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
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
I’m now two months into the fall semester, which has been an especially busy one. My mantra for this year is “the perfect is the enemy of the good,” and that extends to makeup. (Ironically, it doesn’t extend to this post, which I’ve been tweaking for over a month now.) I’ve had to perfect a… Read More My Five-Minute Teaching Face, Fall 2022
When I first got into makeup, in the early 2010s, blush was an afterthought in the Western beauty community. Everyone had a couple of blushes, generally a warm pink and a cool pink, but beauty bloggers often fretted about the prospect of looking tacky or clownish or old-ladyish (never mind the ageism and internalized misogyny… Read More The Great Blush Inventory of 2021
This week I’m diverging from the 2020 Lipstick Chronology in order to review my first new lipstick of 2021: NARS Velvet Matte Lip Pencil in Red Square! I spent much of my January no-buy scouring the web for a replacement for Topshop Matte Lipstick in Rio Rio, which I bought and reviewed back in June… Read More A Red for Citrus Season: NARS Velvet Matte Lip Pencil in Red Square
Product: NARS Sheer Lipstick in Dolce Vita Date Purchased: January 4, 2020 Grade: B+ I started this blog in early 2014 with a series called Lipstick Chronology, in which I set out to review all of my lipsticks in chronological order of purchase, musing on the circumstances in which I bought them and the feelings… Read More 2020 Lipstick Chronology #1: NARS Sheer Lipstick in Dolce Vita (New Formula)
Welcome to my annual roundup of my 15 favorite new-to-me beauty products of the past year! (Here are my lists for 2016, 2015, and 2014.) My 2017 can be summed up in this viral tumblr post: Because I had so little time for blogging in the second half of 2017, this post will double as… Read More My 15 Favorite Beauty Products of 2017
Since my last post, I’ve crossed a few thresholds: the autumnal equinox, my 30th birthday, and my dissertation deadline. (For the record, 30 feels exactly like 29, and I was so busy in the weeks leading up to my birthday that I didn’t even have time to freak out over becoming an Old.) Now that… Read More Lipstick Project Pan Update #1
After three and a half years (!) of beauty blogging, I’ve learned which panning projects work for me and which are guaranteed to fail. I can usually push myself to finish a piece of makeup if three conditions apply: It’s a cream product (usually a lipstick) I like it enough that I’ve already used up… Read More Lipstick Project Pan, Fall 2017
Last month, NARS shocked many of its customers by announcing that it was expanding into China, whose government requires animal testing on all imported beauty products. Like most successful smaller beauty brands, NARS is already owned by a larger, non-CF brand (Shiseido, in NARS’ case), but it has not allowed such testing on its own… Read More Some Thoughts on NARS and "Cruelty-Free" Beauty
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