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.

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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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

Meet Jasmine, Our New Sephora Undercover Agent

Remember life before Sephora? When twenty-seven dollars seemed a good price to pay for jeans, but not, like, a blusher packaged in a little brown paper box? Remember when eyeshadows were actually sold with their very own applicators and "cosmeceuticals" was not a term? Remember when ten bucks seemed like a lot to pay for foundation? Suffice it to say, we at Jezebel consider Sephora a scam on par with Scientology, and we have long desired to find a spy inside the company to tell us how it works. Well, we found one! Her name is "Jasmine", and like a Scientologist, she speaks in code. (Did you know that when a Sephora employee insults another Sephora employee's outfit, the insult is known as a "gift"? Jasmine would like to be the gift that keeps on giving.) After the jump, Jezebel operative and beauty expert LoMorale breaks down the method behind the makeup retailer's madness and interviews Jasmine about her life and work. Questions? Concerns? "Pushback"? Email us! More »