A Week Without Mirrors, Plus a Giveaway of Kjerstin Gruys’ New Book

By Meli | Published: May 9, 2013

In support of Kjerstin Gruys’ new memoir detailing her year without mirrors, a call was put out for beauty bloggers to take a day off from looking at our reflections. Inspired by both Kjerstin’s book Autumn Whitefield-Madrano’s month long mirror fasts, I decided to take a week without mirrors. And here’s what I found:

 

1. I missed looking at myself in the mirror. It’s not that the voices in my head are always rah-rah-rah; they run the full range from “Wine is a bad friend” to “Hello gorgeous” to “That hair has been growing for that long? Ugh!” But I like that monkey in the mirror – it’s me, and after a dozen years of yoga, I like me. (And for more on those voices – Autumn did a great post and selfie diary of internal voices for her own challenge this year.)

 

2. I did notice a distinct lessening of self bodysnarking. I’m not the most athletic, get-up-and-go-to-the-gym active person ever (I’m not even in the running), so some of my workout activity is pure “will it lift my butt and get rid of that lump there?”. I know it’s ridiculous, but after this kind of workout, I’ll look in the mirror, as if the results will be there right afterwards. Not being able to do that encouraged (maybe forced) me to think about how I felt rather than how I looked. And even if I hate barre exercises while I’m doing them, I had to admit that I felt pretty good afterwards.

 

3. Public appearance is performance. And it’s weird to go out without an internal frame of reference, as in how I look today. It doesn’t really seem to matter to anyone else – one of my neighborhood store guys even told me I was looking especially pretty one day. But while planning a visit to see a dance performance, it occurred to me that it’s really weird to head out “on stage” without rehearsing first. Maybe thinking of it that way instead of obsessing over minute flaws is a more accurate – and enjoyable – way to think of the mirror?

 

4. Trying a new outfit resulted in second-guessing, not third or fourth-guessing. I’m kind of a “uniform” person, so I didn’t get into trying tons of new clothes without the mirror’s assistance. I did want to dress nicely to go out one evening, and instead of going back and forth about whether this really looked good or not, asked my husband and just went with it. No one was harmed, no one stared at my craziness or ill-fittedness, so I assume it went well. The old adage that other people are not paying nearly as much attention to my flaws as I am probably holds true here, especially since I was going to BAM and not the Met Gala.

 

5. Increased technology really does enable elaboration. Kjerstin points out in her book that the rise of the pimple cream industry coincided with the widespread appearance of bathroom mirrors. For me this isn’t just a mirror thing; in the past year, through building construction and hurricane Sandy, I’ve at times involuntarily gone without electricity, running water, and most recently, cooking gas (plus an extra half day of no electricity during the fast). All of these modern conveniences make our lives simpler – I for one am very glad to not fetch water from the Hudson River every morning – but having our cooking fuel delivered into our homes also means that peas porridge and hard biscuits won’t do it – my husband and I both expect ourselves to be able to cook pretty well. Without the help of mirrors, my beauty routine was simplified – it’s not really feasible to try out a new eyeshadow palette without them. But it was more “how do I get what I need done without them?” more than “I don’t need to do any of this. I do expect a higher level of grooming than I would without them. This phenomenon has been examined by feminists – usually as a conspiracy to get women to be minutiae-obsessed consumers rather than full humans. But like the bloating of paperwork that coincides with the rise of ever more powerful word processing software, maybe some of this is less conspiracy and more unintended consequence of technology?

 

6. I enjoyed reading about Kjerstin’s mirror fast more than I enjoyed my own. Well, how could I not? She went for a year, while planning her wedding as well (and working on her Ph.D thesis – yeah). Navigating the Bridezilla minefield of wedding planning is hard enough, with its constant reminders that it’s “your special day” and its often ridiculous suggestions to make that day the Most Ultimate Princess Day Ever. Her adventures in trying new looks – hair, makeup and clothing – without really knowing what she looks like (and her fiance’s reactions when the experiments go awry) are really funny. Learning to go beyond what the mirror “demands”, and to trust her family and friends to love her and assist her through the chaos, Kjerstin manages to organize an amazing and fun wedding, and when the photos come back? Well, I’m not going to spoil the ending for you….

