All Eyes On Her

Two pairs of Spanx. And no eating. Heh, I had you all excited for a second there; don’t deny it!

I sometimes get struck by utter genius when I’m in the shower, and last Tuesday was no exception.  I’ve invented a whole new beauty term!

Brotox
\BROH-tawks\ noun
1 : A male who exhibits evidence of creepily unnecessary anti-wrinkle treatments;
2: An alternate name for Botox when used on male subjects.

This tickled me enough to add a “Beauty Neologisms” category, in case I come up with any more good ones.  Watch out, Mickey Rourke — soon I’ll have a complete new lexicon to describe your freaky ass!  (Please put down the bronzer.)

I think I finally found my favorite shine serum ever: Moroccanoil. So very yummy smelling, and I love that it doesn’t get greasy or heavy looking unless you really put gobs on.  Too bad the smell doesn’t last longer!

I must have gotten possessed the other day, because I somehow managed to make a fairly large LUSH purchase online.  And I stopped buying their stuff years ago — too much SLS, dyes, fragrances, etc. for my sensitive skin.  But they do definitely have some winners — I always wind up going back to Aromacreme, and Big is scratch-tastic and Flying Fox smells like heaven.

Well, I discovered a couple new hits this last time around.  Vanillary smells similar to my usual Comptoir Sud Pacifique Vanille Coco fragrance, but slightly less sweet; and the apparently best-selling Jungle solid conditioner bar is less of a pain in the ass than I would have predicted.  But the real show-stealer was a new cleanser meant for problem skin, called Dark Angels.

Read the rest…

Okay, I’ve talked about making a DIY version of a powder product before, but now I HAVE to do it! Check out Peter Thomas Roth’s two new sunscreens.  The first is an SPF 30 formulation that’s specifically meant for oily and/or problem skin, and it contains such additions as salicylic acid and “willow bark extract” (ahem: same damn thing, PTR), as well as the old standard antioxidant cocktail.

However, the new stuff ALSO contains powdered dimethicone, which we all know I’m not a fan of.  And can you blame me?  The stuff blocks pores like none other, so I don’t exactly consider it a wonder ingredient for a product that’s designed to alleviate oily skin and acne.  (Perhaps there’s something I don’t know here — maybe dimethicone in powder form is less comedogenic.)

The second new tube contains the same antioxidants and sunscreen ingredients (albeit in higher concentration), and no salicylic acid. And they’ve somehow packed butylene glycol in there.  But BOTH new versions contain bismuth oxychloride, which is a real bummer — it’s known to make some people break out in an irritated, bumpy red rash.  No thank you!

The old stuff I still have a tube of contains silica and the Antioxidant Trifecta, but no dimethicone or bismuth oxychloride.  It also has significantly less titanium dioxide (and less zinc oxide as well), and it’s WAY too dark for my skin tone so it’s pretty obvious.  I tested these two new ones on my hand at Sephora and they both seemed a bit paler, but it was tricky to tell.  However, the ingredient list in the old stuff is much shorter, which of course makes me happy.

Honestly, since they still share the same crappy packaging with the coarse, shed-prone brush and the cap that comes unscrewed, I’ll probably just concoct my own and put it in a synthetic dispensing brush that I found online.  I will update if and when I get around to actually seeing this through… now I just need some free time to clear out our storage closet!

My GOD does Aveda suck now. I mean, this isn’t exactly news to my regular readers, but they’ve sucked for quite some time now — right around the time that good old Aerin.  One of the ways in which they deviated from their original glory is to start offering BS marketing ploys, namely the Pure Privilege system. (Privilege my ass, when I have to pay $10 to enroll.)

Turns out this system has a teensy catch — your points expire if you don’t use the account frequently enough.  So, even though I paid my $10 for this privilege, I’m about to have my account shut down and my existing points voided.  Why is this, you ask?  Because Aveda has literally not made a SINGLE product that I can or would use, in the past TWO YEARS.

And it’s not for lack of trying, trust me.  Back when they came out with their Smoothing Collection a couple years ago, I bought the shampoo and conditioner duo to give it a try.  And it wasn’t totally horrible — it kind of made my scalp freak out, like most dimethicone-heavy smoothing formulations do — but it delivered similar results to that holiest of hair grails for me, the Redken All Soft collection.  However, it smelled so incredibly foul that even my fiancé begged me to return it!

And recently, I returned to the scene of the crime to try and buy a tiny trial-sized item just to activate my account, and I of course got into a discussion with the Aveda sales gal about the company’s downfall and crappy products.  (I can never keep my mouth shut when they start to pry or go for a hard sale.) She badgered me into buying a bottle of the Style Prep Smoother, which had a different but still bleh smell, and which TOTALLY did not work on my coarser, wavier hair.  WAY too much cetyl alcohol content for a leave-in product — it dried out my ends like crazy, despite the fact that she swore it made her hair more moisturized.  And shockingly, I hated it and returned that too.

