Beauty Bytes: August 23, 2012

People don’t usually think of makeup artists as card-carrying feminists, but most of us working behind the scenes in fashion, music, and advertising are just that. What’s the connection between lipgloss and feminism? Super-Top makeup artist and Chanel Brand Ambassador Kay Montano pays tribute to Helen Gurley Brown and Cosmopolitan Magazine on her site: kaymontano.com.

• Former makeup artist and current style columnist Rachel Weingarten shares her personal experiences with Helen Gurley Brown, as well as life and beauty lessons from both Brown and Phyllis Diller. CNN.com. Newsday.com.

• Phyllis Diller may have embraced the ugly and awkward in her comedic work, but she adored beauty – and men – in life. The Washington Post reissues an interview she gave in 1979, for a book called What Makes a Man G.I.B.. The Washington Post.

• Dangerous Beauties: Countess Bathory, the most prolific female serial killer in history, may or may not have bathed in the blood of her victims. TheGloss.com goes into her troubled, sadistic family and relatively stable and loving marriage to another psychopath in their Shelved Dolls series. TheGloss.com.

• Here in the 21st Century, royalty aren’t given the same leeway to torture and kill servant girls. And in America, beauty and violence is more about money than social standing. An enterprising couple in Wichita, Kansas have created Tracey’s Dream Weavers Salon and Sporting Goods, a combination beauty salon and gun shop for women. Unfortunately, the couple don’t have the requisite licenses to sell guns, so the Feds are shutting them down. The Sacramento Bee.

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• The Countess needn’t have bothered: women can be beautiful without serial murder. Joyce Carpatu, an 80-year old New Yorker, has been turning heads all her life. The Advanced Style icon shares her beauty secrets with MSNBC. Her biggest secret? Stay out of the sun! MSNBC.com.