RSSArchive for March 2009
Makeup Model : Light Summer
March 31, 2009
Edit June 23/10 – Just a note to be sure everyone knows that this Makeup Model series of articles was posted before I became a Color Analyst. The articles have been very popular, so I leave them up, but the makeup recommendations are not necessarily those I’d make today. For anyone interested in more accurate Season and color advice, do look at 12blueprints.com or join the 12 Blueprints Fan Club on Facebook.
The palest pinkest women. A friend of mine sees a dermatologist who refers to her coloring as “you pasty white chicks”. That’s got to be Light Summer.
Remember Cool Summer’s gray-silver-ash brown hair? This season is light blond to white blond. The blond is not overly golden and certainly not red. The hair could also be light brown. As with Cool Summer, the keyword is ash. That’s means greyish-brown, kind of like the taupe of hair color. A Light Summer in warm brown hair is killing off what little color she has in her complexion.
But NOT platinum, like on Christina Aguilera. Platinum is too harsh, almost metallic in its lightness, though a few thin streaks could work among other light blond colors. All-platinum might work on some Winters but Summer wouldn’t go beyond a very pale blond. A child would might be flaxen or almost white, but not silvery/metallic.
This is an easy season to makeup. Just stay pink and light.
Reese looks great, better than the too-yellow-gold hair she often wears. She looks young and shines with an inner energy and light. Her eyes don’t look pale or faded. Her lipcolor is dark for the softness of her color scheme so my eye is continuously distracted by it. There is often a tendency for these women to wear vibrant colors because they feel it might bring color to the face, or the marketing industry told them a “pop” of color was in, but their coloring is easily overwhelmed.
The most difficult makeup choice this group has to make is with bronzer/contour. You can struggle at the makeup counter with all the too-yellow-for-you bronzers, and that includes the light and golden ones most of the time.
Or you can go the drugstore, look at Almay and Revlon, or any other non-animal-tested choices, and pick a powder a little darker than your skin. Beige. Not peach. Just the next shade deeper than what would be a match. Call it a day.
Oh, no wait. They’ve packaged their powders so that you can’t see them. How clever. Is this why we all end up at MAC and Sephora eventually?
MAC always has some of the best options for recreating skin’s real life colors, at a decent price point, with colors you can test. Their Select Sheer Pressed Powder is nice to use for its sheerness. Many of the shades have a peachiness that can work well as a bronzer for many seasons. This group, who just can’t take very yellow pigments, and certainly not orange, don’t want to end up with an overly colorful face. You should stick with pressed powders that are skin-tone beige. Remember though that this group also represents the Summer/Spring fusion with Summer coolness predominant. A slight hint of peach may be worth trying on those of you who can wear a few of Spring’s yellower shades.
MAC Mineralize Skinfinish/Natural offers some terrific choices. It’s still sheer, not sparkly, and comes in good skin colors. These products can be a tad glowy ( which is the last thing you want from the contour that’s supposed to recede things not make them more noticeable), but it’s not so extreme as to get in the way. For light skin tones, the Mediums to Medium-Dark and beyond are brilliant.
Not sure of your season? Pretty Your World is loaded with information and tips to help you.
Look at these shades
Lipstick : Clinique Glosswear Kissy Fit ; Bobbi Brown Bright Pink gloss; Revlon MineralGlaze Gloss in Continuous Pink and Eternal Blossom (Infinite Rose ? Nope, that’s for Cool Summer)
Blush: Clinique Iced Lotus; NARS Mata Hari
Eyeliner: Clarins Waterproof Gris/Grey 03 ; MAC Technakohl Earthline
Eyes: Bobbi Brown Tan ; MAC Omega ; you need a grey and a brown that look like this,
Eye hilite : Bobbi Brown Ivory or Shell ; MAC Yogurt
These are guidelines to get your eye looking at the right colors. They won’t be different next year even if the ad campaigns say they will. Try the products first to hit your own bull’s eye.
-->The palest pinkest women. A friend of mine sees a dermatologist who refers to her coloring as “you pasty white chicks”. That’s got to be Light Summer.
The most difficult makeup choice this group has to make is with bronzer/contour. You can struggle at the makeup counter with all the too-yellow-for-you bronzers, and that includes the light and golden ones most of the time.
Makeup Model : Soft Autumn
March 28, 2009
Edit June 23/10 – Just a note to be sure everyone knows that this Makeup Model series of articles was posted before I became a Color Analyst. The articles have been very popular, so I leave them up, but the makeup recommendations are not necessarily those I’d make today. For anyone interested in more accurate Season and color advice, do look at 12blueprints.com or join the 12 Blueprints Fan Club on Facebook.
Autumn colors are deeper than Spring to be sure. But they’re not darkened by adding gray(as Summer is) or black (because that’s Winter).
These are browner colors. They toasty and golden, coppered, and bronzed. The degree depends on which Autumn. If you could distill Autumn down to one color, it would be brown, which would include the variations of gold and orange.
Soft Autumn is not as deep and warm as the other 2 Autumns. They’re quietly warm like in the picture above. Their toned-down richness makes them closer to neutral. This means that they’re easily confused with Soft Summer, who also have a subdued strength in their coloring. Soft Summer is neutral too but is more cool than warm.
