Refinery29.com has a GORGEOUS slideshow titled, “6 Bright Makeup Looks You Can Actually Wear” that’s full of legit useful tips for everyone scared by neons, AND beautiful models of color. HIGH FIVE!
Monthly Archives: June 2013
Floss Gloss Nail Lacquer in Con Limon
Con Limon by Floss Gloss, $8
OK. I don’t want to say that I’m straight up slaying the natural nail game right now, but, I am. It’s just facts. This color just took my life to a whole new place and now my nails are on some next level shit.
SO GOOD.
As you can see, I’m also slaying the shower curtain game. I have got it goin’ on! GOTDAMN!
The second I saw Con Limon, there was never any doubt we were meant to be together. It was gut punch love at first sight. And when I put it on my nails, I never wanted to take it off.
After one use, Con Limon has joined China Glaze’s “For Audrey” and Rescue Beauty Lounge’s “IKB 2012” in the upper echelon of “POLISHES I WEAR MORE THAN ONCE.” This is big time stuff, but I think Con Limon is up for it.
Some of you may know that it’s customary to lay down a coat of white polish under neon colors to keep them from blending into your nails, and make them pop. Before I started my Con Limon manicure, I tweeted Floss Gloss and asked if they suggested I do that under their polish. They responded and told me it wasn’t necessary, that Con Limon would be opaque in two coats without any white under it.
A likely story.
A TRUE STORY.
As is the case with all creamy neons I’ve used, Con Limon applied a little streaky at first, but by the second coat, it was indeed fully opaque. I was pretty impressed, actually. Two coats of neon, without any white undercoat, and there wasn’t any visible nail line. I did a third coat just to even out some places where I had missed the second pass, and the color was the perfect neon lime green of my fantasies.
Everything I do with my hands is so dope now.
Cracking eggs? Dope.
Folding manderwear? So sexual.
Voguing in the mirror? BEYOND FLY.
This polish has turned my “Why give handies when I can give vaginies?” worldview upside down. I don’t know who I am anymore! But, isn’t that the best you can hope for in this world today? To have your ideals challenged? Learning and growing and wondering if you should start giving more hand jobs because your nails look so cool.
Ah. Life.
And hey, stickers!
STICKERZ
I am so in love with this color, the little bottle it comes in, and every fucking thing else on the Floss Gloss site. Con Limon is going to be a year round color for me. It’s obviously good for summer, but I will def be flashing it when it gets cold.
Buy it HERE.
Hair Apparent
CLAP YOUR HANDS EVERYBODY
IF YOU GOT WORKING MITTS
CUZ I’M SARAH C. AND I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT
THESE ARE MY PITS
If you can’t tell, they’re hairy.
I don’t remember the last time I shaved them, and I have no plans to shave them in the immediate future. I wear a tank top pretty much every day.
It started by accident. I got used to the idea of letting my body hair grow in beauty school, of all places. When you wax, you need at least a 1/4″ of hair, so you can’t shave for a couple weeks. I was able to get over my embarrassment in a room full of girls with other equally hairy body parts.
The summer after beauty school, I had an epiphany while I was in between waxes; if I didn’t care about my hairy pits while I was waiting to be waxed, why was I waxing at all?
BECAUSE OF SOCIETY, RIGHT?
Because supposedly it’s mannish, radical, disgusting, dirty, unladylike, wrong for me to have underarm hair. Because someone actually told me if I loved Jason, I wouldn’t let my underarms get that way.
Am I maybe mannish, radical, disgusting, dirty, unladylike and wrong? Very possibly. I’ve been accused of being any number of those things throughout most of my life. I mean, in elementary school, I found out about Amelia Earhart and decided to start wearing an old leather fighter pilot’s helmet to school.
I had already taken to wearing a black sailor cap around, so probably nobody was surprised by my new hat.
Growing up fat, female, while dealing with depression and anxiety in a sometimes oppressively religious home, there are a lot of ways to question who you are; there are a lot of ways to feel like your body isn’t your own. The diet industry, the patriarchy, the church, everyone lays claim to your body. When you’re 13, with big boobs, and adult men catcall you, it’s your own body you blame. If you live your life desperately trying to change your body while it seems to only do what it wants, you don’t feel like you’re in charge. Hearing from puberty that your body belongs to your future husband. Knowing that just by leaving the house, I’m inviting commentary from the public. I’ve done decades worth of harm to myself mentally, physically and emotionally by letting other people tell me what to do with what’s mine.
I have super sensitive underarms. Regular deodorant+shaving gives me gross pit zits, every natural deodorant I’ve used+shaving ends up burning my skin. These issues hurt, but I shaved anyways until I had the realization that I didn’t have to do anything to my body that was painful just because it was expected. If I didn’t care about the hair, why should I keep hurting myself? For other people? Other people can suck a million.
I took some control by letting my body do what it does naturally.
This is me. This is my body. This is what it does, and it makes me happy.
It scared me more to show you guys my upper arm fat.
I can’t believe how freeing it is. It seems so stupid and small, but seizing that tiny bit of myself back from the world was exhilarating. That FUCK YOU makes me feel good every day. I start a revolution for myself every time I lift my arms over my head in public. I see people look, and it makes me feel proud and defiant. I haven’t felt so punk in years. I’ve started peace talks with myself here in my unshaven underarms. A small piece of neutral territory, where there has never been any before. My pits are Switzerland.
