Some of Watson's piece is needlessly insulting — she writes that if Palin were "to appear on television or in photographs wearing anything less than serious slap, she would look as if she had just emerged from a crack den (that's the way it goes, particularly if you're 45 and it's before midday)." Some of it just seems inaccurate:

Extreme Republican views, coyote-trimmed down jackets, guns in the glove compartment and plenty of good old-fashioned orange blusher go together like stars and stripes. If Palin were a natural kind of girl - slick of mascara for the school run, bit of tinted moisturiser and lippie for meetings - she'd be a Democrat.

But some of it is sort of interesting. Watson writes,

You either are or you aren't a make-up girl, pretty much from puberty, depending on what your friends are doing and who your role models are (and maybe how much your mother wears), and it is tribal. Right from the word go, girls fall into two camps, and we don't really mix, because the difference between the heavies and the make-up lites is about more than cash outlay, time spent in front of a mirror and whether you like eye shadow - it's a philosophy of life.

Now, I don't agree that "heavies" and "make-up lites" don't mix with one another, and I'm a little bit offended by the assertion that women like this divide because "it gives us an immediate and foolproof way of judging other women." But the simple assertion, "you either are or you aren't a make-up girl" may have some truth to it. I started wearing makeup around eighth grade, and for a short period, I went through a daily regimen of eyeshadow, mascara, and lip gloss. Thing is, I was really, really bad at it. My heavy purple eyeshadow looked like a bruise; my favorite lip gloss, if memory serves, was sort of a gross orange. I finally worked out that I looked like crap, and I retreated to the position I've held ever since: I wear lipstick, and leave it at that.

Part of my aversion to the wider world of makeup has to do with my increasingly sensitive skin (a swollen-shut eye: not hot), part of it has to do with money, but part of it is simply that makeup intimidates me. I don't "get it." Whenever I absolutely have to wear eye makeup (most recently, when I was a bridesmaid), I get someone else to do it. And I stand in awe of women who wear makeup effortlessly and wear it well.

I don't, as Watson implies, judge them — I'm more likely to be, um, jealous of their skills. But I have come to see my "make-up lite" approach as part of my personality. Maybe it's a holdover from my hardcore nerd days, back when I wore flannel — a sort of statement that even though I now care about clothes and fashion, part of my soul still has braces and watches Doctor Who. Or maybe it's the same slightly self-conscious low-maintenanceness that makes me sometimes brag about not owning a hair dryer — not, I recognize, an actual accomplishment. Whatever the case, my makeup habits are about more than a distaste for itchy eyelids, and I'm curious whether those on the other end of the spectrum — "make-up girls" as Watson rather infelicitously calls them, feel the same.

Sarah Palin: A Make-Up Kind Of Girl [TimesOnline]

If your pal X'ortel needs advice on covering up those scales, she should look no further than Allure's "Starry Night" feature, which advocates tinted moisturizer on the cleavage and not one but two types of makeup on the legs. But where Allure truly shines is the social sphere — essential tips on activities most humanoids take for granted. Devoted followers will remember the immortal "How To Take A Shower," but the December issue expands on the seemingly-simple-activities theme by offering advice on how to talk to people. For instance, aspiring humans should try to relate current events back to fellow partygoers' lives. Allure's example: the Jaycee Dugard kidnapping. Charming! But X'ortel might not want to take her cue from alleged human Kirsten Dunst, whose insight after a recent cross-country road trip was, "wow, America is so poor." Celebrities, like aliens, want to seem down-to-earth, and Dunst is, as we say here, doin it rong.

[Miami, October 14. Image via Splash.]

Ruth La Ferla writes,

A 27-year-old single mother from South Shields near Newcastle in England, Ms. Luke is nothing if not approachable. She is the kind of open-faced, plain-spoken Englishwoman you might expect to encounter at the butcher shop or corner pub. With her plump proportions and pretty if nondescript features, she seems an unlikely candidate to shake up the beauty world. And yet it appears she is doing just that.

For those of you in the know, Luke's an internet cosmetics maven and YouTube sensation who's garnered millions of views, a book deal and a cosmetics line. The Times piece quotes a few experts explaining her trick: says one department store buying director, "Her appeal is that she is the Everywoman...She connects on an emotional level, and her quirky honesty is infectious." And the editor of Allure says women like her because she's "not a threat."

This sort of patronizing rhetoric reminds me of the hundreds of attempts to "analyze" Susan Boyle's appeal. How about the fact that we just like real people? A new study finds that celebrities have little to no effect on our buying power; why is it still some kind of revelation to these experts that a normal, straightforward person is appealing to us? "Normalcy" is not a novelty or a marketing gimmick to most of us. It's just...normal.

Sometimes it seems like many who make ads and magazines and generally create our perception of beauty actually don't understand this. They say they do, because that's what you're supposed to say. Everyone knows we're supposed to celebrate "real women" in all their beautiful diversity. But the mindset is genuinely different. I recently read the memoir by Jean Godfrey-June, the relatively down-to-earth beauty editor of Lucky, formerly of Elle. She paid lip-service to a variety of beauties, and to avoiding unnecessary procedures. But at the end of the day, the assumptions were: you want to be thin and look young. Everyone wants to look like models because they're the most beautiful. And I doubt she was even aware of it: she was so ingrained with these standards that the notion of anything else was literally inconceivable. The thinking seemed to be, "yes, lots of women are beautiful...but you do want to be thin, right?" Or take Liz Jones. A bit off her rocker, yes. But when she admits freely that she, as a magazine editor, found women who were not, like her, anorexic, "disgusting," one has the uncomfortable feeling that she may not be alone. And she, mind you, is a theoretical advocate of expanding the standards of fashionable beauty!