This season is so soft, in fact, that it approaches neutral but just lingers on the warm side of the line. Like who? Drew Barrymore. She can be a cool blonde but she looks better warmed up a little more. Lindsay Lohan, on the other hand, cannot be blonde nearly as well as red because her coloring is too committed to Autumn’s warmth.
Can you see how good it can be when you get it right? There’s no contest. Color Analysis works.
Lips: Clinique LongLast Glosswear Sunset ; Almay Ideal Gloss in Bronze Shimmer; Clinique Glow Bronze lipstick.
Blush: MAC Trace Gold. Don’t just fluff this color on. Apply it with feeling (meaning a firm stroke of the brush) to really get the color, not just the shimmer.
All Autumns should know that they can transform their many too-pink blush mistakes to a great burnished shade with Trace Gold. It works best for the Soft Autumns who wear warm pink better than the other Autumns.
Eyeliner: Clinique Chocolate Lustre.
Eyes: Cargo Warm Neutral Palette ; MAC Era.
Cargo Warm Neutral palette.
Eye hilite : MAC Shroom. This is an all-purpose under brow eye color. It would suit all the seasons, certainly all the warm ones. Paula’s Choice Beige is another completely versatile under brow hiliter for all the seasons, at a fraction of the price, and is really perfect because it has no shine.
The disclaimer : Don’t buy it if you don’t try it. These are color guidelines to give you a sense of what you should be looking at.
The colors are getting warmer now, but there’s some heat on the way and things are going to get a whole lot hotter.
-->Soft Autumn is not as deep and warm as the other 2 Autumns. They’re quietly warm. Their toned-down richness makes them closer to neutral. This means that they’re easily confused with Soft Summer, who also have a subdued strength in their coloring. Soft Summer is neutral too but is more cool than warm.
Read moreWhat Women Have Learned
March 25, 2009
Women often send one another words and passages that were uplifting in their humor and their sadness. The balance speaks for the experience we live each day. We are the bearers of our family’s emotional weight. We shoulder the role of stewarding a society’s acceptable behaviors (to paraphrase Tracy’s insightful words), whether we fully realize it or not.
A long time ago, a reader sent me the following in an email. I regret that I can no longer find her name, but I kept the email and have read it many times. Perhaps many of you know it already. It is a beautiful reminder of the many things our everyday struggles have taught us. At the end of a day that feels miserable, you just have to keep living. For how long? Until a ball comes at you that you can’t hit back.
Maya Angelou was interviewed by Oprah on her 70th birthday. Oprah asked her what she thought of growing older.
[[ Right there on television, she said it was 'exciting.'
Regarding body changes; she said there were many, occurring every day...like her breasts. They seem to be in a race to see which will reach her waist first. The audience laughed so hard they cried.
Maya Angelou said this:
'I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.'
'I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.'
'I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life.'
'I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life.'
'I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.'
'I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back.'
'I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.'
'I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.'
'I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. '
'I've learned that I still have a lot to learn.'
'I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.'
Please pass this on -- you will boost another woman's self-esteem. If you don't...the elastic will break and your underpants will fall down around your ankles! ]]
Maya Angelou seems an enviably serene woman who radiates simple honesty. I expect that the notion that looking your age is not good enough was one of those things she threw back. More of us should do the same. You will be held in higher regard if you share your true human warmth than if you glow only from the surface of your perfect skin.
More recently, my dear friend, Gina, sent this. She knows I’m a terrible facebooker, but wanted to be sure that I saw it, so she e-mailed it direct.
These words, between a poem and a song, celebrate the small wonders for which we make time each day. Women are sisters and friends and soulmates and cheerleaders and we are each other’s beating hearts. We find ways to heal ourselves and each other with our truths and our deep connection to life’s most basic energies.
Alone, we can be frightened. We shortchange the value of our contribution to our homes and our workplaces. With two of us together, our bravery more than doubles. We can take on the world.
-->Women are sisters and friends and soulmates and cheerleaders and we are each other’s beating hearts. We find ways to heal ourselves and each other with our truths and our deep connection to life’s most basic energies.
Read moreProduct Review : LipSense Liquid Lip Color
March 22, 2009
I’m always a little nervous when asked to do a review on a product I’m given rather than one I bought myself. What if it’s awful? I don’t like writing really negative things unless I can balance it with something positive. Does your integrity require that you write the opinion even if it’s bad, since the person requested it?
No need for anxiety here. This is the most interesting and weirdest product I’ve put on my lips and also one of the best performers. I had given up on long-wearing lipstick, figuring it was just a beauty industry inside joke. ‘Lip Plumping’ , now that really is a joke.
Kelly Robertson of Celebrity Lipstick e-mailed to ask if she could send me a lip product sample from her SeneGene line. She looked at the pictures I’ve posted of myself along the way and chose a color in keeping with my neutral-makeup-loving, conservative, Canadian self. The color Kelly sent was Apple Cider, on me a warm peach-rose color of medium depth.
The product comes with a Moisturizing gloss in a second tube, and an instruction sheet. It’s makeup – do I need instructions? Actually, yes, they’re helpful.
