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.

Have you ever played yourself so badly in a relationship that even years after the fact the salient details are still enough to embarrass you? The kind of situation so inherently unfortunate that, upon its demise, you don't even want to tell your friends it has ended because they'll just snort, "good," and assume that it is so obvious that you are better off without it that there is nothing left to say on the topic? I met him because we worked together. At the strip club. He was living with his girlfriend when we first started hooking up, while sorting out the details of a divorce to a third woman. Our "relationship" only ever seemed to happen on the weekends, after work, where sometimes we engaged in what he liked to call "non-sex." Non-sex was when we did it, but then he denied doing it. I felt sleazy and dissolute, which, at the time, was novel and exciting. He was so nice when it was just us. And passionate. And caring. And secretly really awesome! I encouraged him to get secretly awesome all over me on and off and on and off for almost a year before I was ready to cut off my drama supply at the source and move on to something possibly healthier. But by then, I'd become attenuated to the bombast and obvious chord progressions of his Bon Jovi song style of lovin' and everything else just seemed... too quiet. Or subtle. Or something. Which was finally enough to scare me... strip clubs and nocturnal relationships with strip club DJs were supposed to be more of an interesting digression for me than a permanent lifestyle plan, and I felt in danger of falling through one of my own cracks. So I cut him off and stopped going to work lest he use his DJ microphone to manipulate me back into his good graces (this is the beauty of strip club jobs. You can take a week or a month or a year off and no one even notices). It was around then that I found a typo-ridden galley copy of something called It's Called a Breakup Because it's Broken: The Smart Girl's Breakup Buddy. This would have been almost five years ago. It was only a dollar and I thought maybe it would at least entertain me while I prostrated my unwashed body in front of my window unit air conditioner and flipped wildly back and forth between hating him and hating myself, murderous rage and spontaneous crying jags, fantasies in which his head exploded a la Scanners and tender reconciliation scenes that featured me in a trashy white bridal bikini.

It's Called a Breakup Because it's Broken brings the added component of Berendt's wife, Amiira Ruotola-Behrendt, to the wisdom offered up in He's Just Not That Into You, which is the guide to figuring out what's really going on with all that non-sex. (Namely, break up. Or, more commonly, wait for him to break up with you, which leads to that kind of horrible soul-crushing life-wrecking freshly-dumped angst most of us are relatively familiar with.) (I was proud not to have figured out the He's Just Not That Into You part on my own over the course of a year.) Anyway, the basic premise of this book is that the Behrendts were able to fall in love and build a happy relationship purely because both parties lived through a lot of bullshit before they met each other, namely of the breakup variety. Their co-authorship serves as sort of a built-in source of hope to people who are presumably reading the book because they have just had their heart masticated, digested, and flushed down someone else's toilet. They are, thankfully, not particularly obnoxious about this, choosing instead to stick to practical coping methods that you can use to put your breakup in the past and get on with your life.

Part 1: The Breakup

The first thing I couldn't figure out about my breakup was why it hurt so much. I mean, it had been a bad time for which I had for whatever reason repeatedly shown up of my own volition. I should have known better than to get involved in the first place, I knew the whole time nothing good would come of it, and it seemed to me that ending it would be a relief, like walking away from a car crash with only a few scrapes. And sometimes it did feel like that. But more often, it was the usual, "Whyyyy don't youuuu LOVE meee?" shit. Which would in turn make me really angry with myself, like I was so dumb that I had deserved the whole thing. The first section of this book does a good job of talking you down from taking full responsibility for anything other than making sure the broken relationship stays over and consequently taking care of yourself. They're always asking you what you'd want with a broken relationship. Which is the kind of simple logic I needed after spending the past year twisted into a veritable pretzel of denial and convoluted thinking. Then, just to make sure, after asking, the book repeatedly tells you that you don't want a broken relationship so many times that by the second section, it starts to stick.

Part 2: The "Breakover"
Commandment 1 — Don't See Him or Talk to Him for Sixty Days: Actually, it is that simple, it's just not that easy. If you were quitting smoking, you wouldn't buy cigarettes, hang out with people who smoked cigarettes, go to places where people were smoking cigarettes, or get drunk and call cigarettes at 4 A.M. begging them to come over for one last smoke.

I was all set to argue with this like, "this is exactly what I would do if I were quitting smoking!" Then I remembered that I was still a smoker! They, um, refer to this as "he-tox." I picked up a few phone calls I shouldn't have during this period of time, but for the most part, I stayed away. The thing about my ex was that he was super-charming and looked like an underwear model. I did not stand a chance in the same room as him and I knew it; hence the entire non-relationship. I stayed away like my life depended on it, which, looking back, it kind of did. Not that he was ever abusive or dangerous. It had more to do with the kind of life I wanted to live, a life in which my boyfriend would publicly admit he was my boyfriend and hang out with me during daylight hours. Bare minimum.

Commandment 2 — Get Yourself A Breakup Buddy 'But he was my best friend.' So was that girl who smelled like egg salad in the third grade, but you don't still need her around, do you?

The breakup buddy is like the Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor of broken hearts, dedicated to raising your morale and being on call for commiseration, all the while keeping you committed to your sixty day he-tox. Personally, I was so embarrassed by the fact that I'd allowed myself to be in a relationship so royally screwed up that my non-boyfriend habitually disappeared when the sun came up that I didn't really want to talk about it anymore by the time the breakup happened. A big part of making the break, for me, was to finally admit that the relationship had even happened, since he'd been extremely adamant about keeping it hidden at work. I cried on my friend Tiffany, a fellow stripper who knew him, a few times, and that was pretty much that.

Commandment 3 — Get Rid of His Stuff and the Things That Remind You of Him Be strict about it, but reasonable as well. Let's not pack up all the glasses because he loved orange juice, but the framed pictures of the two of you, his toothbrush and toiletries, and his CDs have to go.

The Behrendts also recommend recruiting your breakup buddy to deliver your stuff back to your ex so that you don't have to break your he-tox period and risk backsliding by doing it yourself. This was probably the most effective chapter for me, because it required absolutely no hard labor: I didn't have any of his stuff. Even after a year. This spoke volumes I was finally ready to listen to.

Commandment 4 — Get Your Ass in Motion Every Day Besides, you've got to have a life, because when you do meet the next guy and he asks you what you're into, you don't want to say, 'My ex-boyfriend.'

That is some real talk. The book predictably advocates exercise as a good way to fill your newly empty days, but it takes into account the fact that when you're truly devastated, getting out of bed counts as an achievement. Then it discusses hobbies, as well as making a list of all the things you didn't do because you were with whoever and doing them all by yourself. When I was ready to get off the couch, I walked into another, better strip club and got another job. It was so easy I suddenly understood why he'd been so clingy even while totally unwilling to behave the way a real boyfriend should: he'd known that this day would come. He'd been wondering what was taking me so long. And the bonus of working at a club that he did not also work at was turned out to be that he wasn't there to distract me. I rearranged my whole work strategy and finally started making the kind of money they tell you strippers make.

Commandment 5—Don't Wear Your Breakup Out Into the World Indulging in messy public breakup behavior only makes those around you uncomfortable and makes you seem unstable. So keep it to yourself and your dearest friends after business hours, and make a pact with yourself to try to live the vision of what you want your life to look like. Every time you step outside, you should make an effort to reflect the person you are on your way to becoming, not the shell of the shattered woman he dumped. Turn that husk into a tamale!

