About Me

Welcome! I’m Zoe. I grew up in San Francisco and now live and teach English in Washington, D.C. Some fun facts about me: I studied Japanese for nine years, from sixth grade through sophomore year of college; I have a modest (in size, not in color) collection of ’80s blazers and sweaters; and I’ve lived in almost every region of the United States.

In 2014, midway through my Ph.D. in Renaissance literature, I started Auxiliary Beauty as an outlet for my musings on makeup and beauty. (I quit for a year in 2019 and 2020, but couldn’t stay away.) In this blog, you’ll find product reviews, discussions of cosmetic history and beauty marketing, and self-indulgent introspection, sometimes all in the same post.

The name of my blog is a seventeenth-century slang term for cosmetics. A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, a compendium of London thieves’ slang from 1699, defines “Auxiliary-beauty” as “Dress, Paint, Patches, Setting of Eye-brows, and licking the Lipps with Red.” Fair warning, however: I draw more beauty inspiration from k-pop than I do from the early modern period.

It pains me to even have to say this, but I fucking hate generative AI and will never use it in my writing (or in any other aspect of this blog).

I don’t partner with brands or accept PR in exchange for reviews. All of the products I review are purchased with my own money unless I note otherwise. Blogging has always been and will always be a hobby for me; it’s just simpler that way.

You can leave me a tip here: https://ko-fi.com/auxiliary_beauty. Thank you for your support!