I started by doing what we all do with lipstick, I smeared it on my hand. Within 30 seconds, I couldn’t get it off. Promising indeed.
When you apply it to your lips, the first thing you notice is that it stings. That’s about all you’re noticing for 10 seconds as something evaporates. Not tingle. Sting. The color goes on sheer with 1 application but builds nicely with further applications, and it stings with each. Kelly tells me that the sting comes from SD40 alcohol, a type well above standard cosmetics grade. If your lips are chapped or cracked, you’ll feel it even more.
It’s also thin and can sneak past your lipliner easily if you move too fast. There is a plus side here for mixing 2 colors. It would be extraordinary for me to apply a color of anything from the container without mixing it with something, so mixability is a big concern of mine. If you owned 2 or 3 of these, you could customize an endless number of colors.
It’s tacky within 1 minute and you apply the moisturizing gloss. The stinging stops. The gloss is shiny but not obnoxious, quite pleasant actually. Kelly tells me that the stinging sensation is relative to how dry your lips are but that the shea-based gloss is very healing and the sting on application goes away after a couple of days of wearing the product.
Now we get to the good part. It does not come off. It does not require the gloss to be applied every 15 minutes (every 1-2 hours is plenty and doesn’t need a mirror because the color doesn’t budge) because the color is not drying and the gloss has some lasting power.
The product doesn’t crack, roll, crumble, fade in the center, dry, no matter how often you roll your lips. Other than being a little sticky, it’s very flexible and you don’t really know you have it on. It leaves no trace on cups. I drank tea and it didn’t move. I applied my MAC lipstick over it once instead of the gloss it came with and the color looked interesting but didn’t move.What you give up in comfort in the first minute, you get back in a huge durability and comfort payoff.
Are you familiar with the business lunch? 6 men and you. You took a little more care with your makeup. You’ve met, you’ve eaten the soup. By now, you know your lipstick is long gone. Buy why put on more lipstick, there’s still the wrap or the salad? By the time they’re done, you can’t even hope for lipliner to be getting you through. You hope that the emphasis you placed on your eye makeup is drawing attention away from your naked lips.
Yes, you could excuse yourself to go touch up your makeup, but how womanish and wimpy is that at a work meeting, and then you return looking all glossy? This is better. The guys are hanging around drinking coffee and guess what? So are you! Looking the same as when you walked in. Now here’s a woman who has it together and whose look is working for her in every sense of the word.
After a salad with dressing, the product is gone from only the center of the mouth but still quite presentable. Pull out a lip balm (if the guys wouldn’t pull out a lip gloss, then you shouldn’t either; Labello or Blistex, or anything one of them would use, is forgiven; you can fix the look back at the office or alone in your car), slap some on, and you look good. Don’t eat oily food at the business lunch.
For evening, for parties, for meetings, for a day outdoors, anytime you don’t want to fuss with reapplying lip color, this product is most definitely worth a try. It’s uncommon for a product to surprise me but this one did. It was still looking great 8 hours after I applied it.
The color selection is quite remarkable. I appreciate that one of the biggest challenges of online makeup sales is showing colors that are representative across different browsers and monitors. Though the swatches have been improved since I first looked at them, they might still need a little work. Apple Cider looks like a light-medium peach-pink on the site but it actually goes on deeper than that on me, and I have medium coloring. On a fair woman, it would certainly be more intense unless she only used a single sheer layer. I also wish the swatches were about twice the size they are.
If you lick it, it will taste very slightly chemical. You won’t taste it when you eat or drink and it has no odor once it’s dry. LipSense is not tested on animals. If you have any questions or need guidance with colors, you will find Kelly incredibly helpful and receptive to questions.
-->This is the most interesting and weirdest product I’ve put on my lips and also one of the best performers. I had given up on long-wearing lipstick, figuring it was just a beauty industry inside joke.
LipSense really keeps its promise. It does not come off. The product doesn’t crack, roll, crumble, fade in the center, dry, no matter how often you roll your lips.
The Best Skin Softening Treatment
March 19, 2009
Paula’s Choice Hydrating Treatment Mask is what you hope moisturizing masks will turn out to be when you buy them but somehow they never quite deliver. It leaves your skin the way you hope wonderful moisturizers will but with a more lasting effect. This mask is a hybrid of the most effective cream you’ve ever used and a fantastic softening mask. There is not a trace of greasiness. The feeling is more of drawing water from the air.
My skin is generally oily. I haven’t much need for hydrating masks. But there is no product that comes close to the performance of this one when
- I’ve gotten too exuberant with the exfoliants and my skin is very sensitive and a bit inflamed. Even my regular non-irritating products will sting, but not this wonderful stuff. Wear this for a couple of night and I promise you, your skin will feel baby-ish – moist, plumped, relaxed. It allows a very healing environment. Each morning, I can tell that my skin has healed significantly just overnight.
- It’s a case of sunburned skin, which should never happen but if you believe that, you don’t have children. The product applies very soft and velvety. It doesn’t sting, spreads easily, is not greasy or slippy, and feels calming and cooling to skin.
