Beauty and Culture

Category

Vanities: Art of the Dressing Table

Let's face it: we humans love to dress up. Long before we were using metal tools, we were painting our faces and bodies, combing...

The “Yoga Body”

We see them everywhere: some are serene, blissful, meditating in drugstore fliers. Others - lithe visions of feminine happiness, stretching in yogurt and maxi...

Stealing Beauty: On Cultural Appropriation in Fashion

If there's any constant in fashion, it is that it always changes. And part of that change is fashion's taking of inspiration from every...

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...

Cole Haan Born in 1928

Authentic is a buzzword that's way overused, especially in advertising. When we see "authentic" statements next to obvious models, giving obviously faux attitude, we're...

Do Facial Expressions Rule Emotions? My One-Woman Experiment in the Field, Plus How Botox Could Help Depression

How do our faces convey emotion? Conventional thinking tells us that we smile because something made us happy, or we frown because we're annoyed...

Beauty Archetypes: Whores

Whore! It may be the lowest insult that can be hurled at a woman. Yet prostitution and promiscuity thrive as archetypes in beauty and...

Creating Characters for Epic The Movie: Why Perfection is Overrated (Even in Hollywood!)

One of the more fun and surprising things about blogging is getting invited to swag-erific events. Not very many - Wild Beauty isn't up...

A Week Without Mirrors, Plus a Review of Kjerstin Gruys’ New Book

In support of Kjerstin Gruys' new memoir detailing her year without mirrors, a call was put out for beauty bloggers to take a day...

A Week Without Mirrors: My Space vs Their Space

Less than three days into my week without mirrors (inspired by Kjerstin Gruys' Year Without Mirrors, I noticed that I was feeling really annoyed......

My Writing

Does Makeup Hurt Self-Esteem? Is The New York Times Sexist for Asking?

The New York Times published - on its "room for debate" page - a by authors with various viewpoints about makeup and self-esteem....

Cult Favorites: Miss Craig

It's easy to make fun of vintage beauty regimens - any beauty fiend who's watched George Cukor's 1939 classic The Women is mesmerized by...

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....