slouch herself in the humor department—she writes and stars in a hilarious web and film series called The Sisters Plotz, directed by Lisa Hammer; its most recent installment, The Sisters Plotz and Their Afternoon of Will-Reading and Poetry, will air on Manhattan’s MNN Lifestyle Channel October 3 at 2 p.m., and on MNN’s Culture Channel October 7 at 10:30. It will also be live-streamed on MNN.org during those times. (And if you need further incentive to watch, yours truly has a small role in it. I even sing!) So I’m particularly delighted to have her guest post today about critic Nikki Finke’s Emmy live-blogging feat in which she claims that—well, read on.

I snapped today when I read Nikki Finke’s much-talked-about critique of the Emmys, specifically her thoughts on Julie Bowen’s win for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series. I’ll put Finke’s entire tirade here to spare you the trouble of clicking through (but if you must, it’s here): “Listen-up, Hollywood: Beautiful actresses are not funny. They don’t know how to do comedy. (As Bowen demonstrated with her acceptance speech that repeated the phrase ‘nipple covers’ 3 dozen times. To zero laughter.) Only women who grew up ugly and stayed ugly, or through plastic surgery became beautiful, can pull off sitcoms or standups. Bowen isn’t a comedienne just like Brooke Shields wasn’t and a zillion more. Because it’s all about emotional pain and humiliation and rising above both by making people laugh with you instead of at you. So stop casting beautiful actresses when you should be giving ugly women a chance. (Tina Fey always points out she looked like a troglodyte when she was younger.) This also applies to handsome men, by the way. Now argue amongst yourselves.”

Finke knew what she was doing; hits for her piece would go up by declaring something so controversial. And she’s already had responses with people ranting about her and posting photos of funny women, talking about what a fool she is. That’s all great and helpful. My response is that I’ve never understood why the funny vs. beautiful dichotomy even exists—and I’m questioning how we created a world in which it does. (Okay, and also that Brooke Shields is hilarious. When I saw her on Friends as the obsessed soap opera fan, I thought, “Yes, Brooke! You went from underwear model to blasé movie actress to Norma Desmond! You will not let people tell you who are!” Only someone who is unwilling to let herself grow would look at Brooke Shields and decide that a woman who used to parade around in her panties for a living can’t decide to start letting her wit do the dazzling…while still looking movie-star perfect.)

Beauty is mesmerizing, transportive; it makes tongues wag and it makes times slow down. Beauty says, “I am here as an object for you to admire,” and while it contains power, it’s a power that turns its owner into an object of projection and fantasy. Comedy is refreshing, jarring, true, smart. Comedy says, “I am powerful, in a way that means I am going to call it like I see it, and sometimes you will feel taken aback.” The ability to deliver a comedic line is a form of confidence that a person has—or doesn’t have. The ability to show up at an event and know that a certain percentage of people will stare at you is a confidence a person has, or doesn’t have. The difference is that beauty, though a quality that dazzles a room, invites people to make up who you are and fill in the blanks; comedy shuts that down. When a beautiful woman demonstrates a sense of humor, it goes one step past showing she’s smart and gets right to, “I’m not just smart, I’m questioning and I’m making observations. I am an active participant, not a shell.”

The idea that a woman can only be funny if she has suffered is an interesting one, for humor can be a sign that someone is able to find happiness at all times, and it is often developed as a survival mechanism for those dealing with hard times. But the implication—and this is not just Finke, it’s the reason she and others have this issue in the first place—is that beautiful people don’t have everyday problems and therefore can only be funny if they’ve suffered the plight of the underdog. What’s particularly disturbing about this implication is that a beautiful, funny person has to keep proving their pain—has to keep apologizing. “I’m still hurting! I’m not just enjoying being funny and beautiful! I hope that makes you feel better about your sucky life and limitations!” Why do we need to know that Tina Fey wasn’t attractive when she was younger? Why did Joan Rivers constantly make fun of her own appearance, then pick relentlessly on gorgeous Liz Taylor when Liz was struggling with her weight, and then resort to frightening plastic surgery? Do we need to see a funny, successful woman apologizing constantly for her wit and success in order to feel that all is right with the world? Must every beautiful funny woman pull out “awkward teenage photos” to prove “but I’m one of you! Really!”

The beautiful vs. funny issue comes down to the recurring problem of women not being allowed to embrace all forms of their power. A beautiful woman, out of politeness, has to pretend she doesn’t notice she is being watched, even though of course she should be aware of it, for reasons ranging from self-protection to understanding why she might receive special treatment, either preferential or jealous. A funny woman proves consistently that she is aware of herself in the world, and is insightful about human behavior and motivation—and when this is combined with prettiness, it leads to a viewer wondering, “Wait, so are you aware that each hair toss drives people wild too? How much of this are you picking up on?”