- I do my usual Skin Balancing Carbon Mask which is quite lovely in a green-black swamp mud sort of way. I place this around my eyes as an eye mask. I gob it on but it’s thick enough to not migrate into your eyes even if the mask is on an hour because you forgot it and the green stuff is crunchy and itchy but your book is so good you didn’t rinse it off. The consistency is of a thick cream, like DQ soft ice cream. It holds a formed swirly shape.
- My children had very very dry skin as toddlers and one still does to this day. Chlorinated pools are particularly offensive. You know those patches of scaly, itchy skin they get on their back? Nothing, and I mean nothing, solved the problem as well as this product. I tried Eucerin. Dormer. Keri. Shea. Akerat. Hydrocortisone. Curel. Lubriderm. Body Shop Butters, though I was averse to using something scented. This is the stuff they ask for. All 3 have a tube by their bed. They haven’t outgrown the dry chapped hands in winter tendency but we have the solution for all these problems.
- I want the best hand and foot cream I know. Sleeping with socks is more than I can bear but with this mask, I don’t need to because it stays put. I add a few drops of lavender or rose oil for this purpose only, barricade the door to my room, and dare someone to get me out of bed. Wear this at night and the Pure Mineral Sunscreen SPF 15 in the day and your kids will very soon stop telling you that you have old lady hands. These are 2 of the most skin-soothing products I know, no matter how sensitive or irritated the skin might be.
- You have a friend whose skin reacts to everything she puts on it. This is the only thing that doesn’t require a few days of indecision about whether it will irritate. She can tell almost immediately that it will be fine. She uses it as her everyday moisturizer. I was glad to give her some to try. I gave her the whole tube 4 days later. Many of you with reactive or sensitive skin will do the same when you see how your skin looks and feels after replacing your moisturizer with this for 3 days. (Of course, it contains no sunscreen so either you use that as well in the daytime, or just use this for a few nights and leave your day routine as is.)
- Your husband is going out with skin so dry that it looks like it has a layer of chalk on it. God knows why that would be after scrubbing his face with Irish Spring. It has no scent and it won’t get in his eyes or make his face shine. He can feel the effect so quickly that he figures he’s getting some bang for his buck. Thankfully, neither the bottle nor cream are peachy pink, so with the words turned towards the wall, the tube can live on his bathroom shelf.
It doesn’t apply thick and white and masky. It goes on invisibly in a thin layer and translucent in a thicker layer, but it’s not white like sunscreen can be. There is absolutely no color residue. It feels much more soft and velvety than any other cream or mask I know, including Paula’s other creams. The texture really is quite unique, more like whipped cream rather than oil. You can put makeup over it within 5 minutes if you want to and there would be no trace of color. I never ever rinse it off, though you could, like any mask.
I believe this is one of the superstars of Paula’s lineup, I really do.
Do you know that cleansers and toners are 25% off in March AND shipping is $3 on all orders? So, that’s Canadian money at par and free shipping from a US site. The next step is obvious. Lay in your summer supplies and pick up a tube of this mask. You will not regret it.
-->
Paula’s Choice Hydrating Treatment Mask is what you hope moisturizing masks will turn out to be when you buy them but somehow they never quite deliver. It leaves your skin the way you hope wonderful moisturizers will but with a more lasting effect. This mask is a hybrid of the most effective cream you’ve ever used and a fantastic softening mask. There is not a trace of greasiness. The feeling is more of drawing water from the air.
Read moreKegels
March 16, 2009
Oh, please not this topic. We all know we’re supposed to be doing this in grocery store lineups, everywhere, all the time, every chance we get, but it’s uncomfortable and irritating.
I know it’s odd but you need to know this. It is not often talked about, at least not at any exercise class or video I’ve ever seen. Maybe that’s because it’s awkward to say “Squeeze your pubococcygeus now, ladies”. You only hear about it to help reduce urinary incontinence or to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles during and after pregnancy.
Where?
What’s a pelvic floor? Those are muscles that act like a sling to support and contain all the organs in your pelvis (bladder and its sphincter, uterus, the end of the intestinal tract or rectum, and its sphincter). Nobody wants to talk about it but NOBODY wants any of this stuff to go wrong either. It needs to be tuned and tight just like everything else to work really well for a long time.
Your deepest core pelvic muscle is the pubococcygeus, the one you work with Kegels. It’s called “deepest” because it’s nearest the center of your body, organized like an elastic around a pole that goes through the middle of you in an up-down direction, like an internal pogo stick. That pole has another name – it’s called “gastrointestinal tract”, which curves around a lot, but is still a tube running right through the middle of your body.
Why?
MUST we really talk about this, you ask? Yes, yes, it’s cool how much stronger it makes your torso and how much deeper your abdominal control will become. Core muscles doesn’t just mean firm lower abs. It doesn’t get any deeper than this.
Pilates Pro has a technical but truly precise definition of what core stability really means. There are descriptions of the lumbar and core stabilizers, including the pelvic floor and the one we hear so much about, the transversus abdominus.
Having strength in these muscles is an integral part of having a strong trunk, the top and bottom of which can act in a coordinated way. If the top half is solid but the bottom half is slush, then the whole thing is weak and especially prone to injury in the weaker part.
How?
Stand in a horse squat or open plie ; now tighten those muscles you do for a Kegel. Basically, that means pretend to stop the flow of urine or tighten around a tampon. Did you notice how your whole trunk just stabilized?
