‘Tis nearly the season of the dreaded flu shot. Those things hurt! And they make you feel awful for a day. Another alternative? LaRocca’s Shield Multi-Active lip balm contains bacteria-fighting ingredients like Camu Camu, a blend of amino acids and vitamin C, which helps strengthen your immune system. There’s also Cha de burge, which is another property used to help kill viruses. (Yeah, we’ve never heard of either of those before, either. But everything you read on the internet is true, right?)

“Anti-Microbal” elements aside, the balm also acts as a good lip moisturizer. Does it really fight off illness? We hear the psychosomatic benefits are wonderful. [$18, LaRoccaSkinCare.com via DailyCandy]

Part of the fun of makeup is getting to buy new products to add to your collection, and feeling satisfaction in having an array of choices and colors to use. If you’re like me, this means you like to buy pretty eyeshadows that you rarely use but keep around “just in case” you’re in the mood to do that ice blue liner thing you saw in last month’s Elle. Hello arsenal of teeny compacts, samples, and lip glosses for the masses! But still, I don’t like to part with any of these. I tend to keep them around.

If you’re the type who hordes makeup as well, you probably don’t pay too much attention to throwing out your products when you’re supposed to. Or, perhaps you don’t even consider that keeping things around for years is harmful, in which case you may want to check out these Beauty Alert stickers, which will remind you when to chuck out-of-date items (or just force you to do some cosmetic spring cleaning). And here’s why it’s important ...

Sacre bleu! L’Oreal has been found guilty of racial discrimination. The French high court, La Cour de Cassation, slapped the make-up giant with the guilty sticker after it was revealed that L’Oreal and the recruitment agency Adecco planned on using only white women as staff to sell their Garnier Fructis Style hair care line. Evidently, L’Oreal thinks their French clientele is more inclined to buy hair products from a white saleswoman. Anti-racist group SOS Racisme filed the lawsuit after viewing a fax sent out by Adecco advising recruiters to hire women that are “BBR” – “bleu, blanc, rouge”, a term meaning a white French person born to white French parents. This might explain why when 38.7 percent of candidates for the job were minorities, only 4.65 of the total hired were black, Asian, or Arab. The director who sent the fax told the court she only wanted the women to “express themselves correctly in French” when selling the shampoo. So a black or Arab woman fluent in French can’t talk about conditioner ? Lame. The Paris Appeal Court fined L’Oreal and Adecco and ordered them to pay SOS Rasicme damage costs. I guess we’re not all “worth it.” [Times Online]

Sam Fine is a makeup pro whose career has spanned more than 10 years. He’s made up almost everyone, including Tyra Banks, Vanessa Williams, and Jennifer Hudson. So we were totes excited to learn he’s releasing “Fine: The Basics of Beauty,” a DVD version of his

Fine Beauty, which promises to help the everyday woman get dolled up and look naturally gorgeous. The makeup master lets us in on the secret to bronze-y skin, pouty lips, and perfectly-arched brows by making up three women with different skin tones and beauty needs. Sounds exciting right? Well, in an evil plot to keep us from becoming our own Sam Fine, his website says the DVD was released last month, but we can’t find it anywhere. Who is this twisted person that would dangle a gem like this in front of our faces, but not deliver? We will keep checking Amazon, because when it comes to looking fine, we won’t be deterred!

The outside world is more like a Hooters restaurant than you previously thought: a new study says that men are more likely to tip a waitress if she looks pretty wearing makeup.

Researchers studied the tips received by two waitresses from 186 male and 98 female customers. Only one third of the dudes left a tip if the waitress wore a bare, makeup-less face. (Cheap bastards!) But after a beautician applied makeup to the servers, the number of men who tipped flew up to 51 percent. Not to mention that the size of the tips rose 25 percent. Hmm, it brings new meaning to the term “makeup tips,” doesn’t it?

Salma Hayek has beautifully smooth skin, and once she launches her anti-aging cosmetic line, we’ll have her beauty secrets. The line is inspired by Hayek’s grandmother Maria Luisa, who was a makeup artist and used to make her own cosmetics. According to Hayek, Maria Luisa’s skin remained wrinkle-free well into her nineties. “When she died at 96, of course her skin had sagged, but she didn’t have any wrinkles,” Hayek told InStyle. The makeup line will be a recreation of her grandmother’s lotions and potions, made from ingredients available only in Latin America. But we’re also sure it will contain some plum lipsticks and brown and aubergine shade eyeshadows, too, as those are Hayek’s favorites. [Female First]

There’s good news for the pack of nearly a dozen fashion mavens that came to my Halloween party dressed as Amy Winehouse: she’s launching her own line of cosmetics and accessories!  From hair scarves to liquid liner, the vamp style icon has been in talks this week to create products based on her unique look. Winehouse, who just hosted a makeover/sleepover party this week with Kelly Osborne and her goddaughter, has had her praises sung for more than her sweet 60’s style.  The five time Grammy Award winning voice is poised to send boring boho fashion into style rehab. From the looks of all her excited fans, it’ll be straight eye for the queer guy…and gals like me!  [The Sun]