The division between beauty and humor hasn’t always been as sharp as it is now, and throughout film history there have been women who have shimmied through the cracks. On the late ‘80s/early ‘90s hit Designing Women, a rare woman-focused show where attractive ladies were not trying to cut each other’s throats for men—though they all did date and had some lasting relationships—beauties Dixie Carter and Delta Burke both owned their physical beauty and their comedic strengths. In The House Bunny and Legally Blonde, Anna Faris and Reese Witherspoon, respectively, win our hearts as women who discover that underneath their pretty exteriors they really are smart…and they are hilarious doing so. But the shining era of beautiful, glamorous, hilarious women in film was the 1930s. Myrna Loy, Constance Bennett, Carole Lombard, Jean Harlow, Kay Francis—heck, just watch The Women (the 1939 original, please) and you’ll see why I get so frustrated with how far we’ve regressed from when a film like this allowed each lady to shine.

So what changed? The foundational problem some members of our culture, like Finke, have with funny, pretty women is that they’re just too much of a threat—and in 1939, most women weren’t really seen as threatening in the least. Carole Lombard could be beautiful and hilarious in 1936’s My Man Godfrey because the biggest threat her dizzy socialite character could possibly pose would be selecting the wrong “protégé.” Fifty years later, women had gained in status, income, and independence—so quick, call off the funny ladies! You can see the unimaginative screenwriter’s dilemma: “Wait, she dazzles me and I project my fantasies onto her, but she also sees the world in a way that shows an ability to question everyday behavior and call bulls**t when she sees it. Should I objectify her, or go to her for wisdom? Can’t she make this easier for me?”

I’ve dealt with a rare type of snarky man who can’t laugh at a woman’s joke, and I smell it right off. I see humor as play; I see it as a way to connect, to loosen the atmosphere, and most men respond to this. But there are exceptions. When I was 20, I worked at a food counter in the stock market. All the men were sweet and friendly to me, but there was this one smarmy fellow who would never laugh at my jokes. My delivery is sweet and friendly, and occasionally dry, but I’m never trying to be “one of the guys.” When I delivered the food, I would banter, and the men would banter back, and it was fun. But this one fellow just couldn’t laugh, because I was a cute girl in his age group and therefore my purpose was to be an object he could look at as powerless. He would look at me in the sleaze way, but my jokes were not welcome. One day, I’d had it up to here with him. So when I showed him the day’s menu and he said to me, “Is the fish fresh?” all I could think was, He’s toast. So I put my hand on my hip and said, “Yeah, I shot it this morning.” Dude was so shocked that he burst out laughing, and I walked away thinking, “That’s right. Who’s your daddy now?” But it was only because I was finally saying, “Enough already—you’re going to deal with it,” that I broke him out of his attempt to make me feel that my attempts at showing smarts were unwelcome.

I currently write and star in a web and film series called The Sisters Plotz, featuring Eve Plumb and Lisa Hammer. We style ourselves in a vintage, feminine way with an indulgent dose of camp-glamour. Eve and Lisa are two seriously pretty women. Am I about to tell them to disempower themselves by perhaps wearing less flattering outfits or messing up their hair a little bit because I’m trying to decide if they should be funny or pretty? Maybe we should all make jokes pretending we think we’re fat or we should pick on some part of our face or body, because that will make people love us? Um, no. Right now I want to live the dreams I had when I was growing up. This is the one chance I get to be in the world, and I understand that there will always be acts of cruelty or even just idiocy that I don’t understand. But I want to live in a world where women are allowed to be funny and pretty and smart and free and strong and glamorous all at the same time—or none of these things if they don’t want to be—and I know that there will always be people who just don’t agree that I’m allowed to enjoy this type of privilege. But that’s all right. My red lipstick and I are ready.


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Lisa Ferber paints and writes witty character portraits influenced by her fascination with humanity. Her works display an appreciation of the beauty and quirks of human behavior, as well as a compassion for its foibles. Her paintings have shown at National Arts Club, Mayson Gallery and other venues, and sell to private collectors. Her films have screened at the Tribeca Grand and the Bluestocking Film Series, and her film "Whimsellica's Grand Inheritance" won the People's Choice Award at the "It Came From Kuchar" festival. Her plays have been performed at notable theaters such as LaMama, DR2 Lounge/Daryl Roth Theatre, and her play "Bonbons for Breakfast" was a New York magazine "notable production." To learn more about her projects, please visit LisaFerber.com