Today's New York Times' "Critical Shopper" takes on the mother-lode: Sephora: "It is an intense, high-volume job, and the cast members do it in flat shoes with the grit of battlefield triage nurses." [NYT]

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.…

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 …

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…

A recession is coming, and hoarding rice is not going to take your makeup off at night. An occasional series by Sephora Spy stenographer Loren Hunt on the cheap beauty supplies that will carry you through a credit crisis. •Cetaphil Gentle Skin Cleanser: So ubiquitous that there is probably not a woman over 25 who has…

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…

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.…

• Racist Barbie-fondler Allison was kicked off America's Next Top Model. We were not sad to see her go.
  
• Moddels in Bahlinceeyagga looked tard. The white-washed runways at Paris fashion week made us tard.
  
• But Christian Siriano's win on Project Runway cheered us right up!
  
• Obama foreign policy advisor Samantha Power called…

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…

• 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…