Geisha School Dropout

GIVEAWAY SUNDAY: I Wanna Do Bad Things With You

Okay, Glamazons!  Today's giveaway is a Tarte for True Blood eye makeup palette:

Image from A Brilliant Brunette

I bought this a few months ago and although I've opened the box and looked upon it lovingly many times, I actually haven't used it.  So I am giving it away, hopefully to someone who can do it more justice than creepy staring.

The palette contains 17 full-size eyeshadows, ranging from everyday natural to glittery fabulous, primer, aqua gel eyeliner, and mascara. Because it was limited edition, it is no longer for sale in retail stores, but right now it's going for about $80 on eBay.  

So, what I want to know is: Which character on "True Blood" would you most like to do bad things with?

You know the deal: Comment below to enter to win!  I will randomly draw a winner on Friday.  Good luck!

PS: Although I love me some Eric AND Bill, I'd have to go for Pam first.  She's so fierce and she swings my way?  Jackpot!

Sponsored: The Best Advice My Mom Ever Gave Me

Thank you to Tout for sponsoring this post and encouraging me to share mom’s best advice! Visit the SELF + The Honest Co. + Tout contest  on.self.com/MomKnows  to share the best advice you received from your mom and enter to win $500 worth of The Honest Company product and a Maya Brenner Designs necklace valued at $200, in addition to having their Tout featured on SELF.com.  Additionally, for every response, a donation will be made to Baby2Baby.  

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The best advice my mom ever gave me actually started with an insult.  

"Julie-yah, since it seems you will always be fat, be the interesting girl...and the one who has the best skin."

 Emotional scars aside, I did take her admonitions to heart, and she was right.  I am never the prettiest girl in the room, but I am the girl having the most fun, and that grabs people's attention.  And by the law of social induction, interesting folk seek out other interesting folk, so pretty soon you're surrounded by an awesome group of fascinating co-conspirators, a few of whom who could not imagine life without you in it, and thus the seeds of romance are planted.

So how does one become interesting?  There are a lot of different strategies: you can be funny, be smart enough to be able to help anyone with their homework, become adroit at a hobby, keep up with current events, know a lot about sports and pop culture, or be the car wreck people can't help but slow down and watch (this strategy, however, is risky).  Or, you know, be a mix of everything. What's most important is to be someone with an open heart who is sincerely curious about how other people tick, and people will feel good just being around you.

Okay, now on to the skin.  It is so, so, so much easier to maintain already-young skin and postpone aging than to try to reverse the clock.  Cleanse, moisturize, and put on sunscreen in the morning, and you won't be reaching for the hardcore hydroxy acids in your twenties.  For bonus points, go to an esthetician for facials once a month, and you'll be gleaming like a Barbie doll at all times.

Take me for example.  I've always been mistaken for being younger than I am, sometimes ridiculously younger.  I'm 33 now, a mother of two, and the last time I bought tickets for an R-rated movie, the teenager in the ticket booth asked for ID.  I know, that's not that great, in fact it might be a liability to look too young, but I think I'll be happy to cash in on my dermatological fastidiousness when I'm 50.

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Let's see what Jessica Alba has to say:

 

Thank you again to Tout for sponsoring my post. Visit on.self.com/MomKnows  to share the best advice you received from your mom.  Fans and readers can reply directly via webcams at www.Tout.com, through Tout’s mobile application, on www.Facebook.com/TheHonestCompany andwww.Self.com/health/mothers-day in addition to other promotional sites.  Viewers can watch the entire stream of replies on the Tout widget on http://www.self.com and share their favorites to their Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest pages, as well as by email and SMS.

Working Mom

This image brought tears of pride and adoration to my eyes.  From the Wall Street Journal's Photos of the Day blog:

I've totally had that day, when school or daycare was closed, my back-up sitter was out of town, and I had to come into the office for a meeting or some other face-to-face interaction.  I was able to get away with locking the kids up in a spare conference room with a DVD player and some coloring books, but Licia Ronzulli, Italy’s member of the European Parliament, had her (gorgeous) baby girl voting alongside her on Wednesday.

Working moms of the world, unite and take over!

Sponsored: Natural Presents for EVERYONE - including Myself!

Thanks to Walgreens for underwriting this post. I was paid as a member of the Clever Girls Collective, but the content is all mine. Visit http://www.walgreens.com/beauty.

