• save your life, cheap!

    How The He's Just Not That Into You Guy Actually Helped Me Get Over My (Married) (Strip Club DJ) Ex-Boyfriend

    Tormented? Driven witless? 99 problems but therapy bills ain't one? Welcome to "Save Your Life, Cheap!" in which we write about the dumb things that get America's uninsured through hard times. AA meetings, James Joyce, Ani di Franco, suicide hotlines…anything nonalcoholic can apply, the more embarrassing the better. Which brings me to: self-help. In our first installment, Sephora Spy's Loren Hunt reviews the $1 book that got her through the worst breakup ever.

    So, it's probably safe to make the baseline assumption that self-help books are not the kind of thing that anyone reads because they think it's cool. For some reason, self-loathing became more inherently cool than trying to fix problems, which would explain the aura of lameness surrounding self-help books: the corny covers, the corny catchphrases, the corny jacket photos, and the corny titles, which are invariably presented in a corny (and really large, readable) font. There are no cool self-help books. Cool people do not write self-help books. Happy people write them. And they could give a fuck who thinks they're cool. And you know who else doesn't give a fuck who thinks they're cool? A 23-year-old stripper who just used up every last shred of self-regard finally "breaking up" with the three-timing strip club DJ she had been fucking for the past year. And that, friends, is how I came to appreciate It's Called A Breakup Because It's Broken, the second offering from Greg Berendt of He's Just Not That Into You fame. More »

    3:30 PM on Thu Jun 26 2008
    By Moe
    10,846 views, 101 comments

    Latest by Cesybabe or Nirvanah Crane: 18 months later, and in a relationship with a very very nice guy, one friend still will not stop talking more »

  • Loren's Lessons

    Undereye Circles Should Equal Sexy, Not Sleep Deprivation

    One of the new frontiers of plastic surgery is the undereye region. According to an article in the New York Times style section, doctors have recently discovered that a round of Restylane injections, which cost $500 to $800 but only last 6 months, is the only real way to get rid of undereye darkness, which is largely "a combination of heredity and genetics.” As our Sephora Spy, Jasmine told us a few months ago, all those creams and potions that claim to erase what your momma's genetics gave ya are a complete waste of money. As the lovely Jasmine said, "Too much undereye shit going on tends to make people's otherwise good makeup jobs look like they're going to a newscaster audition." Also, I have two words for you: Sophia Loren. Pictured at left, with no gunks of concealer marring her sexy visage, Loren looks gorgeous and sultry. I think Loren should be the poster-woman for the pro-circle campaign that I'm starting. More »

    1:00 PM on Thu Jun 12 2008
    By Jessica
    8,572 views, 148 comments

    Most discussed gherkinfiend: If you had the transparently pale slightly blue tinged Irish skin I have, you'd be obsessed with covering up dark more »

  • sephora spy

    Can Foundation Really Be Waterproof? (And Other Details About The Next Generation Of Expensive Beauty Products)

    Sephora Spy is back! Fresh from "SOS" training — it's the OT-8 of Sephoraologists! — our undercover Sephora operative Jasmine takes a turn for the scarily-technical this time around. Waterproof foundation! Hyaluronic acid! Uniforms like something out of the Starship Enterprise! Dimethicone-based foundation primers! And so much more. Estee Lauder and Revlon are just two fading giants in a Brave New increasingly multi-polar world of secretive $65-tinted moisturizer-peddling prophets like Perricone and rising giants exhausting the world's mineral supplies. Your questions answered, after the jump. More »

    2:00 PM on Fri May 16 2008
    By Moe
    19,199 views, 213 comments

    Latest by stefrussell: Love your site. Just added to it Google Reader which I finally figured out how to use. I hope people who like more »

  • sephora spy

    The Dumbest, Most Pore-Cloggingly Ineffective Ways To Waste Your Money At Sephora

    You know the old maxim, "To shop at Sephora is to waste hard-earned money on something at Sephora"? Well, no one wastes money at Sephora like a Sephora cast member wastes money at Sephora, and today, our undercover operative Jasmine is going to share with you some of the dumbest ways you can line the pockets of LVMH shareholders. It's a particularly thrilling time in the life of our spy, who was finally accepted into the elite "Science Of Sephora" training program and is sucking up more juicy counterintelligence to Alger Hiss with us buying public as we speak. In the meantime, she tackles exotic new hair removal tools, crap that claims to cure under-eye circles but really doesn't, skin bleaching, and those "inspiring" messages on all Philosophy products. (Who gets paid to write those goddamn things anyway?) All this and more after the jump. Questions? Comments? Email SephoraSpy@gmail.com. More »

    3:40 PM on Fri Apr 11 2008
    By Moe
    34,569 views, 223 comments

    Latest by Miss Pontificating: I like Sephoria's service, they leave you alone to look, and are very helpful if you have a question. If more »

  • sephora spy

    Mineral Makeup! Lip Plumpers! Oil Cleansers! Colonics? Sephora Spy Spills All, And More!