So what’s a girl to do?  I went down to the local Aveda today since they’re having yet another Double Points Extravaganza!!! event, and I went with the intention of actually making a purchase that I would keep.  Yes, lately I’ve been missing having a salicylic acid-based acne spot treatment, so I went with the intention of checking out their relatively new acne line.  Well, my faithful three readers, guess what I discovered?

Every single acne product contains dimethicone — one of the MOST comedogenic ingredients that acne-prone people fear.  OH my GOD, how the mighty have fallen.  You can have your expired Pure Privilege points, Horst/Aerin.  I know it took me a long time to finally break things off with you, but it is SO OVER now!

As part of my Wedding Skincare Vows, I really wanted to start taking better care of my nails. (It doesn’t feel right showing off my fiancé’s late grandmother’s heirloom ring with raggedy fingernails and cuticles.) So I went out and invested in several of these bad boys, so I’d always have one on hand:

I first bought one of these four-way buffers at Pharmaca a couple years ago, and that $1.99 was one of the best beauty investments I’ve ever made. The thing is supposed to just be a buffer, but it works as both a file and a buffer. It’s small enough to carry anywhere and durable enough to hold up after being knocked around in my purse for ages. The four different portions do a great job of sloughing off length more gently than a pair of clippers, and with less risk of accidentally trimming too much.

But I’ve found the real kicker is the buffers — not for buffing, per se, but for post-filing. Previously, when I filed my nails, they’d still be kind of rough and imperfectly finished, so I’d catch them on something and inevitably tear them. But I find that using the buffing edge right after filing makes them perfectly smooth and snag-free — which ensures that my nails will all stay a happy uniform length for longer. Thus fulfilling my freakish need for symmetry — if one nail snags I have to cut them all off to match.

I’m going to start strategically placing these in all of my purses, at my desk, in my nightstand drawer, etc. — that way I’ll always have one on hand for a nail mishap. A cheap and easy solution!

Ever since I grew up, I haven’t been able to wear headbands. Fabric ones like we rocked in the ’80s, perhaps — but not the cute hard plastic ones that other girls can sport. Why, you ask? Because I have a giant head.

Yep, hats almost never fit me unless they’re adjustable or made for men, and headbands just don’t work on me. I even bought one a few months ago and dipped it into boiling water to try and re-mold it into a head-friendly shape — all I got was carcinogenic-smelling water and a misshapen headband that still didn’t work on my head.

So imagine my joy when I came across this nifty new headband with flexible tips, designed so that the bottom bits can be bent so that they don’t stab into your giant cranium behind your ears. I think I giggled out loud in Target, I was so delighted. But guess what?

IT DOESN’T FIT. The part BEFORE where the tips become flexible is still too tight on my skull. CURSE YOU, GOODY! Please don’t ever consider making a line of plus-sized clothing — I hate to think of what you’d do to a gal’s self-esteem in that department!

Grant and I got engaged last month, and since then everything has been a whirl!  We’ve kicked into planning mode, largely because we’re both really enjoying the planning process thus far.  But of course, one part of the plan is to lose some weight before the big day, so we both look and feel our best.

Along with the weight-loss goal comes a set of skincare goals for me.  And much like losing weight, for me these goals are things I’ve been meaning to do in or out of wedlock, just to keep my skin feeling and looking its happiest and healthiest.  And now I have a really good excuse to make it official! So I’m writing myself a set of skincare vows to follow while leading up to the big day and beyond.

1) I vow to use my Clarisonic at least once per day, with no more than one lapse per week.  (I mean, I paid enough for the thing, and I love the results… when I actually take the time to use it!)

2) I vow to at least remove my makeup before going to bed, no matter how tired I am. (A very bad beauty habit of mine — I always tell people that I’m full of great skincare advice that I have lots of trouble following!)

3) I vow not to skip lotion/body oil after more than one shower per week.  (Taking care of dry skin needs consistency!)

4) I vow to file my nails BEFORE they break and tear from getting too long.  (I’ve been carrying a top-notch nail file in my purse since January 1st, but I have yet to use it once this year!  And I notice my ragged nails much more now, every time I show off my ring… it feels wrong to have crappy cuticles and crooked nails next to such a beautiful heirloom.  I should give the rock the respect it deserves and take care of my manicure!)

5) I vow to be consistent in the application of my topical actives.  (No more starting things like Retin-A but skipping it six nights a week — no good will come of it, and I hate getting perpetually stuck in the dry flaky phase!)

Hopefully the fact that I made these vows public will mean that I actually follow them, to some degree.  I’m also going to post them on EDS so that my pals online can help egg me on.