Whinny! We Interrupt This Moment....

For scores of funny dangling legs.


Saks' "Intimate Apparel" section looks a lot like Edward Muybridge . This is too ridiculous. Giddy-up! (Or meow!)

tomorrow or in the next few days... wax! expensive sunscreen!

Salivating over Salve

Fuck yeah, I got Cloverine! It's great. Cheerful blue and yellow and white tin - the sort of thing Heidi would keep her Ricola in. I am going to do a point-by-point comparison with Smith's Rosebud, another excellent salve by the same company (Rosebud Perfume Co.) which some of you may be familiar with. They also make some Strawberry thing but I don't fuck around with that kind of shit.

Ingredients
Cloverine - white petrolatum (Vaseline), turpentine (paint thinner), fragrance (fragrance)
Smith's Rosebud - cotton seed oil, armol, essential oils

Advantage - Cloverine. Armol sounds like arm oil and that's gross.

Color
Smith's Rosebud - pink
Cloverine - mucus

Advantage - Smith's Rosebud

Scent
Cloverine - mild, but distinct and pine-y
Smith's Rosebud - baby powder, cloying

Advantage - Cloverine

A special tingle that means it's working
Smith's Rosebud - none
Cloverine - slight

Advantage - Cloverine

Total - Cloverine 3, Smith's Rosebud 1.

I am also all up on Cloverine because it's still UNDERGROUND. UNDERGROUND SALVE.

To Make You Blush!

Benefit's Georgia Peach Blush

For this season's color stories, it's all smoke and mirrors—deep greys, opulent purples, metallics. But then, there are fail-proof colors that anyone can wear like this blend of citrus orange and pink blush by Benefit. We think this is just peachy.

Special Stila Makeup Compacts

At Macy's downtown San Francisco, the first shipment already sold out. Tawny, shiny, pretty, small and packed with wearable colors—neutral yet sparkly. Scrawled with a lovely floral design, the ultra-slim compact fits anywhere—after all, discretion is the better part of valor.

Burberry Metallic Notebook (only passport, available online)

Burberry's stocking stuffers (for families who don't gift socks for the holidays ). Raccoon radar: on. Now, what does one do with a metallic gold leather diary embossed with deep Art Deco rectangles? "Accidentally" leave in a conspicuous place and the rest is history. For once, a supple super-gold lined notebook, mouth-watering and then returned to its place on the table at Burberry's (before they called security), has a true calling. If as the New York Observer says, pretending to read books is the new black, pretending to keep secrets is surely the new gold.

Elongates eyelashes and shortens leg hair!

You know, I was wondering if spending all this time reading blogs and eating crackers was making me stupider, and I think I have definitive external evidence that it is. (See, I need the external evidence because my mind is too cracker-logged to evaluate itself. I am like, at the level of a smart-end-of-average pig, probably.) Anyway. I got a new mascara, and it's NOT FLEXTENCILS. It is this new Lancome mascara, L'Extreme, and it is supposed to have special elongating worker-bunnies and patented eyelashening fiber bits and I'm sorry, but this is crap. It is sticky and dumb and so not eyelashening. And I spent money on it because my stupid French class is near stupid Bloomingdales and what, am I supposed to NOT go in? And then I want the shiny ladies at the makeup counter to touch my face, because I love having my face touched, especially by shiny ladies, and then I feel bad not buying at least the mascara from the shiny face-touching lady although they probably get locked in the basement at night and the money I paid goes to the parent company which probably uses it to develop more efficient baby-crushing-machines and I am being HAD, but it keeps happening. Average-to-smart pig, I'm telling you. Ha, know what, I would be fucked if I were an average-to-smart pig, because word on the street is that Lancome's parent company, L'oreal, is not exactly ahead of the let's-not-test-on-animals curve.

