My Morning Beauty Routine… Exposed!

Ahem. I’m getting back to the business of beauty today — yes, straight up, old-fashioned, beauty as in beauty products! By visiting over on No More Dirty Looks, where they’ve been doing this fun series grilling people about their beauty routines and posting all of the details. It’s weirdly addictive and fascinating to read how other people cleanse themselves (dry brushing? this is apparently a thing we’re doing now?), so naturally, I assume you’ll be equally fascinated to read such details about moi.

Especially if you’ve been Beauty Schooling for awhile now, and recall when I first took stock of my beauty labor before and during beauty school. (Need a refresher? You can find those posts here, here, here and here.) Consider this the one year post-beauty school look… in some ways I’ve become a ginormous slacker again (makeup!) but some changes (money spent on skincare products!) definitely stuck.

Oh and why yes, that is Audrey Hepburn pictured above because Siobhan asked me who my beauty icon was, and well, that’d be her.

Except of course then I had to get all weird and explain to Siobhan that when I say beauty icon, I don’t mean “person I want to look like,” because hello, restrictive beauty standards and broadening the definition and all that jazz… I more mean, “person I really enjoy looking at and thus, am very happy existed so we can enjoy her beauty.” And poor Siobhan was like, “Right, I just wanted to run a fun old movie star picture, so…”

Sigh.

Note to self: Sometimes, the soap can just stay in the box. Except — ha! — I don’t even use soap, as you’ll learn when you go read about my whole morning routine here.

The Wedding Report

As I mentioned back here, I was MIA for two weeks because I had two uber-important weddings to attend for some of my closest friends. And let’s just say it: Nothing messes with your body issues like getting married. Y’all have read how I dealt with that pressure (banning bathroom scales, freaking out about my teeth, going rogue on bridal makeup) but one thing we haven’t talked about a whole bunch on here is the very specific and extra weird pressure that comes from choosing your wedding dress. I mean, it can be epic.

So here is my friend Kate, to tell you about how she faced down this pressure and dealt with it in a pretty unique way.

Oh, and just for clarification, when it’s italics, it’s VA talking and when it’s not italics, it’s Kate talking. Got that? Here we go.

[Guest Post] Emily Does Not Strike Him As Someone Who Is Curvy

Y’all. So excited to have this post here on Beauty Schooled today because A) it  is going to make you go all WTF?! on this business. And B) Emily — who I have befriended via blogging and Twitter (OMGthisiswhyIlovebloggingandtwitter!) — is super beyond great.

As evidenced by this photo:

YES.

Which gives away that she is indeed Emily of Rosie Says fame and also, Emily notes, serves as a fantastic litmus test when online dating because it tends to weed out all the guys who assume she is dressed like a car mechanic for no apparent reason. Except for this one genius who somehow slipped through the cracks.

Here’s Emily.

[Fun With Press Releases] The Wedding Industry Wants You to Do Your Body (No) Favor

I spend a lot of time dissecting the beauty industry (you know, by going to beauty school, making fun of their press releases, and so on). But if you’re in a certain mid-20s to early-30s age bracket like me and my friends, chances are you’re also spending a hell of a lot of time navigating the wedding industry. Which is its own very special breed of insanity. When I got married two years ago, I worried a lot about my weight, my teeth and my makeup. And my best friend Amy was the voice of reason about one thousand times. (Amy is also the deputy editor of ReadyMade Magazine, so you might remember her from this post last week, about my house.)

Now she’s getting married in almost exactly one month — yippee! — so it’s my turn to try to say helpful things.

And since we’re both magazine folk, this particularly unhelpful press release landed in our inboxes at the same minute yesterday and I told Amy she had to go to town on it, guest post-style, for y’all.

So here we go.

[2000 Dollar Wedding] Bridal Makeup is Whatever You Want it To Be.

The third and final post in my 2000 Dollar Wedding Guest Post Series is all about bridal makeup: The rules we learned at Beauty U —psst, Beauty U fans: There’s a new Miss Jenny story!—  versus what really happened with me and bridal makeup on my wedding day.

I also get to talk about the awesomeness of my friend Katherine (that would be her, hair-spraying me down, above) who is a very talented makeup artist, just by the by. (She also did Kate of Eat The Damn Cake‘s wedding makeup and was endlessly patient with both of us no-makeup types!)