Tamale status begins with dressing cute at all times and refraining from crying at work. Earlier in the book, they reference the Lili Taylor character from Say Anything, the one accompanying herself on guitar to a song called "Joe Lies" in the middle of a party. And here is the thing about that character: what is awesome and hilarious at a party in a a romantic comedy is pathetic and uncomfortable at an actual party, for everyone, except at the time perhaps the one too grief-stricken and wounded to care much about superficial shit like "pride" and "dignity" in the moment, but oh my god that will change. The book recommends that you abstain from this kind of behavior, and I was good at this. Few people who knew both of us even really knew we were dating, and would have been surprised at the level of involvement and how hard I was taking it if they did know. I kept doing like I'd been doing and eventually started believing that it hadn't been such a big deal. In a lot of ways, it began to seem mutually convenient that we hadn't had a "real" relationship. I realized this a few months later when I attempted to be a breakup buddy to Moe and had the distinct pleasure of watching her send a text to her ex that read "I want to shit in your eye." I laughed hysterically. I probably wasn't cut out to be a breakup buddy.

Commandment 6 — No Backsliding! Once you give in to it, you find yourself caught in the worst kind of relationship purgatory—the demotion—because you are in effect telling your ex that he can still have access to you WITHOUT the emotional responsibilities. Backsliding doesn't mean you're getting back together, it just means you've lowered your standards and accepted a demotion from ex-girlfriend with self-esteem to ex-girlfriend whom he can still get busy with if he wants to.

Ouch. The fact that my entire non-relationship was a demotion out of the gate was ample reason for me to avoid backsliding. That didn't mean I didn't want to hear his voice or turn the lights on to inspect his perfect hip ridges up close one more time. But I didn't. Okay, I did, but years later, and when I was totally over him. They really are perfect! But by then, I felt like Jennifer Connelly at the end of Labyrinth, surprising herself by realizing that it's actually true when she says to David Bowie, "you have no power over me." This day will come. You know it will come. So think of it this way; the faster you stop having unsatisfying, emotionally fraught post-breakup sex with your ex, the quicker you'll be able to have hot unattached meaningless sex with him!

Commandment 7 — It Won't Work Unless You Are Number One! You are the prize, the sun, the moon, and the stars. Not him or anyone else. You can love your friends, you can love your family, and you can love every stray dog or stray drummer that crosses your path. HOWEVER, you have to learn how to love yourself, like yourself, and put yourself first before you will ever find the healthy, loving, and lasting relationship you're looking for.

Yeah, this is the hard one. Do I love myself yet? I'm getting closer all the time! I haven't begged anyone to use me as a convenient repository for all of their bullshit quite as flagrantly as I did while dating the DJ, and my boyfriends have become increasingly realer and realer as time has passed, with none of them counting as completely brutally gnarly Bad Ideas. I'd call it progress. While I have not yet found the healthy, loving, and lasting relationship I'd like to have yet, it is also true that I've gotten infinitely better at coping with the resultant breakups and in the process, wasted a lot less of my own time. I'm still not sure that rules are necessarily as ruthlessly applicable to the human heart in the way that the Behrendts suggest they might be, but I do have faith that I will now be able to recognize which rules are made to be broken in a way that I didn't before.

It's Called A Breakup Because It's Broken [Amazon]

First of all, the anti-circle propaganda we hear (they make you look tired! and old!) could be subtly racist, as the undereye circle is particularly prevalent among "African-Americans, Southeast Asians and Southern Italians," the Times points out. The race thing might be an exaggeration, but what's true is that when one covers up their undereye circles, they take away a certain depth and dimension to their faces. When you whitewash that depth, you also potentially whitewash the sexy. [Benicio Del Toro has them, and he is hot! I have 'em, too, and I never wear concealer. — Dodai]

Like Sadie I am a fan of neologisms, and I think part of the under eye circle's problem is public relations. Under eye circle just sounds so…unappealing. How about "vamp ring"? Perhaps "glamor crescent"? Or even "lover's shadow"! Sadie suggests "ombre d'amour." It's like a French perfume from the 20s! Sophia's ombre d'amour is ever so appealing. Fuck it. We should probably just name it after Miss Loren herself. Ladies of the world: unite with your Lorens flashing!

Putting ‘You Look Tired’ To Rest [NYT]

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

Q: Hi, I have a skincare question. I get spring allergies — really strong ones to tree pollen. As a result, I get itchy, watery eyes, a runny nose, and asthma. Pretty lame. And though my skin isn't directly affected, the watering of my eyes and the constant use of tissues on my face cause the areas around my eyes and nose to chap. Like your lips chap. The skin gets rough, and very irritated; after a while, toward the end of my allergies, it'll peel like really mild sunburn. In the past I've just desperately stepped up my normal routine — moisturize twice a day, with more moisturizer. I use Clinique and always have — I adore it. When it gets really irritated, I'll put rosebud salve, Vaseline, or even Chapstick on it to soothe it. Worse, the irritated skin gets really dark and red, and makeup looks hideous on top of it. Is there anything out there that would help heal this skin without waiting out the three months of hay fever? I'm willing to spend a little cash on this. Thanks!

I have something for you! There is a product called Hydra Healer Maximum Strength Moisture Cream made by a company called Cosmedicine. The company was started by a doctor who has incredibly sensitive skin to the point where showering hurt him and he was perpetually red and flaky and gross like what you're talking about. So he made this stuff for himself, more or less. This product has 11% hyaluronic acid, which is a natural substance that bonds and binds to water. One molecule attracts something like a thousand molecules of water. So this helps you hold on to the water you have in your skin already. This is not a light cream, it's greasy as fuck, but it's probably less greasy than Vaseline or Rosebud Salve. I think you'd do very well with that. Bad news: it's $75 for an ounce. That amount should get you through an allergy season, though.

Q: I just needed to find someone that works at Sephora! If you wouldn't mind telling me a little about working there? We're opening our first Sephora here in Montreal and i just had my interview which went pretty well, the store director is new also she only started a month ago. I just wanted to know if we get reduced pay for the SOS training? Do we get paid at all? and what is training like? Is it hard to remember all the products? And how much is employee discount? And whats the uniform like? And how long do they take to call you back after an interview? The store director told me that SOS starts May 2nd so i'm expecting by next week! I always wanted to work at Sephora. How many employees are there in one store? I'm sorry for so many questions i just want to be ready!! thank you so much!

You are hilarious. So, you should be called back within a week, and if not, they don't want you. Yes, you're paid in full for training. Have you ever had a job before? Sigh. Training is like: they give you a big huge Trapper-Keeper full of information about your skin and your makeup and your eyes and all this other shit. You learn the "Sephora way" of putting on makeup and Sephora hygiene, which is basically how you handle the testers in front of the guest. Like, it's not a Q-tip. I mean, it is, but Sephora calls it a cotton-tipped swab, which is what you have to call it should you ever need to directly refer to that thingy you use to put whatever product you're helping someone test on the back of your hand. Then you throw that thingy out, never to be seen again. They will teach you, very specifically, to clean out sample jars with spray alcohol and a tissue before putting a product in them to give to guests. To put the product in the now extremely hygienic jar, you use a little spatula that you also then throw away immediately. No, it's not hard to remember the products. It all gets lodged in your brain against your will eventually. If you don't know a lot about skin care stuff, start reading all the backs of the products while you're in the store to familiarize yourself with the ingredients. Read the little Sephora catalog magazine-y thing. Or go on the website. Figure out what's up. The employee discount is 40% for Sephora brand things and 20% for everything else. The uniform looks like you got hired to work on the Starship Enterprise, but the Starship Enterprise was turned into a cruise ship and now you're a waiter. But you know what? It's very slimming. Maybe kind of like the kind of thing a female presidential bodyguard in the future would wear. I've thought about wearing it out before.

Q: I've never tried waterproof foundation before, but Sephora, break-outs, and the prospect of pool season have me tempted. Do any of Sephora's waterproof foundation/cover-up brands hold up to the pool and the beach?

