Category: All Posts

Posted on

Double the Pleasure: Cameos and Mermaids

In the style section for Sunday’s NY Times, the shopping snapshots feature showed cameo brooches and rings worn by stylish fashion editors and other taste-makers. I’ve long loved cameos and always like to see a vintage accessory appreciated. For me, it’s like is a tiny piece of art. I like that cameos are carved out of seashells and generally reveal one side of the subject in only one color but with much detail, providing a bit of mystery (find more about the beautiful art of carving them in this much older NYT story).

I also love mermaids and my mini-collection of cameos includes a mermaid cameo ring (pictured). It was an eBay find and I remember being thrilled to see it during a general search for cameo rings. Many others share my love of mermaids, but the mermaid cameo was an unexpected, double-the-pleasure discovery. (Like accidentally dropping a piece of chocolate in peanut butter and realizing they tasted better together?) This cameo one is set in a sterling silver ring and the siren is sitting with her arms wrapped around her tail, resting peacefully (and, I imagine, soaking up the sun’s rays before diving back into the sea).

Posted on

Seeing Red: Making Impressions with Makeup

When I was growing up, I was friends with a girl whose mom was an Avon lady. I remember trying out the makeup samples and coming home to have my mother tell me to wash my face — that I was beautiful just the way I was and didn’t need makeup. (Go, Mom!) She wore almost no makeup herself, so this lesson was an especially good one. But I saw images in magazines and on television of women in makeup and I wanted to paint my face and lips, too. I was absorbing the messages that makeup makes you more beautiful.

All these years later, I wear makeup (sparingly and unapologetically) and I also write about green beauty (because I don’t want my makeup to slowly poison me or you). I like the drama of a bright red lip color every now and then and I like the way the tinted moisturizer with SPF I use protects me from the sun’s rays while blending my skin tone. I wear makeup because I like the way it looks and also because it can be fun, in the same way it is for me to pick out what to wear each day.

But I got pretty fired up reading “Up the Career Ladder, Lipstick in Hand,” an article in the New York Times this week on a study that suggests women wearing makeup are perceived as more competent and more trustworthy. Certainly, we make impressions with what we wear — clothing or cosmetics. I happen to love fashion and enjoy choosing what to wear, but I know women who are disinterested in fashion — the difference is in personality. Yes, we show some of our personality with what we wear. But competence? Trustworthiness? Please, no!

The study involved showing photos of women with makeup and others without it, and respondents basically judged those with makeup as more capable. Maybe with a similar study on clothing, there would be an outcome like this as well. If you put a woman in a suit next to a woman in cut-offs and a tank top and asked a passerby to make a snap judgment on which woman seems more reliable or capable, the answer might be the woman in the suit. Or maybe not. Maybe the person taking the test would stop to ask, How the heck am I supposed to make that determination simply by looking at a person? I wonder if anyone asked that during this study on makeup.

I’m not even sure if comparing clothing to makeup in this scenario is fair, if only for the fact that our society requires that we wear clothing. Makeup? That’s personal. I wear makeup because I choose to, not because it’s expected of me or because it gives me an edge in the workplace. I hate to think that girls and women would feel that kind of pressure to wear makeup to make the right impression.

Posted on

The Right Pink

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but you probably know that already. You’ve seen the pink ribbons on products and on apparel. If you watch NFL football, you’ve even seen players wearing pink shoes, gloves, and caps. Hoorah for pink! I will cheer from the sidelines with pink pom-poms at efforts to raise awareness and research funds for a dreadful disease that affects far too many.

But here’s where I draw the line. So many of cosmetics being sold to women with pink ribbons stamped on the packaging contain toxic ingredients on the inside — and some of them are carcinogens. I want to applaud Avon, Revlon, Estee Lauder and other companies for what they are doing to raise awareness — and millions of dollars for research to find a cure for this disease — but not nearly as much as I want to sit their executives down in a room and ask, “What the f#$%?” Or, maybe I would hold it together and take a more calm approach: “Why are you selling products with harmful toxins, including carcinogens, when you know you can make safer products — when, in fact, so many other cosmetic companies are already making high-quality products without the toxins?”

That’s right. The good news in this rant is that there are companies making personal care products and cosmetics with safer ingredients. I use them. I don’t miss the makeup I previously used, before finding out about the dangers hidden in those tubes, bottles, jars, and compacts. I don’t feel like I’m compromising by using the better-for-you choices. You can also look up individual products to see how they rank for safety at the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database.

And the practice of the other companies fooling consumers into thinking a product with a pink ribbon stamped on it is a good one? It’s know as “pink-washing” and it’s disheartening (more on that here, from the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics). But we all make choices with our wallets. Here is one: Would rather buy a lip gloss from a company that knowingly uses harmful ingredients (including known or suspected carcinogens) to make its products or from a company making lip gloss with safer ingredients? I always like to support the good guys (and girls).

Added: Support the Safe Cosmetics Act.

Posted on

Fashion Flashback: High School Rings

During a recent family visit, I found the high school ring of my cousin’s husband and suggested that my cousin wear it on a chain as a necklace. That’s when I wished I had my own high school ring. I wore rings in high school and had already developed a fondness for jewelry, but I had no interest back then in a high school ring. Then Mr. MVP told me he didn’t get one, either. So this sent me to Ebay and Etsy to search for castaway high school rings. I found this one on Etsy and chose it for its color (iridescent blue, so dreamy) and high school name (Pleasant Grove High, which sounds like the name of a school in a book that would be made into a dark indie movie with a really great soundtrack). The Etsy seller wrote that she purchased the ring with a lot of others from an estate sale; it was dirt-cheap and now I have it hanging on a black cotton string made from a recycled T-shirt, with two other childhood rings.

Posted on

Santa Ynez Discovery: The Garlic Guy

On a trip to Santa Ynez Valley last weekend, we happened up the farm stand of the Garlic Guy. Poul Palmer has his stand in Los Olivos on Grand Avenue, the main strip with numerous wine tasting rooms. Poul said he has grown 100 varieties of garlic and we tasted a few. Yes, tasting garlic. I asked for a good garlic for making a marinara sauce and he said he was sold out of the first varieties he would ordinarily recommend. Then he peeled back a clove for me of the Rose de Lautrec and I sniffed it, then timidly touched my tongue to it. Woweee, that was good and strong. Sold. Then Mr. MVP came over and asked for a taste and he less timidly took a bite out of a Burgundy clove.
In addition to numerous varieties of garlic, he also sold salsa boxes. The box contained four heirloom tomatoes, two jalapeno peppers, two bulbs of garlic, and one onion. How perfect: simply chop up the ingredients and you’ve got yourself a pico de gallo. A traditional pico de gallo doesn’t call for garlic, but this was coming to us from the Garlic Guy, so we couldn’t resist. A dash of salt and fresh pepper, plus a squeeze of lime to finish it off, and it was all set. Yum.
Posted on

Style Souvenir: Cowboy Boots from Nashville

During a trip to Nashville several years ago, I found these Justin roper boots in teal at a thrift store full of stylish treasures. They were on back wall with shelves filled with pre-owned boots in various colors, styles, and sizes and I walked right up to this pair, drawn to the spectacular color. Talk about luck: They were my size. (They were my size!) I bring them out for special occasions and wore them out this weekend for a birthday party at a western bar. They’re good for dancing, too.