 

But I will give away a copy of her new book, Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall: How I Learned to Love My Body by Not Looking at It for a Year, next Saturday morning, May 18th. You have three ways to win:

1. You can follow Wild Beauty on Facebook.

2. You can have a friend follow Wild Beauty on Facebook & tell who sent them – both you and they will get a chance to win. And you can get more chances if you get more than one friend to follow.

3. You can leave a comment below: what do you think of this mirror fasting idea? Would you try it? For how long?

Enter by midnight Friday night (the 17th of May). A winner will be chosen by a random generator.

 

Good luck! I know you will enjoy reading the book as much as I did!

 

Resources on mirror fasting:

Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall: How I Learned to Love My Body by Not Looking at It for a Year by Kjerstin Gruys.

A Year Without Mirrors – in real time (blog).

A Month Without Mirrors at The Beheld

Mirrors: A Short History at Wild Beauty.

 

Email
Posted in Beauty and Culture, Beauty and Technology | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Response

A Week Without Mirrors: My Space vs Their Space

By Meli | Published: May 5, 2013
Making Her Toilet by Chase William Merritt, 1889

Making Her Toilet, by Chase William Merritt, 1889

Less than three days into my week without mirrors (inspired by Kjerstin Gruys’ Year Without Mirrors, I noticed that I was feeling really annoyed… I was enjoying reading about Kjerstin’s journey without mirrors, but I was not enjoying my own.

 

It wasn’t just the inconvenience of putting my contacts in with a tiny speck of reflection, nor was it not having a visual frame of reference before I go out into the world.

 

I had the feeling that I was working on a job for a celebrity – one with a really stiff rider that states that no one is allowed to look her in the eyes. And that diva was me.

 

Am I a diva? Am I so into looking at myself in the mirror that its absence is such a deprivation? I thought about that a bit, and the truth is more complicated than that.

 

Many who’ve done mirror fasts recount the voices they hear criticizing what they see. Whether it’s the pimple, the weight, the bed head – the mirror is, first and foremost, a place for criticism.

 

I don’t fully have that experience. Sure, I do see what could be fixed (and what can’t). But mirrors for me have always been a quiet place in a noisy world. Growing up as the fourth of five noisy children, it’s not surprising that I would value a space of my own, one where I can hear myself think. And, possibly, see myself think as well.

 

As a teenager who was unsure of her place in the world, I found myself, among other things, playing with makeup. What I saw in the mirror, and what I wanted to do about it, were as related to craftiness as they were to insecurity, and as a creative and gifted craftsperson with good bone structure, I was able to get good results. Good enough to lead me into my work as a a makeup artist.

 

But there’s another factor at play here…In the mirror at least, my younger self was mostly looking at what CAN change, and easily – the paint and powder parts of the equation. I was lucky enough to have good skin, and even if my diet wasn’t healthy, I was thin enough to have never worried about being fat. Having the process in front of the mirror come down to what can be done – adjusting a scarf, making an eyeliner line exactly how I want it – leads to results – the small sense of satisfaction from improving something is there.

 

That’s not to say I don’t have other voices speaking….I’m well into my forties, so there are there are new lumps and bumps which are not responding to reasonable diet and exercise. And gravity is doing its thing in general. Pausing to check in with how I feel, rather than how I look, is a good thing – not automatically looking for results after a workout is even better.

 

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t look at myself in the mirror much at work*. When I’m spending all day working at a specific aesthetic (Boticelli pastel? 70′s disco glam?) it’s distracting to see my own sweaty working self, whose early morning lash-curl-and-mascara is not being touched up every 20 minutes. But at the end of the day, when the kit’s packed up, I have a little ritual of putting my lipstick on before I leave. It’s a way of setting a boundary between work beauty and personal beauty, between them and me – between the noisy, sometimes chaotic work space and my personal space.

 

At home, I do get to be the diva – if the makeup’s coming out, it’s me who’s going to be the beneficiary of the effort. And being married to a man who loves me and appreciates my looks doesn’t hurt. I’d worry that it’s a little Evil Queen, except that I don’t worry about the beauty of the models at work – they have their thing, and I have mine.

 

Am I still doing the week? Yes, though I have been tempted to trash it, especially after going to the pool – somehow not drying my hair and tending to my own self (even if it’s just q-tipping the water out of my ears) felt like being in one of those teen movies where the girl has her lunch in the bathroom – I just felt excluded. I should mention that my gym is really mellow – there’s usually at least one person napping by the pool, and I’ve never seen anyone participate in vocal body shaming – of themselves or others.

