Taylor Swift’s latest album The Life of a Showgirl is difficult to forget because it’s so alarmingly hollow. What lingers is the sensation that something …
makeup lesson
Taylor Swift’s New Album Is a Warning Sign of Who I Don’t Want to Become
The Girl Gets the Guy *After the Eyeliner*
There’s something weirdly magnetic about a movie makeover. The girl steps out from behind her old hairstyle, the camera pans up, and boom, she’s visible, …
Chasing the Chase
Born in 1987 (barely), I’m a Millennial. I grew up on a steady diet of TV shows and movies that centered around a girl, living …
Let’s Tell the Truth
Let’s tell the truth. Makeup is not salvation. It is not a time machine. It will not make you young again, nor will it deliver …
A Lip Color Warm Up
Sometimes, experimenting with beauty comes from curiosity. What would it feel like to step a little outside your comfort zone, just enough to see yourself …
Burning Down Beauty’s Old House to See What’s Left
The modern day beauty industry was built on scaffolding that’s starting to rot: filters, referral codes, marketing gimmicks, and the manufactured scarcity of “limited editions.” …
What Enlarges Me, What Diminishes Me?
James Hollis offers a deceptively simple compass for navigating life’s endless choices: What enlarges me, and what diminishes me? At first glance, it feels almost too straightforward—like …
What Makes Me Come Alive
Sometimes I wonder if I’m chasing beauty, or if beauty has been chasing me all along. My favorite kind of beauty lives in the in-between. …
The Mirror of Desire: Beauty and the Pull of What Others Want
Why do we want what we want? René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire says our desires are rarely born in isolation. We don’t simply want something because …