Archive for the ‘Beauty’ Category

I think it’s pretty safe to say that I have a deep and abiding obsession with chemical peel pads. I once pitched a two-page magazine story about the wonders of the little white exfoliating discs, and I had absolutely zero trouble finding enough things to say about how ground-breaking and life-changing I find them to be.

(I know – I need to get a life. Immediately.)

After a quick scan of these here Momover archives, I see that I’ve blogged about a whole mess of peel pads, including Peter Thomas Roth, Arcona, philosophy and Colbert MD.

Well, say hello to the hottie du jour: Dr. Dennis Gross Alpha Beta Peel Extra Strength.

I can’t tell whether I’m happy or sad that I discovered them on a recent wander through Sephora. On the plus side, I’m in serious like. On the minus side, I’m in debt. Not really. But they aren’t cheap, that is for damn sure.

And between the $200 Refissa and the $85 robo peel pads, my skincare shopping cart is getting a little spendy these days.

But maybe this is my new normal. Maybe I’ve turned some sinister corner and I’ll never not need the razzle dazzle provided by my beloved Refissa and my peel pad of the moment.

Whatever. I’m just super-duper glad they were concocted by the mad scientists in the beauty labs. Love you, mad scientists.

On Friday afternoon, as I was making my way back home to Momover Central from a schmancy beauty luncheon at the Waldorf, an email query popped up on my iPhone: Would I like to be granted media access to listen to Dr. Brandt’s radio show on Saturday? Gwyneth Paltrow would be his special guest.

Hells yes, I tapped back.

Faithful Momoverettes know I blog about Dr. B incessantly.

And while I blog about GP less incessantly, she was nonetheless the recipient of my first-ever Hot-Mama Appreciation Award. Love her. Team Gwyneth, big-time.

So I was happy to tune in to hear these two peppy peeps chirp about beauty and wellness. And I agreed with so much of what they had to say, which I will now convey to you, my lovely reader, because that’s exactly the type of super-nice person I am.

I will lead with Dr. B because it’s his show.

Dr. Brandt’s Top Beauty & Wellness Tips

1. Swathe yourself like a beekeeper and avoid the sun like the plague. Or, alternatively, just be normal and wear sunscreen.

2. Juice up some greens every morning in your trusty blender. Dr. B likes to pretend that his fictional wife Edna is whipping up his little celery | kale | spinach | ginger | green apple | ginger concoction, but you don’t really need all that backstory to crank out a healthy bevvie of your own.

3. Make time to prepare decent meals for yourself. None of this eating on the fly nonsense. You are worthy, darn it! Stay the heck away from the Taco Bell drive-thru! On crazed work days, when he’s flitting from patient to patient with a Botox needle in his hand, Dr. B even says a little prayer first before wolfing down his lunch and getting back to business.

4. Ingest vitamins topically and orally. Taking issue with the recent Iowa Women’s Health Study linking vitamin supplement intake with a higher mortality rate among women, Dr. B says we still need to popping and slathering. He likes B vitamins for hair and skin (niacin topically and biotin orally); vitamin D orally for overall great health and immune support; and Omega 3s obtained through foods like salmon, walnuts and flaxseed oil.

5. Steer clear of sugar. Dr. B is convinced we can retrain our taste buds to prefer less-sweet fare. And he’s adamant that we should. Not only does it add unwelcome padding, it contributes to wrinkles and sagging and spikes our insulin and cortisol levels. Your poor bod doesn’t deserve all that sagging and spiking.

GP’s Top Beauty & Wellness Tips

1. Sleep. And then sleep some more.

2. Drink tons of water.

3. Get tons of exercise. Gwyneth says she does cardio five times a week, and credits Tracy Anderson for helping her feel confident when she has to strip down to her skivvies in movies.

4. Give your digestive system a rest every once in a while with some type of cleanse. When she’s up for a major overhaul, she prefers to follow Alejandro Junger’s three-week Clean program. But she’ll also do a five-day juice fast from time to time. Our world is just too toxic, she says, not to take that extra step to rejuvenate.

5. Feel happy and positive. I loved that she said that focusing on all the good stuff in the world (her world, the world) is her number one beauty secret. We can all do that. Personally, when I’m happy and relaxed I look five years younger. It’s so much more effective, and family-friendly, than the $500 miracle cream.

I’ve had a long career in beauty, and one of the best parts was getting to know the late Kevyn Aucoin before he got absolutely batshit-crazy famous.

