Collecting Vanity Items: Beauty & Crime Is Skin Deep

I've written about actual beauty crimes in history, learned from this book I reviewed.

Michelle Obama On Mentoring

Michelle Obama featured in November's issue of Glamour -- the first time in 70-years that a First Lady has been on the cover!



Since she's being given a Special Recognition award for her commitment to mentoring young women, First Lady shares wisdom on mentoring:

The real role models aren’t movie stars--they’re the people you know: “They were the people in my life. My mom, for sure. My dad. The teachers. For me, role-modeling was immediate, it was touchable...Children connect with who is in their lives, present and accounted for...That’s why we’re trying to encourage moms, teachers, fathers, to be that presence in their children’s lives, in their communities, because it really makes a difference.”

Don’t wait to be “discovered” by a mentor: “I was blessed throughout my entire career. I had people rooting for me. It started with my parents, but it extended to almost every teacher that I had. When I was a young lawyer, there were other women and men in the firm who took me under their wing. Look for those mentors, because sometimes mentors don’t find you--sometimes you seek them out. Oftentimes, they’re flattered and glad to lend a hand.”

Don’t put yourself last in line: In answer to a reader question about how she keeps her sanity, the First Lady told Katie, “I have always tried to put my kids first, and then...put myself a really close second, as opposed to fifth or seventh. One thing that I’ve learned from male role models is that they don’t hesitate to invest in themselves.”

I certainly don't want to show off the wide expanse of crotch.

Yes, we get it; they're harem pants. But does the model have to pose like that? If that's how another can tell you're wearing harem pants, then I pass.



The November, 2009, Marie Claire.

Best Magazine Covers

Amazon is now holding a contest for Best Magazine Covers Of The Year; vote and discuss.

Plus, when you vote, you'll automatically be entered to win a $10,000 Amazon.com gift card. *wink*

The Overused Doll Parts Metaphor

Support Victims Of Domestic Violence

Just wanted to let you know that today I'm participating in the blogathon for Hope For Healing, raising awareness of domestic violence & money for supporting victims of domestic violence.

Many thanks to Twolia for generously sponsoring me in this wonderful event!

You can help too: Comment at, link to, & Tweet my blogathon posts as well as use this special link to iSearch.iGive.com to perform online searches -- doing so raises money for HopeForHealing.Org.

Of Literature & Magazines

There are few barriers for authors who possess these [lightness of touch and generally in humor] in addition to genuine literary merit. Nor does the average periodical aim at mere entertainment. It must interest the reader, but it may also benefit him. It may even, to some extent, improve his taste. And there are gradations of taste by which the callow reader may ascend from one periodical to another. Some editors are men of unquestioned culture; and they are willing to experiment somewhat with specimens of what promises to be a new order of literature.

More than half of our successful American editors have been innocent of a college degree; but this can hardly be said to be in every case a misfortune, since it would be difficult to show that a college education is indispensable to either authorship or editorship. One of the most intellectual of English poets, Browning, obtained his culture chiefly outside a university; and, among our Americans, Whittier, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Whitman and O. Henry owe something to their sturdy individuality to an escape from the conventionalizing influence of the college. They were not men cut out on a pattern; and in literature this is of the highest importance. Magazines generally encourage individuality--even though they frown upon too much boldness. Within reasonable limits, therefore, periodicals may be said to have fostered the growth of permanent literature.

I'd love to make you guess when this was written -- but you'd cheat & Google it. *wink* Plus, I'm too excited by it not to share it right away.

It's an excerpt from "Periodicals and Permanent Literature" from the North American Review, December 1920, by Harry T. Baker. Does that surprise you at all?

Discuss.

(There's a comment section there below even!)

The entire article has been painstakingly typed onto the internets by my friend Cliff Aliperti, who says, "'Periodicals and Permanent Literature' struck me as an article extolling the virtues of magazine collecting in an age long before they were seriously collected. Published in one helping by the North American Review, I've split it into 8 serialized parts for the VintageMeld, each of which I hope both takes you back in time and presents you with a desire to hunt down some of the old issues for yourself."

The Eight Parts:

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: 18th Century Pioneers

Part 3: Lamb and Hazlitt

Part 4: Matthew Arnold

Part 5: Thackaray

Part 6: Kipling

Part 7: No Distinction in Quality Between Books and the Best Periodicals

Part 8: Conclusion

More From The "Where Can I Wear That?!" Files

Emily Finkbinder, if you are proposing this "Look That Will Razzle-Dazzle 'Em" as a way for a conman working a dirty shell game on a boardwalk somewhere to "razzle-dazzle 'em" so they can't keep their eye on the shells long enough to track the ping-pong ball, fine; I'll let this ridiculousness slide.


But as I cannot find any mention of such a scenario in this "Strike Up The Glam" piece on John Galliano's Spring/Summer '08* catwalk saunter, I can only conclude that this black-eye, however covered in glitter, is a fist in the face to me and women everywhere.

Furthermore, calling it "flapperesque" is a raised finger to my roaring 20's sisters who had enough trouble with an establishment so scandalized by their lipstick, bare knees, & pajamas that they were already considered fair game to abuse & murder. Something one can easily argue is still with us today.

Let me spell it out for you: black & blue bruised eyes are not sexy.

* Yes, that's 2008 -- this was published in the in the December/January issue of Interview magazine; I don't always get through every page in every issue so timely. How can I when there are stupid pages like this?

Don't Hate Me Because You Think She's Beautiful

Kate Moss is no Kelly LeBrock; I only hate Kate because she's an icky, attitudinal druggie poser (and I, sincerely, mean "poser" in that 80's wannabe lingo; not in reference to her career as a model). So when I heard stick-girl was coming out with more stinky stuff for Cody I was just going to ignore it. However, her new "fragrance" has been dubbed Vintage and so it's filling up my RSS readers. For that offense, I now take the offensive myself.

Now you know I'm a lover of vintage things, including fashion; but "vintage" as a smell is not something I'd go for.

Precluding musty mildew as the base note, "vintage" sounds like the "grandma smell" (a combination of Avon cologne, pennies & mints) you find in vintage purses and on vintage handkerchiefs. If I want to smell like grandma's purse, I'll just tuck an old hankie from an old purse into my bra and let my body heat generate a wafting odor sure to make folks ask me if I'm lost -- or if they can have a mint. (By the way, the mint will also smell like pennies and cologne, so beware, whippersnappers!)

Of her new spray d'offend, Kate had this to say to WWD:

"I am fascinated by vintage pieces because they not only have a remarkable beauty but also an innate sense of history," says Moss. "I love the fact that each object has its own story to tell. And yet vintage items can be reinvented with a modern twist to make them very fresh and relevant today. That's why vintage looks have inspired my personal style, my work as a fashion designer and, now, my fragrance."

I wonder who wrote that? And how many puppy uppers did it take to teach Kate to speak it on command?