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I am a firm believer in natural and organic food and products, but as a mom I just can't bear to spend a ton of extra money trying to create an non-toxic household.  Luckily, the market for these kinds of products has grown to the point where you don't have to go to exclusive stores or pay a high premium anymore.  In fact, here are some examples of healthy, environmental, and reasonably-priced gifts you can find in your neighborhood drugstore.

For the Kids

I believe it is especially important to provide kids and babies with natural products as much as possible, but often the steeper price tags make us moms a little hesitant to buy organic or all-natural stuff on a day-to-day basis.  However, that's also the exact reason why they make great holiday gifts, though!

Here is an example of a bath and body set that is sulfate-free, isn't tested on animals, and has gentle vegan ingredients.   I've always thought grapefruit is such a great scent for kids; it's fresh- and clean-smelling, and matches their sunny dispositions.

 

 

 

 

For Men

This category is super-easy.  There is a brand called Every Man Jack that specializes in men's products, and their stuff is vegan and sulfate-free.  Best of all, they work really well and they smell great too (although they do have unscented versions of almost all their products for the sensitive guys out there).  Every Man Jack makes it easy to introduce the man in your life to the cleansing/toning/moisturizing/sunblock regimen he really should have been doing for years now without overwhelming him.  Grab a few skin, hair, and shaving products, arrange them in a shower caddy, and voila, you will have a cleaner, handsomer man!

 

 

For the Ladies, Including Moi

My friend got me some Out of Africa products for my birthday last month, and I am a total shea butter fanatic now.  It turns out that shea butter is absorbed into the skin much faster and keeps your skin moisturized for so much longer than normal lotions, and my skin looks so much healthier now, especially my hands.   I just figured that the little crackles and crosshatch patterns were a result of aging; turns out my skin was just dry!  No Parabens, Sulfates, Petrolatums or Phthalates; Cruelty-free and Eco-Friendly.  Try it and see if your skin will lap it up like mine does.  

 

 

While we're on the subject of hands, another recent discovery is non-toxic nail polish.  I had no idea it existed until I saw this Keeki Holiday Nail Set online.  I am aching to try it out!  Manicures and pedicures are two of my favorite ways to unwind and pamper myself, but I always feel uneasy smelling all the chemicals and wondering what they are doing to my nails.  My curiosity is piqued.

 

 

 

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Merry Christmas and happy shopping!  If you have encountered any other great finds, please let me know!

Birthdaypalooza Part Deux

My girlfriends and I spent Birthdaypalooza this year in LA.  Since I was then the unofficial host and tourguide, I took them to two of my favorite places: Magic Castle and the Korean spa.  People might label an evening of drunken flirtation with members of the occult followed by a day of full-monty same-sex nudity with scrub-downs by dour Korean ladies dressed in what can only be described as ironic black lingerie as unorthodox, but then again, they wouldn't know much about me and my girls.

The worst part about Birthdaypalooza is the shock one feels the Monday afterwards.  Reality never felt so cruel.  

Sigh, I love them all and always will.

Oh!  I also owe two of them a limerick.

Ode to Linda

Linda brings boatloads of fun
Her parties are second to none.
My liver's still sickened
From her bachelorette weekend
That happened in 2001. 

Ode to Deb

Deb is a dancer and sailor
And so many boys want to nail her!
But they disappoint,
She rejects them en pointe;
Only her groom is allowed to abseil her. 

Cardio Jam of the Week

Fast and uplifting is always welcome during one of my walks, but sometimes the miles melt away when the music empathizes with the suffering part of working out too.

When the strings take over, it's nothing short of glorious.

"Curious Critters" by David FitzSimmons

I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy of "Curious Critters" by David FitzSimmons and test it out on the kids for a couple weeks.  Emi giggled at all the quirky things the creatures had to say to her, and Isaac, my little trivia junkie, enjoyed learning the various facts about the animals inside.  Both kids to this day regularly select the book from the bookshelf to peruse on their own or to have me read it to them.  To be completely honest, sometimes I've caught myself leafing through the pages even when the kids are at school.

The author, David FitzSimmons, is a freelance photographer as well as a university professor.  I have to say, the pictures he took for this book are breathtaking.  The colors are so bright, the focus so sharp, the reader can see every little detail in a kind of clarity that makes it hard for the brain to accept that the page doesn't feel furry or slimy when you reach for the animals.  Even the less savory animals like bugs and snakes are beautiful through this guy's lens, and they display a level of personality you don't normally see in other nature books.