    How did humanity even survive without some of the things we now regularly buy at Sephora? Yes, I am kidding. Today our Sephora Spy, Jasmine, is back, and, with the help of commenter LoMorale, she tackles your questions about some of the most common things you didn't know you needed before Sephora started selling them. Lip venom: is there anything to the pain? Mineral makeup: can you really sleep in it? Won't you break out? Oil cleansers: won't those also make you break out? "High-definition" makeup for making television appearances: crap, that's asking for a breakout. All that, a rigorous discussion of high colonics and what you won't hear from Jasmine while she's on the clock, after the jump. Not satisfied? Drop a line yourself to SephoraSpy@gmail.com. More »

    2:00 PM on Fri Mar 28 2008
    By Moe
    31,708 views, 300 comments

    Latest by MGB: Bare Minerals is the best thing that ever happened to me. No more forehead bumps, nary a zit in sight, more »

  • the week that was

    This Week Made Us Unbeweavably Tard

    More »

    6:20 PM on Fri Mar 7 2008
    By Jessica
    3,619 views, 24 comments

    Latest by ASmallTurnip: Not sure if this is the proper place to post this, but hey, I'm going to go wild and crazy more »

  • sephora spy

    How I Conquered My Cystic Acne, In (Just!) 17 Painful Steps

    Fighting acne is like fighting war. There is collateral damage. Things get worse before they get better. Whole villages of innocent, noncombatant pores stand in the line of our chemical weapons. And like war, fighting acne can be "controversial." Last week our Sephora Spy, Jasmine made an offhand comment about how acne can render a person "homeless," and some of you commenters declared mutiny. This week Jasmine is back to defend herself and what she feels is a just war on her adult onset cystic acne. It is, after all, her own experience with adult-onset cystic acne that launched her into the never-ending quest for a cosmetic cure and the accompanying lame retail job she works at to fund her, um, research. Because when it comes to the skin on your face, cysts aren't a shallow concern: They're deep. Really, really deep. (Which is pretty much also why they suck so hard.) More »

    3:00 PM on Tue Mar 4 2008
    By Moe
    56,751 views, 342 comments

    Latest by EricaHippolytus: Forget Accutane and all the rest of it... my doctor put me on Adoxa and it worked miracles sans side more »

  • the week that was

    This Week We Binged On Ex-Lax And Tyra

    • We live video-blogged the premiere of America's Next Top Model, menstrual cycle 10! We got really meta and Tracie's dog peed everywhere with glee.
    • We admitted the most destructive things we did to lose weight. Explosive diarrhea resulted.
    • But Elle told us that dudes find 'rexy sexy, and we believe everything we read in Elle.
    • The Sex and the City trailer leaked! Carrie gets jilted! So does Miranda! Charlotte gets knocked up! But does anyone really care?
    • We put orange pits in our teddy bears' heads with Marcy from The Cat Ate My Gymsuit.

    More »

    5:30 PM on Fri Feb 22 2008
    By Jessica
    2,032 views, 12 comments

    Latest by Vermeil: @RetroChristal: Me too. Its Rex Manning Day! Oh Rexy, you're so sexy! more »

  • sephora spy

    I Work Here To Feed My Sick Fancy Product Addiction; The Least I Can Do Is Help You

    Remember life before Sephora? When lipstick was lipstick and foundation didn't need to be "primed"? Well, ever since the the Berlin Wall fell, Pakistan developed nukes and "cosmeceuticals" joined the Oxford English Dictionary (okay, not really, but!) the world of beauty has been much more complicated and perilous to navigate. And that's why we brought in Sephora Spy, our double agent in your personal War On Ugly, to offer up beauty tips (and a few wild war stories.) This week she gives us some tactics for buying eyeshadow, weighs in on how dirty the testers really are, and shares the riskiest thing she ever did to get clear skin — and yes it was illegal! She shares all that and much more with commenter LoMorale after the jump. Questions? Comments? Email SephoraSpy@gmail.com! More »

    3:00 PM on Thu Feb 21 2008
    By Moe
    28,127 views, 314 comments

    Latest by MrsJ: I would also like to hear how to get rid of dark circles under my eyes. I always look more »