The pencil test: Measuring bra needs and "breast ptosis" since the invention of the American teenager. Among things I have done at various points in my life to determine whether I possess certain attributes of beauty: put coins between my ankles, calves, and knees (“ideal” legs meet at these three places), lain a ruler from my ribcage to my pelvic bone to see if the ruler touches my belly flesh (suggested by Glamour magazine to determine whether my stomach needs slimming), measured the distance between my eyes (it “should” be equidistant to the length of one eye), evaluated the amount of eye white showing under my irises (as inspired by the book You Are All Sanpaku), walked in wet sand and then seen how close together my right and left footsteps fell (“try walking with your feet closer together for a sexy sway!”), and traced… Read More...

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between. From Head... Fifty shades: Loving reading the responses to this poll about attitudes toward coloring gray hair. (As a brunette, I'm looking forward to having gray hair but not so much to having graying hair, so once it starts for real, I have no problems dyeing it. Then I will go on a fabulous journey for six months and reemerge into society with a cap of shining gray, thus shocking EVERYONE. Your plan, whether current or future?)   ...To Toe... Pedicures in the news: Life in the Philippines began to return to normal after a 7.6 magnitude earthquake prompted a tsunami warning, as shown by this striking photo of a woman on Samar Island receiving a pedicure. ...And Everything In Between: Getting lippy: Finally! Someone willing to call BS on the lipstick index. I mean,… Read More...

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between.   From Head...  Water wigs: Click through, trust me. ...To Toe... Know thine enemy: We can all agree that PUA—that's pickup artist, in case you've had the good fortune to remain unawares until now—tactics are grody gross gross, but reading this sad little forum thread about whether or not to get a pedicure sort of puts it in perspective. PUAs aren't threats in the least! They're just sad, with gnarly feet.  ...And Everything In Between:  Hellboy: Revlon controlling shareholder Ron Perelman got his way this week when a federal judge dismissed a suit filed by his estranged brother alleging that Perelman improperly used pension proceeds to finance Revlon. Also, disappointingly, Ron Perelman and Ron Perlman are two separate people. It's P&G time, kids: Procter &… Read More...

Note: My appearance on the Today show has been rescheduled for Monday morning, but since the Today show covers news, that can change at any minute.  What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between. Instead of plucking collagen from liposucted thighs, let's take it from the menace of the sea!   From Head... Fruits of the sea: Newest skin-care source: jellyfish! (Raise your hand if the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word jellyfish is Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself. Anyone?)   ...To Toe... Political pedicure: Okay, I know I swore off "dudes get pedicures too!" for this section, but since the dude in question actually elaborated on his tootsies I think this gets a pass. So: Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, gets pedicures. Ta-da! More important: Cory Booker's people must be pretty phenomenal. How many other mayors of towns under… Read More...

Why would I feel beach body anxiety? Hell, Annette Funicello looks thrilled to be at the beach, and she's not even wearing a skydiving harness! First off, a bit of news: I’m going to be on the Today show tomorrow morning sometime soon [breaking news, apparently] talking mirror fasting. I’m pleased that this is beginning to be talked about as something more than just a blogger or two—word up, Kjerstin!—taking some time away from the mirror, and while I’m skeptical that there are enough mirror fasters out there to truly qualify as a “trend,” the idea that this is a part of a zeitgeist of women questioning their relationship to the mirror is exciting. I was planning on doing the mirror fast again anyway, making it a sort of annual ritual for myself, when the Today show reached out to me after having read about my first go-round. In talking together, we decided it would… Read More...

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between. From Head... Crop top: Miley Cyrus cut her hair; world freaks out. Luckily, we have Mary Elizabeth Williams (with whom I've previously disagreed about short hair) to lucidly articulate why a crop needn't be a "call for help": "Long hair represents femininity and vulnerability and sex. It’s princesses and mermaids and porn stars. Short hair, on the other hand, says, 'If you think I’m gorgeous, great, but this isn’t about you, pal.'" ...To Toe... A Tale of Two Walks: I've never been amused by men doing stereotypically feminine things for laffs; it generally strikes me as condescending, not investigative. Yet I'm sort of halfway into this fund-raising/awareness walk for domestic violence called Walk a Mile in Her Shoes, where men walk, yes, a mile in women's high heels. It shifts the… Read More...