Because there will be a quiz later, make sure you’ve also read Part 1: Why I Stopped Weighing Myself Before My Wedding and Part 2: Yes Your Teeth Could Be Whiter (But Why?). And check out all the other guest posting awesomeness that is happening over there right now. If any of y’all are wedding planning, 2000 Dollar Wedding is where it’s at for keeping your sanity in check. (Even if your wedding costs way more than $2000. Promise.)

Thanks so much to the wonderful Sara Cotner for including my posts in her maternity leave coverage! (PS. She’s now the proud mama of little Henry J!)

[2000 Dollar Wedding] Do Your Teeth Match Your Wedding Dress?

Because in Part 2 of my 2000 Dollar Wedding guest post series, I confess that for at least twenty minutes, I was fully convinced that mine should.

PS. In case you missed it, Part 1 of the series (in which I encourage brides to ban the bathroom scale from their lives) is over here.

And one more.

I know, I know. Now you’re just going to think I’m some kind of guest posting slut, popping up all over town like this. Which is somewhat appropriate (in the most feminist, reclaimed, empowered sense of the word slut, obvs) since this one is a Q&A over on MyDaily, with the fabulous Rachel White, author of the blog Rabbit Write and creator of Lady Porn Day!

And here you thought President’s Day was a hoot. (Note: All of those links are pretty PG, but if you keep on clicking around Rachel’s site, you might find some stuff that is NSFW. And now you’ve been warned, so enjoy!)

PS. Just in case all of these guest posts are making anyone anxious: Do not fret. I’m just being extra social this week. There are some new blogging developments in the works, and I look forward to telling you more about all of that asap  — but Beauty Schooled is and will remain my true blog love, with plenty of published-here-only content coming atcha.

Michelle Obama and I Both Feel Good About Our Weight.

Okay, actually, I am not privy to that sort of insider Obama info. And neither is Rush Limbaugh, which is why I’m busy being mad at him today over on Never Say Diet.

But I had to go for the convoluted post title because, in other fun guest posting news, I’m also over on 2000 Dollar Wedding, talking about why I ditched my bathroom scale for several months before my wedding — and you just might want to do the same. It’s part 1 in a three-part series I’m doing over there, about all the ways we pay for pretty when we get married. I know. There are a lot. Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 in the next few weeks!

Yup, that’s even me in the white dress up there.

So, wow, you have a lot of clicking to do. Rush Limbaugh! Weddings! Hopefully not together! Enjoy.

Beauty Schooled is Over on No More Dirty Looks Today.

It’s like when the sitcom actors do cross-over appearances on each others’ shows during Sweeps! First they guest posted here. And now I’m over there. And it’s a really kick-ass post, so make sure you read it. Here is a taste, to get you excited:

I had all of these questions. Why are salon workers getting sick? What could happen to me from using all of this crap? When am I ever going to lose this last ten pounds? Why do I even think I need to lose ten pounds? What on earth is up with Brazilian waxing? And why would so many of us rather not make eye contact with the woman we pay to do that for us?

I decided to go to beauty school, because I thought by crossing that invisible wall between me (the beauty consumer) and them (the beauty workers), I might find some answers to these questions. I did and I didn’t. (Check out my new Beauty U page to get the full story from start to finish.)

But one big thing I realized, after 600 hours in beauty school and hundreds of blog posts and conversations with women like Alex and Siobhan, is that all of these questions are a lot more connected than I first thought.

But HOW are they connected, you ask? (Seriously, because I think this is maybe the first time I’ve ever explained it even after writing this blog for over a year.) Well, click away, grasshoppers, and find out!

See you back here tomorrow. xo

[Guest Post] What Happens When You Switch to Clean Cosmetics

So after Siobhan O’Connor and Alexandra Spunt made me give up styling products, I figured the least they could do was come on over and tell us more about how ditching traditional, chemical-laden beauty products can be awesome and not as hard as that sounds. (Because it sounds hard.) And of course I’m excited because not only are they here to give us the play-by-play of what’s up in their bathroom cabinets these days, they’ve also got some interesting thoughts on how simplifying your beauty routine from an environmental perspective can help free you up from some of those impossible beauty industry-created standards too. Which is sweet.

Also, I’d like to put the phrase “stop chasing the beauty dragon” on a t-shirt. That is all.

 

Siobhan and Alexandra, sans styling products.

 

Hello! We’re the girls from No More Dirty Looks, the book and the blog that maybe some of you have heard of, thanks to the amazing Virginia. In case you haven’t, here’s the short version…