Or try this. Sit on a stability ball, arms at your sides and feet on the floor in front of you. Lift one leg about a foot off the floor. Now pull the ball towards and away from the foot on the floor. Once you feel the ball unsteady from side to side, tighten the Kegel muscle. Notice how the ball is suddenly much more under your control and that side-to-side wobble disappeared?
Try the one where you lie on your back and do leg circles with an extended leg either out at 45 or straight up at 90. Try to keep your pelvis from rocking around. Even if you tighten the glute of the leg on the floor, it’s still hard. Now do the Kegel- see how the other muscles now don’t have to work as hard and yet you’re much more stable with less effort? The exercise gets easier and the entire pelvic region is suddenly more solid. Weird but it works.
When?
Every time you breathe out.
The diaphragm is a sheet of muscle that goes through your body cross-wise, like a plate under your lungs. It cups upwards, like a jellyfish, when you breathe out, like lifting a sheet off the ground by holding on to the center. It flattens out again as you inhale to make space for the lungs and to suck them open by pulling downwards.
Think of moving the diaphragm and the “Kegel” muscles together. Raise the pelvic floor by doing the Kegel exercise as the diaphragm lifts up to exhale. You can visualize the 2 muscle sheets (diaphragm under lungs, pelvic floor under abdomen) moving rhythmically, up and down, in synchrony. Now you’ve got control of your core.
The best everyday application of this is your ab workout. When you do a crunch, or any exercise that requires your abs to be tight (like a plank, bicycle in the air, whatever), tightening the Kegel muscle is like a handle you can pull against to help lift your shoulders off the floor. Just try it. It’s amazingly effective. The stomach muscles don’t have to work nearly as hard when you pull yourself up using the Kegel move, so they’re still capable of a little more exertion to get deeper into the exercise and more result from the movement.
To improve balance, this works like a charm. Stand on one leg and close your eyes; you’ll feel wobbly. Tighten with the Kegel exercise – notice how the top and bottom of the trunk suddenly start to work together to keep you balanced and neither part has to work as hard as when it was doing all the work alone? Gives a whole new meaning to the word “tight”.
Fun facts and funner anatomy
I know you need some comic relief right about now. Does it help to know that it is by contracting this same muscle that animals wag their tails ? How fun is it to know that? Why, you’re ready for Jeopardy!
If you really feel you have no need to know any more of this anatomic detail, do not follow the link. It will take you to Arnold Kegel’s view of the pelvic floor muscles. The pubococcygeus is colored red. Can’t get any more core than that. If you like visualizing and understanding the biomechanics of bodies, have a look.
So, this is a diagram of a woman sitting on a clear glass table, drawn from below. I’m sure this has been done many times on sites of a different type than this one, for different reasons than ours. Do you see the orientation? The hole in the center is the end of the digestive tract. At 12 oclock from that are the vaginal opening and the urethral opening right above it. The red muscle is the hammock under the organs under the pelvis. Slack and floppy is clearly not where we want to go here.
-->MUST we really talk about this, you ask? Yes, yes, it’s cool how much stronger it makes your torso and how much deeper your abdominal control will become. Core muscles doesn’t just mean firm lower abs. It doesn’t get any deeper than this.
Read moreThe Male Business Model
March 13, 2009
It often feels like we’re going at it alone. We dream of another life, or at least being able to opt out of the one we have temporarily.
My body cooks up funny problems to take me out of circulation for a few days. It knows when I need to sign out of my own life for a little while and it grounds me with some strange unimportant abnormality.
I bring it on myself by the Law of Attraction. I think “I wouldn’t mind having a minor ailment. How wonderful that I could have 2 or 3 sick days and no one would expect me go to work. I could just stay home, my favorite thing.”
And sure enough, just like you get everything if you think about it enough, I get this. This is why my problems are always gynecological. Men are not empathethic creatures where pain is concerned, but they will back off with this kind of pain. If I had a simple gash in my leg, the men around me would feel I should be at work because they would be. Lots to prove.
The male business model’s paradigm is always PUSH.
And if that works, what do you do next?
And if it doesn’t work, what do you do?
Same answer.
PUSH HARDER.
That mindset believes that if you haven’t put in a 60 hour work week, you haven’t been worthwhile, a “hard-worker” worthy of respect from your kind and yourself. Interesting that these guys still easily carve out time on the golf course.
This is the male version of abundance. It’s the thinking of a certain upbringing (small towns), a certain a generation (wartime), and the attitude about life that results (life is a competition because the amount of good stuff out there is limited; if you win, someone else loses so you better beat everyone else to the cash and prizes). The female mindset of abundance is the hamster-on-a-wheel life that women set up for themselves. In both cases, busy-ness and exertion can fool you into thinking that changes are taking place.
And then after they’re done pushing harder, they’re busy wanting MORE. There’s no line in the sand that says to them ‘enough’. They’ll risk what they already have. In fact, they’ll put it up on the auction block and sacrifice it altogether and allow it to be destroyed to get MORE. The financial meltdown was an example on a grander scale of the male business model needing to forever prove itself with MORE.
