That’s right, your girl is back in the workforce! I’m teaching part-time at a local community college this semester and working on my creative writing on non-teaching days. It’s going well so far; I missed being in the classroom. I also missed adapting my makeup to the demands of teaching, though there’s less distance now… Read More Classroom Makeup, Fall 2025
There are certain beauty products, usually lipsticks, that stay on my mental wishlist for years, never quite becoming an urgent desire but never quite fading from memory, either. The original version of MAC Heroine is a good example. In 2012, dozens of Tumblr posts brainwashed me into wanting a purple lipstick (real ones will remember… Read More MAC MACximal Silky Matte Lipstick in Everybody’s Heroine + More MAC Lipstick Swatches!
This post is going up a little later than I expected (I was out of town for the holidays for an extra week, and then I got sick), but I’m back in Philly and back on my bullshit, so here it is now: my roundup of the best beauty products I bought in 2024! I… Read More My 12 Favorite Beauty Purchases of 2024
You’re not misremembering: my first post about my True Winter makeup collection did include eyeshadows and eyeliners. However, I realized after publishing that post that I’d forgotten to include a few products, and then I bought two more TW-appropriate eyeshadows and decided I might as well do a whole new writeup. So my previous post… Read More My True Winter Makeup Collection, Part 2: Eyes
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of Googling makeup swatches and being directed to filtered-to-hell TikTok videos. MAC has reformulated almost all of its lipsticks over the past few years, and it’s next to impossible to find the new ones swatched even on Instagram, let alone on blogs. (Forget about coherent reviews written… Read More MAC MACximal Sleek Satin Lipstick in Guessing Game + Lots of MAC Lipstick Swatches
Beauty-wise, 2023 was a year of caveats. As you may have gathered from the tenor of my blog reviews, very few makeup products blew me away as thoroughly as, say, Gucci Anne Lilac did the previous year. I bought roughly as many color cosmetics in 2023 as I did in 2022, but I felt less… Read More My 12 Favorite Beauty Purchases of 2023
Slim lipsticks, somewhere between regular lipsticks and lip pencils in width, have existed for decades (look no further than this Maybelline commercial from 1980). ColourPop’s original Lippie Stix, NARS’ now-discontinued Pure Matte Lipsticks, Hourglass’s Confession Ultra Slim Lipsticks, and Kevyn Aucoin’s Unforgettable Lipsticks all fall into this category. Slim lipsticks appeal to customers because of… Read More Season of the Slim Stick: MAC Powder Kiss Velvet Blur in Wild Sumac & Maybelline Color Sensational Ultimatte in More Cedar
Since the spring semester is almost over, I thought I’d publish a quick update to the post I made six months ago. I still take about five minutes to do my makeup before classes, but as the weather has warmed up, I’ve gravitated toward different colors and textures while remaining in my cool-toned comfort zone.… Read More My Five-Minute Teaching Face, Spring 2023
Happy Lunar New Year! January 22 marked the start of the Year of the Rabbit, which happens to be my own zodiac animal. (Yes, that means I’m nine months away from turning thirty-six, the age at which I’ve always assumed I’ll have all my shit figured out, though that seems increasingly unlikely.) I realize that… Read More MAC Retro Matte Lipstick in Ruby Woo: The Ultimate Red?
We’re halfway through January, and that means it’s well past time to round up my top dozen new products of last year! I resolved to buy 40 or fewer new pieces of makeup and nail polish in 2022, but I ended the year at 47, one more than the previous year. Though I never felt… Read More My 12 Favorite Beauty Purchases of 2022
Auxiliary Beauty 