Yeah, none of it is really waterproof, even if it says it is. It might be water resistant. Whatever. Your best bet is to probably wear something super heavy that will wear off more slowly. I think is good is Laura Mercier's Stick Foundation That shit stays ON. It's thicker than what you might be used to. They are not kidding when they say it is full-coverage. I tend to recommend this to older women who have a really extreme makeup look going on already. Make Up Forever's Panstick foundation might be good, too, especially if you mix it with concealer. It was made by the woman who does makeup for Cirque du Soleil, so it's going to last a lot longer than a lot of other products under adverse conditions. This range has lots of amazing shades. Alek Wek and Tilda Swanson could seriously both find something that suited them from Make Up Forever. Honestly, though? Unless you are absolutely sure that your skin is like scaring-small-children hideous and it's not just in your head, just go have fun at the pool and don't worry about foundation, especially if you're acne-prone.

Q: Now for my real beauty question. I have become a tweezing addict, I have all of my facial hair completely on lockdown without the help of lasers or chemicals. However, my under jaw and upper neck area has developed this gross pattern of dark spots. I'm African American and have a light skin tone; the only thing that I can attribute it to is how men get shaving bumps, but mine are not bumps, they are dark spots. I've never had acne and the rest of my face is great, to the point where I don't wear foundation or powder. I have oily/combo skin so i just blot and wear blush and mascara. What should I do about the spots? I'm wary of lightening creams, these seem not good for darker skin. Also, I can't NOT pluck. Letting hair grow on my neck and chin is not acceptable. Thanks for any help you can offer!

Basically, you have hyperpigmentation. Melanin is something the skin produces to fight trauma, which is the reason that people get tan from the sun before they burn. Anyway, plucking counts as trauma. Jesus, now that I think about it, you are hardcore. I can't imagine plucking hairs out from the underside of my chin. I think I'd wake up the neighbors with my shrieks. Can't you just shave it? I might do that. Anyway, there are a few things you can do if you want to lighten hyperpigmentation gently, without resorting to hydroquinone. I mean, I love hydroquinone. I'm olive-skinned and it doesn't do anything creepy to me. But if you're not into essentially bleaching parts of your face, DDF Intensive Holistic Lightener might be up your alley. Peter Thomas Roth also makes one called Potent Skin Lightening Gel Complex. These awesome science fiction sounding names make these products sound a lot more intense than they actually are. Use a Q-Tip and put it directly on your spots. It should do some kind of something for your problem.

Q: Do you use a primer? Are primers all basically the same thing, or do different ones give different results? Which ones should I spend my tax refund on?

If you have oily skin, large pores, or acne, there's a product in the skincare section by Dr. Brandt called Pores No More. You can use it before makeup or wear it by yourself. Basically it's like putting a product on that has ingredients that will treat your skin type. One of their main ingredients is still dimethicone, which is the ingredient that is in primers, typically speaking. Then Smashbox makes a million different primers in about a million different colors that all do different things. Mostly, they are pigmented for people who are trying to correct their skin tone, which I think is often some musical theater shit and not necessarily something a woman just going to work or something needs. Some of them aren't corrective, though. I'd go for one of those, like maybe the Photo Finish. That's popular. Anyway, these are also dimethicone based.

Q: I just saw your interview on Jezebel.com today for the first time. I have to say that it was possibly one of the most entertaining things I've read on a blog. I really familiarize with you because I worked for Shiseido for a long while and I, too, am a huge product junkie. ...which leads me to my next question... I'm just about to run out of my face cream (Fresh) and my eye cream (Shiseido Bio-Performance). The face cream is.. well... "eh" The eye cream I love, but am looking into other options. I have combination skin. Any recommendations? Best, Matt

Awww, it's a BOY! So cute. Anyway, Shiseido Bio-Performance is really heavy! You're not fucking around, are you? Well, I don't know much about you, but if you're into Bio-Performance, you like stuff that a lot of other people will think is super-greasy. Primordiale Optimum is a day cream from Lancome that I think is called "Primordiale" because it is typically purchased by old ladies. Anyway, that's good and thick and oughta do something. Christian Dior has an eye cream called Capture R60/80 Wrinkle that is really emollient and it has that tech sounding name that makes me think men could get into it. People swear by this stuff. It really does kind of de-puff your eyes and smooth out the wrinkles.

Earlier: The Dumbest, Most Pore-Cloggingly Ineffective Ways To Waste Your Money At Sephora
•Mineral Makeup! Lip Plumpers! Oil Cleansers! Colonics? Sephora Spy Spills All, And More!
•How I Conquered My Cystic Acne, In (Just!) 17 Painful Steps
•I Work Here To Feed My Sick Fancy Product Addiction; The Least I Can Do Is Help You
•Meet Jasmine, Our New Sephora Undercover Agent

A short list of ingredients often connotes a certain degree of skincare integrity, and Cetaphil delivers on that, containing only "Water, Cetyl Alcohol, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Stearyl Alcohol, Methylparaben, Propylparaben, Butylparaben" Its packaging also screams integrity, claiming that "Unlike soap, CETAPHIL is completely non-alkaline, non-comedogenic, and fragrance free. Soothes and softens as it cleanses, helping the skin retain needed moisture." Does it do all of this? In a word, yeah. Is it exciting? No. If you get the big 16 oz. size that comes in a pump (for around twelve bucks), and the pump gets slightly stopped up, does it sometimes go squirting across the bathroom and stick to the wall like a load of slightly iridescent semen from hell? Absolutely. Should you use it? If you haven't already, you have probably been stuck in a basement for some portion of your adult life.

Cetaphil Reviews [Makeupalley]

How do you use a brightening/lightening product without getting kabuki face?

Fuck yes, I love these products. I have so many of them going and I like them all. I use them just because. They work, not fast enough, but they work. You have to be really consistent to see results, and as you get older your cellular turnover starts to slow down, so if some kind of pimple trauma happens to your skin, it might take up to a year for it to go away, so I'm constantly using something like this at night. Something funny about hydroquinone is that it turns brown if you don't use it right away. I have some shit from a derm from years ago that's all brown and nasty and I put it on anyway. My boyfriend calls me "chocolate chip" when I do that because it looks like I have them on my face. I'm shameless. From Sephora, DDF Fade Gel 4 and Post-Acne Spot Lightening Gel by Murad are my favorites. You can use them on age spots, acne scars, melasma—what you can't do is use it while you are pregnant to lighten your unborn child. Also, there's no point in smearing this stuff all over your face, it's more for spot treatment. The full-face treatment with hydroquinone is how kabuki face happens. If you're trying to get rid of freckles, for example, you'd have to decide whether a face several times lighter than your body is worse than your freckles, because there's pretty much no way to avoid smearing it all over your face in that case. If you're going for a whole kabuki face system, go to Shiseido. They have a whole line called White Lucent. Shieseido are the kabuki face masters. They've been perfecting it for like 200 years.

Have you ever achieved Zen by reading the labels on Philosophy products?

Close to it, sister, close to it. Maybe not Zen so much as nirvana. What I heard about Philosophy is that it was designed by a woman who was doing aromatherapeutic massages on cancer patients who had compromised skin from radiation therapy. So she was doing these with super natural nice products and infusing them with good vibes or something, and discovered by doing this that good vibes never hurt anyone, even when they're topical. So that's the idea behind the positive messages on Philosophy products: when you read something that makes you feel good while using a beauty product, you have an extra little moment of positivity in your day, which your face may or may not end up appreciating in the long run. Some people love it, some people just like it, and some people think its bullshit. I like it.

