My Lipstick and Me

Filed Under All Posts, Beauty, Carine Fabius | 13 Comments

Popular Science Monthly, May 1939

From deadly poison to feminist statement, Carine Fabius unearths lipstick’s curious history

And now for something really important amidst all the issues in our world… My artist friend David Gibson and I were hanging out the other day when the subject of lipstick came up. He’d noticed several small, colorful bottles on my desk—a new line of herbal lip dyes that I sell through my temporary body art business. Anyone who knows me is aware that I never go a day without lipstick.

Our fearless leader, Cathy Fischer (who started Fifty is the New), likes to tell people about the time she asked a bunch of women gathered at my house to count the lipsticks in their purses. The one with the most lipsticks wins… I clocked in at 17 tubes. (That was then! I only carry one at a time now). I even wrote a recent blog for Huffington Post called Lipstick, I Can’t Live Without You. What can I say? I’m serious about Lipstick. But, back to David. Read more

The Evolution of Beauty

Filed Under All Posts, Beauty, Prudence Baird | 14 Comments

Prudence Baird shares an eye-opening video and her thoughts on beauty and aging.

How would your life have been different if you had seen this time-lapse video on the cusp of your own womanhood?

What if, as a young girl of 13 or 14, you had witnessed the impossibility of being that perfect face on the billboard? Would you still have lain in the sun to get that Bain de Soleil tan? Or, turned your legs (and Mom’s white sheets) orange with “QT” (aka Quick Tan)? Or stripped your hair with the spray-on Sun In, trying to look like those Nordic blondes in the commercials?

Would you have starved yourself to look like Twiggy or stretched your Dippity-Do gelled hair over soup cans to have Cheryl Tiegs’ smooth, waspy locks?

Me, I don’t think I’d have done anything different…I think I still would have broiled in the sun and sacrificed my personal development in order to please friends and boyfriends. I hope that I wouldn’t have, but as the philosopher Ouspensky said, “If it could have happened any other way, it would have.”

And, after all, what would be the point of being young if you listen to your parents’ wisdom and learn from their mistakes?

(If you are viewing this post in your mailbox, you must click on the title to get to the Fifty is the New website and view the video.)

Could Gray Hair Be My Silver Lining?

Filed Under All Posts, Beauty, Cathy Fischer, Reinvention, Style | 29 Comments

Cathy Fischer’s third and final installment of her “hair trilogy”

I thought of writing about a topic other than my hair, but my dear friend and chemo companion Wendy (who accompanied me to all four treatments, where we’d yak for a few hours, leaf through magazines, then go out for a fabulous lunch) insisted that I update those who are anxiously waiting to know if I’ve gone gray or returned to being a slave to color.

First, a quick recap/update:

In January, I posted “Wigging Out” which chronicled my going from hirsute to hairless, in just three days. It started when my hair began falling out after my first chemo treatment for breast cancer. I shaved my head, preemptively, to avoid the horror-induced depression of finding clumps of hair on my pillow or even worse, having a head resembling the cruelest of all male baldness patterns—the Franciscan monk look.

In hindsight, the quote about the “joy” of being hairless was true. It was a relief not having to shave or pluck, cut or color, for a few months. I’m pretty sure that most of the money I saved on hair maintenance went directly to shoe purchases. “Do what makes you feel good” was my motto, which often manifested itself in the form of new shoes, dry vodka martinis or extra crispy french fries. Read more

Bird Books and Other Wonders

Filed Under All Posts, Beauty, Melissa Howden, Politics | 10 Comments

Melissa Howden believes in the power and danger, the wonder and necessity of art.

Last week, my friend Stefanie sent me a link to the image above, entitled The Language of Birds. The image of a site-specific installation across from the famous City Lights bookstore in North Beach, San Francisco made me gasp out loud in wonder. The “birds” are books in flight. Below them on the street are phrases embedded in the walk from over 90 authors, as if their words have fallen out of the books. The piece, by artists Brian Goggin and Dorka Keen, was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Seeing the “bird books” ignited delight and made me thrill at the prospect of a pilgrimage to the site when next I am in the area. The fact that such a piece exists at all, and was commissioned by a public agency for the benefit of all, is also incredibly heartening.

Thanks to my mother who began taking us to live theatre at a very early age (she always got seats in the last row so that we could stand up in the seats to see and not disturb others) I grew up with an appreciation for art as something as vital and necessary as the air I breathe. Art that is successful, no matter its form, has the affect of rearranging my cells, creating a sense of expansion and challenging my beliefs. Read more

Gray Matters

Filed Under All Posts, Beauty, Cathy Fischer | 28 Comments

For Cathy Fischer, being post-chemotherapy is great, but soon she’ll need to make a choice about how she looks and how she might be perceived.

By now you probably know about Susan Boyle, the middle-aged television show contestant whose awkward and dowdy presence had the judges and studio audience of Britain’s Got Talent ready to laugh her off the stage. But when Susan Boyle began to sing, her matronly gray hair and bushy eyebrows disappeared and her enormous talent smacked everyone upside the head.

Like millions who’ve watched the video, I laughed, cried and cheered for the underdog. This real-life morality tale has people examining their own looksist and ageist stereotypes.

Now that I’m finished with chemotherapy, my hair is growing back—on my head, eyelashes, brows—and other places, I’m afraid. (Dang those mother pluckers!) My formerly bald pate is covered with hair soft as duck down, dark with smatterings of silver at the temples and marbled throughout. The Jane Fonda Klute wig I’ve been wearing will soon be a relic, so here I stand at the crossroads: go gray or say nay? Read more

Gray Texture

Filed Under All Posts, Beauty, Carine Fabius, Humor | 17 Comments

Photo by Pascal Giacomini

Can I just bitch for a moment about getting old? I know, I know, there are people starving in America, and I should just be grateful for my wonderful life. And, I am. But let’s face it. Regardless of bombs going off in the world and in the lives of people you love, if a missile has landed in your little universe, you can’t just wish it away. Pettiness and substance often occupy the same space. Life is like that. Okay, disclaimer taken care of. Now can I bitch?

I’ve written on this site before about going gray, and I thought I had a pretty good game plan in place: because it blends so well, start with platinum blonde around the crown, where it’s coming in at a speed rivaling the action in Charlie Chaplin movies; and, that’s been working very well. Until now. Who knew that my nice, soft curls would morph into coarse, wiry pubic hair? Gray pubic hair at that! Read more

A Parable of Woe or A “Hairy-Tale”

Filed Under All Posts, Beauty, Connie Stetson, Humor | 11 Comments

On my father’s side of the family I am part Swedish (Ecklund) and part Portuguese (Frias)…Ooh…I’m a Porta-Swede.

Up until the time of the Menopause, the Swedish ruled the Queendom of Connie.  Fair, liberal and free of excess body hair, they ruled all parts of the Connie with good judgment, equilibrium and ease.  The Swedish in Connie laughed and played and worked in the warmth of youth and vigor, proud of her lack of excess body hair.  Little did she suspect that just under the skin, awaiting some deep genetic signal, a coarser, darker presence was lurking. Read more

keep looking »