 

So I’m still at it – and there are a few other interesting thing I will note. (I’m just getting to the clothing part.) And it’s only two days from now, so I can manage that.

 

(*An aside on the not looking at mirrors at work thing – Alfred Hitchcock famously admitted that after looking at Cary Grant on the set all day, it was a severe disappointment to go home and see himself in the mirror. )

Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall: How I Learned to Love My Body by Not Looking at It for a Year by Kjerstin Gruys.

Email
Posted in Beauty and Culture, Beauty and Technology | Tagged , , , , | 2 Responses

A Week Without Mirrors

By Meli | Published: April 30, 2013
Venus at her Mirror by Rubens, 1612-1615

Venus at her Mirror by Rubens, 1612-1615

What would a day be like without looking at ourselves in a mirror? The idea of seeing our own reflections – first thing in the morning, or anytime we want to check something out – is so easy and automatic that we don’t even think of it. Mirrors surround us – in our bathrooms, our bedrooms, and even on the street if we live in a city. The ubiquity of mirrors in our lives mean that we are constantly checking ourselves out – something that could be good or bad, depending on who you ask.

 

Yet plentiful mirrors are an artifact of modern life – they used to be so expensive and rare that only the wealthiest people had access to clear ones – and even they didn’t have very many (even 17th century Venus, left, with her earthly and heavenly “help”, has a fairly small mirror). So what does that mean for us moderns? Much has been said about the constant barrage of perfect faces and bodies in mass advertising, but what of our ability to compare ourselves? If we took a break from our own reflections, would that change the ongoing monologues inside our heads? Or maybe just give us a chance to hear the voices for what they are?

 

These questions are the basis of a year-long personal experiment done by Kjerstin Gruys. As a bride-to-be, Kjerstin was going through the craziness of wedding dress shopping, and having struggled with eating disorders in the past, found the inner Bridezilla monologue especially crazy-inducing. So she hatched a plan – maybe taking a year away from the mirror would help? It was an ambitious project, and undertaking it while planning a wedding (and working on her PhD thesis) provided amusing anecdotes for her blog readers, and has now yielded a memoir, Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall: How I Learned to Love My Body by Not Looking at It for a Year.

 

Kjerstin has invited other beauty bloggers to spend a Day Without Mirrors, on May 2nd, in concert with her book release. I’ve been fascinated by the concept of mirror fasting since I read about it on The Beheld, though Autumn’s month-long fast is a little long for me. I’ve written about the history of mirrors in the past, but “doing without” is not generally my thing. So I’ve decided to go a week without mirrors, and see what happens.

 

Is it 100% no mirrors? I’ve covered the bathroom mirrors with paper, but there’s a flap to expose a 2×4″ area so I can get my contacts in and do makeup/grooming. This isn’t a week without grooming (or seeing clearly) – it’s more a way of removing the reflexive “checking myself out” that happens every time I’m in the bathroom. As for the outside world, I’ll just have to consciously avoid looking at my own reflection, which could be weird. If I’m working a studio job (so far everything’s on location), I’ll really be avoiding myself – though I have a habit of not really looking at myself in the mirror at work anyway, since I’m concentrating on making the models look the way they need to. It’ll be weirder at the gym, where the mirrors are huge and yes, I do spend my fair share of time looking into them. We shall see.

 

What inner voices about my appearance have been threading through my brain that I’m not aware of? Does my face still exist if I don’t see it every day? What is my dependence on this modern technology? And what will I experience if I’m not using it? These are questions I can think of now, though more will come up as I embark on this mini-journey (and read Kjerstin’s book while doing so.)

 

I’ll be sharing periodically during the week, and if you’re joining in the Day Without Mirrors, please feel free to share your experiences in the comments.

 

Resources on mirror fasting:

Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall: How I Learned to Love My Body by Not Looking at It for a Year by Kjerstin Gruys.

A Year Without Mirrors – in real time (blog).

A Month Without Mirrors at The Beheld

Mirrors: A Short History at Wild Beauty.