(Ed Note: I just looked that up and it appears to be actually true. You can read more about Philosophy in this Salon piece.. God I hate those fucking messages though. I mean, as long as I'm being forced to stare at the thoughts of some blowhard for the duration of my shower, couldn't it be someone interesting, like Hegel or Jack Handy?)

Which products are the biggest money wasters?

Exfoliating cloths or cloth pillows or whatever. Those things are a waste of everything and it seems like every product line has one. There are these stupid Shiseido The Makeup Facial Cotton things that piss me off every time I see them. Ladies, you should already know not to buy things like this. Just use a motherfucking washcloth. Also, anything that claims to grow your eyelashes or brows. Talika Eyelash Liposomes is one. Revitalash is another. They are both bullshit. Your eyelashes are not going to get longer, ever.

I have 190 Sephora points. Where my free deluxe samples at?

You need to march up to that counter and say, "where's my free shit?" They scan your Beauty Insider card at the register. The gifts are good. It's usually some kind of full-sized product. The products rotate... so if it's something crap, you can hold off on cashing your points in and wait until they're offering something you want.

How do I cope with under eye circles? Does that Hylexin crap really work?

Hylexin does and does not work, and I'll tell you why: under your eyes, there are these fat pads that keep the area really puffy and full, and as you age, these pads shrink, causing you to look like Skeletor. Underneath the fat pads are capillaries, which are full of blood, and these are what you're looking at when you see a dark circle. Hylexin stimulates the capillaries which somehow lightens their appearance. So this will work if your undereye circles are a product of aging, as opposed to something hereditary or generic or structural in your face. If you're 45 and have just noticed the dark circles over the past few years, it might work for you. If you've had them since you were ten, the only thing that is going to fix the circles is plastic surgery, and the only thing that's going to help them is a good concealer. We just got a new product in at Sephora called Eye Slept by someone named Tricia Sawyer who I've never heard of before and know nothing about. It's basically a primer that smooths the undereye area to help concealer stick and prevent it from creasing in the fine lines under your eyes. It has sort of a light greenish tint to it, and it works like crazy. Personally, I feel like fuck an undereye circle. I mean, I have them, but I also choose my battles and most of the time, they are the least of my worries. Too much undereye shit going on tends to make people's otherwise good makeup jobs look like they're going to a newscaster audition. I think the best possible solution for any kind of eye issues is a cute pair of novelty frames. They not only distract everyone else from whether or not you have undereye circles, they also distract you.

What's up with the No!No!?

OMG, I just got serious training on this at Sephora camp. I loved it. I Nonoed both of my arms. It's addictive. It's not really a blade. What it is is a hot coil, or wire, that sizzles the hair off... they call it crystallizing... you know how hair is coiled up like a little nugget thing under the skin? The whole idea of the No! No! is that if you apply enough heat to the hair follicle, on top of burning the hair above the skin off, the heat will also eventually alter the follicle so that it stops growing hair entirely. You'd have to keep at it. The blade coil thingy wears out probably every six shaves or so, but I think that after you went through about six of those, you'd pretty much be hairless. Anyway, using it is pretty foolproof. There's an LED light on it that stays on only when you're at the perfect 90 degree angle contact with your skin. If the light starts blinking or goes off, you're doing it wrong. It works best if you only use it on really small areas of skin at a time, maybe an inch or two, and go over the area a few times. You'll feel some heat, a slight prickle, hear a little sizzle, and you will smell the burned—sorry, crystallized—hair. It comes with a little exfoliating buff to remove the crystallized hair from your skin, but the first few times you use it you might want to even shave afterwards. It's definitely not as effective as a razor until you've been at it for awhile. I think it would be good for someone who is super hairy, used in conjunction with shaving.

Earlier: Mineral Makeup! Lip Plumpers! Oil Cleansers! Colonics? Sephora Spy Spills All, And More!
How I Conquered My Cystic Acne, In (Just!) 17 Painful Steps
I Work Here To Feed My Sick Fancy Product Addiction; The Least I Can Do Is Help You
Meet Jasmine, Our New Sephora Undercover Agent

Do lip plumpers work for anything other than keeping you entertained while you're on drugs?

They sort of work. Basically with a lip plumper like Lip Venom or Lip Injection, you're putting an irritant on your lips. Put an irritant anywhere on your skin and that part of you is going to sting, puff up, and get red. The lips are a really delicate, sensitive area, too, so something that might not irritate the rest of you will probably irritate that area. If you are not looking for entertainment while on drugs or in the middle of a photo shoot, I really don't see why you'd subject yourself to this. They don't sting that badly, although sometimes when I show people the Too Faced Lip Injection, they start freaking out and moaning and writhing in pain. These people being ridiculous. If that is what they think pain feels like, I'm glad I'm not their doctor. But the real question to ask yourself when it comes to lip plumpers is, "would I put this on my inner labia?" If the answer is no, it probably shouldn't go on your face lips either. Even so, as far as I know, there are no known cases of anyone not surviving a lip plumper. It's not really doing anything permanent or profound, don't let the nine layers of fancy packaging fool you. It just kind of tingles.

Bare Escentuals: miracle product or a gimmick?

Bare Minerals is Bare Escentual's star product. It's basically a foundation in powder form that claims to be so good for your skin that you can sleep in it. The thing I do like about it is that there are only five totally straightforward ingredients. It's mostly titanium dioxide, which is an ingredient you find in a lot of sunscreens. This is good because it provides some sun coverage, but the bad news is that lots of people are allergic to this ingredient. If you have an allergy, you'll break out in hives either right away or after prolonged use. Titanium dioxide is all well and good as far as I'm concerned, but Bare Minerals also has something called bismuth oxycloride which can trigger serious cystic acne in people who are allergic to it. Not so cool. Also not so cool is the fact that between the bismuth oxychloride and the mica, it is some disco shit. Which is awesome if you are eighteen, but for everyone else, the shimmer will accentuate large pores, wrinkles, acne, dry patches... whatever is wrong with your face, Bare Minerals will somehow manage to highlight. This stuff gets all up in my crow's feet and makes them look worse. Also embarrassing is that this was originally a QVC product. They also have really corny mall stores. I hear it works wonders for some people, but between the infomercials and the mall stores, I have to wonder if the lights in Applebee's are not maybe sort of forgiving. We sell a ton of this at Sephora. The starter kit is a really good deal and everyone usually buys that. You get two different shades of foundation, concealer, mineral veil which is basically powder even though all of it is powder, a priming lotion, and all of the brushes you need. Can you sleep in it? Why would you sleep in it when they make Rare Minerals is ridiculous. I mean, it's sort of awesome in that it is makeup that is also a night treatment. It's supposed to make you pretty while you sleep. I can see this being a lifesaver for girls who haven't gotten laid since the year 2000 because their skin is so bad that they don't want the guy to see them without their makeup on, yet are equally unwilling to go to bed without washing their face. It has decent coverage, too. It's makeup. I don't know if it works, I'm kind of scared of it. Every fiber in my being says that sleeping in makeup is wrong, and that it is even more wrong to put makeup on specifically for sleeping in.

Can Little Rock, Arkansas please have a Sephora store?

Well, way back right after they hired me, there was this big meeting when they asked all of the $11 an hour sales assistants (but not the lowly $9 an hour sales assistants) what we, personally, thought about the terrible conundrum of Little Rock. I tried to fight for you guys, really I did, but eventually the president told us that he felt that Little Rock was "beyond our services" in the beauty department. I had a free panini in one hand and the spigot on a box of Franzia pushed down with two of my other fingers. Who was I to make an issue?

I'm getting married soon and I'm so not a "makeup" chick. What kind of foundation looks the best in pictures taken outside?

