Tag Archives: cool stuff

How to feel good about the way you look, without having plastic surgery like Megan Fox

30 Mar

One of my favorite snarky reads (and I don’t read a lot of snark. who needs the negativity?) is Jezebel.com.  And today the blog raised a very important issue regarding plastic surgery and self-esteem.  In It’s Going to be Awkward When Megan Fox’s Baby  Comes Out With Megan Fox’s Old Nose Dodai Stewart contemplates what might go on when the plastic surgery’d star comes face to face with her original face in tiny baby form.  Can she consider her own baby beautiful?:

It’s curious to me, because I wonder if you can tell your daughter that she is beautiful and lovely — and mean it — if she has the old nose that you hated. Or, if you can, do you realize what you’re saying? You’re saying that your old nose, the one you had sliced open, destroyed and rebuilt by a doctor, is actually not that bad.

My Mom had a nosejob.  Luckily, neither my sister nor myself came out with my Mom’s hawklike original nose.  But that’s ok.  My nose came out like the other noses on Mom’s side of the family, so I ended up looking partly like them anyway.  Even if I did come out with that hawklike nose, who knows what it would have looked like on the rest of my face, which is, after all, part my Dad.

Unfortunately, now, in my 50′s, it’s the jowly part of my Dad’s face…

Later in the post, Stewart brings up how Fox has had around $60 grand worth of plastic surgery, and *still* feels bad about herself.  That’s kind of sad, when you think about it.  The post notes that Fox told Rolling Stone that she has low self-esteem and feels “insecure about everything.”   It sounds like Fox will never be able to get enough things about herself surgically fixed in order to feel good about herself.

Bottom line is this:  we can’t surgically fix away whatever it is that is bothering us that would make us dramatically re-arrange our faces and bodies.  In my Mother’s case, and also in mine, it was people in our lives, people who were supposed to love us, and didn’t, that contributed to our low self-esteem.  My Father was not the nicest person, and being in a marriage with him took its toll on my Mother and me.

The biggest contributing factor to low self-esteem is how the people who are supposed to love us treat us, not whether or physical appearance is or is not a certain standard of perfect, nor all the bullying we experience at school.  If those people in our homes do not love and accept themselves, they are incapable of loving us, and thus our self-image and self-esteem becomes damaged at its core.

Nowadays, while I’m far from the perfection that is someone like Megan Fox, I’m not unhappy. I’m pretty darned happy. Sure, there are photos of me out there that are pretty godawful, that even I look at them and go “ack! what a frumpy old lady!!” But occasionally, when my makeup’s right, and I’ve had a good night’s sleep, and I’ve bothered to make an effort with my wardrobe, I’m not all that frightening.

As a matter of fact, here is Megan Fox and me, side by side:

Keep in mind that Fox is a movie star, more than 20 yrs younger than me, and has had a bunch of plastic surgery. I haven’t even had Botox, and I’m over 50. Oh and the pic was taken by me, in a bathroom mirror in a hotel in Lower Manhattan and not photoshopped in any way. I blame my good complexion on my Mom ;) …..

That’s part of what makes me not feel bad about myself–my good skin.  The other part consists of  taking care of health; making sure my makeup is done right; wearing clothes that are modern and well-fitting.  Oh, and a lot of emotional work on myself,  a group of very good friends,  love, and some admiration from time to time….

Because beauty comes from the inside, and not what one does on the outside. Especially as one gets older….

It’s sad that Megan Fox appears to have such a deep hole of insecurity that not even a beautiful, new baby might fill.

For the baby’s sake, I hope that’s not the case.

Average Woman Looks at Springtime Shoes (and what they say about you)

26 Mar

Spring is here!  The weather’s getting warmer, the trees are budding and the forsythia is in bloom!  Which means it’s time to put away the suede shooties and shearling booties (mostly) and start thinking pedicures and peep-toe pumps.  That is, if it doesn’t snow the first week of April….

On the Spring 2012 Runways we saw a lot of what we’ve been seeing and wearing: sky

gorgeous Meredith platforms available at charlotteolympia.com

high-heels, chunky platforms, and barely-there flat sandals in every color of the rainbow (almost) including color block.  This is definitely one of the most exciting springtimes for shoes I’ve seen in years!

But let’s face a few small facts:  it’s hard to get around town in sky-high heels.  Chunky platforms on over 40 legs aren’t always fun, let alone attractive.    So what’s a woman to do?

Christian Siriano "Michelle" ballet flat at payless.com has a trendy keyhole peep-toe.

