Almost Pretty

NARS Makeup Your Mind Beauty Guide

Russian-American poet Joseph Alexandrovitch Brodsky said that "There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them." And even if you prefer a life that is more visually inclined there is still much one can do to learn. This NARS Makeup Your Mind Beauty Guide includes 65 before-and-after photos of models of various ethnicities and looks, including Naomi Campbell and Erin O'Connor to help you learn about the entire process of makeup application from start to finish.

Thursday Think Piece: Beauty Guilt?

We are feeling a bit conflicted about beauty. Marie Claire, normally a magazine we enjoy has been sending out a few mixed messages. Their new piece about living Biblically and giving up makeup sent us for a loop.

Generally beauty and fashion magazines tend to err on the side of women not doing enough to perfect their looks. We feel guilty for not making enough effort after reading all their how to pieces. But now it seems we are supposed feel bad for making the very effort they encourage us to make if the above piece on giving up clothing, makeup and sample sales is any indication.

The messages seems to be that either a woman isn’t pretty enough because she doesn’t spend enough on clothing, dieting or makeup or she isn’t moral enough if she doesn’t give it up? Which side is she supposed to choose? Marie Claire we object! What do you think? Are we being made to feel guilty about beauty no matter what we do?

Thursday Think Piece: The Trouble With Glitter Lipgloss

We are struggling with a certain cause and effect conundrum with lipgloss. Now we know a lo of women who do makeup for themselves and only themselves so this doesn't apply to them. But for many of us makeup is about appearing more attractive to others; in particular, the opposite sex (though we guess this works the same for lesbians too). Yet once we actually get someone near our lips a painful reality becomes clear. Having someone else's glittery lipgloss on your pucker really sucks!

In fact, we know many women who, when their boyfriends dive in for a kiss, will wave them off saying "fresh lipgloss!" So why go to all that trouble to attract your mate when you if your efforts actually work you shush them away. Or worse yet if you mate or potential target lands that kiss they are suck with a mouth full of glitery goo. Not exactly the sort of positive reinforcement you might want if you plan on doing a lot of lip locking!

Bobbi Brown Glitter Lip Gloss

Thursday Think Piece: How Is It "Flawless" If You Are Wearing Makeup?

You know what drives us nuts? The so called "flawless skin" makeup trend. We feel like its an oxymoron. If you have flawless skin why they heck are you wearing makeup? Please bear with us while we opine.

This idea of faking flawlessness has our mind in a bit of a twist. The whole point of makeup is to make you look better. People can tell you are wearing makeup and that is OK. It isn't really flawless if you need help but hell there is no shame in that!

So why not call it the "making yourself better" trend or the "hiding your faults trend" or the "your better self" trend. Why? Well we guess that flawless just sounds a bit more promotable. All the aspiration sells products even if it has very little to do with how we perceive our skin. Frankly we are OK with needing a little help sometimes. That is why we are Almost Pretty! We have good skin days and bad skin days just like everyone else. Even celebrities get pimples even if they just rush to their derms for a cortisone injection.

Our skin isn't flawlness, neither is yours, and obsessing over faking it is probably unhealthy. So while we totally support making yourself look better don't kid yourself into believing some promotional spiel. You will look better but if your skin were flawless we wouldn't be beauty consumers in the first place.

For more on achieving these so called flawless looks we suggest checking out Beauty and Makeup Blog's interview with Smashbox artist Lori Taylor.  

Apparently High Definition FX Foundation and Function 5 Self Adjusting Foundation can get you there. But like we said if you need to wear foundation don't kid yourself about being flawless! Who said there was anything run with being flawed anyway?