Ocean View, Amalfi Coast, Italy
photo via childofthesea
"
What we have is not a war against fakery, it is a war against that which displays itself as fakery; we’re all supposed to be pretending that we’re naturally wide-eyed and soft-skinned and blushing and blemish-free. Women are expected to be photorealist portraits of femininity, not expressionist canvasses; lies are tolerated only in so far as they are told convincingly. But when we start being too overt about the fabricated status of natural femininity, there’s a lurking danger that we might start to question their absurdity, or realise that we can invent altogether new images in radical moulds.
Perhaps, then, instead of demonising fakery, we should embrace a proliferation of artifice, in a style that refuses to acknowledge the existence of any such thing as ‘natural’.
"—
Shona McCombes, In Defense of Fake Beauty.
Good post. It also points out that ‘natural’ beauty is infinitely more difficult to achieve, more time-consuming, expensive, and restrictive. There is a class element in calling another woman’s hair or makeup, ‘tacky’—think how often the term is paired with ‘trashy’.
The ‘natural’-looking beauty featured in Aveeno ads is just as contrived as the more exaggerated femininity seen in M.A.C. ads. There’s nothing more (or less) feminist about avoiding peroxide, fake tanner, or super long acrylic nails. There’s nothing wrong with liking a ‘natural’ look either, but you have to be careful not to use your preference for self-presentation as a means of judging and policing other women.
By Eric Gill
DIY beauty round-up
Homemade lip and cheek stain made from olive oil, honey, and beets
Use Scotch tape to create the perfect cat’s eye. I’d also suggest using medical tape if you have sensitive skin or eyes, since it’s designed to be less sticky/gentler on skin.
Loose eye shadow + clear nail polish = a unique shade of nail polish
How to get vintage style curls without heat. My favorite part of this is that you get two cute hairstyles out of it (image source)
"It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it."
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)
This isn’t Halloween-related, per se, but an actual thing I found for sale on Amazon.com: Rejuvenique RJV10KIT Facial Toning Mask Kit
By delivering a light pulsation from a 9-volt battery (included), the 26 gold-plated contact points inside this facemask gradually tone the skin and reduce the appearance of wrinkling. The mask’s control unit has a knob that adjusts the pulsation intensity to suit individual preference. Though the mask is made of hard plastic, you can adjust the headband and extend key contact points by rotating them so you can fit the mask to any face size, both male and female.
The Actually Ugly Duckling by pictures for sad children
favoriteeeee
I was thinking about this comic in class today! We were looking at picture books, and one of them was basically this without the wit.
These beautiful photographs are of the Maʻdān, or the Marsh Arabs, who live in Iraq. They built these exquisite houses out of reeds (also called a mudhif, coffeehouse/meetinghouse), created floating villages, used the reeds to feed their water buffalo. A really lovely culture. But when Bush Sr. asked the southern Iraqis to stand against Saddam Hussein, they did. And he abandoned them. In retaliation, Hussein created a mother of all canals that essentially drained the marshes.
First photo from http://blog.lib.umn.edu/healy082/architecture/2008/03/the_environmental_effect.html
Others from http://www.uned.es/geo-1-historia-antigua-universal/new%20website/PROXIMO%20ORIENTE/MARISMAS_IRAQUIES.htm <—great article too
(via cosmopolitan-fascist)