Cargo cosmetics carries a product called Blu-Ray High Definition that is specifically meant for people whose pictures are being taken. I think the clever concept behind that name it is that it'll make you look good enough for high definition TV, which obviously magnifies every little imperfection and flaw and can sometimes be less than pretty for that reason. This product is a little kit for $59 that includes powder, blush/highlighter stuff, lip gloss, a mattifying primer, and mascara. Now, how mascara can be considered "high definition" in a sense beyond it separating your eyelashes is beyond me, but yeah, it's in there. The lip gloss is whatever. But the face products make a little more sense to me. They come in one color that supposedly works on everyone. The idea is that you use your own foundation between the primer and powder, and the blush is something that works for everyone. The fact that it's a whole kit is good for non-makeup-people, and also people who are buying makeup for a specific event during which they'll be photographed. As far as foundation goes, if you use this stuff along with your usual foundation, it should be fine. This stuff is pretty heavy-duty.

I'm Black, and I have what I guess is considered "typical" skin for Black people: oily, with blackheads and large pores. What should I use? How often should I wash my skin? Should I use moisturizer?

If you walked into Sephora, I'd try to sell you on the Shu Uemura Skin Purifier High Performance Balancing Cleansing Oil. Five ounces for $28. Basically the idea is that oil repels oil, so if you're oily and wash your face with more oil, it encourages your skin to find a balance. A lot of oily skinned people try to dry their skin out, which kind of makes their face think that it needs to produce more oil to compensate. Using an oil cleanser is one of way of making sure that doesn't happen. This alone could have a really dramatically good effect. Also, cleansing oils are good because they require you to massage it in, something that's really good for your face. Of course, since I'm not on the clock at the moment, I can tell you that you can do the same thing on the cheap with products you can find in the drugstore. Check out this website for the Oil Cleansing Method. The site recommends that you only do it once, at night, and since it involves oils anyway, there's no need for a moisturizer. Bare Minerals actually has an SPF 15, and it's great for oilier skin, so if you wear makeup during the day, that's a good way of killing two birds with one stone.

What other techniques have you thought about trying in your quest to achieve perfect skin?

I'm really interested in high colonics right now. I spent a whole day last week calling places up and asking them questions until they were about to hang up on me. A high colonic is when they pump your ass full of water, or water mixed with other substances, in order to clean your colon out. Apparently sometimes they find things you swallowed as a child, like pennies, rings, buttons, things like that. So what I wanted to know was, if you find a ring, can I keep it? Can I just keep my old poop if I feel like it? Cause you don't have to go digging through it if you don't want to, I'll do that part, but if I swallowed a ring as a child I probably want that back. Also I asked what I should eat first, and they said no meat or dairy for 24 hours beforehand. And I wanted to know if it hurts. Like fifty times, I asked that, and every single place assured me that it didn't. The one place said that all the poopy stuff goes through this tube and you can watch it come out, like poop TV. I asked them if I could do it every week, or if I should wait for something to build up, because, you know, they like to do a series of them. I'm not sure if that's a rip-off tactic or not but that's what all of them tell you. Anyway, it's supposed to be really good for detoxing your skin. If you are suddenly able to digest better, your liver isn't working so hard and your epithelial system isn't bearing the brunt of your bad habits. I can see how that works. Mostly, though, it's just something to do and I want to see what happens. A technician stands there and massages your stomach and whispers sweet nothings in your ear as your colon is irrigated. Do you think they get tipped? If anyone knows a precedent for that, please tell me. I would seriously hate to stiff a colon irrigation technician for a tip. It's poop. If they generally get tipped, I want to tip well.

Earlier: How I Conquered My Cystic Acne In Just 17 Painful Steps
I Work Here To Feed My Sick Fancy Product Addiction, The Least I Can Do Is Help You
Meet Jasmine, Our Undercover Sephora Agent

• 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 Hillary Clinton a monster. Then she got canned.
  
• Maybe she should ask Slut Machine for advice?

• Memoirist and former gang member Margaret B. Jones turned out to be a fake memoirist named Peggy Seltzer. The only "gang" she was ever in was probs sold Samoas.
• You know who else got canned? A bunch of Jezebels.
• Our Sephora Spy conquered her cystic acne. And it only took hundreds of dollars of product.
• Well, you bitches can afford it: you're bringing home the bacon.

So, how did you finally get rid of your cystic acne?

Cystic acne is the gift that keeps on giving. I have basically come to the conclusion that I will never be entirely rid of all of it. It's the hundred years war. It's the Mongols in Imperial China. You can stave it off, usually temporarily and by employing some really extreme measures, but it's not just going to go away forever and never bother you again, especially if it's the adult-onset hormonal variety.

But your face looks fine. I saw you in Sephora, under bright lights, and I would have thought you'd have some sort of miracle formula for dealing with this judging from how your skin looked.

Are you serious? Because you don't have to be nice to me about this. It's something I am realistic about. I'm breaking out right now and the cysts are so bad that I wake up in the middle of the night in pain because they rubbed on the pillow the wrong way. They're not gone or anything. If my skin looked even partially okay, it is because I have gotten good at doing makeup, which is necessary when you have acne. Actually, I think one of the best ways to help acne heal is to wear nothing except your skin care products — if you can hack it. Obviously, I can't. I am not Mother Teresa. I just want my skin to look good. But for anyone who can hack no makeup, that's probably the best way.

Meanwhile, this is how I feel about makeup. I want to look flawless, with light, gorgeous coverage... no Hollywood Post-Nine-PM drag, no crusty MAC tranny face situation, none of that. So with acne, to avoid getting crusty faced, you need something that gives heavy coverage without giving the appearance of being heavy-coverage makeup. So a smooth formula becomes all-important. Make Up Forever makes good full-coverage foundations that I use sometimes, with Clinique's All About Eyes concealer for spots. I don't love Clinique, but I like their concealer. It doesn't crack or get crusty as much as other concealers, maybe because it's meant to be for the under eye area. Lancome Photogenic Ultra Comfort foundation is a miracle. I think it must have some sort of dimethicone in it, because it goes on really smoothly. Napoleon China Doll foundation is like $50 a tube, but it's another miracle worker for me. These things are what is getting me through my Sephora shifts under those lights right now. I'm glad you think my skin looks good— I try really hard to get it to a state of general passability.

Okay, but for us mere mortals, weapons need to be deployed, attack strategies need to be perfected. What is the most radical thing you tried?

Well, the time I stole all those cortisone syringes from the dermatologist's office, which was the most risky thing I did from an ethical standpoint. But I think I know what you're getting at: cruel and unusual punishments, and I will tell you that nothing really compared to the 30% glycolic peel I had once. I went through maybe four weeks of intense, intense peeling. And when I say peeling, I looked like I was like... a burn victim who was never going to be better again. I had a prescription for silver sulfadiazine cream to use afterwards, which is literally the same thing that is prescribed for burn victims. The whole thing was pretty horrible. But when I got through to the other side, it looked like Jesus Christ came down and touched my face. My cheeks felt like the stomach of a six year-old child. I looked really good. The results lasted for maybe three months.

What did you try next?
At some point I started visiting an acupuncturist who got me into Chinese homeopathic face reading, which basically dictates that the area in which your acne appears corresponds to larger health problems. If you have acne from the nose down, like in the chin area, your lower cheeks, around your lips— it's hormonal. If it's in the temple area [-Ha! -Moe] it's toxicity... so you should worry about your liver and your kidneys, stock up on supplements to help those things out, maybe do a cleanse. On the forehead, it's usually an issue of sebum, hair that hasn't been washed enough, that kind of thing. There are a lot of websites that can offer rough guides. (Like here.) And this is if you believe in this stuff, which I do. The face reader I saw is pretty convinced that most adult onset acne is of the hormonal variety. Chinese homeopaths will give you teas, tinctures, things to balance your hormones, herbs, acupuncture, acupressure... did the acne come back? Yeah. But here's the thing: it always does.

