"mother" defends decision to give 8-year-old daughter botox!

I'm still struggling for words to describe the kind of knot that formed in my stomach when I came across this story: Kerry, a mother from San Francisco, injects her 8-year-old daughter Britney with Botox, she says, to keep up with the kiddie pageant world in which she is involved. In an interview with Lara Spencer on Good Morning America this morning, Kerry and Britney talk about the process candidly (showing photos of the child during the process all bruised up, with ice packs and everything), saying they are definitely not the only ones who do this.

The (so-called) mother talks about it as if it was a joint decision between two adults. But in a very telling moment, when Britney is asked why she gets Botox done, she answers "I don't know".  At this point you  see Kerry flinch at her daughter's answer, and throw her a look. And then you see the child look at her mother, receive the look, and snap back into her script, continuing "Oh yea, I see like, like wrinkles and, um, it just, like... I just like, don't think like, wrinkles are nice for a little girl."  I don't know if I would have believed it had I not seen the clip for myself:



The disturbing twist to this story is that the Botox almost completely eclipses the leg-waxing the child has also dabbled in, thanks to her (so called) mother.  Britney says in the end that she "looks way better, like beautiful, pretty, like all those kinds of nice words."  The little girl smiles throughout the interview, and the knot in my belly tightens with her every word.

no mirror? for a whole month?!

photo: getty images

Writer Autumn Whitefield-Madrano, who blogs at The Beheld, has decided to do away with the mirrors in her life for an entire month.  You heard/read me.  I ... She said one month with no mirrors.  I have to admit, an idea like that has never even whispered in my direction, so I was fascinated when I came across the story on Clutch recently. 

Whitefield-Madrano's inspiration came from the "uncomfortable recognition" she had while reading the following quote, from John Berger's Ways of Seeing:

 "A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. … And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. … Thus she turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of vision: a sight."

In preparation for the experiment, which she started on the 1st of this month, Whitefield-Madrano has covered up her bathroom mirror; her windows will either be open or covered with closed blinds, and any accidental meeting with her reflection throughout her days (shop windows, other peoples' homes, etc...) will be met with a swift turn of her head in the other direction.  The only exception she'll make will be a small mirror she'll use to apply color (makeup) products. She wants her experiment to be about all the time she spends looking into mirrors for no practical reason (don't we all, especially without even realizing it?), and what happens with that time when the mirrors are taken away.  She writes:

"There’s nothing wrong with looking in the mirror. There’s nothing wrong with sometimes looking to your reflection—even when it is impossibly subjective, and backward at that—for a breath of fortitude, centeredness, and assurance. I just want to see what life is like when I’m not using that image as my anchor; I want to see how it affects the way I move through the world, the way I regard myself and others. I want to know what it’s like to sever a primary tie to one of my greatest personal flaws—extraordinary self-consciousness—and I want to discover what will fill the space that the mirror has occupied until now." (The Beheld)

I don't know if I've ever loved an idea so much, while at the same time feeling like I wouldn't even know how to begin to try it.  I mean, just thinking about the covered up bathroom mirror gave me a little anxiety, and I don't consider myself especially vain.  So while, I may not have Whitefield-Madrano's gumption, I am a huge fan of her May mirrorlessness (try saying that 5 times, fast).

What about you?  Could you live without looking into a mirror for a month? a couple of days? 

temporary lip tattoos

photo: violent lips

With Violent Lips Temporary Lip Tattoos, rainbows, cheetah print and polka dot lips are at your fingertips.  Just wet and apply the stick-ons and voila!  Over at stylelist, Lindsay Mannering writes that if she showed up to work with a polka dot mouth, her boss would probably laugh in her face and tell her to go home. Not that she sounds at all like she would be inclined to try the look, even if that weren't the case:  

"I'm not sold. I think the look is cool, but I only see Ke$ha really wearing this, and the "bad girls" who go to prom that pretend to not want to go to prom, but go anyway, and with lip tattoos. Am I right? They'll regret it though, if they want to have a make-out sesh .. " (stylelist)

 Um ... okay ... It's none of that for me.  I guess it's just the makeup artist in me thinking "Hey, these might be fun."  And at $15 per pack of three, makeup artist or not, I don't see a reason not to try some on.  What do you think?  Would you try Violent Lips Temporary Lip Tattoos?  Here's a tutorial to encourage those of you who are inclined to play:

michelle obama dancing to beyonce!

beauty beauty beauty beauty beauty everywhere! ... I ADORE our First Lady.  check it:

beyonce for the 'chirren-let's move flash workout campaign

Okay, okay, it's not just for the kids ... Let's all get in better shape, shall we?