My favorite fashion guru, Bill Cunningham, recently noticed that women in New York City (a place where it’s important to be quick on your feet) have put the huge heels in their tote bags, and are traversing the streets in ballet flats.  If you have to move fast, nothing beats a good-fitting ballet flat!   I have several inexpensive pair that I use for kicking around in the spring and summer, esp. when I don’t have heavy-duty walking ahead of me.  That’s the great thing about ballet flats:  you don’t need an expensive pair to look great.

That’s not to say that heels and platforms will go by the wayside.  Not at all!  And if you want to wear them, by all means do!  I’m so looking forward to getting into my 4.5 inch red Guess platform sandals that I bought last year, even if I don’t wear them while traipsing through the streets of New York City or to the local grocery store — although the latter can be lots of fun, esp. if I want to turn a few heads…

Which leads me to another reason why you might want to wear some high heels every now and then.  Not only can they lengthen your legs, but they’re great eye-catchers.  Yes, even if you have a husband or a boyfriend, please just admit that it’s great fun to catch some good-looking guy eyeing up your shoes.  It’s a thrill!  I find it even more fun when the good-looking guys are a whole lot younger than myself (shoes are one of those things that are, well, ageless if you let them be.)   This cute little feature from Glamour.com let’s you in on what goes through the brains of men when they’re looking at your shoes.  Totally darling!

For Fun:   Check out Bill Cunningham’s latest on the beauty of springtime in Manhattan  and my Pinterest “Shoe Fetishist” pinboard of cool, beautiful shoes.

Sunday Editorial: We are all Gloria Steinem Now

25 Mar

it doesn't matter who we are anymore, or our power in media. We all have media, we all have power. We are all leaders of the women's movement.....

Last Sunday, the New York Times ran two stories on Gloria Steinem, both in the Fashion & Style section.   Many of us wondered why these articles were relegated to the “women’s pages” of the Fashion & Style section, and there was some outcry to this effect.  Yet the world has changed greatly since Gloria Steinem, especially the media world, and that the singular rise of social media has given all women the power to be what only one was capable of attaining in a broadcast and paper media world.

The first–Gloria Steinem, A Woman Like no Other–gives a short overview of Steinem’s activism, notes the current situation with the Komen Foundation and the rise of social media.  Overall, the article questions why there isn’t one single leader for women with the unique combination of personal qualities that made Steinem an iconic leader of the women’s movement in the 60′s and 70′s.   There is the admission that there are now “feminisms” vs. one monolithic feminism, and that, in the 21st century, there is “a more inchoate sense of feminist leadership.”  Steinem herself does not see this as a negative, and states, in an email, how “It’s obviously a great sign of growth and success that the media no longer try to embody the bigness and diversity of the women’s movement in one person.”

Indeed!

The second article–My Roommate, Gloria–is a sweet puff piece on how Shelby Knox, while a college student, came to share a New York apartment with Steinem.   In the early years of this century, the press and many others, were ready to anoint Knox the next leader of the feminist movement.  However, it wasn’t necessarily to be.  Knox now works as director of women’s rights organizing for Change.org, and says she is happy to be writing press releases rather than being the subject of press releases.

Maybe this is a part of the “why we don’t have a single feminist leader these days” is that no young woman necessarily wants to be the sole voice of an entire movement.  The glut of mainstream media keeps the camera in one’s face far longer than it should be, and probes the  personal lives or public figures in a manner that might have been considered inappropriate 40 or 50 years ago (think Clinton vs. JFK.)

The 24-hour news cycle has perhaps taught us that only very strong, or very narcissistic, people survive the glare of the modern-day spotlight with their psyches in tact.

Yet the other aspect of all this media is that we have a thriving “people’s media” landscape on the Internet.  The Voice of the People, channelled through various social media platforms, what marketers bemoaned with the Motrin Moms, has become the force for change that got the Komen Foundation to back down from their anti-Planned Parenthood initiative, Rush Limbaugh to lose face for his attempt to shame Sara Fluke, and is currently bringing shame to the Sanford, Florida police department in the Trayvon Martin murder case.

What started–around the time of Shelby Knox–as a “disreputable” and  troubling form of “new journalism,” the blog, the forum, the chatroom, and other forms of what we now called social media, are the places where groups rally around those who first hear the message, then spread the message.  We hear about protests against Limbaugh, and we spread the links to friends on Facebook and Twitter, who spread the links to their friends.  We write about the incidents on our blogs, which are now picked up by Google, which leads to readers that then click the links to other stories or petitions and get others to act.