If most acne is hormonal, does that mean I should just go on the pill already?
Well, that's what I did next. I went on Ortho Tri-Cyclen, the birth control pill. I took it for purely cosmetic reasons. If I hadn't had acne, I'd have just told guys to fuck me in the ear or the armpit or whatever, I don't give a fuck. But it cleared up my skin for awhile. It does, of course, lower your sex drive and it makes some people crazy, although acne made me way crazier, so it's a trade-off.

Is there anything too radical you've been too scared to use?
Part of me thinks using antiandrogens to treat hormonal acne is really where it's at. You want something that blocks testosterone from being received by your skin. I think that's what gives women acne. Also, a sex drive. These drugs are no joke, though. Antiandrogens are what they give male-to-female transsexuals. Spironolactone is one of the antiandrogens some doctors use to treat acne hormonally now. It's for high blood pressure and has supposedly "feminizing" side effects so men are only supposed to take it in extreme cases. Anyway, when women take it, their acne sometimes disappears. My gut feeling is that hormone therapy is probably the best bet for getting rid of the hormonal kind of acne, but I'm sketchy about using it. That's saying a lot because I'd harvest goat piss during a full moon and bathe in it while chanting hymns to Satan to get rid of my acne. But I do sort of feel that if I need hormone therapy this intense to get rid of my acne, maybe I'm just meant to have it and that's that.

Another thing I've noticed is that no one thing works for me forever, but short-term, a lot of things work. Maybe the answer lies in just rotating treatments, mixing it up so that your skin doesn't have a chance to figure out a way to thwart your treatment. I'm planning on seeing an endocrinologist next. I'll report back on what they say about it.

What are some of the more moderate treatments sold in stores — say, Sephora — that you've seen work for other people?
DERMAdoctor is a really good line. Don't let the queer-ass names stop you from buying this shit, this is a company that is not afraid to use chemicals, which I like. Ain't Misbehavin' is their acne serum. Supposedly, it contains two ingredients that specifically fight hormonal breakouts, so if you believe the packaging you're applying some sort of hormonal inhibitor to your skin. Picture Porefect is another serum in the line that helps with what people like to call "enlarged pores." Basically, you can't shrink the actual size of your pores. But if you're aging and losing collagen and sagging, the shape of the pores will kind of stretch out. This stuff will help with that, and you'll temporarily look better. Blockhead—specifically for a patch of blackheads. It comes in a container that looks like an eyedropper. It's a really intense exfoliating serum that just goes on one patch of skin. It'll make you dry, but it'll work on the blackheads. Expect a dry, red patch for a week. In order to get rid of this stuff, a few layers of skin are going to come off and you're going to look like shit for awhile.

Kinerase's acne line is a gentler approach to healing acne... more about healing than exfoliating, which is good especially for older clients who don't feel like abrading the fuck out of their face. They all contain this topical antioxidant that's very soothing and good for people who are dry, sensitive, and flaky, but still breaking out. Clear Skin Moisture Light is nice and gentle. Clear Skin Treatment Serum smells like sphincter, but if that's what it takes to nurse your skin back to health, I know I'd walk around with the whole sphincter in my pocket.

What about acne scarring? Is there anything I can do to minimize this?
Two different concerns here. The first one being that people with darker complexions are going to deal with hyper-pigmentation, or dark spots where their zits used to be. Hydroquinone, which has recently been linked to liver cancer, is something that helps with that. You can get a 2% solution over the counter and a dermatologist will prescribe a 4%. A lot of companies are coming up with hydroquinone free products that lighten up dark spots a bit... kojic acid, licorice, naturally occurring melanin inhibitors from plants. Do they work as well? Ehhh.

Then we have our lovely pits. Microdermabrasion or a chemical peel will help with those. I think microdermabrasion will be a course of six treatments, which will run you about a thousand bucks. Peels are about $250, and that's just one. Cosmetic fillers that you'd get from a plastic surgeon. Oh, side note: I would never recommend microdermabrasion or a peel on a live crusty zit situation. It's abrading the skin, tearing it. When you do that, the tears become channels that the bacteria can swim up and infect other parts of your face. You're making an open wound situation on your skin. I don't believe in doing microderm until you're finished with your acne treatment, kind of like icing on the cake.

At what point do you just embrace your sad, homeless-looking face and say "Fuck it, I'm done?"
This is, believe it or not, something I've done a lot of thinking about. I know I'm out of control. Nice, clear skin is my obsession the way some people are into shoes, clothes, hair, sports cars, big screen TVs, whatever else they're obsessed with. I don't give a shit about any of that. I'll leave my house in a nipple ring and a diaper, but when you see me walking down the street you'll be like, "Oh! Your face looks radiant!" That's my goal. I will spend all of pennies and go into debt looking for the answer to this. When I bought my house, one of the things I liked best about it was the third floor bathroom. It's gigantic. I have a whole skin care station set up in it, with basically theater lights to make sure that I am not missing anything. I do firmly believe that all of the things I have done to stay on top of my skin situation have improved my face. It looks better than it would if I were not doing anything.

Which brings me to the homeless. You ever see a kid who's probably from Darien, Connecticut with rich parents sitting on the street with their dog and their dreadlocks and their heroin addiction and a little sign and a face full of pimples? That's what I'm talking about. They have made a choice to not take care of their skin: hence, they are pimply. The choice they made was to jump from boxcar to boxcar and re-name themselves Avocado and become a crust-punk junkie or whatever else it is that they believe in. I'm not knocking their lifestyle. I just do not personally want to look like a member of it when I am not. We all have our priorities, including the homeless, but I think it's somewhat dishonest to pretend that they are the same ones in a column about what is basically a gigantic beauty product franchise.

Anyway, getting intensely into skincare basically comes down to a lifestyle choice, too. A lot of the things you can do to yourself to help with your acne are the kinds of thing a sane person would not willfully elect to do to themselves if they were not in a desperate situation. When you fuck with this stuff, you are almost always going to look hideously fug before you look better. Once you kind of stabilize, your skin will look better. But if you have cystic acne, this is like a quest. I think a person really needs to evaluate how much their acne bothers them and make a decision, because none of the treatments are fun or anything. I mean, how bad is your acne? If you have one zit and go on Accutane, I guess that's your choice, but... even I think that's insane. But it's all about what it's worth to you. And if you can honestly evaluate whether all the peeling and flaking and burning and not wanting to leave your house is worth it to eradicate that one zit from existence, then there is no shortage of things for you to try that will more or less, temporarily, accomplish that goal.

Earlier: I Work Here To Feed My Sick Fancy Product Addiction The Least I Can Do Is Help You
Meet Jasmine, Our New Sephora Undercover Agent

• 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.

• Lohan posed nekkid for New York as an homage to Marilyn Monroe. We wondered whether her assets were real or manmade
• Our Sephora Spy stood up and admitted to the world that she's a product-oholic
• John McCain maybes fucked this blonde lobbyist who looks just like his wife.
• J.Lo pushed out some spawn. We cannot WAIT to find out what she names them. Fingers crossed for Anthony and Antonia Lopez-Anthony!
• Cosmo said vaj-jay-jay. We barfed.
• Now go spend your blissful work-free weekend meditating on why Ginger Spice does not get more respect. Hop to it!

How gross are the testers? Which ones are safe to try?