alisha, a short film about body image

Alisha is a short film I recently came across on Clutch.  Written and directed by 17-year old filmmaker Daniel Citron, the award winning film is the story of an overweight  teenage girl struggling with body image issues while also trying to maintain a relationship with her abusive father.  It doesn't go down easy, but it is a necessary and well done piece of work.  Check it out:


Alisha from Daniel Citron on Vimeo.

hairstory: pitstops on the road to the glorious coil

Even though it’s completely opposite to my natural texture, straight hair is where my story begins. In childhood memories around hair, first came the hot comb, and then later, the no-lye relaxer. There were times when I wore my hair in African braids, beautiful intricate styles that lasted for months at a time. Even so, soon after the braids would come out, in would go the relaxer. The idea that hair needed to be straightened was such a given, it was like a fundamental part of the way I was wired. I was born into that world, knew nothing else, and didn’t find my way to questioning any of it until decades later.

When I first started experimenting with changing my hairstyle, my ideas were variations on it in its relaxed state. Like the period in high school when I decided I didn’t want my hair tightly curled with a hot iron and stacked into an impossible looking asymmetrical sculpture (It was the eighties). I stopped curling my hair. I would part it on the side, and let it fall, which I will admit, in retrospect, left it looking more like an interruption on the way to a hairstyle than an actual hairstyle.

Another phase in my hairstory was the summer of the weave, in the middle of college. The only evidence I have of that now is a set of photo negatives, and the vague memory of how quickly the excitement of having that new hairstyle faded. Once I got the weave, and lived with it for a bit, I didn’t get it anymore. The maintenance was too involved for my taste and I had answered my wonder about what it would feel like. It felt exactly like what it was: someone else’s hair sewn in strips to mine. Not for me. Now when I see those negatives, I can’t help but laugh and think, Damn it looks like I was trying to give Chaka Khan a run for her money on the hair tip.

In my 20s I got curious and courageous enough to cut all my hair off. By that point I had done all I was going to with a relaxer, and I started to notice Black girls with amazing natural hairstyles. I wanted to experience the ease of a wash and go style. At the same time, I was becoming more aware of societal beauty norms, how little they coincided with how I felt and thought, and how automatically, often frantically, people subscribed to them. It all seemed a tad on the bizarre side to me because my hair changes felt in a sense like I was trying on selves for fit. And when the fit wasn’t right, I didn’t linger.

Nowadays, I wear my hair in long dreadlocks and I absolutely love it. I love my hair in its natural, coarse, texture. I love the myriad styling options available to me. I love the strength of it, the coil of it, and yes, the feel of it. I know I’m not supposed to, if I want to fit in with my land-of-the-free society. Every day, several times a day, I encounter billboards and all kinds of ads that basically say, as if it’s a given fact, that what my hair does naturally is not what hair is supposed to do, not what I should want it to do. I get the message. I just disagree. Highly.

It wasn’t some mystical, magical, beyond-us force that came down and decided that a European beauty ideal would be the law. Those kinds of ideas came out of human minds, like mine. Like yours. Like the ones it will take to eventually get mainstream media to reflect our society’s beauty in its gloriously diverse actuality. Once I got conscious of this, it became impossible for me to blindly ingest beauty ideals served up by mainstream media, or anyone else.

galliano and the quasi apology

The artist formerly known as creative director of Christian Dior, John Galliano, has released a statement about his recent anti-semitic drunken rants, that includes an apology.  Well, sort of an apology:

"... I completely deny the claims made against me and have fully co-operated with the Police investigation ... However, I fully accept that the accusations made against me have greatly shocked and upset people ... I must take responsibility for the circumstances in which I found myself and for allowing myself to be seen to be behaving in the worst possible light." (Telegraph.co.uk)

You know what would be an absolute breath of fresh air?  If the next called for public apology turned out to be just that: a plain and simple apology, with no extra I'm-Not-That-Bad frills around it.  We could be spared extraneous bow tie/sweater combos in melon-berry-burst-skittle blue, and/or the part where we, the offended, are somehow the ones who got caught up "losing the point"  being made.  We could skip those bits all together, and just focus on the topic at hand.  Maybe then, these apologies would feel more real, and not so much like emergency public relations moves.

But to be fair, substance abuse is real and very rarely produces rational behavior, so Galliano's sort-of apology shouldn't come as a shock. We do love that he has chosen to go to rehab, and wish him the absolute best.

Read Galliano's full statement here .  What do you think?

from the mouths of beauties: edwidge danticat

"Looking pretty, looking beautiful, in a disaster zone might be one more way of exclaiming to the world that you are doing more than breathing, that you are surviving, that you matter."