Of course, I don't know how up to date this info is or anything, and my views on animal rights are nuanced (underdeveloped). Still, in honor of a) the fact that this new mascara is very expensively not doing anything for me and b) my love for my dog, here are some good (and tested-on-Violet) mascaras made by companies that don't test on animals.*

Almay One-Coat Lengthening Mascara: Nice and natural and drugstore-cheap, I think this is what I am going to buy when my current stock runs out. Almay is owned by Revlon, and I don't know what their practices are, but the Almay branch is a-ok.

Chanel Extracils: Chanel, of course, does not fuck around. Still, this is not as dark as I wish it were. Chanel also owns Bourjois, which makes the SPARKTOCKULAR Coup De Theatre (pardon the lack of accent marks, I'll get it figured out) and very fun top-coats, including this one. Multiple steps of mascara application are not what I want to deal with in the AM, though, so these do not make good everyday products for me.

Clinique High Impact Mascara: Actually dark enough for me, though not as lengthening as I wish it were. Nothing has been yet, so I guess that's not really points off. (Clinique, and a whole lot of other companies, including Perscriptives and MAC, I think, are all owned by Estee Lauder, and are all ok animal-wise. Of course, they may have all sorts of other issues. Or not! Who knows! But we're talking about animals today.)

There are others, but I don't really care to reveal how wantonly I purchase (even animal-friendly) mascara, so that will have to do.

*NB, my research is how you say, MINIMAL, so if buying products not tested on animals is really important to you, double check these. Also, I am sure there are plenty of animal-friendly companies that make lovely mascaras that I have never tried. Not so sure, actually. Still. These are not those.

Thus Victorians Names Perish Slowly

I am dying. Sort of. Waking up at 6 am has fairly ravaged my once gleaming visage, and left me a pale specter of my former beauteous self. Makeup cannot save me today. Nothing will, but a good night's sleep.

On the agenda for this week (stay totally tuned!):

Benefit's Georgia Peach Blush
See, I just typed George--bless that failed magazine and my feather pillow.

Amore Pacific Refining Cream
In conclusion, $90 cream can't hurt you.

Special Stila Makeup Compacts

Burberry stocking stuffers (for families who don't gift socks for the holidays ).

And, as an apertif, Tom Ford perfume.

In which I pay for self-righteousness with what may be eczema

So after getting all stringent about what I put on my face last night (haha good pun Violet! You crack me up, girl!), I woke up with weird flaky patches on my eyelids and chin. I've been using Gerber's Teeny Faces Moisturizing Stick because I like to think I have a teeny face and it has a yummy kind of tangy lavender-ish smell, but the problem with it and with all super-intensive moisturizing goop (Aquaphor, plain Vaseline, my precious Smith's Rosebud Salve) is that my bangs get in it and get grody and I don't really like lank, greasy bangs rubbing up against my breakout-prone forehead all day. So I need something that will school my flaky skin but also absorbs super super fast.

Any Thoughts, Charlotte? I Like Our Awesome Victorian Pseudonyms.

I'd like it if more butch boys would start wearing makeup so I didn't ever have to feel funny about it, 'preciate it, thanks.

My mantra may be "don't take yourself too seriously and don't take other people seriously at all or your whole mind will explode," however, I am going to need to work out a couple of kinks if I am going to call myself a GIMONGULOUS FEMINIST and plan to write about things that women (like me!) are tricked in to paying a lot of money for so that they don't look so fucking ugly and old.

There is the it-is-fun-and-empowering-to-play-with-your-appearance thing, but it's kind of disingenuous to act like I can really own my makeup-wearing when a large percentage of my makeup-wearing is, how you say, corrective? Like "own my makeup-wearing," ok, but why not just own my zits? And owning-my-makeup-wearing ends up also meaning owning a lot of fucking makeup.

It is noble not to pay for things.

So, we're all pretty invested women's insecurities about appearance! Oy, you wouldn't believe! It's how in how we consume, it's in how we bond, it's in a whole lot of things, and some people are getting veryveryvery rich off it.

Anyway. This is just stuff I am thinking about. About makeup! Shiny.

PS. You know what DOES suck, genuinely, is when making yourself sparkly hurts. Like with eyebrow threading. That really hurts. Not as much as having a unibrow does, though!