My body is the one thing I had when I came into this world, it’s the one thing I’ll take through my whole life, it’s mine. I share it with my husband, I share it with the world, but ultimately it belongs to me. I’m trying so hard to be beautiful on my own terms. My terms say my eyebrows are perfectly shaped, but my pits grow free. Take it or kick rocks.
Here’s the picture of me they’ll use on my “Monsters of Feminism” postage stamp.
Wen
Over the weekend, I said on the Lab Bunny Facebook page that Wen wasn’t worth it. To be fair, when I said this, I may or may not have been in an altered state.
That doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not Wen is worth it, I just want you guys to know I party. Don’t worry, I’m cool. I know the score.
I know the score about Wen too. To be (actually) fair, I tried Wen about a year ago. But, after I posted that to Facebook a couple days ago, I had a request for more information, and I’m happy to share my experience.
I purchased the Wen system in April of last year. As you can imagine, this was a very exciting time for me. The Wen infomercial used to be one of my favorite late night shows. I’d watch it over and over, making Wen one of those “I want it so bad but I can’t make myself spend the money” products, so when I happened upon whatever sale, coupon code, or twists in logic that allowed me to finally buy it, I was beyond thrilled. Obviously, this was going to be the answer to all my hair problems.
Hair problems include: 20 years of near nonstop coloring, the kind of texture that has been referred to as “horse-like” by stylists on more than once occasion, a refusal to air dry sexy and smooth, tons of shedding, heavy, semi-coarse, with a tendency to just lay there and be all dull, grease, and, ok….’druff. Ew. That’s the most embarrassing thing I’ve admitted to on this site so far.
At the time, my hair was really long; past my bra, nearly down to the small of my back. That length + thickness = a massive amount of hair. I mean, I can wash my hair at night, and it will still be damp in the morning. My buns and ponytails are so heavy, they give me headaches. It’s a lot to manage. I don’t want to sound like one of those people that complains about things that other people covet, but the grass is always greener, blah blah blah.
Right off the bat, there was an issue. The bottle was only 16 oz., but for long hair, they recommended using something like 12-15 pumps worth of product. At that rate, I would have been through that $30, “month long supply” in just a couple weeks. So, after the first few times, I realized I couldn’t keep using it at that pace, and I had to work with a smaller amount. This led me to wonder if I was even getting the full effect of the system, or if it was just one of those things companies do to make you use up your purchase quickly so you have to buy more. It was aggravating. I don’t like being swindled. This guy wasn’t going to pull the wool over my eyes!
Gorrrrrrl, please.
So, this product is more expensive than my usual salon brand products, they’re going to automatically charge me $90 (!!!) next month if I forget to cancel my subscription in time, AND they want me to use a ton of it? Ok. Does it work? Depends on your definition of “work.” My hair was clean, so it accomplished the bare minimum. Did it deliver on anything that infomercial promised? No. Not really. Not for me anyways. There was no discernible difference in the texture or look of my hair. It didn’t look any smoother, my scalp wasn’t healthier, nothing really happened. From what I could tell, it’s the same concept as the “no-poo” method. It’s just washing your hair without shampoo. For $30 a month.
I used it for a little while, and it was just making me angry. So, I gave it to my Wen-curious friend, Erin, so she could give it a shot. Her hair is very different than mine, so I asked her to share her experience too:
“I have been plagued by fluffy hair. Because of my hair fluff condition, I keep my hair very short. I do like my short hair, but I have recurring dreams where my hair is long and luscious and I just sit and brush it lovingly. So when I saw the infomercial for Wen, I not only watched it in its entirety, but I have probably watched that same infomercial 5 or 6 times since it began airing. I thought this would be the product that would finally tame the fluff and allow me to live my dream of having long, luscious, brushable hair. Luckily for me, I have a wonderful and beautiful friend who was kind enough to give me the last two inches left in her bottle of Wen after she decided that it sucks. My final review? Well, I wouldn’t say that it sucks, but my hair never stopped being fluffy, and I would definitely say you could get the same results out of a big bottle of Suave conditioner. After washing with Wen and noting that it felt like washing my hair with conditioner, I did a little research and found that washing with conditioner is indeed a thing. I started a new conditioner-washing regimen and my hair became shinier, softer, and generally more healthy-looking. So basically what Wen did for me was prompt me to seek out a (much) less expensive alternative.”
There you go. Two different types of hair, the same experience.
Also, Erin is absolutely right that you can just wash your hair with regular conditioner. It’s one of the no-poo options. Conditioners generally have enough surfactants in them to clean your hair without the other things in shampoo that do damage. I haven’t tried it though, I’m chicken. Maybe this week I’ll hit the beauty supply, get a new conditioner and give it a shot. I HATE the conditioner I have now, but that’s a whole other review that isn’t even worth writing.
You can buy Wen from Amazon now, so if you still want to try it, do that. That way you don’t have to sign up and remember to cancel your account before they charge you and ship out the next 3 months worth of product.
And hey, if you want to buy something from a hypnotic and persuasive informercial, buy Zumba. I give Zumba two thumbs up.