And yet, when Susan Boyle or Lauren Luke takes off, it's a novelty. It's an aberration. The thought goes, what's going on with us that this appeals to you? You're supposed to like models! Doesn't it strike people that, as soon as we have access to self-produced media, the opportunity to make our own choices, we're choosing "average?" Editors know that actors sell more magazines than models: does it occur to them that this has to do with accessibility and presuming to know a bit more about them? That we relate even more to regular joes? Or is this a bridge too far? Sure, people still love the aspirational ideal, and always will. But I believe part of this is because that's what's presented, not just as routine, but with conviction. When we see a Dove ad, we know we're being shown "real women" and the condescension and the self-congratulation are palpable. It's not merely showing a variety of people, Elle: it's believing it. Not because we're not threatened. But because we're not stupid.

An Everywoman As Beauty Queen [NY Times]

Related: Most Claim To Be Unswayed By Celebrities In Ads [AdWeek]
Commentary: Why We're Fascinated By Susan Boyle [CNN]
The Appeal Of Susan Boyle [Huffington Post]

Earlier: Is This Woman Actually "Mad"? Results Inconclusive, Fascinating
The Inconvenient Truth Behind Dove, The Love-Your-Body Beauty Company

Although Max Factor will still be sold internationally, the brand born in Hollywood just wasn't popular enough here in the States. (Max Factor ranks among the top brands in strategically important markets such as Russia and the United Kingdom, corporate owner Procter & Gamble says.) P&G bought Max Factor from Revlon in 1991, but the brand is a classic American success story.

According to John Updike's excellent article last year in the New Yorker, Max Faktor (he changed the spelling later) was a five-foot tall Polish Jewish fugitive who left Russia in 1904 and arrived in California, breaking into Hollywood via manufacturing cosmetics for the film industry. When film changed  from black and white to Technicolor  Factor changed the chemistry and formula of his makeup, and actresses who wouldn't appear under harsh lights  Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, and Claudette Colbert  had new products, which were more flattering. When the company started selling to the public, it often used actresses in its advertising. (Check out some ads below; there are more here.)


"Max Factor Hollywood" lipstick, featuring Susan Hayward, 1947.


Max Factor's "Tru-Color Lipstick," featuring Evelyn Keyes, 1942.


Max Factor's "Pan-Cake," featuring Maguerite Chapman, 1946.

One of Max Factor's most famous inventions was Pan-Cake makeup, which was originally designed for use on Technicolor film and under harsh light. But actresses kept stealing it from the set, so the company made it for public consumption, and it "immediately became the fastest- and largest-selling single make-up item in the history of cosmetics," outselling all sixty-five of the imitations advertising themselves with the now magic word "cake."

Max died in 1938, but his son Frank changed his name to Max, so the business transition was seamless; and one of the company's claims to fame was supplying the green makeup that Margaret Hamilton wore as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.

One interesting detail the recent book about Max Factor points out: Unlike some other make-up artists, he was never painted as an effeminate type: "Photographs of Factor show him simultaneously as makeup artist, chemist, and father figure."





Max Factor Kisses America Goodbye [WSJ]

Related: Makeup and Make-Believe [The New Yorker]
Max Factor, the Man Who Changed the Faces of the World [Arcade Publishing]
Earlier: Max Factor: The Man Behind The Makeup
Hell(raiser) Freezes Over (Max Factor Oldie But Goodie)
Max Factor's Iron Maidens (Oldie But Goodie)

While I can see his point, it seems like the sixth grader is just experimenting with her look, and for a lot of little girls, playing around with makeup is a fun game, and more about make-believe than making out with boys.

Because when the question is what kind of experience black women have when shopping the beauty market, the answer is bleak. Stephanie D. Smith writes:

African-American women spend $7.5 billion annually on beauty products, but shell out 80 percent more money on cosmetics and twice as much on skin care products than the general market, according to the research. That difference comes as African-American women sample many more products to find the ones that are most effective on their skin.

"She spends a lot, but there's little satisfaction. What keeps us buying is the hope that this product will do what it's supposed to do," said [celebrity makeup artist] Sam Fine.

So despite being generally ignored or marginalized by mainstream magazines, black women spend billions of dollars on cosmetics, desperately searching for something that works. According to Smith, Fine also said he believes that the typical African-American shopper is "more likely to buy products from aspirational labels  Chanel lipsticks and Versace perfume, for example  than brands that are associated with celebrities." Could it be because many of the black celebrities who pitch cosmetics  Halle Berry, Beyoncé, Rihanna  represent only a light-skinned sliver of what the general population of African-American women look like?

Fine also noted that older black women are overlooked by the beauty industry: "There's no face of aging in the African-American community," he said. "There's Sharon Stone and Christie Brinkley, but no one who's African-American." Do the cosmetics companies actually believe the old saying "black don't crack?" Or do they honestly have no interest in tapping into that $7.5 billion a year?

Essence Panel Explores Beauty Purchasing [WWD]

Earlier: Marie Claire: 15 Years Of Good Skin; 2 Black Women
Cover Girl's Use Of Gays & Blacks: Progressive? Or Pandering?
Beyoncé's L'Oreal Ad: Lightened?
Beyoncé: Double Takes
Whose Fault Is It That The Ethnic Women In Magazines Are Whitewashed?

The new anaerobic digestion system will capture methane from waste provided by nearby cattle farms and turn it into electriticy. 85% of the cosmetics factory's power will be supplied by the system. According to L'Oréal, it's part of an effort to reduce the company's carbon footprint, and will cut emissions to 50% of the level recorded in 2005 by 2015. That's something everything can get, ahem, behind.

L'Oreal's Cosmetics Factory Set To Run On Poop [Inhabitat, via Allure]

[Image via Flickr.]