Kevyn was a great guy. A big old softie. But he could also be intense. Very, very intense. He once got so furious at me for something I’d written that he called and positively reamed me. But then he calmed the — down, reconsidered his position, and sent me masses and masses of fleurs with a heartfelt letter of apology. He was a volcanic rollercoaster of talent and love.

I think about Kevyn from time to time, mostly when I see props in the press for his fantastic makeup products. But here’s when he also springs to mind: When I look in the magnifying mirror on my bathroom counter and detect a bit of peach fuzz. Kevyn detested peach fuzz on his female clients, obviously because it short-circuited his ability to achieve the level of complexion perfection he was after. He wanted a flawless finish, and he didn’t want any fuzz getting in his way.

The other night, as I was surfing the new fall TV shows, I caught a glimpse of Whitney. I stayed just long enough to see a bit in which she and her husband are primping in the bathroom simultaneously.

Trouble, I thought; I believe firmly in separation of church and state. And when she whipped out a razor and started shaving her upper lip, I couldn’t switch the channel fast enough. Gads, WTH?

In the same vein, did any of you guys see the episode of RH of Jersey in which Caroline comes clean with the bizarre-o fact that she shaves her face every day in the shower? The other gals were completely freaked out by that.

So was I. She said it was for exfoliation, and here’s me, screaming at the flatscreen: That’s what scrubs are for! Get some Remède! Or Dr. Gross’s Alpha Beta pads! You can afford it, Caroline Manzo of the affluent township of Franklin Lakes!

Although I’ve shaved my legs almost literally every day of my life since I was twelve years old (seriously; I get the creepy crawlies if I can’t get to it for some reason), I’m so not down with letting that razor drift north, to my face. But maybe I should just get over it already. According to Hollywood lore, both Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe shaved their gorgeous mugs.

I can’t picture it. Or more to the point, I won’t picture it.

Not that you asked, but my de-fuzzer of choice is threading, mainly because it doesn’t leave my skin quite as irritated as waxing. Yes, it hurts. But I just channel my inner Marie Antoinette and repeat: Il faut souffrir pour être belle. Translation: Beauty must suffer, sister, so suck it up. Besides, I think a razor gash would hurt a lot more. Right?

I’ll cop to the notion that he’s an unlikely beauty role model, but I’m totally obsessed with Ricky Gervais’s teeth.

Since he lost all that weight, I can’t help but notice the Brit funnyman’s other stabs at making himself over. And clearly, he’s spent some quality time at the dentist’s office having his teeth bleached to an almost fluorescent white.

Still, his choppers are completely wack and utterly imperfect – almost vampire-ish. And I’m not saying that to be mean, because I love him to pieces. I recently discovered his now-defunct show Extras on HBO Go, and it’s pee-your-pants hilarious.

All I’m sayin’ is that Ricky didn’t go so Hollywood on us that he swapped-out his pointy incisors for 20k per tooth veneers.

And I’m hoping lots of others in the public eye follow suit. Not because I’m not down with superficiality – I wave a flag for superficiality every day of my life. It’s just that I’m becoming very drawn to an aesthetic that’s all about beauty checks and balances. Like: Maybe you’re wrinkly and crinkly but your bod is bangin. And since I’m trotting out bizarre-o boy beauty heroes today, Iggy Pop is a perfect example of the wrinkly crinkly / bangin bod theory.

Okay, perhaps Iggy is a little bit too beat up to support my beauty checks and balances theory. I’ve probably been reading too many French fashion magazines. Whatever. He’s just so cool, and – to me at least – ageless. J’adore.

I just did a Google search of celebs with crooked teeth, and shocker, there aren’t that many. Not that many models, either. But there are a handful with gorgeous gaps, like Dutch stunner Lara Stone and Georgia May Jagger, who seems to have won the Jerry Hall / Mick Jagger looks lottery. I even spotted a gap-toothed guy model in the new Michael Kors campaign.

Of course I realize that having a gap isn’t the same as having crooked choppers. Or teeth that, over time, just don’t look that amazing. In fact, just a few weeks ago, I blogged about wanting to get braces again.

And I think I probably will. Plus, I’m gonna buy a case of Crest White Strips Advanced Seal. (I’ve tried a million home kits, and those are the best.) But no veneers. I wanna be a super spiffed-up version of natural, just like Ricky.

