Introducing new contributor Lolo Michelle!
As you might know, I’ve been in the process of interviewing contributors recently. Lolo’s application immediately stood out: she’s funny, smart, a great writer, and obsessed with beauty. For her first post, we thought it only fitting that Lolo highlight one of her all-time favorite products, the classic MAC red lipstick Ruby Woo (she’s wearing it here).
Charlotte Casiraghi is the new face of Gucci Beauty. Princess Grace’s granddaughter has already been shilling for Gucci for a while, but only for their Forever Now campaign highlighting iconic Gucci elements like floral patterns and red-and-green striped handbags. Now, she’ll be fronting their Gucci Beauty ads.
You know those times when you’re so frustrated you feel like you could pull your hair out, and all you want to do is throw a pillow across the room, slam a door, and stomp on the ground?
Yeah. That’s how I feel about now.
Every few years, I go through a existential blog crisis, wondering what my next step is going to be and trying to take stock of it all. For various reasons that I can’t go into–and the not-being-able-to-go-into-it-yet aspect is KILLING ME–I’ve felt much less angsty these past several months. Life has been very good, I’ve been working on a few different projects that will be unveiled soon-ish, and I am beside myself with excitement over finally being able to reveal them to you.
But I’m sure you’ve noticed that I haven’t been blogging as much recently–and when I have, it’s much more surface. Which I hate. Which makes me frustrated. Which makes me miss the old days when I was one of the only games in town and there weren’t five billion blogs–beauty or otherwise–to choose from.
How do you distinguish yourself when you’re drowning in a sea of people younger; more energetic; more social-media-inclined; more makeup-swatch-obsessed; more in tune with pop culture (my confusion over Beyoncé-worship makes me feel like a pariah screaming at kids to get off my lawn); more willing to devote their lives to endless events and networking and profile curating and image-management and spinning on the hamster wheel of “This is the facade I choose to present to the world, even though it’s not real”?
When your personal life is flourishing, but for some reason it’s just not translating into your writing, what do you do?
In truth, I think I’m suffering from run-of-the-mill writer’s block (blogger’s block?), which is a shade ironic seeing as I’m working fast and furiously on my next book and am zipping right along with that. But this here blog is almost 10 years old, and every once in a while I feel like Norma Desmond, muttering about how I AM big, it’s the internet that got small.
Sometimes I worry that my best professional years are behind me, and that I’m never going to be as prolific, popular or creative as I was in my 20s. I worry that writing about mascara launches and skincare how to’s and Kate Middleton’s latest triumph simply isn’t enough for me–that my voice is shriveling and wasting away, 140 characters at a time.
I know tomorrow or the next day, I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled programming and all will be well. One of my most valued personal traits is resilience; I’m usually pretty good at picking myself up and dusting myself off, no matter how bad the scrape.
But I miss talking to you guys truthfully, and I just wanted to let you into my current headspace for a second. I really miss having you all in residence there. Soon again, I hope.
When I was younger, my mother was all about organic and natural products. She shopped at health food stores way before Whole Foods even existed, and would do (to me) weird things like drink raw, unpasteurized milk, eat local honey for its immunity properties, and spend way too much money on the organic produce upgrade. Of course, this is all super common now! A trend-setter, Mama Jolie was.
Perhaps as a reaction to my mother, I’ve never paid much attention to the quality of my foods. Sure, being raised on organic fruits and veggies means that you’re naturally drawn to healthy foods, so luckily I’m hardly a chips and cookies addict. But I never really cared whether something was organic, locally-grown, soy or not soy, with hormones, or sustainably-raised. As long as it was relatively healthy and tasted good, I was in!
Snip, snip, Pippa chops it off!
Presenting my April Beauty Favorites!
I like to get all smug about sunscreen, thinking of myself as an SPF champion. The brutal reality is that even I of the “wear sunscreen for the love of baby Jesus!” mother and the “burns after .8 seconds in the sun” skin occasionally get lazy and take my skin’s health for granted.
Exhibit A: this ridiculous sunburn I got back in January when E. and I were at Hobbiton in New Zealand. I’m diligent about sunscreen on my face, as much because I’m not a fan of skin cancer as because I’m terrified of wrinkles. When it comes to the rest of my body, though, I sometimes miss the mark. And there’s just no excuse for that.
For Skin Cancer Awareness Month, L’Oreal Paris has partnered with the Melanoma Research Alliance (MRA) to launch It’s THAT Worth It™ – a global public health call-to-action urging women of all skin tones to prevent melanoma by using sunscreen and to help save lives by supporting melanoma research for a cure. The campaign features spokespeople Eva Longoria, Aimee Mullins, Lea Michele and Diane Keaton (who is a skin cancer survivor, which I didn’t know).
I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream... I was a total Disney baby, weaned on episodes of the old Mickey Mouse Club (with Annette Funicello!) and repeat viewings of Cinderella. Once baby brother Jolie came along, there was one movie that prevailed, playing 24/7 on our VHS player because he simply couldn't ...
I’m hiring two new contributors: one in New York, and one in LA. There’s a beauty event practically every day (literally every day in New York) and not only can I not attend them all, but I simply don’t want to. I’m in Santa Monica…crossing the 405 is so challenging…I get SO TIRED…my next book deadline is looming…do I have to go to school today, mom?
Being a contributor is a pretty sweet gig: you’ll attend beauty and travel events, get to keep all the products and swag for yourself (oh, let’s not pretend like it doesn’t still exist), make connections with both other writers and a panoply of publicists, and write up your experiences in your own voice on this here site.
If there’s one beauty product I’ve been associated with over the years, it’s unequivocally bareMinerals. I’ve been championing them since my Lucky mag days, and have turned on countless friends, readers and viewers (I know, because you’ve all emailed me about it!). I still use bareMinerals, years after appearing in one of their infomercials, as it’s the only foundation that doesn’t make me break out while giving me the coverage I’m after.
Liquid foundation? I just can’t abide.
So, that’s why the news that bareMinerals has launched a liquid foundation called BareSkin comes as something of a shock.
