Once upon a time, a woman named Louise Mensch was an MP for Britain’s Tory political party. Last summer, Mensch suddenly resigned [last item], saying she could not juggle her young family and being a politician at the same time.
Since then, Mensch has taken up a somewhat … surprising … pursuit: she now runs a beauty and style blog called Unfashionista in which she blogs about how someone with tomboy style can please her man. Keep reading »
There are these women, in Tory Burch flats, with their hair styled, their button-downs starched, and the vents in the backs of their knee-length pencil skirts never rumpled or creased. I know this is true because I see them everyday, slogging along to work, just like me, with their perfectly applied nude lips and their obligatory Longchamps tote.
So as much as I want to believe that such levels of polish existing is as likely as me bumping into a unicorn in CVS, I know better — I’ve commuted beside them in the mornings, quietly mortified. Because, more often than not, I’ve forgotten to apply lipstick before leaving the house, my skirt is clean but wrinkled from sitting on the train ride in, and my own obligatory Longchamps tote — a bid at joining their ranks — is coated in what I am 86% sure is Marshmallow Fluff. (Furtive licking would later prove this to be so.)
It’s not like I’m a slob. I know how to dress for my corporate day job and when I get to the office there’s always a stop at the bathroom to make sure I can pass for business casual. This means: the forgotten lipstick is applied, the cardigan put on, the Fluff removed, the slept-on-it-wet hair pulled back into a clean ponytail, my favorite boots replaced with sensible pumps. By the time I’m done, I’m transformed from who I am into an appropriate, if not stylish, secretary. Keep reading »
Artist Leanie van der Vyver created these insanely high leather heels, aptly titled “Scary Beautiful,” to draw attention to the strange and intense ways humans alter themselves to achieve “perfection.” The front heel requires the wearer to lean forward onto their shins in order to stand and walk upright(ish). Extreme? Yes, but if you had no context at all for modern day beauty standards, would these seem any more ridiculous than a 6-inch studded Louboutin stiletto? Or a syringe full of Botulinum we use to voluntarily paralyze the muscles in our faces? Food for thought. Check out a scary, beautiful video of the shoes in action, after the jump… [Laughing Squid] Keep reading »
This beautiful woman is 22-year-old Vered Fisher, a member of the intelligence unit of the Israeli army who was crowned “Miss Large” after beating out 15 other contestants in a plus-size pageant. As weirded out as I am about beauty pageants in general, and as much as I wish there didn’t have to be a distinction between “large” beauty and mainstream beauty, it’s always refreshing to see more body diversity in areas that have normally been off-limits to larger women. Plus, I love Fisher’s message to other plus size women: “You are pretty as you are and you can succeed as you are.” [BuzzFeed]
This hilarious (and painfully accurate) video reimagines Photoshop as a beauty product that can erase acne, whiten teeth, make you skinny, and even change your race. Over a pulsing techno track, models pose and flip their hair while the narrator explains “Just one application of photoshop can give you results so dramatic they’re almost unrealistic.” Says creator Jesse Rosten: “I was watching TV one sleepless night and stumbled upon an infomercial for some beauty product. The commercial showed before and after portraits, that to my eye, looked like the same photo just photoshopped. I laughed to myself. Then I made this video.”
The tagline sums it up: “This commercial isn’t real, and neither are society’s standards of beauty.” Powerful stuff. [Fotoshop by Adobé]
When legendary sex symbol Bo Derek appeared on Oprah a few months ago, Oprah kept pressing her to tell the world something profound about being a beautiful woman, and Bo kept brushing off the questions, saying, “It’s just about the way the bones line up.” That felt pretty profound to me. In our culture, the standard of beauty is narrow, and every day we face countless reminders of the ways we fall short. When it comes down it, though, our society’s definition of beauty is simple and unromantic: it’s high cheekbones and a button nose and long legs and a small waist and so on and so on. We can only congratulate or punish ourselves so many times for the way our bones line up. Here are 50 vastly different definitions of beauty that I know to be true… Keep reading »
“Sesame Street” has aired a new song, “I Love My Hair,” aimed at young black girls to teach them to value and love their natural hair. The character dances and sings in every little girl hairstyle imaginable, from a small Afro to ponytails to cornrows to twists. This is an important lesson for black girls to learn because even if they come from a household where natural hair is celebrated, like I did, they will no doubt get the “lesson” from the outside world that straight and silky is better. Keep reading »
Take a close look at this picture from J.Crew’s website. Notice anything strange? Like, oh, the hairy-as-hell legs the model is sporting? We’re thinking the explanation could be:
A) J.Crew is finding its inner feminist (unlikely).
B) Some disgruntled graphic designer decided to play a prank on the company.
C) Somebody had a really dull razor the day of the shoot. [Dlisted] Keep reading »
On Monday, a media industry blog revealed that Essence, a lifestyle magazine geared towards black women, had hired a new fashion director named Ellianna Placas, to begin in September. But it was not the lines on her resume touting O: The Oprah Magazine and Us Weekly that attracted attention. It was the color of Placas’ skin: white.
I’ve waxed my eyebrows. I’ve waxed my upper lip. But when it came to waxing my ladyparts, I passed. I checked out. I just chose to be a noncombatant. I removed excess hair on my eyebrows and on my upper lip because it embarrassed me. But did it make sense to be embarrassed — nay, to form an opinion at all — about a part of my body seen by no one but me? No, I decided, it didn’t. In fact, a woman’s vagina is so personal and so private that I thought it would be pretty un-feminist to feel shame that it didn’t look quote, unquote “pretty.” (And yes, I’ve seen Eve Ensler’s play “The Vagina Monologues,” like, eight times.) Besides, who would want to let an aesthetician down there with her tongue depressor dipped in hot wax? Surely someone of heartier stock than I.
Then I had my first bikini wax at age 26 and surprised myself by liking it. Keep reading »
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