There comes a time in every woman’s life when she needs to push aside her pricey OTC miracle cremes and clear some shelf space for the guns-blazing prescription stuff.

For me, that time came this summer. Actually, my moment of truth arrived a lot earlier than that, but I managed to bury my head in the sand like an ostrich about it for quite a while. It also came in handy that my eyesight isn’t amazing and I refuse to wear glasses. If your vision is sorta lousy, and you squint whenever you look in the mirror, you are perpetually 27.

Try it; denial is not merely a river in Egypt.

But for whatever reasons, I’ve been facing the music lately. Kinda. I could definitely benefit from some more invasive dermatological intervention. But I already tried that to do that, and I completely caved before any filler-filled syringes were actually waved about.

Wuss, thy name is Momover Lady.

Not that all was for naught: Along with an ill-defined desire to learn to age gracefully, I got something powerful out of my near-needle experience: A prescription for Refissa. Snap. I’m in love.

Though it can’t help with sagging and loss of volume (two huge bummers attached to advancing years) Refissa, which is a moisturizing spin on retinoic acid, addresses the third ghastly hallmark of aging skin: Discoloration, fine lines and that crepey-ness that comes from too much sun and champs.

It’s pretty mild – containing only 0.05 percent of tretinoin, the prescription-strength vitamin A used in Retin A. Still, that’s more than Renova (0.02 percent), the earlier ramped-down version of Retin A. And it’s a hell of a lot more high-test vitamin A than you’ll ever find in a drug- or department store retinol product.

Which isn’t to say that retinol products are a waste of time, because they aren’t. Several are really fantastic. But they don’t contain 0.05 percent tretinoin. If they did, you’d need a prescription to buy them.

Perhaps you’re not where I am, face-wise. If not, by all means dive into a big vat of RoC or philosophy help me.

But let’s say you want to raise your game, and give those little brown spots and sun damage a swift kick in the pants. Or a gradual kick in the pants, if, like me, your skin only likes to be Refissad about three times a week. Just call your dermy doc and go for it. You have nothing to lose but the third ghastly hallmark of aging skin.

Ooooh, so happy the ladies are back. After New York (painful) and Jersey (why, why do I still watch?), the RH of Beverly Hills are like a breath of carcinogen-filled LA air.

Who knew Camille could be so lovable? Not me. I’m actually feeling for her for losing some of her amazing pads. Her home in Beaver Creek is stunning. That stonework is straight outta Arch Digest, and I could so picture her and her troops celebrating Turkey Day there. Grrr times a million trillion.

Oh, and speaking of Beaver Creek, I 1000 percent loved what Kyle was saying to Taylor in the hot tub. Who hasn’t tried to get a gal pal to read the boy-writing on the wall, to see her own value, to not fear the future, and to get the hell out while the getting’s good? That was genuinely good advice. It felt real.

Here’s what else is real this season: RHOBH eyebrows.

A bushier, Shields-ian brow is one of the biggest beauty trends for fall, a fact I’m sure these hyper-groomed creatures are well aware of. Still, though, I kinda feel they march to their own tricked-out drum, and aren’t exactly memorizing The Row f/w 2011 catwalk look-for-look. (A primo example of the season’s power brow.)

But what if, for various reasons, your own brows are less than lush? Because of hypothyroidism, and waaaay too much professional plucking, I’ve had these weird “skips” (aka bald patches) in my own brow.

For a temporary fix, I swear by my Tarte Brow Mousse, which is still exclusive to QVC. It lets you fill in the gaps, and really stays put.

For a longer-term solution, my beauty junkie pal Nancy has been pestering me to try neuveauBrow. She even gave me one to try, but it’s buried in the cavernous recesses of my Beauty Armoire.

I’m on deadline now, so I can’t take the time to sift through all my little bins and baskets and unearth it. But I will later today. And in a few weeks (months?), I’ll report back.

Actually, it’s supposed to work in 30 days. So let’s chat about it in a month. In the meantime, vive les Beverly Hills!

When I was at the dearly departed Cookie, overseeing health + beauty coverage for tot-lets and their gorge mama bears, I was visited by the ultra-smart guy who created Damon Braces. I think his name was Floyd, but you’ll forgive me if it was actually Frankie or Fabian or Fauntleroy, right? The Wee Lass was still a Diapered Darling at that point, so I was a touch sleep-deprived.

