Tag Archives: 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 …

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

Beauty Bytes: April 26, 2013

By Meli | Published: April 26, 2013

Beauty 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, …

Posted in Beauty Bytes | Also tagged Beauty Pageants, Dove, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hank the angry Drunken Dwarf, Howard Stern, Instagram, Jaw Reshaping, Jezebel, Kjerstin Gruys, Leonardo diCaprio, Miss Korea, Niss Hawaiian Tropic, Parsons, People Magazine, Prada, Real Beauty, Rina Bovrisse, Smithsonian, Teen | Leave a comment

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 …

Posted in Beauty and Culture, Inside Beauty | Also tagged Beauty Secrets, Elle, French, Insouciance, Isabelle Adjani, Lie, women | Comments closed

The Duty of Beauty: Vanity in Downton Abbey

By Meli | Published: February 14, 2013

Any of us who are into fashion and beauty watch Downton Abbey with an eye for the details: the clothes and jewelry, and of course, the hair and (imperceptible) makeup. But I’m also struck by all the beauty and dress rituals going on in the background: the starching of collars, removing of stains, the help bathing and doing hair. Those of us behind the scenes in photography know how much labor goes into a “flawless” look, and that the series …

Posted in Beauty and Culture, Beauty and Technology | Also tagged Collective, Downton Abbey, Dress, Duty, Fabulous, Factory, fashion, Glamour, Hair, identity, Individual, Jewelry, Labor, Makeup, Modern, Other, Relationships, Self, Servants, Society, Vanity | Comments closed

Beauty Bytes: February 8, 2013

By Meli | Published: February 8, 2013

Yo Dawg, I heard you like lookin’ good: the hottest new male model is here, and he’s a 3 year old shiba inu. His site is blowing up, and why not? It’s not just cats that rule the Internet. I just wish I’d thought of it first…Menswear Dog.

Here in New York, we’re in the season where we talk about fashion, models, and body size. If I didn’t know it was Fashion Week, I could tell

…

Posted in Beauty Bytes | Also tagged Already Pretty, Fighting Weight, Goop, Gorgeous, Gwyneth Paltrow, Health, Kay Montano, Menswear Dog, New York Times, NYFW, Shiba Inu, The Beheld, Why Models Are So Skinny, Wild Beauty | 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

Posted in Beauty and Culture, Inside Beauty | Also tagged 000 Hours, 10, Alabama, 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

Beauty Bytes: January 18, 2013

By Meli | Published: January 18, 2013

Mostly when people discriminate against others because of their skin color, it’s racist. But what do you do when your own race is weirded out by you? Africans born with albinism face more than just discrimination based on their lack of melanin – in many African countries they are believed to have mystical healing powers. With poachers looking to chop their arms off to sell to witch doctors (yes, really), living “in the skin of a white person”, as Refilwe …

Posted in Beauty Bytes | Also tagged African, Albino, Aspasia, Downton Abbey, Fake Facebook Girlfriend, Lady Edith, Lucie Amundsen, model, Refilwe Modiselle, Thando Hopa, Virtual Makeover | Comments closed

Better Makeup: How to Make a Beauty Resolution That Works

By Meli | Published: December 31, 2012

Like most people, I’ve made plenty of New Year’s resolutions. Most of them start off with the best of intentions but fail right around January 2nd. But some of them work out really well – I stick to them, and they become a catalyst for a positive change in my life.

Why do some resolutions work and not others? It’s not about willpower – it’s about how these resolutions are structured. So many “improvement” resolutions have to do with …

Posted in Better Makeup | Also tagged Beauty Resolution, Better, Makeup, New Year's Resolutions, SMART goals, Superfood | Comments closed

Beauty Bytes: December 7, 2012

By Meli | Published: December 7, 2012

Guess it had to happen: with the rise of “healthy at any size”, there is now a fearful backlash by one woman who is worried that fit people are now being stigmatized. Britton Delizia is a Las Vegas fitness model who is sick and tired of being told to “eat a sandwich”, and has started a Kickstarter to raise funds for a book to fight the stigma of being a fit woman. Now I know that my skinny friends get …

Posted in Beauty Bytes | Also tagged Actress, Afghanistan, Algorithm, Autumn Whitefield-Madrano, Beauty Bytes, Britton Delizia, Comedic, Dark Triad, Fat, Fit, Healthy at any Size, Infidelity, Iranian, Kay Montano, Kickstarter, Machiavellianism, Meli Pennington, Michael J Strube, Mindy Kaling, Mongolian, Narcissism, Nicholas S Holtzman, Nose Enlargement, Profile, Psychopathy, Taliban, The Beheld, The Gathering Goddess, The Other Woman, Vanity, Wilma Mae Basta, women | Comments closed

Beauty Bytes: November 30, 2012

By Meli | Published: November 30, 2012

Is there a connection between beauty and danger? Maria Susana Flores Gámez is the latest Mexican beauty queen to be connected to the country’s drug gangs, dying in a shootout against the Mexican army. Unfortunately, it appears to be a trend: in her state of Sinaloa, home to a powerful drug cartel, at least three other title holders have been linked to druglords and even drug crimes themselves. And in Sinaloa’s capital city of Culiacan, a beautiful woman is said …