In the 21st century, with our dispersed and populist media landscape, we have important stories–stories that require activism to create change–dispersed and made viral like never before.  The populist media that so many feared might lead to something bad, is actually forcing change for the good–and is bringing awareness to women’s issues that most of us felt were resolved with the women’s rights struggles of the 70′s.

So maybe, in the 21st century, it’s not the monolithic leader, the attractive and photogenic young woman—a Gloria Steinem– who becomes the image and voice of the woman’s movement, but all of us who use social media platforms to spread information, who are already the voices of a new women’s movement.  Perhaps we are, as the NYT noticed–in the “inchoate” phase of a new, stronger women’s movement that better represents the needs of women across the country.

All that’s needed, right now, are women who spread the word to other women.  It’s the groundswell that demonstrates the power of women.

Maybe at some time, when we are confronted again with situations where only one leader can speak,  one leader will emerge.   Yet that might not even be the case any more.  We may simply have women like Sara Fluke, who have to speak for us in special instances.  There is no doubt that our world has changed because of social media, and so, the ways in which leadership emerges in this new landscape will be different.

Only time will tell.

“The Hunger Games” costumer Judianna Makovsky combines past, current looks for film

23 Mar

Today opens the much-anticipated (and hyped) film  “The Hunger Games,” a dystopian fantasy where poor young people are pitted against one another in a battle to the death.  But have you noticed what they’re wearing?  I certainly have noticed, and not necessarily the garb on the star-crossed young folk, played by Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson (who, in the story, are given their own stylists), but also the clothing and coiffures on actors Stanley Tucci, Wes Bentley, and Elizabeth Banks….

Poor horrible, horrible Effie. I'd rather fight for my life than have to wear this get-up. yeesh!

I’ve been fascinated by the horrific-looking Effie Trinket,  that Ga Ga-esque fuscha nightmare, replete with leg-o-mutton sleeves like I haven’t seen since the 1980′s.  What about Tucci’s blue samurai haircut, Bentley’s weird facial hair, and that the residents of District 12 look like they stepped out of a King Vidor film of the 1930′s.  Well, there’s no coincidence here.  Costume designer Judianna Makovsky (also the costume designer for the Harry Potter films), spoke about her work and influences to the Los Angeles Times and InStyle.com , with the latter of the two a little more (perhaps inappropriately) enthusiastic about translating the film’s looks to our world.

Makovsky, however, was most interested in keeping the looks consistent with descriptions in the book.  For Katniss Everdean’s “girl on fire dress” Makovsky says:  “I wanted the dress to be red, but not so covered in stones that it would look like something out of Dancing With the Stars…”  And, of course, the dress doesn’t actually burst into real flames–CGI helped in that department.

Many of the designers who influenced Makovsky’s “Capitol Couture” fashions include Alexander McQueen, Jean Paul Gaultier, Rodarte, and Elsa Schiaparelli, queen of surrealist fashion design in the 1930;s and 40′s.  So it’s no wonder that I’m seeing the 1980′s, since Gaultier and McQueen’s work was highly influential back then–and certain motifs and themes keep getting recycled into 21st century fashion.  The Capitol dwellers have been described as “opulent” and other word to connote their high-fashion status.  But with the colored-hair wigs (green, pink, etc) I can’t help but think of the sad-looking women with bizarrely colored wigs in Stanley Kubrick’s classic A Clockwork Orange–another dystopian society movie with kids as the main focus.

A purple-haired pub waitress in Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange."

Wardrobe for Katniss and other District 12 dwellers is most definitely influenced by workwear of the past.  Makovsky looked at photos from that time period, to get a better sense of everyday fashion. Since there are always more regular folk than fashionistas, the numbers of costumes for the extras (as well as the principals) came from a combination of vintage finds and costumes hand-made and fitted for the film.  With roughly 600 charater extras, there wound up being a total of 1800 costumes just for this group alone!

Makovsky says she hopes that many of the costumes will go on display somewhere after the movie.

Yet there’s another rather silly and superfluous side to all this great costuming.  Lion’s Gate, the Hunger Games film company, decided to go all out with their social media promotions for the film, including a tumblr titled Capitol Couture.  This has to be one of the worst sites I’ve ever seen: everything from the dull colors to the District Style Challenges screams promotion desperation.