Anyway, what old Floyd had to say made such perfect sense. Here’s why:

If you’re my age (40s, okay late 40s, what-ev-er), and had braces when you were a tween or teenager, there’s a really good chance you had teeth pulled in the run-up to becoming a metalhead.

That was the shortcut route to alleviating crowding, and it probably lopped a solid chunk of time off your prison sentence. (Weirdly, I loved having braces, but I realize I stand alone in that sentiment.)

For example, I have a petite little mug and relatively large choppers, so four teeth had to go. And I think that was kind of the norm – two on the top, two on the bottom.

In the short term, this teeth-removal stuff is fine. You get your braces off and presto, change-o you are the biggest babe on the planet.

And then you get older. And everything starts to shift, and you lose “volume” in your face, and suddenly it all starts to go to dental-hell in a hand basket. And then, says Floyd, you are totally and completely cursing your parents for green-lighting that pre-braces yanking. Why? Because you realize how much you need them for the holy grail of youth and beauty: the super-wide smile.

Obvi Floyd isn’t down with yanking. So if and when the Wee Lass needs braces, and I think she will, we’ll undoubtedly go the Damon route.

But what about Momover Lady?

A few years ago, I went to visit the handsome and hilarious Marc Lowenberg, who has beautified the smiles of a galaxy of models, rockers and movie stars. I hadn’t seen him in eons, but he segued immediately from pleasant catch-up chit-chat to dire forecasts about my dental future.

It was all “dark triangles” this, and “collapsed smile” that, and by the time I left he had instilled the fear of god in me. I had much brighter teeth, because he’d just bleached me, but I was a big ol’ stress-ball all the same.

I know Dr. Lowenberg is right. And I know Floyd was right. The question is: What am I gonna do about it? I’m not really into the idea of veneers. I know a lot of people with those, and I never think they look especially natural. Blinding white and perfect, yes. But maybe a little too Hollywood. I don’t know. I’m not ruling them out, but I’m not ruling them in, either.

As crazy as it sounds, I’m leaning more toward Braces, The Sequel. I’m at least going for a consultation. Maybe I’ll end up with Invisalign, maybe Damon, maybe old-school metal. Whatever will get me fairly quickly and inexpensively to a wider, more youthful, Angie-r smile. Brad Pitt not included, of course.

Between swimming lessons at day camp and our weekend treks to the town pool, the Wee Lass has been immersed in chlorine at least five times a week this summer.

This state of affairs has its plusses and minuses.

On one hand, she has mad skills now, which I’m thrilled about, and tons of confidence when she barrels off the diving board.

But on the other hand, her hair is a dried-out, scary-snarled rat’s nest. And no amount of No More Tangles (the shampoo+conditioner, the leave-in, the this, the that) is putting a dent in that mess. It’s driving us both nutsy, so when I fetch her from camp this afternoon, we’re headed straight to the hair salon to have several inches whacked.

Yes, I know about all the special swimmer shampoos. But if you saw my Beauty Armoire, and my bathroom cabinets, you’d hardly be urging me to rush out to Duane Reade to add to our stash.

Once I started obsessing about the effect of chlorine on my tot-lette’s locks, I immediately segued to obsessing about the effect of chlorine on the rest of her. And me, too. And let’s not forget dear Hubby. And the entire pool-loving universe, while I’m at it.

And okay, OMG. I just did a very quick, cursory scour of the World Wide Interweb, and I’m officially paranoid. I can’t begin to do this topic justice right now, in a blog post, because I have the Wee Lass’s playspace turned on its a– , organizing per the stellar advice of my current Mama Guru, Barbara Reich.

Plus, it’s the height of bad journalism to just sort of state that some insanely prevalent chemical – hello, most of us drink, bathe and brush our fangs with chlorinated H20 – is hammering our health to the nth degree without saying why, and what to do about it.

But I think chlorine is hammering our health to the nth degree. Crummy, snarled hair is the least of it. I need to investigate. Grrr.

As the pic here illustrates, there’s fierce and incredible puffy hair. And then there’s the kind of puffy hair I have, which is neither fierce nor incredible. Trust me -  if I looked like this broad, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

But I don’t. So we are.

I’ll say this for not working: It’s pretty fantastic for keeping up with your beauty maintenance. Nary a week goes by when I’m not doing a little low-level primping. And because it’s my béte noire – the weak link in my hot-mama chain – my hair receives the bulk of the maintenance love.

