I admit that I’m a little bit compulsive about washing my hands, which tends to make both my nails and my hands a bit dry, especially this time of year. Now’s the time when I need a heavy hand cream, and my favorite is Rescue Beauty’s Rosemary and Pamplemousse Hand Cream. I admit that I picked this up initially because rosemary is one of my all-time favorite scents (in spite of the fact that it’s an irritant), and because I just looove the word “pamplemousse.” (That’s “grapefruit,” another irritant, but doesn’t that word just make your tongue laugh?) Luckily, neither of these irritates my hands, which is terrific because this stuff smells sooooo yummy, I just wanna eat it, and I’m almost happy my hands are as crunchy as potato chips just so I can wear this stuff. It’s quite greasy (it contains, among other things, dimethicone and mineral, sunflower, and grape seed oils), so I can’t type with it on my hands; what I do is keep it on the sink, and after I wash my hands, I pour some on the back of one of my hands, then I rub the tops of both of my hands together, then using my thumbs, I work some onto my nails and cuticles. Because it’s so greasy and occlusive, it holds the moisture in. At bedtime, I’ll spray some NaPCA onto my hands and then rub it all over my hands (because I won’t be gunking up my keyboard then), and I’ll rub a little under my nose, too, just so I can enjoy the smell as I drift off. When I go out, people alway ask “What’s that smell?” and then grab my hands and sniff ‘em because they smell so good. Like I said, this stuff’s just for wintertime, because it’s just too heavy for the summer when my hands aren’t parched, but Rosemary and Pamplemousse Hand Cream is just one more reason I love wintertime!

You can’t open an issue of Elle, Allure, or any other beauty magazine these days without reading on several pages that you’re a hopeless hag unless you use the T3 Bespoke Labs Featherweight Dryer to dry your hair. My hair’s shiny enough as it is with my Conair IonShine 1875, but I admit that all the hype began to get to me, so I got my fanny down to the nearest essentials to check out the T3, and I’m beginning to think that the beauty world’s having a collective hallucination, or conspiracy, or maybe everyone had a stroke at the same time. What do you get for your $200? Yeah, it’s lightweight at 13 ounces, but it outputs at 1800 watts … and that’s it. There’re two speeds (high and low), and a cool shot button, and that’s all she wrote. All it’ll do is burn your hair! My $25 hair dryer has high, medium, and low heat output as well as high and low speeds, and I don’t use the high heat, so I never have to smell that hair-is-frying smell. The other funny thing is that the buttons are placed right where your hand is, so you keep turning the thing off while you’re using it … just like with the $25 Conair! The only really good thing I can say about it is that it feels more sturdy than my Conair (but then everything feels more sturdy than Conair products; you don’t buy then for their sturdiness), and it’s waaaaay smaller and more compact than my Conair, which requires that my arms be about a foot longer in order to properly dry my hair because it’s hugungous. But otherwise, what is it with this thing? Do people simply enjoy the cachet of being able to say they spent $200 on their blow dryers (and then put them in their drawers so they won’t burn their hair into frizz with heat they can’t adjust)? What the heck am I missing? Granted, I didn’t USE the thing, but that’s because I value my hair. What’s in the KoolAid that’s making everyone insist that if you must own this blowdryer? $200

Is there a girl alive who doesn’t obsess about the size of her pores? (Okay; I imagine there’re prolly girls in Ireland who don’t, but outside of Ireland, the rest of us do.) I can remember steaming my face until I broke capillaries, making little red circles all over my face with extractors, using scrubs until my face was raw, applying salicylic acid preparations until my face peeled like an onion … and then a few years ago, I read that scientists were working on a way to pull sebum plugs from pores using cyanoacrylates (Superglue!) and having some luck with it, and they hoped to have a product on the market within a couple of years. I hoped they did, too, but all too often, these great promises never result in a product on the shelf. When the Bioré pore strip showed up, I knew the scientists had succeeded at something, and I couldn’t wait to get home to see whether, at last, there’d be a happy ending in my fight to have invisible pores! Read the rest of this entry »

I thought I was doomed to live forever with dark circls under my eyes. I’d always read that they were caused by capillaries below the skin, and that allergies make them worse (I have those!) and that lack of sleep contributes (I don’t have that!). So imagine my surprise when I read a dermatologist say that for some people, dark circles are caused by too much pigment in the skin beneath the eyes, and that to find out if your problem is pigment, you can press the skin below your eyes and if, when you let go, the spot where you pressed is lighter then turns dark again, capillaries are causing your dark circles, but if there’s no color change, it’s too much pigment, and you can use skin lightening products to lighten your dark circles. I fell into the latter camp! Holy cow! Can it be that there’s hope beyond concealer (and the search for the perfect concealer) for many of us? Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not a huge fan of LORAC; it’s not a cosmetics line designed for me, but rather for women who work in offices, serious women who wear suits and need to look serious and officious and want to look as if they’re not wearing makeup. That’s why I was surprised to find that my quest for a sparkly black liner ended at the LORAC counter with LORAC’s Midnight Sparkle Eye Shadow/Liner Pencil. Every now and then, I need something with a little pizzzaz, something that pops more than flat matte black liner, and had been looking for a frosted black. I didn’t find one, but found this instead. If you’ve read my previous posts, you know I’m no fan of glitter (it belongs only on teenagers, hookers, and transvestites), but LORAC doesn’t do the kind of garish glitter that gets in your eyes and abrades your corneas. This is much more granular and less garish, and just adds a hint of gilmmer instead of a whole huge pile of Halloween effect. Read the rest of this entry »