Seriously, this is a dystopian film.  Lots of people get killed.  You want to dress like the idiots of the Capitol and the “citizens” who are marked for death?  Really?  That kind of promotion seems tacky and jaundiced, and almost seems to highlight an ironic mocking of fans and moviegoers.  Same can be said for a feature at InStyle.com, which talks about Katniss’ spring style.  Really???  That’s like the Lisabeth Salanader look for H&M.    All I can do is chalk this stuff up to the annals of “When Film Promotions Go Horribly Wrong.”    If film companies and p.r. departments are looking to capture some sort of fashion zeitgeist of these films, they really can’t.  The looks speak for themselves, and audiences will adopt those looks if they find them cool.  Companies cannot manufacture that kind of fashion passion.  It just happens.  Trying to manufacture it only makes them look like the people we’re supposed to be rooting against in films like The Hunger Games.  How Ironic.

 

Indulge your inner retro-sexy Happy Homemaker with Tie Me Up Aprons

22 Mar

If you’re like me, you probably do a fair share of cooking.  And if you’re even more like me, you’ve probably ruined a shirt or dress or something else while you were cooking.   My Mom always used to tell me to wear an apron while cooking, so that I wouldn’t ruin what I was wearing.  So when my friend, photographer Bruce Barone, posted some pictures he took for   Tie Me Up Aprons , I  thought I’d died and gone to clothes preserving apron heaven!

Anita Senkowski, proprietress of Tie Me Up Aprons, creates her unique confections from out-of-production and

NEW!! The REAL Krispy Kreme Girl Apron. A Tie Me Up Exclusive!!

vintage fabrics.  She has a great eye for color and pattern and assembles her aprons with a certain je-ne-sais-quois  that will make you say “hey, that’s wicked cool! I’ve got to have it!”

Considering the new season of Mad Men starts on Sunday–well, you might just need one of these to protect your perfect Betty Draper party dress while serving era appropriate hors d’oeuvres!

If you order now, enter the code HIGHFASHION1 and you will receive a 15% discount on any apron, including the made to order Zen Charmer (from a very limited fabric) This offer extends through March 31, 2012!

Tie Me Up Aprons are hand crafted in Michigan, USA, and ships worldwide (so no excuses you people in the UK, Australia, and everywhere else.)  Tie Me Up takes PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, and Discover.

“Like” Tie Me Up on Facebook and follow for the latest updates on the new fabrics Anita’s getting plus other cool news from Tie Me Up.

Photo courtesy of Bruce Barone Photography

Sunday’s Fashion Lesson with Bill Cunningham….

12 Mar

If you don’t know who Bill Cunningham is, you should….especially if you want to learn anything about how to cultivate a

poster for the documentary "Bill Cunningham New York"

discerning eye for fashion and style.  Not to mention the lovely little lessons on the history of 20th century fashion that Cunningham weaves into his weekly fashion videos that are featured on the front of the Sunday  New York Times website

Cunningham has been a  photojournalist for The New York Times since at least the 1970′s–prior to that he was a fashion journalist for Women’s Wear Daily and a Harvard drop-out.  He has been taking candid street photographs of fashionable people for close to 50 years now.  While some might consider his photos “artless” it’s not art that Cunningham is looking to create.  Rather, he documents the ways in which people of all sorts interpret the fashion of their day, as much as he chronicles the evolutions of fashion styles….

For instance, in yesterday’s short titled “Sun Spot”, Cunningham views Paris Fashion Week, the last week of  shows for the Fall-Winter 2012 fashions.  He notes how much yellow he sees on women attending the shows (working women, many still clad in always-in-fashion black) and in the flowers dotting the Parisian landscape.  Cunningham notes that fashion is all a jumble right now, but that women nowadays want fashion that not only fits their lifestyle, but also fashion that they choose and pay for themselves.  In this “modern age” we are not the “decorative women” of the post-WWII 1950s,  who were festooned to represent the affluence of their husbands and who, in their leisure could be nothing more than decorative objects (much to the consternation of a lot of women.)

“When someone else is paying, then you buy something frivolous,” Cunningham says, ” When you’re paying for it yourself, you think twice.”

And that, to me is what marks the difference between adolescent fashion and grown-up fashion.  For adolescents (and the chronological age is variable) there’s spending a whole lot of money for something that is trendy and may look downright awful.  Grown-ups, however, don’t have that particular level of disposable income that so many young people might have…..

So, the young people become the frivolous fashionistas, which, IMO, is what’s plaguing a lot of fashion right at this moment.  We don’t have enough fashion for grown-ups who work, who raise families, who aren’t lounging around sipping smoothies and exercising all day in order to keep their “girlish figures.”

I love, though, that Cunningham is so delightfully sanguine and believes that fashion will turn around and reflect what women need.   This is another part of why I love to watch his photos and listen to him every week: in a fashion world that seems to be constantly unforgiving of women and women’s lives, Cunningham situates fashion in historical context, and, right now, reminds us of the upheaval that may indeed shake out for the best.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue to watch Bill’s weekly videos and take his fashion and style recommendations…..