Edwidge Danticat
--excerpt from A Place Of Refuge, an essay in Allure's March 2011 issue, about the redemptive power of beauty for some women in Haiti, when poverty and devastation threatens their basic humanity.

saturday special: man beauty, daddies

If I Were Your Daddy, This Is What You'd Learn is a recently released book touted as the most comprehensive parent-to-parent mentor guide ever put together.  When author Julia Espey, a former aerospace engineer for NASA, became a single mother, she wanted to find out how highly successful men were raising and inspiring their kids.  "This is for all the moms who have to be dads (at any time), dads who want to be better dads and for parents who want to improve their successes with their kids," says Espey. (PR Newswire)

Happy Saturday to all the daddies out there who make it their business to raise their children.  We see you, beauties.

from the mouths of beauties: dr. maya angelou

"Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size

But when I start to tell them,

They think I'm telling lies.

I say,

It's in the reach of my arms

The span of my hips,

The stride of my step,

The curl of my lips.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me." 

— Maya Angelou (Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women)

in the kit - kryolan (beauty tech) dermacolor mini concealer palette

photo: y. diggs

Whether it's just a touch to cover dark circles and/or brighten the under-eye area, or a little more to conceal that teardrop tattoo from wilder times, Kryolan Dermacolor Mini Concealer is the way to go.  (Also works really well as a base for eyeshadow!!)
Get it here.

saturday special: man beauty, tim gunn

For enriching vocabularies everywhere, keeping it all aesthethically pleasing and standing up for what he believes in, Tim Gunn, host extraordinaire of Project Runway, is our man beauty this week.  Gunn wants designers to stop using fur in their collections and he's talking about it:

“I’m on a campaign to get as many fashion designers as possible to stop using it,” said Gunn, who is the chief creative officer of Liz Claiborne. “I’d just like to sit with them and have a talk and ask, ‘Is it really necessary?’” (ecorazzi)

To that we say, beautiful.

What do you think? Do you dabble with fur?  Fur trim? Fur from your grandmother?  If so, is it really necessary?

beauty music: india arie

fashion week: essence.com brings it to you

It's Fashion Weeeeeek!
No tickets?  No worries:  Starting today, ESSENCE.com brings you an unprecedented multi-media experience, live from Mercedez-Benz Fashion Week 2011, that is aimed at making you feel like you're sitting front row.  Featuring treats like real time wall-to-wall coverage, fashion reviews on designers from around the world, and ongoing video streams, "you can bet your last money, it's all gonna be a stone gas, honey." (Don Cornelius)

carte blanche: beauty a la 1920s

An absolute joy to be around, and talented through and through, Carte Blanche.
(hair and makeup for this video by yours truly)
Enjoy!

from the mouths of beauties: ani

"so i walk like i'm on a mission

cuz that's the way i groove

i got more and more to do

i got less and less to prove

it took me too long to realize

that i don't take good pictures

cuz i have the kind of beauty that moves"

ani difranco

(evolve)

21 days, 21 ways (to do a face)

photo: Phyllis Li/ELLE

Feel like switching the look up from time to time?  Blogger Phyllis Li (of Makeupforlife.net) has got you covered.  Recently featured in Elle magazine displaying her prowess with a makeup brush (or two), Li  takes on the challenge of creating twenty one unique makeup looks for 21 days.  From the understated sophistication of a lip stain to Bollywood inspired rainbow lids, Li reminds us that beauty is a moving thing.  Yes?

saturday special: man beauty, clyde

Former NBA star and now Knicks broadcaster Walt Frazier. 
They started calling him Clyde during his playing days when he bought a wide brimmed hat that reminded folks of the movie (Bonnie and Clyde.)

"The first time I wore the hat, everybody laughed at me. My teammates and, I remember, the guys on the other team, because they'd never seen anything like that. But that's part of my individuality," he says. "Like, when I was in high school, I never drank, because I'm not afraid of being ostracized from a group if there's something I don't want to do." 

-excerpt from a One On 1 segment with Bud Mishkin (on NY1)

His recently re-issued 1974 book, Rockin' Steady-A Guide to Basketball & Cool includes a chapter entitled  "A General Guide to Looking Good and Other Matters."

Need I say more?
Run to the bookstore.

from the mouths of beauties: paulina

"Personally, I believe that every woman in the world is beautiful. Sometimes the distribution of her attributes is not immediately apparent; sometimes it’s a little uneven, but if she knew how to celebrate the things she was given, whether it’s a beautiful pair of eyes or legs, or intellect, or a sense of humor­– she could see how uniquely beautiful she was."

Paulina Porizkova