That’s why I toodled off to the Ouidad Salon late last week for a deep conditioning treatment. I’ve known Ouidad for eons, and recently had the chance to re-connect and interview her for a few stories I was writing. She’s funny, very cut-to-the-chase, and completely, utterly and totally besotted with curly and textured hair.

According to Ouidad, a hefty chunk of the population has textured hair – myself included. Translation: It isn’t stick-straight, and has some type of wave or curl pattern. Thus, she’s made it her life’s work to help us fight the frizz and coax the luster out. And a big part of that is education. (That’s why there are more than 100 Ouidad-certified salons dotting the country.) You need know-how; winging it ain’t gonna win you any beauty contests.

Counter-intuitively, in super-humid weather (meaning Gotham in August), frizz-prone tresses need moisture to calm the —k down. And that’s how I came to be slathered in a thick paste and parked under one of those old lady-style bonnet hairdryers last week.

But first came my pre-treatment consultation with Mirsada, who is Ouidad’s right hand and has lovely SJP-ish curly / beachy blonde locks.

“How often do you shampoo your hair each week?” Mirsada asked, as she scanned the new-client questionnaire I’d just filled out.

“Four? Five times? I work out a lot,” I replied.

“Very, very, very bad,” responded Mirsada. “Very.”

Ooh, four verys – one for each shampoo of the week, I suspect. Here’s the thing: Frizz-prone hair is dry. And when you wash it a lot, as I do, it just gets drier. And frizzier. A vicious circle indeed.

Okay, I’m staring down a whole mess o’ household chores that I need to get to, so I’ll just CliffsNotes what I learned from Mirsada:

1. Rinsing and conditioning is a perfectly good alternative to shampooing your hair to smithereens. Yes, even if it’s 100 degrees outside and you just huffed and puffed and bitched and moaned your way through a grueling round of P90X.

2. Gel is a frizzy gal’s BFF. But this is a two-parter:

A) Apply it in sections, maybe even using those long salon clips, and don’t just glob it on. You’ll have a lot more control that way.

B) If you don’t like “defined” curls, you can cut some of that crunchiness with serum. Just make sure your gelled hair is completely dry first before applying serum. And only use a drop or two. A little dab’ll do ya.

To learn more about curly and textured hair, hightail it on over to Ouidad’s info-laden website.

I’ve never paid much never-mind to the idea that beauty products “expire” the same way foods in our fridge and pantry do. Let’s put it this way: I once used a custom-blended powder blush for seven years. Sure, I’d misplace it for months at a clip. But I’d always re-find it, and then just dab it right back on again with nary a care in the world.

With the exception of liquid foundation and mascara, which do in fact need to be tossed-out on a regular basis, many beauty products can last a super long time – especially if you haven’t even cracked ‘em open yet. And that accounts for probably 90 percent of the contents of my Beauty Armoire. It’s just stuff that I figure I’ll get to eventually.

But most of the time, “eventually” never quite morphs into “now.”

Perhaps because I can feel work tugging at my skirt hem (translation: potential clients are reaching out to me, and I may just actually have to stop summering and commit to new projects pretty soon), I’m feeling a sense of urgency. I just want to throw out everything I own and start with a clean slate.

You know what’s really helpful when you need to go on a massive purging spree, but can’t begin to part with all your (allegedly) precious possessions? Watching an episode of Hoarders.

Oh my lordy. Recently, I listened to the endless rationales issuing forth from some poor lady who couldn’t bear the idea that all her started-and-abandoned crafts projects would be better off in the 50 dumpsters parked outside her home on the big day of reckoning. “Oh, I’m gonna make a coat for my dog with those carpet remnants,” she’d say to the hapless A&E crew assigned to liberate her from all her crapola. Or, “I really don’t think 40 boxes of buttons is too much.”

I’m paraphrasing, but you get the drift: It was the sound of someone who just couldn’t let go.

Of course I had mixed emotions as I watched the show, particulalry since I recently did re-start crafts projects of my own that I’d abandoned. (My knitting, which I’m completely ga-ga about now…) But I’m talking three or so little yarn kits; not the 3 million projects Hoarder Lady had tucked into every nook and cranny of her about-to-be-condemned California home.

I don’t want to be the beauty-product equivalent of Hoarder Lady, even though I’m sure she’s like the nicest broad on the planet once you get to know her.

Nice is great. Crazy-organized and nice? Even better.