 

Email
Posted in Beauty and Culture, Beauty and Technology, Beauty Inventions, Inside Beauty | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Response

Beauty Bytes: April 26, 2013

By Meli | Published: April 26, 2013

miss_korea_contestant_sideBeauty pageant contestants have long been accused of all looking alike. After all, their competition involves reaching towards an “ideal” standard of beauty. But the convergence of beauty ideals plus the ready access to cosmetic surgery may have taken the phenomenon to a new place: contestants in the Miss Korea pageant have been accused of all looking exactly alike. And no, it’s not just Westerners saying it either: in a country where one in five people go under the knife, the facial ideal of wide, rounded eyes and pointed chin is easier to attain than ever (as the photos of the contestants running alongside today’s roundup attest.) Still, some of the shock may still be cultural – both Jezebel and Gawker include galleries of Western celebrities, who, thanks to ideals, surgery, and styling, also look a lot alike. Jezebel. Gawker.

 

 

Speaking of beauty ideals, what’s this about chins? I need to be worried about my chin? Maybe if you’re in a Korean beauty pageant you do (though that chin is more of a jaw reshaping). But anthropologists at Dartmouth compared 180 different fossil chins from different regions and came to the conclusion that there isn’t one global ideal for chins (yet). PLOS One. Smithsonian.

 

 

Forget judges at beauty contests – why not ask the Internet if we’re beautiful? Teens are participating in Instagram “beauty contests”, asking, “am I hot or not?” Of course, asking total strangers to rate one’s looks isn’t the healthiest form of reassurance, and given that teen girls’ Internet popularity is mostly judged by the skimpiness of their tank tops, and that these “pageants” are usually done without their parents’ knowledge, the implications are disturbing.  ABC News.

 

 

Another way to crowdsource a beauty pageant: Hawaiian Tropic has discontinued their “Miss Hawaiian Tropic” swimsuit pageant in favor of a neck-up contest, looking for a woman who embodies “beauty, confidence, style, enjoying the sun and keeping skin healthy.” The contest, which begins May 6, will be held on Facebook, with the winner chosen by fans of the brand. Which could go really well, or could be taken over à la People Magazine‘s 1998 Most Beautiful, when Howard Stern fans voted Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf most beautiful by 17 times more votes than Leonardo DiCaprio. The New York Times.

 

 

People Magazine has rectified the Most Beautiful situation, keeping their choices well within media and publicist control. To the point that most of us don’t even register it, except that I ran across Kjerstin Gruys’ post describing how Gwyneth Paltrow was her thinspo during her eating disordered teen years. Even those of us who haven’t suffered from eating disorders know what it’s like to wish we had someone else’s life as teenagers, though not many celebrities’ entire lifestyles are laid out for us to “emulate” as Gwyneth’s. But can you break up a friendship with someone you don’t even know? Yes, you can. Read the letter here: Mirror, Mirror, Off The Wall.

 

 

Pretty is as pretty does. Or not: After graduated from Parsons School of Design, Rina Bovrisse worked her way up the luxury retail ladder, first at Chanel and then at Prada, where she was moved to Japan and appointed  senior retail operations manager. But if overseeing 500 Prada employees wasn’t working hard enough, senior management were also getting on her about her own looks, telling her, “the CEO is ashamed of your ugliness and will not introduce you to any visitors from Milan.” After her complaints to management resulted in the demotion and transfer of about a dozen employees – many of them top salespeople – for being too fat or old, Bovrisse sued in Japanese court. The court ruled against her, stating that such discrimination was “acceptable for a luxury fashion label.”  Now, Prada is countersuing Bovrisse for “damaging the Prada brand”. NY Daily News.

 

I’m not the biggest fan of Dove’s latest installment of the “Real Beauty” campaign. But here’s an awesome list I came across this week of “Six People Changing the Face of Beauty Better than Dove”, from Narcissista. Narcissista.me.

 

 

Email
Posted in Beauty Bytes | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Peggy Olson at Work? Cosmetics ads from 1968

By Meli | Published: April 24, 2013
"This is No Amateur Blonde" - Helene Curtis

“This is No Amateur Blonde” – Helene Curtis

In Mad Men, we’ve recently seen Peggy Olson going after the Heinz Ketchup business. Women in advertising were often in charge of accounts catering to women – dishwashing liquid, hosiery, and cosmetics.

 

Looking through the advertising in issues of Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Mademoiselle from 1968, it’s fun to imagine who these magazines imagined their readers to be. Vogue, with its mix of jewelry, fashion, and travel ads obviously caters to the wealthy society set (who are also featured in its editorial spreads). Mademoiselle is fully a college magazine, with its Breck Girls and slumber party facials. And Cosmopolitan, with as many liquor ads as those for cosmetics and hosiery, lives up to its party reputation.

 

1968 was fully into the swinging sixties (even Vogue and Mademoiselle ran articles about drug use and counterculture), and the Pop Art sensibility in some of these ads contrasts with the the innocence in others. Two of these ads feature the same product – one with wild 60′s Pop zing, and another with collegiate slumber-party innocence. But they’re all pretty fun – some of the looks could pass muster with the current beauty police, even if the copy wouldn’t.

 

Here’s a gallery of several cosmetics ads from 1968:

 

 

 

 

So what’s your 1968 makeup personality? If I were time-travelled back to 1968, I think I’d like to be a Cosmo girl, Pop Art, lashes and all.

 

Email
Posted in Beauty and Culture | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Responses

“Real Beauty Sketches”: Why Dove is Pushing the Wrong Buttons

By Meli | Published: April 19, 2013
Dove's Forensic Sketches

Dove’s Forensic Sketches

Most of us are familiar with Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaigns, which broke cosmetic advertising ground by including more body types and ethnicities than the usual skincare ads. And women loved it – it was lauded as an antidote to unrealistic beauty standards that we’ve internalized from the big, bad world of commercialized fashion and beauty.

 

But something about their latest campaign bugs me, and it’s not just advertising hype. I’ve been neglecting some of my duties here at Wild Beauty to do other things, and one of those things was reading Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. If you haven’t read it, the FaceBook CEO’s book is a “been there, done that” guide to the mistakes in behavior and perception that derail talented women from getting powerful positions at work. While critics have called out Sandberg’s privilege, I found her description of societal gender dynamics regarding achievement, confidence, competition and modesty to be revealing for any woman seeking the full expression of her talents.

 

I’ll get back to that – but first, let’s look at the video:

 

 

Some of this is pure Television for Women: the dramatic tension of the FBI forensic artist, and the woman going to a place she’s “never been” (which is obvs a not-very-scary photo studio). The tinkling piano music cues our emotional response, as women reveal their most critical descriptions of themselves. Other people who were asked to get to know them describe them in more flattering terms, and as the women look at the differing portraits of themselves, they are shocked to see the results of these differing descriptions. And then the women come to the tearful realization that they are more beautiful than they think. And they are sooo grateful to have this pointed out to them.

 

While I love the idea of the sketch artist going purely from description and the differing results we get from our own descriptions versus those of others, the way this exercise in perception is framed is misleading. And wrong.

 

Dove wants us to think that we’re all hating ourselves for our looks, and that if only we’d accept that we’re beautiful – no matter what those other beauty companies tell us – we’d be so much happier. And it uses our own publicly acceptable behavior against us to do this.

 

There are several dynamics mentioned in Sandberg’s book, but many run along a certain theme: that women are supposed to advocate for others but not for ourselves, and that we are primed to accept (and anticipate!) judgement for our behavior, not our merits. The professional repercussions of these expectations that women not stand up too fast (or lean in) are shown, but we also experience them in more casual situations.

 

The women in the video know they’re being taped – they’ve been cast to appear in this, after all. And of course they wouldn’t go on about how they love the line of their nose, or that their hair has a great texture that rarely lets them down. That’s not an acceptable way to talk about oneself – even movie stars have to err on the side of modesty when discussing their looks (and achievements.)

 

By talking critically about their looks, these women aren’t just following leading questions from the FBI artist. They are behaving in the most socially acceptable way – and then they’re being shamed for what was, only twenty minutes earlier, the right way to talk about themselves. No wonder they’re crying.

 

And they’re supposed to feel grateful for it – after all, isn’t shaming us for our behavior expected? Aren’t we waiting to be told what we should think? Isn’t the (socially acceptable) public kindness towards our looks given by others (on videotape) the truest expression of how wrong we are?

 

How women really feel about our own looks is a tricky subject – to be overly critical is to be falling into low self-esteem, yet admitting that we are perfectly comfortable with our looks is to risk making others uncomfortable. But this campaign suggests that Dove is the one that finally gives us permission to feel the way we want to feel – or the way we truly feel. It’s a pimp’s argument – “don’t worry, baby, all that family abuse is in the past, think what I tell you, and you’ll be fine”.

 

It may be a while before women are comfortable owning all our power, and yes, that includes our beauty as well as our intelligence and strength. And even when we do, we may still consider it “polite” to describe near strangers’ appearance in more flattering terms. Dove may believe that they are expanding the public beauty conversation, and in way, they are. But shaming women for being polite and then expecting them to feel grateful for it? Sorry, I’m not buying it.

 

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg.

 

More critiques on Dove’s latest campaign:

One Narrative Fits All: Dove and “Real Beauty” at The Beheld.

Science vs. Dove: Thanks, But It Turns Out We Are NOT Our Own Worst Beauty Critics… at A Year Without Mirrors.

Why Dove’s “Real Beauty Sketches” Video Makes Me Uncomfortable… and Kind of Makes Me Angry at Little Drops.

Email
Posted in Beauty and Culture | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Responses

The Future is Now: 3 Predictions for Your Skincare Routine

By Meli | Published: April 16, 2013

lunaThe New York Spa and Wellness Show is a trade show featuring the latest equipment and treatment options for spas and skincare salons. From big-name salon skincare to upstart technologies, ideas abound as to what the next big thing will be.

 

But amidst all the laser equipment and skin imaging technologies, there are the take-home treatments: the extras salons hope will keep their clients’ skin looking its absolute best.

 

Salons may be the first to offer these options, but if spa goers love a new skincare product, the rest of us will likely follow. With that in mind, here are three predictions for the future of your skincare routine:

 

1. You will use electric-powered devices.

 

We’re familiar with the Clarisonic, and loads of users swear by its oscillating brushes. Now there’s a sexy new competitor in the sonic cleansing arena: the Luna (pictured above). The Luna relies on textured silicone and thousands of T-Sonic™ pulsations to open pores without friction. I don’t know how it compares side-by-side with the Clarisonic, but as a beautifully designed and, ummm, pulsating device, it is sure to find a sizeable following.

 

But those are just for cleansing. There are also devices designed for product application: Clarisonic has the Opal Sonic Infusion System, and TEI Spa has a Sonic Spatula. These use vibrations to push skincare serums further into the skin than ordinary finger tapping – the vibrations means that the silicone tips are “tapping” the skin at hundreds (or thousands, for the Sonic Spatula) of times per second. This technology has been available to salons for facials, but is just now popping up in gadgets small enough to use at home.

 

lightstimOther facialist’s technologies have been miniaturized for home use, too: TEI Spa’s The Point is an electric-toothbrush-sized galvanic current device, designed to stimulate facial muscles into firmness. And the high frequency ozone device – that glass wand facialists pass over the skin to kill bacteria after extractions – also now comes in an at-home size, to treat acne at home.

 

If  galvanic current and high frequency are just too twentieth century for you, how about taking LED light therapy home? LightStim’s LED light therapy devices are available for wrinkles, acne, and even pain management. The LightStim for Wrinkles (at right) uses amber, red, and infrared LED lights to stimulate collage and elastin production, and the LightStim for acne combines red, infrared, and blue LED lights to kill bacteria and reduce inflammation.

 

There are also LED light devices for hair growth and even cellulite reduction available, which might lead one to ask: where am I going to put all these things?  For the LED light and galvanic treatments, the reps told me that they don’t keep these devices in their bathrooms – they keep them where they watch television.

 

 

2. You will partake in Stem Cell Therapy.

 

Now that medical stem cell therapies are getting so much attention for their illness-curing potential, is it any surprise that skincare companies are looking for benefits? Of course, using human stem cell for skincare must be ages away, right?

 

Surprise: there’s already at least one skin care line that utilizes human stem cells. While not including actual human stem cells, which can’t live outside a laboratory environment, Stemulation uses an active stem cell derivative in its serum and eye cream. I’m not sure how far the technology has come in terms of FDA-cleared effectiveness trials – the technological explanation on the website highlights the already-proven benefits of the antioxidant ingredients – but someone’s got to be first with this, right?

 

plant_stem_cellsThe use of plant stem cells in skin care is more common, with products touting stem cells from Alpine Rose, apples, and even the Argan tree. The Alpine Rose is a favorite, and not just because it has a romantic name – the lovely flower (which is in the rhododendron family) flourishes at extreme altitude, with all the cold and sun that entails (which is what we’d like our skin to do). Its extracts have been used in skin care for years, and the stem cells – which in plants are located at the root and leaf tips – are said to preserve skin cell function. Dermelect Cosmeceuticals includes them in its Resurface Stem Cell Reconstructing Serum and its Resilience Stem Cell Regenerating Treatment.

 

 

3. You will take beauty supplements.

 

The link between health and beauty isn’t a mystery, but spas are moving in to make that connection clear – and easy to implement. Pure Inventions has introduced concentrates to flavor water, formulated with green tea extracts, fruit extracts, or nutritional blends designed to help us destress, lose weight, or detox our livers. These extracts are sweetened with stevia leaf, so if you’re living for Crystal Light, there’s a healthier alternative for flavored water.

 

Homeopathy for beauty? If you’ve tried homeopathic relief for allergies or flu, you’ll have an opinion as to whether the modality is useful or not. Sprayology offers homeopathic and vitamin blends in an easy-to-use spray form: the blends include a tonics for stress relief, better sleep, and even getting over a hangover. Their beauty essential kit includes three sprays: Hair and Nail Tonic, Body Skin Tonic, and the Daily Multivitamin.

 

So what will you really use?

 

For better or worse, many treatments offered by salons are years ahead of their department store counterparts. And at the trade shows, the effect is amplified: some of the equipment I saw may not even be legal, much less FDA approved! But estheticians and spa owners are an adventurous bunch, trying out new beauty products and procedures for the rest of us. Some of these products will be for the hardcore skincare aficianados, or severe acne sufferers, but others will become commonplace. Even the super-natural organic products I favor are incorporating plant stem cells: AnneMarie Gianni sent me a sample of their new Repair Serum, which contains citrus-derived stem cells. Whether I’ll have an LED device next to my TV chair is still up in the air – it’ll take me a while to decide that one – but hopefully by then they’ll have combined the wrinkle device with the pain management one I’ll surely need.

 

Email
Posted in Beauty and Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

War Paint

By Meli | Published: April 9, 2013
Photo: Tyen for Vogue Paris

Photo: Tyen for Vogue Paris

Do you watch Vikings? I’m totally hooked, and between the violent clashes between cultures (and the costume details), I’ve been musing about Floki’s eyeliner.

 

Fierce is a word that’s been used – and overused – by fashionistas when describing some of their own looks, but the drag queens bringing the word into the studio aren’t that far off the mark. “Wild or menacing in appearance“, fierce describes a way of looking that’s deliberately designed to look out of control.

 

Looking wild or menacing – unpredictable and possibly out of control – is a big plus on the battlefield, and warriors all over the world across time have taken advantage of the effect.

 

Modern society is relatively polite and peaceful – I’m not currently worried that hordes from New Jersey will come over with hatchets to rape and pillage Manhattan. And I’m happy about that.

 

But I miss the paint. Maybe there’s no way to wear extreme makeup in polite professional society – our aggression and greed towards each other is suppressed into firm handshakes and furtive calls to our attorneys. And maybe broad stripes of paint just make a person look too aggressive to trust.

 

But fashion and pop culture take advantage of this – they attack our senses and astonish us with color and sound. I’m sure that’s why I fell into a new wave rabbit hole when MTV showed up on cable in the 80′s. And it’s a huge part of why I do what I do for a living, even if the evidence mostly shows “natural makeup”.

 

Here’s a short gallery of battle-inspired makeup looks:

 

 

What do you think? Do you sometimes wish you could rock one of these looks at work? Is “war paint” a relic of more violent times? What’s your “combat makeup” look?

 

Email
Posted in Beauty and Culture | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Faces: Thérèse Le Prat

By Meli | Published: April 2, 2013
therese_le_prat_4

Photos by Thérèse Le Prat

As a makeup artist, I love faces – that goes without saying. But I don’t just love a pretty face with makeup on it – there are interesting faces everywhere, and all kinds of ways to look at faces, too!

 

Thérèse Le Prat (1895-1966) is a French photographer whose work I recently discovered. She loved faces – you could say she was obsessed by them – and for those of us who also love faces, her work is a marvel.

 

After experimenting with landscape and portrait photography, Thérèse Le Prat concentrated on photographing faces. At first, she was photographing stage actors (her first two books, Visages d’Acteurs(1950) and Autres Visages d’Acteurs(1952) are remarkable documents of the post-War theater scene in Paris.)