The male world sees it as a big deal to leave work at 2 to pick up a child. In the female version, where everything is available and possible, it’s very natural. The family is who we do it all for. There’s no way we’ll do anything that would jeopardize that. Men say they do everything for the family too. But it’s not true. They do it for themselves, for their sense of self-worth and to fulfill their idea of what a MAN does.
Men have taught us that one income at a time must be pivotal and protected. They put all these impediments on us to sustain that because it suits them very well. They find they get less interruptions and more eagerness to be accommodated. Women swallow the small seed of fear and resign themselves to “Whatever would we become without that income??”
Allowing that belief is how we’ve been kept down and kept each other down. We will never make that system work or play naturally within its boundaries. You look at your job for the things you really love and they’re not there. You feel scared and hassled with no control.
We can see the posturing and the bluffing, the bluster and the swagger, for nobody’s benefit but their own. We don’t belong. We know how artificial it all is. This is how they assure themselves that they’re doing something important. Some of them have figured it out – that busy doesn’t mean productive or successful.
They don’t mean badly. They’re just following a pattern that we’ve all been taught. Nobody wants to reinvent a system that, on the surface, seems to work for everyone. Or looked like it did for our parents. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe we can want and have more than our mothers.
All we can do is to stop playing. It’s so deeply embedded in our culture that the only ones who can see it are those women who consciously decide to pull away and make up something new. Who realize that it can be whatever you see it as being.
The more I pull away, the more bizarre the thing looks. It becomes ever clearer that money can be soft-earned and not at the expense of what we already have, including family, a huge non-monetary asset, and health, which is the most valuable commodity that exists.
You don’t have to live in the male world. That net that restricts all your limbs can be gone. Let the wind move to your back. You don’t have to want people who don’t want you. Don’t think of it as being rejected. Better to see it as a wonderful stream of selection that brings you the people with whom you can thrive. The other kind can screen themselves out.
The male world, by the very way it’s set up, holds women away. They can’t see it and we can’t either, but the fit isn’t right. John Fowles said “Men love war because it allows them to look serious. It is the one thing that stops women laughing at them.” We’ve become too afraid to laugh.
There is no single right answer where all the outcomes will be joyful. There are more choices than we admit, fewer consequences, and even less risk.
PS – In searching for the Fowles quote, I looked first at Aldous Huxley because I was certain he said those words. I was wrong, but he did say these : “Maybe this planet is another planet’s hell.” Depressing but funny, and freakishly out-of-the-box, consistent with much of what he said and wrote.
-->It often feels like we’re going at it alone. We dream of another life, or at least being able to opt out of the one we have temporarily.
The male solution is always to Push. And then to PUSH HARDER.
That mindset believes that if you haven’t put in a 60 hour work week, you haven’t been worthwhile, a “hard-worker” worthy of respect from your kind and yourself. Interesting that these guys still easily carve out time on the golf course.
Colored Eyeliner
March 7, 2009
So you like blue, green, and purple? Me too.
Taking yourself seriously is never recommended but, in some situations, you do need to be taken seriously by others. Colored eyeliner is not the way to get there.
While exuberant colors on your face might still not be the best choice for a professional setting, color is too much fun to reject altogether.
There are 2 ways to add blue/green/purple to makeup that I think look great. Obviously, these are eye makeup – in fact, eyeliner - techniques. They’re both subtle enough to still be tasteful. They’re fast. They’re easy to get right and surprisingly hard to get wrong, because the color is used on such a small area.
This is not a dark eyeliner look or a smoky eye look. The color has to be softer to work as a subtle accent in its own right. Someone looking at you should not be able to see the color right away. Too dark comes on too strong and winds up looking hard with the first technique and fierce with the second one.
Naturally, women with stronger, more intense coloring will choose deeper colors. Women with very soft coloring, like Michelle Pfeifer, would pick something that would be too washed-out on Eva Longoria.
InStyle shows a photo gallery of colored liner looks. I’m not a fan of most of these looks. The color is too obvious. Kate Hudson’s turquoise and Blake Lively’s gold – they’re just too much. Rebecca Gayheart shows a good example of how to use a light to medium color in a more subtle way – there’s a light color lining the inner rim of the lower lid (that’s called the ‘waterline’).
Be careful not to choose a color with a lot of red pigment or you may end up looking as if you’ve been crying. Those pigments can often be very irritating to the eyes as well. Blue-purple, medium green, violet – this is the time to play (and not spend too much money) so try out different colors. Rimmel’s Exaggerate Full Color Eye Definer in Aubergine is a nice blue-purple. The same pencil in Pine is a good medium green. ( Rimmel does conduct animal testing. These were bought at a time when I was less judicious.)
To help choose a color that will be great on YOU, consult the color palette for your season. (Visit Pretty Your World to learn a lot more about Color Analysis. Once you get this figured out once, you’ll never again make a color mistake.). See a color that you’d like to try as an eyeliner? Teal on an Autumn? Soft plum on a Summer. Sounds gorgeous to me. Use it in one of these two ways :
First eyeliner technique
This method begins with the colored liner and applies it in the usual way, as a line around the eye, top and bottom, inside corner (where the lashes begin) to outside corner. The line is barely noticeable on the inside corner and becomes progressively thicker as you go outwards, but still never very wide. No need to get precise or do any smudging here The softer color intensity is very forgiving and we’ll be covering it with an eyeshadow anyhow.
