Beauty and Culture

Category

A Rant on Self Esteem: Must We Always Love Everything About Ourselves?

If you haven't heard, Facebook has removed its "feeling fat" emoticon this week, apparently in response to online petition that gathered 16,000 signatures. The...

Artist Francesco Vezzoli Shows us What the Ancient Romans Looked Like With Their Makeup On

True Colors (A Marble Relief Head of a Goddess), c.1st century A.D.-2014. Francesco Vessoli It's easy to imagine the ancients in monochrome. Their classic architecture...

On Being Happy – and Beautiful – at One Hundred

As a makeup artist people usually ask me to make them look as young as possible. And I get it - any of us...

Is Fat Evil?

Just about everybody in modern society has something to say about weight - their own or someone else's. And it's usually not very nice....

Beauty Archetypes: Villainesses

Bad girls - we may fear them, and we're supposed to hate them. But some of us love them! I do, and I know...

Faking It

"Beauty" has a reputation of being misleading. So much historical and imaginative treatment of beauty relates the fear beauty's power has over its subjects....

Blue Eyeliner, Tattoos, and Face Packs: Beauty Secrets from a Prehistoric Siberian Princess

Finding remains of ancient people is rare enough - finding them well enough preserved to guess at their daily lifestyle is a revelation. In...

What is Looking Young Anyway?

As a makeup artist, I get lots of questions from people on how to look younger. Maybe it comes in the form of "How...

Is Your Makeup Killing You? Decoding Cosmetic Scare Stories

You've seen the stories: There's Lead in Your Lipstick! Pthalates in Your Shampoo! Parabens in Everything!   Our cosmetics are awash in toxic chemicals, or so...

Marilyn Minter’s Subversive Beauty

Orange Crush. Marilyn Minter, 2009. Enamel on metal, 108 x 180 inches. What would happen if you ate all your makeup - and it was...

My Writing

Faces: The Weird World of Nina Leen

In its heyday, LIFE magazine was a weekly window into the lives of Americans, sending photographers to capture images of news and lifestyle and...

Painted Ladies: Victorine Meurent, Manet’s Modern Muse

She was the Kate Moss of her day, her face ushering in a realist art that shocked the Paris bourgeoisie. But who was she?...

Painted Ladies: Adele Bloch-Bauer, Gustav Klimt’s “Woman In Gold”

She was the Mona Lisa of Austria - her mysterious beauty enthralled everyone who saw her. For years, she was simply called the Woman...