Sigh.

my ponderous consumerism finally does me some good.

Did you know concealers could not suck? It's true! I almost never wore concealer, since any given brand EITHER did not work at making my dark circles (they're genetic! genes!) or spots (not genetic! I just am lazy about face washing!) disappear OR looked like stage makeup, and if there's one thing I hate, it's theater! (Not really! Sort of!) Then, the other day, the pretty lady at the Clarins counter at Bloomingdales sold me Instant Light/Eclat Minute and it works! It makes me all smooth and glowy and pretty and I am a puppy made out of baby rose petals!

PS it is way better than that other high-end highlighting concealer/concealing highlighter with Eclat in its name. You know who you are.

Makeup and Hairspray for President!

BeachBlonde John Frieda: Ocean Waves Sea Spray Texturizing Styler

For the record, cute guys have totally opined their hair woes when they saw these Ocean Wave Sea Spray Texturized locks . Wind-tossed, natural curls inspire admiration and, every once in a while, “hair awe.” Yeah, yeah, fab Mischa Barton-esque hair isn’t about making cute guys feel insecure, but it’s kind of fun when it does.
(Irrelevant fact: when you shake the bottle, the inside looks like a jacuzzi.) Methinks the secret ingredients are sea salt and jojoba oil.

Jane Iredale Liquid Mineral Foundation

Foundation’s tricky, but this one is just right. Ultra-matte formulas can make for a very dull bird; sheer kinds don’t hide enough on uneven skin. Jane Iredale Liquid Mineral foundation feels kinda shiny and sticky, but youthful glow beats crusty matte foundation, circa 1950, every time. Ingredients seem blossomy and mountainy—mica, aloe vera, lavender, and chamomile—not the usual nine-syllable chemicals.
We don't know if Jane is a born genius (in a past life, she did casting for The Outsiders), or b) just lazy like us, but anyway, the whole shebang of minerals has built-in sunblock too. Rocks are cool, especially when they make you look hotter.

Plain Yogurt Masks

Honestly, I thought this was just for girls who don’t read books. This was an egregious mistake.
If a home kitchen skin remedy, that’s all about slathering on plain yogurt, seems just too easy to be true, think about life....before TV. Gently purifying, nourishing, while leaving skin with a soft glow, yogurt is the new Botox—at least, to me. Scaring people with spooky yogurt faces is way more fun than scaring people with facial muscles that have ceased to contract.

What I love enough to carry in my bag even though I am not big on carrying things. No adventures here, but some solid classics. Solid!

BEFORE YOU MAY READ ABOUT SOME OF MY FAVORITE PRODUCTS YOU MUST DEFEAT THE DESTROYER OF PERFECTLY GOOD VASELINE!

Tarte (that's pronounced "tart," for all you tarts who were unsure) cheek stain in "flush." Even though the color names are not exactly subverting the patriarchy ("flush," whatever. But "tipsy?" "Blushing bride?"), nothing makes me look not-exactly-ill like a good cheek stain, and no cheek stain is better than Tarte. It is not too watery, so it doesn't run down my face and make me look red all over, and it is not too goopy, so it doesn't look like goop. It works ok as lip stain, too - it tastes narsty, but that just means I won't lick it off.

Smith's Rosebud Salve. Lipgloss, cuticle cream, eyelid shiny-maker, eyebrow tamer, and in a pinch, spermicide. I guess I could just schlep around Vaseline, but does Vaseline come in a nasty plastic jar that dog hair sticks to and not a cute arts-and-craftsy looking tin? Yes. Does Vaseline smell like baby powder and not like dog hair? No. Plus, the company makes something called "Cloverine," and I don't know what that is, but I know I WANT IT. I will acquire and report back.

I am not even going to mention the mascara I have in my bag, because it is a joke. It tries, but it is not Lancome Flextencils. I always try to buy something new and think that it will be better and I will have eyelashes as long and lush as reeds on the limpid pools of my eyeballs, but it never happens, and I should just take the totally respectable length and lushness I get from Flextencils and LOVE THE ONE I'M WITH.