Well, testers in general are always sort of borderline gross. This is why you should get a sample from a Sephora cast member whenever possible. We have drawers and drawers full of them, and every client is supposed to leave the store with three samples. Lately we've all been living in fear of being "shopped," which is when someone working for the company poses as a client and then reports back to corporate about how the cast member did. If someone won't give you samples, that's really fucked up of them first of all, but it's also a big company no-no. This gets tricky with Color World. Makeup samples are harder to give out, but we have a few, so you should always ask. But the testers are always going to be the testers and people are always going to do what they do with them no matter where you are. I've seen people do some really gnarly things with the testers. The best is when they stick their dirty fingers right into the pots of face cream and rub it all over their faces in huge amounts in the middle of the store. Sometimes the jar is getting kind of empty and they're all in there trying to dig it out. People who are sort of possibly homeless-ish play with all the testers. I've seen tons of people pick lipsticks up off the displays and put them directly on their lips. When we see this, we're supposed to discreetly get rid of the sample and put out a fresh one, but you can't be everywhere at once so we miss things. We're also supposed to direct everyone to one of the hygiene stations with all the disposable applicators, but they don't always listen. That's also sort of why the hygiene station is there—so you can personally do something to avoid getting in on other people's nasty shit.

When will Fort Wayne, Indiana get a Sephora store?

How the fuck am I supposed to know? I am extremely busy working a register and stocking shelves and putting Prevage in my mouth. I have no idea. Call 1-877-SEPHORA. It'll get you somewhere, although I don't know where that somewhere would be.

What's the best way to get the cast members to actually help you instead of standing around talking to each other?

Ooh, they call that a "black cloud." Because we all wear black, you know, and if too many of us are standing around together, it's like we're going to rain on people's shopping experience. You shouldn't be having a hard time getting a cast member's attention or getting them to help you, and there aren't supposed to be black clouds out on the stage. Obviously black clouds happen, customer service is not perfect, blah blah blah. If you call a store and ask for Leadership, someone will very patiently listen to you complain, be really nice about it, and then probably hang up the phone and talk shit on you. Also, you're complaining about someone who is probably going to leave the company within six months anyway. This job is for children who like eye shadow. You might be able to kind of get some of them in trouble by doing this, but probably not.

What do you think about the Sephora brand eye shadows?

I like them. I use them. They have really pretty colors, and I like the texture of the creamier ones a lot. I think that sometimes, people expect them to be more highly pigmented than they are. They look like they're going to be these really bold colors, but then they go on a little more sheerly. If you want a more pigmented eye shadow, look for companies that are making those. MAC is sort of the gold standard for highly pigmented eye shadows... but I mean, MAC is no joke. Drag queens and movie sets use it. Highly pigmented is what they do. Definitely try stuff out on your hand before you buy it if you're not sure what it does. Or just return it. Sephora brand everything is kind of "meh." The brushes and stuff are cool, but the products are all really middle-of-the-line and not that exciting, especially compared to the other lines we carry.

Why are you so eager to stay at this job, get the training, and learn more? Are you an esthetician or just between jobs, or what?

Okay, what you don't understand is this: I got home from work a few hours ago and I feel like I just mainlined $3000 worth of the best drug imaginable straight into my brain. You would have to love products as much as I do to be able to stand working here. I give myself a facial every night. Ask me about my Kinerase collection. It's sick. No, I'm not an esthetician, yes, I am perfectly capable of holding down a better job. I just like my kind of crack. It's my shit. I'm working here to fuel my fancy skin care addiction. I just realized everyone who works here is eighteen. I asked them, "how can you afford to work here?" And they said, "I live with my parents." Even this woman who works here who is forty and divorced — she lives with her mom. We are all here for the same reason.

Have you always been addicted to beauty products?

Ever since I came down with adult-onset cystic acne about ten years ago. I am a very vain person, the type of person who will stay inside my house and not go into work and refuse to see my closest friends if I have a bad breakout. It is sick. But there is something so sad and homeless about acne. It just looks like something is wrong. That's why I love helping someone who comes in and looks like shit. There is a feminine joy I get from being able to say, here, I know a lot about this and I can help you. Because I can. I have dabbled in everything. I am hardcore. I will try your homeopathic aspirin-raw honey mask. I will take your supplements; I will spend hundreds of dollars on credit on fancy products and I will let you stick your acupuncture needles in me. I also don't pussyfoot around; I believe it's gonna look worse before it looks better. And I do not let obstacles stand in my way: at my lowest point — I can't believe I did this but at my lowest point I would routinely go to a dermatologist and get cortisone shots in my cystic acne. And I would watch where he stuck the needles and when he left the room I would steal a bunch of syringes and do it on myself at night.

Why does corporate Sephora call insults "gifts?" How do they get away with it?

Most of the people who work here are teenagers and they are happy to not be working at McDonald's. This is how they get away with it. As to the why of this issue, my best guess is that it's called a "gift" in an attempt to put a positive spin on what could be construed—let's face it, by anyone functioning normally as a human being—as negative feedback. They mask it with this new-agey shit like, "this is a gift for you to take to the future." Like we should be very glad that now we know our makeup looks like shit or that our shoes are fug, so that we can correct the situation and do a better job. Oh, also, Sephora is what we call a "values-based" company, which to my understanding means that we are not allowed to even say words like steal, shoplift, took, take, thief, what have you. Instead of loss prevention, we have "excellent client servicing." This means that we follow clients around, talking to them, helping them, basically watching them like hawks under the guise of customer service to ensure that the bad thing we're not supposed to say does not happen. So there isn't a security guard, no tags, nothing like that. Instead it's us, and I mean... our costumes don't have pockets for a reason, too. But yeah, we don't use negative terms at Sephora and "gift" is another example of that.

How quickly does stock move at your store? Do any of the items sit around on the shelves for a long time?

People are not feeling the Decleor skincare line. They don't buy the Bliss home waxing kit ever, either. We sell a lot of Perricone, but people seem to be kind of confused about the other cosmeceuticals unless I am here to enable them. Those are my favorite things to sell, but the names have gotten so technical for some of these products that people literally do not understand that oh, this is face cream. The department store brands don't sell... Clinique, Lancome, Shiseido, all of those. People can get those in other places so they tend not to care so much about them. Sometimes someone will come in and request a certain Lancome product or something, but for the most part, people are interested in the fun, new stuff. These products all have preservatives enough so that we can keep them on the shelf for years if they don't sell. Also, I'm not there all the time so it's hard for me to know exactly how much is moving in terms of a gross net. This isn't the kind of thing staff members are routinely consulted about, we're just told how much the store made and how much we are expected to sell for the day.

What's up with your fearless Leader, Cunty Claus? Did she do anything cunty this week?

She does some kind of cunty something every week, pretty much. This week I was at the store on a Sunday before it opened, and I mean, cast members use the front door just like everyone else so if that's locked, you're shit out of luck until someone opens it for you. So we're waiting outside in the cold, and by the time anyone remembered to open the door for us, we were all a grand total of three minutes late. I was the last one to clock in, and I was only three minutes late. Anyway, Cunty Claus took this opportunity to give all of us this terrible lecture at Touch Base, which is our opening meeting, and it's all about how she doesn't understand why we didn't call the store if we were going to be late, what are our excuses, we're late all the time, just a bunch of bullshit like that. I explained to her that we were only three minutes late according to the time clock and she launches into this whole big thing about how the time clock and the clock on the stage are different or something bullshitty. Basically she was just pissed we didn't hop to it in a big hurry freaking out over our jobs even though it wasn't even our faults in the first place that no one opened the doors sooner. She's on this extremely creepy power trip. Once she found me leaning against a display for what, a second, and she says, "We don't lean here. We stand at Sephora." What the fuck? Who says that? She's really into intimidating the cast members so that she seems more authoritative. I think she lives in a world where she has no power and any time she's not at Sephora, working, people like take their dicks out and wipe them on her face. But I guess Sephora is the place where she can avoid the Dirty Sanchez and so we're all three minutes late on Cunty Claus' beat.