BTW, anybody seen my yellow scarf…… :-)

Carine Roitfeld is my fashion soul sister! (well, kinda…..)

7 Feb

Well, ok…I haven’t worked at a fashion magazine ever, and I’ll probably never get closer to Karl Lagerfeld than I did when I almost tried on one of the dresses from his Macy’s capsule collection.  But when I read that Carine Roitfeld, former Editor-in-Chief of Vogue Paris,  is planning a new magazine, slated for launch in September and wants to be “the link between the runway and the real woman,”  well, I almost died…

One of the reasons I started High Fashion, Average Woman, is to experiment a bit with fashion journalism to see if a fairly average woman with good taste and personal style could actually write something that other women would find fun and somewhat helpful as they, too try to navigate the crazy world of the fashion and beauty industries.  Too often I hear from women friends of all ages  and geographic locations about how they don’t understand what’s going on in fashion; question why clothes don’t fit nor flatter their figures; and if there is any sense to even trying to look good when everything looks recycled from previous generations’ bad fashion closets.  Granted, I don’t keep up with this blog as much as I should, but my goal has been pretty lofty and I’m not making any money from this particular venture.  So I get to it when I can.

And I think , for the most part, that I’m meeting my goals here…

So, I’m really glad to see that Roitfeld is planning to use her knowledge and experience to perhaps help us navigate what the heck is going on in fashion and beauty.  In the meantime, I’ll keep up my end of the deal and continue to write here.  Who knows what might happen–you know what I mean? ;)

(h-t to Fashionista.com)

Madonna’s Outrageous Super Bowl Look Eerily Reminiscent of Madeline Kahn as Empress Nympho

6 Feb

in Mel Brook’s History of the World Part I.


And I can imagine that auditions to be part of Madonna’s honor guard (the guys in the Roman gear who carried the bier she rode in on) went something like this (not that there’s anything wrong with it, mind you…):

Swivel virtual dressing room to relieve the pain of long lines and virtual mishaps

13 Jan

You know what it’s like to stand there, and stand there, and stand there waiting for someone to come by and open the dressing room door, or perhaps you just don’t feel like taking something off to try on one lousy blouse…

That’s where Swivel, the virtual dressing room, could save you a whole lot of aggravation.

Swivel was demo’d this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.  FaceCake Marketing Technologies, which developed the snazzy proprietary software is hoping that it will be used by virtual as well as mall-based retailers.  Swivel makes good use of motion-sensoring technology in webcams and Microsoft Kinect to scan your body and then fit you into the items you’d like to try on.

Here’s a screen shot from the Los Angeles Times video of how Swivel works:

Honestly, if I happen to be in a store, I’d rather just buy something and then return it if it doesn’t fit.  However, I can see this as a boon to online retailers.  I will often not buy from online retailers if I am not sure of  their sizes.  Size charts help but sometimes there are multiple manufacturers sold by one online retailer.  Sometimes they have manufacturer/designer specific charts and sometimes they don’t.  Product reviews help (esp. when they note if an item fits too small or too large.)  To have the addition of a visualization before ordering an item could certainly save a whole lot of return troubles!

Note:  I believe I saw Swivel, as well as some other and quite different virtual try-on software at the Fashion 140 conference in New York City last spring.

Product Review: L’Oreal Elnett Satin Hairspray Holds for the Holidays

22 Dec

Over a 30 year period I believe I’ve tried every single hairspray out on the market.  Everything from high-end (Bumble & Bumble) to ultra-cheap (Aqua Net) and found the results to run the gamut from failed-to-hold to frighteningly firm.  So when I heard all the raves for L’Oreal Elnett Satin Hairspray, I took them with a grain of something ozone-free….

But wow!  This is truly the best hairspray I have ever used!  Tremendous hold, even in humidity, and still I could comb it out and not break hair by the handfuls.  That was with the Extra Strong Hold–which I probably don’t need but was the only sample size available on my day of purchase.

I noticed also that it did not have a weird smell nor did it make my hair old-lady shiny.  The “satin” finish is very natural and it lives up to the promise of “unscented.”  So no clashing with my favorite fragrance.

While you’re checking out the L’Oreal website for more info on Elnett, check out other features like Special Offers and all sorts of beauty tips underneath the various tabs (Cosmetics, Hair Care, Hair Color, etc.)  Since some of my favorite products are L’Oreal, I’ll be visiting the site often for more information.

You can purchase Elnett at most drugstores and retailers like Target

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