Don’tcha just hate it when the scarf you’ve so artfully arranged around your neck needs to be adjusted sixteen times an hour? Or worrying that your boob will fall out of your dress/blouse? You don’t have to with Hollywood Fashion Tape. It’s double-sided tape you can use to hold your clothes in place so that your dress or blouse doesn’t gap, giving everyone a show (or worse, showing off your Tara Reid-like bad surgery), it keeps your sleeveless tops from gapping funny, it holds hems together that gave out on you when you were dancing a little too enthusiatically, and it’ll hold up strapless gowns that keep trying to slide down (or up!) and show off your goodies. And the best part is that they don’t leave behind a gummy mess on your clothes, not even on silk! Stick a few in your bag for emergencies. $6.95

When I was first on my own, making my own money and buying my own clothes, I was easily hypnotized at the cosmetics counter. I’d see bright colors and shiny cases and hear the come-ons from the sales girls and then arrive home larded down with all manner of products, many of which went into my junk drawer, never to be used again (or else given to friends and sisters), because they weren’t very practical (or else the colors were hilariously wrong for me). One category of item that simply has never proven useful to me is palettes combining different types of cosmetics. Oh, they seem great in theory, but in practice, they can’t work unless you carry them around with you. After all, if they have lipstick or lipgloss in them, what good will they do you sitting home on your vanity table? You’re gonna need to reapply your lipstick or gloss at some point. And unless you’re one of those girls who lugs around one of those ginormous handbags orthopedists warn against (I’m not), then you can’t take it with you. (When you do, you risk banging the palette against something and breaking the powders inside and ruining the whole kit.) And who needs to keep reapplying shadow and blush and day and night anyway? (There is an answer to that question, but those girls most likely don’t read blogs.) (Or anything else. It’s hard to read on your back.) Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t very well review cosmetics and ignore the elephant in the room, now can I? So let’s get it over with: NARS Powder Blush in Orgasm is on every stylish girl’s vanity (and face) (although my friend Jackie prefers the even more appallingly named “Deep Throat,” I often wear the less glimmery “Oasis,” which is more pink than the peachy “Orgasm”). The name hasta be a marketing gimmick (one which has worked amazingly well; even my mother knows what NARS Orgasm is, and she lives out in Northern Pig’s Ear, Vermont), as no one I know glows a shimmery golden peach after, uh, you-know-what, but let’s face facts: when you’re in a lounge lit with red, pink, or orange lamps and you’re wearing this blush, YOU. LOOK. INCREDIBLE. No matter who you are, what you’re wearing, what you drank, who you’re with, or even what dive or neighborhood you’re in, you glow as if you’re lit from within. Thanks, NARS, for giving us an afterglow beforehand so there might, in fact, be a real afterglow later on! The only drawback: if you don’t thoroughly spank your brush before applying, you can end up too pearly-faced, and trying to tissue it off merely seems to polish the pearlyishness and make it worse. What I do when I “over-Orgasm”: I reapply some foundation to my cheeks with a damp sponge. Voilá! Now I look as if I’m lit from within, instead of looking as if I had an accident at the Esteé Lauder factory. $25.00

I own seemingly thousands of hair care products (it’s probably only dozens, but when I trip and knock them off the bathroom shelves and they all come cascading down, it feels like hundreds or thousands), some of which cost insane amounts of money, but when it gets right down to it, if I were forced to pick a handful of them to jam into a suitcase because I had to dash from the country because, well, I dunno, I was fleeing from the mob or something, I’d most likely grab a buncha Back to Basics products. They all smell good enough to drink, there’s a product to address every hair problem under the sun, the bottles, cans, and tubes are easily to grip and store, the colors are sunshiney and add brightness to my bathroom (not a huge selling point, I know, but I’m just saying), and the price point is right on. My favorite is the Green Tea Normalizing Shampoo and Conditioner for Healthy Hair (it smells nice and green, one of my favorite scent families). I also love the Apple and Ginseng Thickening Serum (it’s great for my fine hair), and the Green Tea and Witch Hazel Flexible Hold Hair Spray. Other flavors include Pomegranate (moisturizing), Citrus Sage (clarifying), Coconut Mango (for thick or coarse hair), and lots more. (Are you salivating yet?) And it barely makes a dent in your wallet! $8.79-20.19

tarte has a reputation for, uh, tart-iness, and their Lights, Camera, Lashes! is as tarty as anything else they’ve done. The tube is covered in a tacky purple faux lizard skin (which is kind of pretty, if you’re into that kind of thing) (I imagine aspiring LA starlets and tarts are totally into that kind of thing, and picture Kim Kardashian owning several tubes of this she never uses, but likes to have in her handbag because of the way the tubes look). But what of the mascara? tarte’s packaging claims it’ll volumize, lengthen, and curl, and that’s a lot to expect from a single mascara, and in fact it is: the product is largely composed of waxes, so what it excels at is lengthening. But boy, does it ever lengthen! And it does so without clumping (the bane of every mascara-wearer’s existence). It goes on smoothly, and you needn’t imperil your eyes with a sharp metal comb (or for those of you brave, scary types, a pin) to separate your lashes and get the goop out. So inside that tarty packaging is, after all, a terrific mascara, so long as you’re not looking for volume and curl, too. (Use your eyelash curler for the latter) (I love tarte’s Picture Perfect Eyelash Curler; it’s a dream). As for volume, you’ll need an additional mascara for that (or false lashes), because this one doesn’t deliver much in the way of thickness. Still, insofar as length is concerned, this won’t become yet another of those mascaras you toss into a drawer as a failed purchase; this one will make your eyes flutter for all the right reasons. $18.00