Category Archives: Inside Beauty

A Week Without Mirrors

By Meli | Published: April 30, 2013

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 …

Also posted in Beauty and Culture, Beauty and Technology, Beauty Inventions | Tagged Autumn Whitefield-Madrano, beauty, Bridezilla, Kjerstin Gruys, Mirror, Mirror Fasting, Mirrors A Short History, Peter Paul Rubens, Rubens, Technology, The Beheld, Vanity, Venus | 1 Response

Beauty Bytes: March 22, 2013

By Meli | Published: March 22, 2013

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 …

Also posted in Beauty Bytes | Tagged Baarde Lunde, Beauty Contest, Cara Silver, Frog, Girl Model, Goat's Town, Gotham City, Gottam, Jan Chipchase, Jordan Almen, Martha Stewart, Model Alliance, New York, NOI.SE, PBS, Pull Yourself Together | Comments closed

The French Beauty Secret Magazines Won’t Write About

By Meli | Published: February 19, 2013

We’re all familiar with the articles and books about French women’s beauty secrets. The secret moisturizers, the insouciance, the je ne sais quas - we in America are held in thrall waiting for the next magical secrets of French Beauty. But there’s another secret you won’t read about in the books or magazines, one that great French Beauties will take to their graves.

French women lie. They lie about their diets, their visits to the dermatologist and what …

Also posted in Beauty and Culture | Tagged beauty, Beauty Secrets, Elle, French, Insouciance, Isabelle Adjani, Lie, women | Comments closed

Beauty Pageants and the Mason Dixon Line: Why the Divide?

By Meli | Published: January 20, 2013

The New Miss America, Mallory Hagan, has provoked some uncomfortable chuckles in her adopted hometown of Brooklyn. Raised in Alabama, she moved to New York to pursue her dreams, one of which was becoming Miss America. And now that she’s accomplished that, well, isn’t that a New York success story?

Only it’s not quite that. There’s something about Southern beauty queens that rankles a lot of people, and now that a Southern girl has won Miss America as Miss …

Shekinah Monee, New York City's Perfect Miss

Also posted in Beauty and Culture | Tagged 000 Hours, 10, Alabama, beauty, Brooklyn, Conspiracy, Feminism, Malcolm Gladwell, Mallory Hagan, Mason Dixon Line, Miss America, New York, New York City Perfect Miss, North, Outliers, Pageants, Public Relations, Shekinah Monnee, South, Syracuse, Syracuse University, Vanessa Williams | Comments closed

Does Makeup Hurt Self-Esteem? Is The New York Times Sexist for Asking?

By Meli | Published: January 3, 2013

The New York Times published – on its “room for debate” page – a collection of essays by authors with various viewpoints about makeup and self-esteem. As would be expected in such a collection, the authors include a couple of makeup artists, some writers and research scientists who’ve written on beauty and women’s issues, and the lone heterosexual male who loves his wife both with and without makeup.

But it’s not the coverage that’s rankling me – there’s something …

Also posted in Beauty and Culture | Tagged Does Makeup Hurt Self-Esteem?, Insecurity, Makeup, Men, New York Times, Sexist, Space Boy, Sports Car, Vanity, Vanity Virtue, Virgin Whore Complex | Comments closed

Beautiful People: Jane Iredale

By Meli | Published: December 18, 2012

Working as a makeup artist, I’m familiar with the extremes of what can be put on a face. Plastic glitter, sequins, acrylic paint, theatrical adhesives… sometimes it gets a little nasty. And while we do help models remove extreme makeup, at the end of the day it’s really on them to maintain their skin – both for their profession and for themselves.

Jane Iredale has watched this drama from the other side. As a producer and casting director for …

Also posted in Beautiful People | Tagged Jane Iredale, Jean Godfrey-June, Living Beyond Breast Cancer, Lucky, Natural Makeup, Natural Products | Comments closed

Video: Billion Dollar Beauty at Huffington Post

By Meli | Published: October 9, 2012

How does globalization affect the beauty industry? Does it depersonalize us or could it “repersonalize” us? James Poulos, who covers politics and culture at Forbes, hosted this talk at Huffington Post, asking questions about organics, global beauty standards, the rise in beauty spending, and whether men should be wearing makeup.

The panel of experts includes me (in my first video appearance), along with representatives from the organic skincare community and a psychiatrist specializing in teen self-image. A lively …

Also posted in Beauty and Culture | Tagged beauty, Beauty Imagined, Beauty Standards, Beauty Tribes, Cosmetics, Forbes, Geoffrey Jones, Globalization, Huffington Post, James Poulos, Makeup, Meli Pennington, Men, organic, The Lipstick Effect | Comments closed

Inside Beauty: Why You Can’t Match Makeup Colors in Magazines

By Meli | Published: October 11, 2011

Ever seen the perfect makeup color in a magazine and gone to the counter to buy it? It’s never the same color. Or texture. Or really, the same at all. But why? Are the magazines lying to us? What brands do makeup artists really use? How hard would it be to just tell us what color they used?

These are good questions – after all, fashion and beauty photos are there to show us what’s available to try and buy, …

Posted in Inside Beauty | Tagged Arts and Entertainment, beauty, Color, Magazines, Make-up artist, Makeup, Makeup Artist, Media Production, Meli Pennington, Photo shoot, Photograph | Comments closed

Inside Beauty: 7 Reasons Why Models are so Skinny

By Meli | Published: September 8, 2011

As a makeup artist, I get a lot of questions about models from my non-industry friends. And most of these have to do with fashion’s requirement for thin models: Why are models so skinny? Why don’t they use more normal looking models? Why is the fashion beauty ideal super thin anyway?

Now, I’d have to be blind not to notice that models have been getting thinner over the last several years. Some of the younger girls are so insectlike, it’s …