How did you finally get rid of your acne?

Oh, that is a long story I will save for next time. But I literally know everything about anything having to do with your skin, so bring on the skin care queries. I am fired up and ready to fight your glands with you.

The first thing that happens upon walking into a Sephora store is a feeling of profound disorientation. While you're busy steeling your self-esteem against the incredibly bright lighting and omnipresent mirrors, display after display of beauty products are working their subliminal coercion on the rest of you, saying, "we can fix you. It'll be fun!" Before you even have a chance to pull out your fuck finger at such a blatant attempt at consumer manipulation, you realize that Sephora is probably right. With over 250 different brands of beauty products under one roof, if you can't find something fun to fix you at Sephora, it might be time to consider quiet resignation as your last remaining option.

It is difficult to overstate how sickeningly profitable that quiet resignation is for Sephora and the multibillion dollar multinational conglomerate that has owned it since 1997, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey. For one thing, makeup is a pretty profitable racket to begin with. Then there's the fact that the average lipstick at Sephora costs $25, and that most of Sephora's brands were virtual unknowns before Sephora picked them up, so with 766 stores in 21 countries, they have Wal-Mart-esque buying power. Then you've gotta remember how small everything is. It's hard to find a store where a $100 item takes up less shelf space that doesn't involve a "Genius Bar"; the average store is estimated to generate $1,200 in sales per square foot every year.

But what really helps Sephora stay profitable is its workforce. Unlike the overeager artistes that lord over department store makeup counters, with their business cards and bags of drag queen-lite makeup tricks, the black lab coat-clad ladies of Sephora are mostly invisible until you ask them to appear. They make $10 an hour. Perhaps to compensate for their meager wages they are taught to speak in a mysterious code language, abide by strange rules and fill their brains with limitless quantities of beauty trivia all in the hopes of attaining eligibility for "Science Of Sephora," the chain's own month-long beauty school. And this is where "Jasmine" comes in. Below, the anonymous insider talks to me about life on "stage" at Sephora... and why she puts up with managers like Cunty Claus. Got questions for her? Email her directly at SephoraSpy@gmail.com.

What made you do it?
I really, really want to do their training. It's called S.O.S, or Science of Sephora. You go for a month, just beauty training every day like it's your job. The reps from all the different companies show up and give you demos of all their products and give you stuff. You learn fragrance notes, skincare ingredients, makeup techniques... just everything. And the gratis is out of control. They give you everything, DDS Mesojections, Prevage, crazy samples of everything, all this makeup that's like specifically picked out for you, a whole skincare regimen, just really great gratis. The gratis is amazing even without having been to S.O.S. yet, just what you get to keep from working at the store. There's always a brand rep coming by with more shit for you to take home. But I was thinking that I'd get to S.O.S., grab my mother lode, and quit after that if I can't stand it anymore. They can probably smell my S.O.S ambition all over me at this point, too. I am no joke. I'm always talking about skin care, sticking my fingers in everything, trying things out when I'm on stage, which is a no-no... we're not supposed to be trying anything during our shift.

Wait... "on stage"?
The "stage" is the sales floor. Then "backstage" is anywhere that isn't the sales floor. I'm not an employee, I'm a "cast member." It's never called a uniform, it's called a "costume." And I mean... that's just like, wearing black. Your bosses are "leadership." The best part is that you wear those little headphones so people are having entire conversations using this lingo over the headsets and it's all I can do not to crack up when I hear things like, "Hi, this is Cast Member X, I'm on stage right now, I'd like to pop backstage, I have coverage in my zone." And it's astonishing to me that people will have full conversations using these words and no one is flinching. Whole conversations of... "pushback." "Pushback" is like, comments or a reply to the "gift" I gave you or whatever else I just told you.

Which brings me to another term, "the gift." If they're going to give you extra work or say something horrible to you about yourself, it's called a "gift." Like, "Your makeup looks like shit today, I just wanted to let you know, if you want to go in the back and re-do the whole thing..." That is a "gift" employees are often on the receiving end of at Sephora. Or, "I need to you to go in the back with all this stuff, and put it away. Here. This is my gift for you."

Are you supposed to say "thank you" when you get a gift?
I always do. Here's the thing: I think a lot of the company lingo is meant to hide the fact that it's work. Because I think any adult actually doing this for the income or like, for their actual career would probably kill themselves. We don't work on commission. I make eleven bucks an hour, and I think that I'm actually one of the higher-paid cast members at my store. The average is probably nine or ten dollars an hour. But, a lot of people are... two of my co-workers are what, eighteen, nineteen? And their first jobs before Sephora were in fast food. So this job is paying them a lot more. It's also a job with a certain kind of clout, a certain kind of clientele, and they're learning something. One of them is like, exceptionally good-looking with the best skin ever, so I wouldn't be surprised if they just have her there to like, walk around and make the store look good. Plus, we get all the training we need from the company. The only other retail job I've ever worked was when I was sixteen, at a GAP out in the suburbs. When Sephora came to town—I mean, at one point, I know I said I'd never work a retail job again. Horrifying. I just wanted to get out and never go back. However, when Sephora came to town, it kind of re-wrote the script for me and I was willing to work on their "stage." The information I think I can get if I can make myself stay long enough is basically a free education. I like going to work in high-glamour mode every day, thinking about these things. Left to my own devices, I don't want to say I don't care about beauty, but I'm less inclined to... you know, obsess and I've definitely never paid this level of attention before. So it's interesting to me on that level.

Which products are you into right now?
Well, today I'm wearing the BeneFit line. There are a bunch of things on my face. I really think they do a good job with little trick products, iridescence products, color correction, highlighting stuff. There's a BeneFit product for every different part of your face, and if you use them together, they really do make your skin look flawless. I also just bought a bottle of Christian Dior J'Adore. It's this Old Hollywood kind of floral scent, and the bottle is really glamorous. I liked the idea of finishing off my Old Hollywood look with this aura of perfume mystique. But I don't know if this is really the fragrance for me. I'm still somewhat dissatisfied with it. I'm really into face serums, too. kojic acid is big for me. It brightens your skin, and it's a gentler alternative to hydroquinone, which basically gives you cancer. People use it all the time anyway, but I prefer the kojic acid products. It's funny, because everyone who works at Sephora always wants to work in Color World, which is where all the makeup is... and we all have to take our turns in every World, just to keep everything kind of fluid... but I like Beauty World. I think skin care is my thing. I also really like working with the clients. Not customers, customers are one-time-only visitors. Clients are people who keep coming back, and they're what we want to make every customer. But it always makes me feel really good when people come in with these skin problems that are completely valid and just making them feel horrible about themselves... like a twenty-four year old girl with really bad acne who walks in never having really used anything except like ProActiv... and I can hook her up. And be really reassuring at the same time because it's horrible to have to walk into a store and be like, "help my face, please!" But if I'm working Beauty World that day, I know that girl will leave feeling good. Another thing that I like is that people can return anything they want, even if it's half-empty, and we give out samples of everything. The Sephora people call that "confidence." Sephora is huge on "confidence."

What's the worst part about working there?
Routinely being spoken to like I'm an autistic third grader. There's this whole chain of command in retail where people feel really entitled to speak down to you. If a client isn't doing it, "leadership" is doing it, and it's always worse when it's someone you have to see every day, like one of my managers, who I like to call Cunty Claus. It's a good thing we don't work on commission, because it would be like "Pretty Woman" in there. There are days when I'm like, 'this is ridiculous,' but I try not to let that out so much. I just keep thinking Science of Sephora... Science of Sephora... Science of Sephora.