After applying the liner, apply your usual medium matte neutral eyeshadow. The color might be camel, taupe, or grey depending on your coloring and the shape of your eye socket. Put a thin wash all over the lid , right over the eyeliner. Go into the crease, and just above the crease, but not to the browbone. This is simply a thin layer on a bigger surface area to tone down any cartoon effect of the color in the liner.
Here’s another gallery of colored eyeliner looks at ElleGirl magazine - and none of them are much use in the real world, except the third, which is a good illustration of this technique.
With what’s left on the brush, go over the line of eyeliner that’s under the lower lashes, or maybe just below it. Don’t go over the liner with an eyeshadow of the same color or the effect will be too vibrant. We want to hint, nothing more.
Finally, apply another, very light, layer of the liner over the first, just to give the color a little more depth.
If you wish to apply a light matte shadow right under the eyebrow, that’s fine. I usually just use a little concealer there to get the lift effect without needing an extra eyeshadow, because it becomes too complicated of an eye design. Personally, I think it looks best with less mascara than you might normally wear.
It ‘s got to look like it might have just happened on its own, like a blurry smudged impression of something more. It’s the power of suggestion.
Second eyeliner technique
You can see this illustrated in the eye at the top. Here it is again. There is no other makeup here, just the eyeliner. Which eye pops out at you more?
This takes a little practice but no time. Your eye color will stand out nicely. The color is on too small an area for anyone to really perceive that it’s there as long as you choose a color that’s neither too dark or too glittery. Once again, the color of the liner is an accent to emphasize your eyes.
Here, we’re placing the liner along the inside rim of the upper eyelid. That’s it. Just draw a line there tracing the pencil along the underside edge of the lashes.
The color above is Rimmel Aubergine.
A deep blue cleans up the white of the eye and looks nice on dark brown eyes in this second technique. It’s this (deepblueliner) .
It’s not this
or this
, and certainly not the metallic versions of these which is worse. Why are these colors such staples, especially on women with blue eyes? I think it’s a leftover from younger days. And yet, blue eyes are the easiest of all to accentuate with liner. Brown and gray (especially warm brown) look better on blue eyes than any other eye color.
On the rest of the eye, use your neutrals, though I think the liner’s effect is more noticeable if you use neutrals in lighter colors than usual – so camel instead of a deeper brown if you’re warm, or mushroom instead of taupe if you’re cooler.
These are not serious looks, so be playful. Try out various colors. As soon as you put green on your face, you’ve relinquished your gravity (in more ways than one).
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There are 2 ways to add blue/green/purple to makeup that I think look great. Obviously, these are eye makeup – in fact, eyeliner – techniques. They’re both subtle enough to still be tasteful. They’re fast. They’re easy to get right and surprisingly hard to get wrong, because the color is used on such a small area.
Read moreMakeup Model : Cool Summer
March 7, 2009
Edit June 23/10 – Just a note to be sure everyone knows that this Makeup Model series of articles was posted before I became a Color Analyst. The articles have been very popular, so I leave them up, but the makeup recommendations are not necessarily those I’d make today. For anyone interested in more accurate Season and color advice, do look at 12blueprints.com or join the 12 Blueprints Fan Club on Facebook.
Your coloring is very cool. Once you resist the temptation to follow the crowd with golden hair, and allow your hair to have its natural silvery-gray-blond color, you will never look better. These women seem few and far between in the real world, maybe because so many are choosing the wrong, warm hair color.
You look horrible in golden brown, but nobody can carry off a muted fuchsia better than you can. You look terrific in blues and soft blue-purple colors.
Your lip and cheek colors comes from the dusty pink-purple colors found in lilacs.
You’re not particularly pale. Your coloring is of a medium intensity in hair and eye color and the two blend together. This is a gorgeous season, with pink veering to blue, and greys that are almost silver. Your most flattering eye makeup is mushroom brown and blue-type greys.
Look at how much better Farrah Fawcett looks in grey-blond (ash) hair. The very yellow hair doesn’t bring out the flush in her skin and lips nearly as well.
Linda Evans looks great in grey-blond hair and will look great in silvery grey hair, as Paul Newman did.
The makeup reminds me of these shades,
Denise Richards cannot pull off yellow hair
but Paris Hilton, a Light Spring, was made for it.
Looks at this makeup next time you’re shopping.
Lipstick: Clinique Glosswear Stellar Plum.
Blush: Bobbi Brown Soft Pink; NARS Outlaw.
Eyeliner: Clinique Quickliner Smoky Taupe; Estee Lauder Automatic Eye Pencil Duo Plum Grey.
Eyes: Bobbi Brown Slate and Heather ; MAC Scene.
Eye hilite : Bobbi Brown Shell.
Mascara: Dark Charcoal.
Here’s another Cool Summer. The grayer the hair gets, the better the skin looks.
For those of you uncertain about what Cool Summer means, you can learn more about Color Analysis and figure out your own season at Pretty Your World.
Your coloring is very cool. Once you resist the temptation to follow the crowd with golden hair, and allow your hair to have its natural silvery-gray-blond color, you will never look better. These women seem few and far between in the real world, maybe because so many are choosing the wrong, warm hair color.