My favorite aspect of the book besides the sheer artistry is the fact that the featured animals  are not rare, exotic species; in fact, all of them can be found in North America, a lot of them in our own backyards.  

I highly recommend this book as a gift for animal, nature, and/or photography enthusiasts who have kids or have one on the way, as well as for any kids who enjoys looking at and learning about animals.

But as my hero Levar Burton says, "You don't have to take my word for it."  You can preview a good chunk of the book online and see for yourself.

If it tickles your fancy, you can buy signed and/or limited edition copies of the book directly from the author here, or buy it from Amazon here.

Silent Sunday

That's My Daughter

Emi hobbled into my room with an Igor-esque gait -- clack-draaag clack-draaag -- in these rock-hard plastic heeled shoes:

She  asked me, "Do I have these on the right way?"

I replied, "Yes, but don't they hurt your feet, sweetie?"

Scowl, glower.  "Yes, of COURSE they do!" she growled.

"Then why are you walking around with them on?"

"Because they make me look PRETTYFUL!"

Aha!  Time for the you-are-beautiful-just-the-way-you-are teachable moment.  But my personal idea of beauty is slightly more specific.

"Aw baby, come over here."  Hobble hobble stumble.  "Shoes don't make you prettyful.  Smiling at and treating people nicely make you prettyful."

"I KNOW THAT MOM, but I want to be prettyful AND I want new shoes.  Buy me better shoes."  Then she took the shoes off and threw them at me.

I don't think I'm going to put that moment on my parenting resume.

There's a song for what my heart was feeling as she left the room in a huff.

That's my daughter in the water
I lost every time I fought her
Yeah, I lost every time

Crystal Renn: "Absolutely not"

Crystal Renn gave an enlightening interview to Jezebel yesterday, specifically responding to the controversy over her taping her eyes back.  Here's some choice clips:

Crystal: I've had moles painted on my face. I've had freckles painted on. I've been made lighter, I've been made tanner with makeup. It's exciting to me...It's not who I am, standing in front of the camera — something happens. I become something else. That's part of why this is a job, it's a performance. There's a whole team and tons of work that goes into 8-10 images that you see in an editorial...As a model, I have made it a big point to learn fashion references, which include different types of brows. And because I don't want to shave my brows off and have the makeup artist, or whoever, draw 'em on, we use things such as tape and makeup to fake it, basically. And to bring the look. Which might be a '20s brow. Or to take 'em away. I did a shoot with Tushmagazine and we bleached my brows away. I didn't go home like that, we dyed them back. But tape is very much the same thing.

Jenna: But just to be clear: when you say it's about "transformation," you're not talking about specific racial transformation. This wasn't about making you look Asian?

Crystal: Oh, absolutely not. We didn't even think about that on the shoot. I'm the one who suggested it, and it didn't even cross my mind. It's something that I regularly ask makeup artists, you know, if it will bring something more to the character. Offer a different face.

Jenna: But not an Asian face.

Crystal: No.

My initial response was surprise and a bit of awe to discover that Ms. Renn has that much creative control over her image; good for her.  She should get more credits to her name.

I still feel uneasy about the whole thing, though, because instead of some boneheaded attempt at racial irony, this whole thing is now smack-dab in the middle of the racial "uncanny valley," where white privilege blinds a person to the potential insensitivity of their actions (ref: "I'm the one who suggested it, and it didn't even cross my mind.").   This is where internet discussions tend to devolve into shit-flinging the most because white privilege is a difficult concept to debate rationally, but other Jezebel readers touched upon it:

Ferrette: Ok, so she's not intentionally racist. But she was pretty damn insensitive 

yfunk: Welcome to the world of the "chinky eye". It's always wonderful for Asians everywhere whenever an athlete (or entire sports team) does it, especially during a match against an Asian athlete or team. 

One gets desenstitized to the ridiculousness, but the outrage always manages to manifest for at least a few seconds. Then, the crushing feeling of defeat. 

RaisinGirl: I've also become increasingly uncomfortable at how while most people seem to understand that blackface is an offensive and outdated practice, yellowface seems to get a pass as "not really racist". 

Anyway, that's all I have to say on the matter.  No one's minds are changing, and we can chalk it up to another brick in the wall that separates me and those like me from other Americans.

Meanwhile, check this shit out.  A lot more obvious, so easier to swallow: