cosmeticslog

Since they're always discontinuing my lipstick of choice as soon as I actually like one enough to categorize it as being of choice, I'm constantly having to experiment with new shades, all of which are promptly taken off the market the second I'm satisfied with one. Recently I stumbled upon L'Oreal's new Endless Kissable™ line, and while long-wearing lipsticks are generally too opaque and waxy for my tastes, I happened upon a shade I fancied and purchased a tube to try out.

Being a spinster, it annoys me that all lipsticks are marketed toward girls who apparently have nothing going on in their lives besides kissing boys & biting into apples. What would be so wrong or unrealistic with centering the advertising around how many beers you can drink, bong hits you can take, or notes on the harmonica you can blow whilst tearfully belting out a wistful blues tune because your life is so unbearably empty, before the color starts to wear off? What about the number of sips you can take from a cup of anti-freeze before the color fades?

But this time I ignored the pictures of Kate Moss or whoever being embraced by the Ashton of the Hour, and I owned up to the fact that, whether I have somebody to kiss or not, I do reapply my lipstick approximately 92 times per hour, and therefore would benefit from a formula that boasts "extreme" wear.

So I sported the stuff for a week or so and was quite happy with it. The shade -- Be Blushed™, thanks -- is slightly shimmery yet subtle enough that it doesn't look like it contains the same chemicals as industrial paint, even though it clearly does, because the stuff does not budge. At all. Multiple cups of coffee into the day, through lunch and dinner, 'til I'm standing in front of the bathroom mirror scrubbing my lips down with turpentine before bed.

Damn, I'm thinking, this stuff really does hold up through hell, highwater, Coronita Extra y Huevos Rancheros! Too bad I'm a lonely old maid with nobody to kiss, or else I'd actually be able to find out if the stuff can own up to its self-proclaimed endless kissability! And then, as usual, I put cucumber slices over my eyes, affixed my hair in rollers, jumped into my floor-length flannel kittens&bunnies-embroidered nightgown, and I in my kerchief, along with my cat, settled into bed for a long spinster's nap.

But a funny thing happened on my way to formally singing the praises of L'Oreal's Endless Kissable™ line. Something indeed took place in the meantime that makes me wonder just what kind of namby-pamby metrosexual girlie-lads they're using as the control in the product's lipstick kiss-off experiment. Somewhere along the line between being resigned to my spinstral fate and writing this cosmetics critique, not only did a boy kiss me, but a boy kissed me like he meant it, and immediately the lipstick vanished from my lips without a trace.

Sorry, L'Oreal. Almost there, but not quite. Almost endlessly kissable, but not quite as endless as the endless kissability of the endlessly kissable boy who is endlessly kissing you like he endlessly, kissably means it for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever amen. Maybe next time.

My advice to you, L'Oreal, is to enroll your emo-boy models in kissing school. And my advice to you, dearest readers, is that come hell, highwater, carne asado o bistec con fritos, even turpentine is no match for the saliva of a boy who kisses you like he means it.

Recently I came across a how-to on recreating Sarah Jessica Parker's hairstyle. "You might not think it's possible," read the article, written by some stylist to the stars, "but you can have SJP's look! Honest!" It then went into a step-by-step process, consisting of sectioning off your towel-dried locks and "folding" them, "accordion"-style, atop your head, after, of course, having applied 92 different "setting" lotions. After using a blowdryer set high on heat, low on air, you're free to undo the sections and apply 92 different types of $40 sold-only-in-apothecary-shoppes "holding balm".

In all fairness, perhaps this method does work, and if you follow these instructions, Aidan and Big and a whole slew of other strapping studmuffins will appear on your doorstep come morning, but I think I have a simpler and cheaper way to achieve SJP's look:

1. Wash your hair.
2. Towel-dry it.
3. Don't put anything whatsoever in it.
4. Go!

Um, hi! Sarah Jessica Parker's hair is totally unkempt, frizzy, and unmanageable, thanks! If this is the look you're going for, I invite you to spend an evening at my apartment, and I will show you exactly how to get your hair to look totally unkempt, frizzy, and unmanageable. It's really not that difficult. Trust me. No accordions necessary.

If, however, you're really a "product" kind of gal, and you'd prefer combing some type of potion through your hair that will enable it to spring wildly from your head, frizz out in every possible direction, and develop a completely independent mind of its own by the time you've arrived at the office, I highly recommend the new "Smoothing Milk" by Fructis, which is supposed to smoothe your hair, but, in reality -- based on a lovely experience of mine just last week, in which my hair did all but grow tentacles with which to poke at random passersby on the street -- does exactly the opposite of smoothing.

And what shall we call the "opposite of smoothing"?

Oh, I'm sorry -- I believe it already has a name:

SJP-ing.

I was going to write about how amused my former roommate would be if he found out that I was using one of the hair products he gave me as a finishing polish for my corn rows. He is, after all, the type who would probably prefer that I use his products in conjunction with getting up at 5 in the morning each day to make myself look like Jennifer Aniston. Won't it be funny, I thought, when I tell him that all of my hair has been done up into tiny little crazy braids, that it's totally out of control & wildly unruly, that if someone were to approach it with a straightening iron, it would recoil in folicular terror, shooting a wiry split end out in defense! Won't he himself recoil in fashionista terror when he's made aware that I've wasted a $15 product on transforming my whitegirl blonde locks into African-American tribal funk!

But then I visited the Redken web site, only to find out that the Smooth Out™ product line is, in fact, geared toward "women of color"! He must have known it all along, but having born witness to my uncharacteristically frizzy hair all these years, he decided to trick me into using the stuff, anyway! Looks like the joke's on me.

Either way, what I'm really here to talk to you about is boys who braid. If you're a girl and you've ever had a boy braid your hair, I think you know where I'm going with this. Quite frankly, it's heartbreakingly adorable -- especially when the boy has "just learned" how to braid, has caught on rather more quickly than he'd anticipated, and is therefore in awe of his own masterful ability at practicing something he'd always thought required actual skill. And it's especially cute when the boy thinks that with every slight tug of the hair he's hurting you, and vows up and down to go about it more gently thenceforward. I'm telling you it's downright tearfully, agonizingly adorable.

Now multiply that by about four hours, and what do you get? I'll tell you: a boy who's swiveling around on your new Ikea chair, delicately decking you out from behind in row after row of tiny little braids whilst a mix -- a mix that he made for the purpose of listening to whilst braiding your hair -- plays in the background, and you're silently translating M.C. Solaar lyrics, sipping iced coffee, and occasionally puffing on a cigarette while the sun goes down over the Hudson and motorcycles are faintly heard whirring over the bridge to Jersey in all the evening's mild-aired spring glory.

I'm sorry, what's that? Pardon? You mean to say that you want to know about the actual product, since this is supposed to be a blog that reviews cosmetics and not a reenactment of the reviewer's personal life? Well, okay then. I'd say that Redken's Smooth Out™, works quite well as a morning-after finishing/shining balm, but I'd only recommend using it if the boy isn't around the next day to touch up the job himself.

And this boy was.

I wish I could relay to you, dearest readers, how my eyes look and feel right about now. You see, waterproof mascara is not my friend. You know in A Clockwork Orange when they tape the guy's eyes open so that he can't shut out all the horrible images? Well, my eyes are stickily, forcibly propped open wide at the lashes with a new hi-tech industrial-strength formula -- Maybelline SkyHigh Curves™ -- given to me by my infamous cosmetics-giant-employee/former roommate, and I cannot close them. I've got a permanently startled expression on my face and it won't go away.

This came in handy yesterday with the unexpected snowfall and the fact that I just so happened to be crying on & off all day. No, my eyes betrayed no sign of racooning or smudging or the faintest trace of lines gone astray. I walked around outside with my chin up, eyes to the sky, inviting the icy flakes to settle on my lashes, but they were immediately deflected by this powerful chemical proofing. I sat at my desk, crying a river, but when someone appeared in the doorway, in the blink of an eye the tears had magically vanished and my bulgingly bug-like whites, retinas, and corneas stood at attention with utmost clarity.

Which would be all well & good, were the skin around my eyes made of synthetics. But alas, it's possibly the most sensitive surface area of the human body, and it doesn't enjoy being coated with globbily tinting adhesive solution daily and rubbed down with super-potent makeup remover nightly. My eyes face me in the mirror and agonizingly beg me to turn around and look at ye olde tube of beloved Almay Bright Eyes™ chillin' in my makeup case:

(turn around!)
every now and then I get a little bit lonely
and you're never comin' 'round
(turn around!)
every now and then I get a little bit tired
of listening to the sound of my--
(turn around!)
every now and then I get a little bit nervous
that the best of all the years have gone--
(turn around!)
every now and then I get a little bit terrified
and then I see the look in your--
(turn around, Bright Eyes™!)
every now and then I fall apart!

Okay, eyes, you win. Besides, I've seen a few too many horrific images over the past couple days. I guess I'll go back to the faintly shimmery, brown/black, non-waterproof, washable, straight-up Almay mascara you so yearn for. You know, the kind that allows full ocular movement? That is, if I can remove this impenetrable coat of Maybelline tonight without going blind... or fallin' apart!

My company publishes a certain bestseller by a certain bestselling author, entitled, I Know This Much Is True. Now, if I know you as well as I think I do, right now, you're probably thinking, (a) Why did you capitalize the "i" in "is" in that book title, when it's clearly a linking verb?, and/or (b) Uh huh huh hu-uh huh! I know-ow this mu-uch is tru-ue! And to that I reply, (1) I know it looks funny, but who got the highest score on Mr. Eisenhart's grammar test senior year? You or I?, and (2) I bought a ticket to the world -- but now I've come back again. Why do I find it hard to write the next line? Oh I want the truth to be said.

Between the aforementioned book -- and Heart of the Matter, of an equally infuriatingly catchy musical title -- lining the walls in poster-form, peeking out of semi-opened crates, or catching my eye from their places on my very own office bookshelf, my life from roughly 9:30am to 7:30pm, Monday through Friday, EST, is one big tribute to Adult Contemporary music.

So when I say that in my hair right now is a product called "Undone™", presumably the first thought that enters your mind in lyrical form is, "Hey child! Stay wild-er than the wind! And blow me in to cry-yyy!" I'd like to believe that its creator was watching the corresponding Duran Duran video whilst thumbing through the the songtitle's corresponding book by the aforementioned bestselling author, and later on in the day found herself humming, "Can't ever keep from falling apart! At the seams! Can't I believe you're taking my heart! To pieces!", racing into the L'Oreal lab the next day with the name: "Omigod, girls! You know that one Duran Duran video? Here's my idea!"

The description on the bottle actually contains the phrase, "disheveled perfection." Who gets paid to do this and when were they were handing out that job? Where was I? Perhaps I was too busy tryin' to get down to the heart o' the matter? Perhaps the position was offered to me, but my will got weak and my thoughts seemed to scatter?

Either way, upon dispersing the product through my locks, Undone™'s lightweight hold combined with subtle smoothing and separating properties turned me into a sweatshirted sorority sister on a Saturday morning, remarking in her best hungover social voice, "Who, me? I just rolled out of bed and threw on some clothes! I definitely didn't just spend two hours primping for this Anthro 101 study group! I mean, look how disheveled my hair is..."

And then I went over to the mirror, looked myself in the eye, and said, "Who do you need? Who do you love? When you come Undone™?"

Scents have always played a sickeningly metaphorical role in my life. In my early teens, around the time that I began toting around mini-atomizers of Evian™ springwater facial mist and swabbing my skin with Origins™ cucumber toner, it only made sense that I would also begin spritzing my pulse-points with something called "Chloe™", if only because it was so obvious that I wanted to become someone named Chloe. These were my early, boyless empowerment days. Clearly people named Chloe are boyless and empowered.

Later on when I surrendered to insecurity, started hanging out with a different, more fitting crowd, and fell into the boyfriend trap, unlike other girls who doused themselves in Eternity™ and Obsession™, I headed straight for Estee Lauder's Beautiful™. This was around the same time that I routinely got up at 5:00am most mornings to work out for an hour before school. Clearly I felt I was lacking in the beauty department and needed to do everything in my power to cover it up. Hell, what your pheromones don't know won't hurt you.

At some point senior year I began sporting Chloe™ Narcisse. I'd returned to my geekily independent quasi-sophisticated roots in the form of taking three foreign languages, a slew of AP classes, actively participating in several extra-curricular activities, writing furious letters to the editor on a regular basis, and having no break for lunch. The scent itself was addictively sweet with vivid floral accompaniment, and a slight yet unprovable trace of whatever the ingredient is that goes into the Calvin Kleins & the Ralph Laurens and sends boys straight to the bathroom with the Victoria's Secret catalogue. But much more subtly and blamelessly, as opposed to something as pathetically forward as Drakkar Noir™. Clearly I was the regular old empowered Chloe again, but with a mysterious little advantage otherwise known as "game": Narcisse.