 

But then her work turned more abstract – she had actors perform for her camera, at first with masks, then with makeup alone. In exploring the face, Thérèse Le Prat looked to reveal extremes of human depth and emotion. And she added words to the mix: her later books include both prose and poetry to push the exploration further. In Masques et Destins(1955), her first book of these portraits, she and her actors searched for photographic expression of the extremes they played out on stage.

 

For Un Seul Visage en ses Metamorphoses(1964), she spent three years with the mime Wolfram Mehring and makeup artist Grillon exploring myriad ways of seeing a single face. And she continued her most expressionistic work with diverse faces until her death, after which the photographs were published as En Votre Gravité, Visages(1966).

 

Her work is new to me, but I think it’s inspired others in the know: looking through her work I can see Serge Luten’s poses and poetry, Cindy Sherman‘s clown transformations, and Pat McGrath’s grittier makeups.

 

Here are a few images from her last two books, Un Seul Visage en ses Metamorphoses(1964), and En Votre Gravité, Visages(1966):

 

 

 

Email
Posted in Beauty and Art, Faces | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Beauty Bytes: March 22, 2013

By Meli | Published: March 22, 2013
girl_model_film

Girl Model

A lot is made of the fashion industry’s extreme beauty standards, and how women consumers feel pressured to look like thirteen year old girls. But what about the girls themselves? Girl Model is a documentary airing on PBS March 24 (then streaming until April 23) that follows Nadya, a thirteen year old model from rural Siberia, to Tokyo, where she is expected to learn her new trade. Autumn at The Beheld gives a full review of the film, which reveals telling details about the “supply chain” of the modelling industry – both the children who struggle to make it big, and the adults whose livelihoods depend on them. The Beheld.

 

 

If Nadya makes it to New York, there are laws there to protect minors working in the entertainment industry. Except, uh, not in fashion – somehow fashion models are not included in the Department of Labor requirements that prohibit dangerous working conditions and require access to tutors if the child is not able to attend school. The Model Alliance has written a petition to give child fashion models the same protections afforded to other child performers. Sign it here. The Model Alliance.

 

 

College can be something of a beauty contest too – Business Insider published a slideshow of the top 25 colleges where the students are “Hot and Smart”, from information given to  College Prowler, a student-based college ranking site. Seeing as the inputs are entirely voluntary, and that Liberty University ranks as a “smart” school (they must be an advertiser), I’m going to guess that this is not a scientific study. Business Insider.

 

 

Pretzels the Goat

Pretzels the Goat

More beauty contests, only this time it’s about the animals. And not out in the country, with 4-h clubs showing their grooming skills. New York used to have goat beauty contests in the 1930′s, and most of those goats lived in the city itself. Secret societies and men’s clubs enjoyed keeping a goat around for laughs, and apparently having a goat at a stable or kennel keeps the other animals well-behaved. (Or maybe next to the goat, they just seem well-behaved.) Goats were all over Central Park, too – pulling little carts for the (human) kids, and working as lawn mowers. Finally, we in NYC think Gotham City sounds all Superhero, but “Gottam”, from a book of English proverbs, means “Goat’s Town”, and refers to a village of simple-minded fools. New York Times.

 

 

Fashion is so often about looking cool, but it’s also about appropriateness within one’s environment, whether that’s the “in” crowd, mid level management, or a roomful of academics. That’s doubly true when traveling abroad – and triply true when traveling in countries where dressing wrongly can lead to personal danger. Cara Silver and Jan Chipchase, global design researchers whose job is seeking insight in how people in developing nations utilize technology, wrote this article on how their female team members deal with dressing in gender-segregated regions in Afghanistan. Dressing modestly, but looking foreign enough to take advantage of the “liberties afforded foreign guests”, is a delicate balance. Future Perfect.

 

 

“Just Like You, But Better”: New York Magazine sums up Martha Stewart’s beauty routine (as told to Allure) perfectly. New York Magazine.

 

 

Jordan Almen by Baard Lunde for NOI.SE No.29

Jordan Almen by Baard Lunde for NOI.SE No.29

In Pictures: Baarde Lunde’s photos of Jordan Almen for NOI.SE Magazine are creepy and cool. The Gloss has them in slideshow form. The Gloss.

 

 

Email
Posted in Beauty Bytes, Inside Beauty | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments closed