Read moreMakeup Model : Warm Autumn
March 4, 2009
Edit June 23/10 – Just a note to be sure everyone knows that this Makeup Model series of articles was posted before I became a Color Analyst. The articles have been very popular, so I leave them up, but the makeup recommendations are not necessarily those I’d make today. For anyone interested in more accurate Season and color advice, do look at 12blueprints.com or join the 12 Blueprints Fan Club on Facebook.
Can a Season share makeup?
I started looking at women and decided that women within the same season in the 12 Season scheme can wear the same makeup. (What is a 12 Season scheme? Read more in Sites To Know : Pretty Your World). The overall color palette and degree of contrast are similar enough to produce makeup palettes customized to your coloring.
If you’re a Light Spring, the makeup that suits you will suit all Light Springs. There may be some that are deeper or lighter than you, so the makeup may look a little different but overall, you will look great in the same shades.
Can you have intensity and light lips?
I don’t like dark lips on anybody. Just a personal thing. They make us look older no matter how perfectly shaped the lips are.
But Warm Autumn needs intensity in makeup to balance strong golden undertones in the skin and the rich clothing colors that suit us so well. I continue to make the mistake of wearing lip colors that are too coral, trying to get a light lip but with color.
Brown alone can look flat and dead… but Autumn does better with brown than anybody. Shimmer is the only way I know to get some intensity and add life to brown, without adding darkness or orange-ness. Brown and toasty/metallic work naturally to become gold and copper and bronze and everything in between. This is what Autumn is all about.
I make the mistake of too much orange in blush too. Candy colors don’t work on this season’s makeup. They have to be natural (meaning warmth added to brown). The strength of this coloring (actually the large amount of warmth in the skin) can cope with metallics in small doses better than the more delicately colored seasons.
Think about Julianne Moore. Her skin isn’t dark but there is enough golden-beige in it that the whole color picture is fairly intense. Dressing her in watered down colors wouldn’t have nearly the kick that deeper warmer colors would have.
You’d put a shimmery copper on her and have it disappear into the face long before it would on Gwyneth Paltrow. Why? Because that is already one of the colors nature put in her overall color design. The sign of a great color for you is that it just gets absorbed into the coloring your face already has. With that kind of color, you can load it on and look real. You can color a little outside your natural lip line and look believable instead of dorky.
Here’s your makeup
Lips: MAC Honey Flower (too brown, dark, and orange alone on me) mixed with MAC Ramblin Rose (more warm coral) or MAC Jubilee (more neutral). MAC Plastique is a fabulous peachy brown metallic, too light on its own though (light and frosty is the formula for ash-colored lips, so it has to be mixed). With those 4 MAC lipsticks, you can create many many good shades. If you like more red color, start mixing in MAC Mocha.
From L, all MAC, Plastique, Jubilee, HoneyFlower, Ramblin Rose.
All this mixing, what a pain, ay? No, no, no ! This is how you learn to customize your colors and how a mixture of 2 colors always always always looks better than a single color alone. Just load a Quo Retractable Lip Brush with your color(s) of the day when you’re doing your AM makeup and you’re set. You can get enough on the brush for 3-4 touchups. Lipstick applied with a brush looks better and lasts way longer, no doubt about it.
Blush: Dior Sunkissed Cinnamon. The price of this stuff is deadly but I like the sheerness and softness of the color. It might look a little pink on you, depending on your skin, more true to its brown-pink name. My skin turns pink to peach, brown to peach, and peach to orange.
Since the color is soft, you can’t see the edges of the blush. What does that mean? Go see the movie Confessions of a Shopaholic and see if you can pick out where Isla Fisher’s blush begins and ends. Also, as a soft color, it looks fresher and younger than a darker or browner color.
The photo is linked to the product at StrawberryNET, which holy cow, if you don’t know it, is worth a look around for the freebies, discounts, sales, selection, and that’s before we talk about Free Shipping Worldwide.
If you like more noticeable color, look at Dior SugarNSpice.
Eyeliner: Dark Brown; there’s thousands of them.
Eyes: MAC Brule, Cork, Soba.
This is a palette of those same colors on a white background. They look dark on the white. I just threw in the gloss for fun. It’s a Chanel Glossimer, color name long worn off.
Fight with Photoshop though I do, every single day, this is the closest I could digitally match the lip colors (Honey Flower is not here). They’re close but not exact.
Look at what happens to those exact same colors on the golden beige skin of a Warm Autumn. Only the background layer’s color has been changed. Suddenly, they’re much closer to what they look like when a Warm Autumn puts them on her face.
Try this out next time you’re shopping and let me know. Convince me I’m wrong.
-->My good friend and sister-in-law, Holly is a Warm Autumn, just as I am. Over the years, I’ve noticed that we can wear exactly the same makeup colors even though her hair and eyes are not the same color as mine.
I started looking at women and have decided this holds true for all women within the same season in the 12 Season scheme.
If you’re a Light Spring, the makeup that suits you will suit all Light Springs. There may be some that are deeper or lighter than you, so the makeup may look a little different but overall, you will look great in the same shades.
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A Greener Tea
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