How can we as a society tolerate you if you have the temerity to conduct your life in such a way that the appearance of your corporeal being actually corresponds with the number of years you've existed on earth? It's as if no one told you that the eight things you're doing nearly every day to feel better are…
Pop quiz: If a woman looks old + sexy and no one is around to validate her, does she still emit a breathy whimper? No really, in order to be sexy, who has to "agree" that you're sexy? Any passing stranger? A panel of Russian judges? The answer is one person, and one person only: You. The rest is sexy magic. And you don't …
Much virtual ink has been spilled over the past few days over the Oxford Dictionary's choice of "selfie" for 2013 word of the year. But I've noticed among the chorus of opinions on the social media self portrait an annoying trend: the selfie evangelist. Selfies are just dandy, they say, because they're a way for people…
Sociologists like to say that gender identities are socially constructed. That just means that what it is, and what it means, to be male or female is at least partly the outcome of social interaction between people – visible through the rules, attitudes, media, or ideals in the social world.
No one has gray hair on purpose, k? Gray hair is only something old people or weird early agers have or people who don't know better. Something people have who've decided to not "fix" the problem everyone else can see plain as day. But Kate Middleton left her house recently with gray hairs and didn't plan in advance for…
The compound used in chemical peels—the anti-aging procedure performed by dermatologists—is raising concern after a growing number of studies suggest it could be a carcinogen. It turns out that pouring acid all over your face could actually be dangerous. Huh.
Once, on a blind date in my twenties, a guy I instantly didn't like realized this and said something hilariously awful by date's end: "You're a bitch, and you're not even pretty enough to be a bitch." It's funny because I totally was pretty enough. No, it's funny because HE LOOKED LIKE AN AARDVARK. Actually, it's awful,…
Like the eponymous witches of Roald Dahl's The Witches, all of the heterosexual women in the world have conspired together to hide their true appearances (talons; baldness; square feet) from all men. How deep does this conspiracy go? Well, according to a new study, the average woman will wait four weeks and one day…
If you're more partial to maximum makeup, people might want to make the sex with you, but there could be a detrimental effect on whether they like or trust you. Okay, science, tell us something sexist we didn't know already.
Ladies: things are wrong. Things are wrong with me, and they're wrong with you. Other (perfect) people don't have things wrong, but we do, you and me. And if we fix the things that are wrong by purchasing products and services, the wrongness will sort of drift away and we'll garner the admiration we so crave — or at…
Did anyone else miss the day when girls got good at applying makeup? I must've been out sick when some magical fairies came in and taught us how to apply tangerine bronze to create cheekbones and purple eye liner to make green eyes pop. When I put on those things, I actually look like a jack-o-lantern. And not a cute…
Young women's internet-fueled obsession with the "thigh gap"—which is that thing where your thighs don't touch and therefore it's "better" (cool made-up garbage, beauty myth!)—is raising concerns among eating disorder professionals. For most women, a thigh gap is a physiological impossibility, not a goal that's attainable…
I read or hear about beauty and women about every single day. Partly, I'm in it, so to speak — the rabbit hole of things women think and talk about. But also it just comes up a lot in the background of conversations about being alive. And it's always pretty much in the exact same way: Women are supposed to be…
Cosmetic procedures requiring injectables and implants have been around for a while. But apparently now the quest for a youthful look is not about filling in wrinkles in the face but making sure the face stays frozen in time like a wooly mammoth.
I remember when I first learned about blackheads. I was a not-quite-teenager and I had come to terms with the fact that zits were looming in my future—weathering the years of ruined photos and traumarama school dances (lol/cry @ the idea that I'd ever get asked to a dance) seemed like a rousing, communal rite of…
Musician Siwan Clark has written a song called "The Armpit Song" in which she sings Regina Spektor-style about the woeful plight of the modern day American woman. Specifically, how she's "sick of being hassled into getting vajazzled." Tell that to Jennifer Love Hewitt girl.
Thanks to the ubiquitous cheeky shorts trend, these days, you can't angrily chuck an iPhone without hitting some teen in the exposed buttcheeks. Some naysayers might say that this is Bad because won't somebody think of the intact hymens? or that it's Harmful because what about those of us with buttcheeks we don't wish…
Huzzah. Another physical flaw for women to cash in the ol' 401k over. Conventional wisdom has long held that plastic surgery can "fix" most signs of terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad female aging, but the two surefire "tells" that you're dealing with a closet crone are the neck and the hands. Now that neck lifts have…
Jennifer Tress was inspired to write her new book You're Not Pretty Enough after being told just that by her ex-husband. If it sounds like the stuff that rom-coms are made of, the movie hasn't been optioned just yet, but it's only a matter of time her message is turned into a story of an ugly duckling who is saved from …
Almost the entirety of the non-white world is plagued with the never-ending desire to appear as "western" as possible. Whether that means whitening creams in India, blond hair in Egypt, or eyelid fold procedures in South Korea, the western (read: caucasian) beauty standard has permeated across virtually all international …