Six years ago, I was waiting for an elevator when Helen Gurley Brown walked up next to me. This wasn’t terribly unusual; I worked for an offshoot of Cosmopolitan at the time, and our offices were housed in the same building. What was unusual was that she was alone, and that I was dressed well. I’d only begun dressing well a few months prior to our elevator run-in; depression had kept me in baggy hoodies and ill-fitting jeans between the ages of 24 and 29. As my 30th birthday neared, I realized I was hitting the age where I just might be putting patterns into place that would stick with me forever. I broke up with my boyfriend, chopped my sloppy bob in favor of a pixie cut, lost 30 pounds—and much to my surprise, found that sometimes I enjoyed being looked… Read More...

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between.From Head... "Tricky tricky things": Stunning short fiction from Nigerian sci-fi writer Nnedi Okorafor about—see, if I say it's about a magical wig it'll sound far less nuanced and enchanting than it actually is. So instead, let's say it's about the power of looking instead of being looked at. (Thanks to Ben Laden for the heads-up!) ...To Toe... Zootopia: Reasons not to be a giraffe, part I: You'd have to be anesthetized before your pedicure. ...And Everything In Between: Tease and desist: Urban Decay, maker of a "Naked" palette line, sends a cease-and-desist letter to Victoria's Secret about their new cosmetics line "The Naked." Vicki's Secret responds by filing a suit in federal court asking for the right to get nekkid, and the legal world now waits with bated breath to find out who will emerge victorious… Read More...

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between. From Head... Saving the day: Introducing the world's first natural-hair comic strip, Kinky & Carl E. Stranz. ...To Toe... Pachyderm pedi: Elephant pedicure video. (Why doesn't someone feed me apples when I get a pedicure?) ...And Everything In Between: Digital ladies: L'Oréal is launching a program that sounds promising: the L'Oréal Women in Digital Program, which rewards female tech innovators in the beauty industry. Not that I want female tech innovators to be siphoned off by L'Oréal instead of developing programs for broader application, but I definitely don't want techie beauty gadgets developed by people who have never worn the products in question either, you know? (That's probably how we came up with these so-bad-they're-great digital makeovers, after all.) Avon falling: Avon is at an all-time low, with a 9% revenue fall from last quarter. The new CEO… Read More...

What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and everything in between. Satisfied Latisse customer. From Head... Batty: Makers of eyelash-growth drug Latisse got grumpy about RevitaLash eyelash conditioner and filed a suit against RevitaLash claiming it was a drug, not a cosmetic, and therefore subject to the same regulation as Latisse. RevitaLash lost in district court this week. My greatest dream from here is that the company challenges the ruling and the case gets all the way to the Supreme Court so that we can watch Ruth Bader Ginsburg try to keep a straight face while hearing about the tragedies of "eyelash hypotrichosis," a "medical" "condition" totally made up by the Latisse peeps.    ...To Toe...  Home sweet home: Whenever I play "If I were rich I would ____," I fill it in with get massages… Read More...

  If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’re well aware of my admiration for Sally McGraw, the mind behind Already Pretty. The fashion blogs I read are few and far between: Unless it’s fashion history and theory like Final Fashion, or fashion politics and philosophy like Threadbared, in general I’m just not interested. Looking current means little to me (most of my clothing is vintage-inspired if not actually vintage), and once I figured out what looks work on me, I figured out where to shop and rarely visit new stores. Creature of habit, I suppose, leaving me with little purpose for fashion blogs. But when I stumbled across Sally’s work, something clicked. Here was a voice that wasn’t just articulate and strong but feminist, and forthrightly so. Instead of just chirping about “loving your body”… Read More...

Karl is wearing TimeWise® Firming Eye Cream, .5 oz., $30, marykay.com or your nearest Mary Kay lady Near the top of the dry erase board where I keep a running list of fragmented ideas—nose job thing, Miss Piggy, story about yogurt (all in due time, my friends, all in due time!)—there’s long been an item that makes me laugh every time I see it, because of its sheer grandiosity. Is beauty inherently capitalist??? it reads, question marks included. I have no idea where my line of thinking was at the time I scrawled it; certainly now the question doesn’t make much sense, unless one is willing to look at beauty as inherently being a good, which I’m not. The best I can come up with is that I meant is the beauty industry inherently capitalist, which, duh, yes, as are all industries, right? Reading “The Pink… Read More...