Narcisse became my unspoken theme thereafter, at least in terms of the boy I was chasing at the time. A couple years later, when finally I attempted to get over him, I went out and obtained a big bottle of Clinique™ Happy, thinking, just as the television commercial programmed me to, 'Hallelujah, come on, get happy! Forget your troubles, come on, get happy!' I would tell you it worked, but you'd never believe me. It did, though. I mean, I certainly can't give myself the credit. No, it was all the perfume's doing.

This past summer I found myself right back at square one in the Happy department. It was going to take more than effective advertising to pull me out of this one. And then somehow I found myself strolling around in the Hamptons with a totally oblivious boy who made me lose myself in a sunshiny meadow of dragonflies and four-leaf clovers, and in one of the daydreams of summercamp and tree-climbing and swimming and fishing, I remember thinking, Grass. Fresh Mown Grass. Mmm. La la la... And when I came to, I headed straight for Demeter™ Grass.

Now that I'm back from La La Land, I've intermittently, desperately gone back to Happy, as I've a huge stash of it sitting idly on my shelf going to waste, and I thought I should try once again to reap the benefits of its magical powers. Needless to say, I've become immune to its influence, and the other day on a whim I found myself waltzing into L'Occitane just to sample the Verbena.

L'Occitane's Verbena, in case you don't already know, openly mimics the scent of the Sassafras leaf. And in case you aren't yet biblically familiar with your Up-State New York Field Guide, the Sassafras tree, rarely growing more than a few feet high and endangered in many geographic areas, bears leaves that can take three different shapes. I hadn't gotten a whiff of Sassafras since I was but a wee lass squatting down alongside my cousins to examine (and promptly destroy) one at my grandparents' lake house. The Verbena bears such a resemblance to Sassafras that for some time I believed "verbena" was just a glamourous word invented to describe an upscale parfum containing Sassafras, instead of being an actual plant of its own.

But instead of just sampling this time, upon reviewing the latent metaphorical value of somehow tying myself to a tree that is not only endangered and notoriously stunted but whose leaves exist unpredictably in three different varying forms depending on its mood, I decided to splurge for the $38 eau de toilette of Verbena. Feminism and singledom may have died out more rapidly and quietly than the Sassafras, but that doesn't mean my boyless empowerment is gonna go out without a bang, without a final blow to the pheromones of every Drakkar Noir-sporting Married within a 2-block radius.

Hallelujah, come on, get sassy! Re-christen me Chloe Verbene.

Note to Self: You are not a "woman of color". Nothing about your appearance conjures up anything but the blandest, most "color"-less, waspiest of effects. Rather, you are a pale and sallow-toned quasi-albino. Under no circumstances should you utilize a product geared toward women of anything but featurelessness.

What, then, gave you the idea of purchasing Pantene's Relaxed & Natural™ shampoo & conditioner? Was it the frizzies or the breakage? Was it the potential male suitor's comparison -- seven years ago -- of your hair's texture to "straw"?

Was it the sudden realization that SEVEN WHOLE YEARS AGO you were TWENTY? You were twenty and you had hair down to your ass, and you could take a shower and walk around with it wet all day and it would air-dry perfectly without frizzing up? You were SEVEN YEARS YOUNGER than you are now, your hair was essentially perfect, and yet a whiskey-breathed boy staggered into your room one night to inform you that your hair felt like straw in between drunkenly professing his undying l'amour pour toi? Is it because, at the time, you cared more about your hair being deemed sub-par than any of the sweet, whiskey-scented nothings being whispered into your ear, thus your punishment of SEVEN YEARS' bad hair luck?

Or is it simply because you've tried every other shampoo and conditioner available, and, apart from a $20 half-ounce bottle of for-use-in-salon-only Rusk™, they all suck ass?

Either way, don't try this at home unless you're clearly a woman of color, regardless of how many tragedian boys have failed to come up with polite descriptors for your locks, unless you're prepared to spend multiple hours scouring down your mane with the soon-to-be-invented neutralizing Pantene Antidote, scheduled for release upon discovery of its mention here.

Keep in mind that by color here, I don't mean near-albinism. And by discovery of its mention here, I mean at least 20% of all profits.