Happy Independence Day! (I took that photo last year in Chapel Hill, NC. The South loves its fireworks.) Now that I’m writing a dissertation on Renaissance English literature, few people know about my past life as an obsessive American-history nerd. Around the age of sixteen, I decided that I wanted to be a professor of… Read More Independence Day FOTD + PSA for Polish Lovers
I rely on drugstore beauty brands for colors I feel ambivalent about, which means that I’ve amassed quite a few orange and warm red lipsticks from Revlon, Milani, and Maybelline. And, surprise, I’m still ambivalent about oranges and warm reds on my complexion. Is this because they really don’t suit me, or because I never… Read More Mandarin Lips and Mannequin Hands
Name: Maybelline Color Statement Lipstick in Ruby Star Date Purchased: February 2013 Grade: B Notes: Ruby Star was a gift from my mom, who included it in her annual Valentine’s package (aww). She thought she was sending me an unremarkable berry-red lipstick, not a berry-red lipstick with a raging case of disco fever. How wrong… Read More Lipstick Chronology #21: Maybelline Ruby Star
It’s hard to resist a $4 nail polish when you’re armed with a $4 CVS coupon. I’d been wanting a black-glitter topcoat for some time, and was drawn yesterday to Maybelline’s Street Art polishes, which feature matte colored glitter in addition to black: there’s a very pale pink, a neon pinky red, a yellow-green, and… Read More Review: Maybelline Nighttime Noise
Names: Maybelline Color Sensational Lipstick in Make Me Pink; Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in Primrose; MAC Cremesheen Lipstick in Creme Cup Date of Purchase: Spring-Summer 2012 Grades: A-, A, A- Notes: Auxiliary Beauty lives, barely. I suspect that I surrendered my beauty-blogger credentials this past week, while scrambling to finish a fellowship application that was… Read More Lipstick Chronology #14: Three Mod Pinks (MAC, Maybelline, Revlon)
Name: Maybelline Color Sensational Lipstick in Nude Lust Date of Purchase: Jan. 25, 2014 Grade: A- Notes: In the first part of Don Quixote (she began, like a totally normal beauty blogger), Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza meet a group of prisoners sentenced to hard labor. The galley slaves are chained together, which… Read More Review: Maybelline Nude Lust
Here’s the thing about the Maybelline Color Elixir in Vision in Violet: Maybelline never promised that the vision would be a good one. I was at CVS today, buying a new tube of my favorite liquid eyeliner, Maybelline Line Stiletto in Blackest Black, and I decided I’d take advantage of the Maybelline sale and try… Read More The Horror: Maybelline Vision in Violet
Name: MAC Lustre Lipstick in Capricious Date of Purchase: August 2011 Grade: B Notes: Capricious was my very first non-drugstore lipstick, purchased from the MAC counter at the Nordstrom near my old high school in San Francisco. (How’s that for a panoply of prepositional phrases?) Capricious has a lustre finish, which means that it’s glossy… Read More Lipstick Chronology #7: MAC Capricious
Auxiliary Beauty 