Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

Well, the impossible has happened. A racist, misogynist sociopath with nothing but contempt for the democratic process has been elevated by it to the most powerful office in the world. Hillary Clinton was not my ideal Democratic candidate, but I came to find her deeply inspiring over the course of this year's vicious, depressing campaign. And now millions of Americans have rejected her knowledge, experience, and tremendous ability for the whims of a con artist loyal only to himself. As a queer woman and someone who has endured sexual harassment from men in positions of power, I can't help but feel that Tuesday's election was a referendum on my humanity. And I'm not even one of the people threatened most by a Trump presidency; it's a sign of my privilege that I can still cling to optimism. I can only hope that this disaster will shake the Democratic Party out of its complacency and force it to listen to the progressive voices in its ranks. I can only hope tha...

In the last couple of weeks, I've been a bad early modernist: I've watched the BBC miniseries of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall without first reading the books. I did start reading Wolf Hall two years ago, but I just couldn't get into it, despite my childhood obsession with Tudor history. There's something about grad school that makes one averse to novels set in the time period one studies. (My own research interests lie in Stuart, not Tudor, England, but the early 16th century is close enough.) However, I didn't have any trouble getting absorbed in the BBC version, not least because of its aesthetic richness. The indoor scenes are filmed in deep shadow to evoke an era before electricity. The costumes and hairstyles make me feel like I'm watching Holbein portraits come to life (indeed, Holbein makes a cameo in the fourth episode). And while the makeup is historically accurate, i.e. barely there, I can still find beauty inspiration in the colors that the charact...

Many thanks to everyone who gave me Canadian beauty advice! As it turned out, I bought three beauty items in Toronto, none of them from a Canadian company: an American Apparel nail polish, a Face Shop sheet mask, and an Inglot custom eyeshadow duo. I almost never wear glitter topcoats, but I made a (possibly unwise) exception for AA's Daisy Field. I'm glad I live in a world where one can wear blossom-shaped glitter on one's nails. I'm very pleased with the Inglot duo, which comprises a pale gold and a dark greenish gold (it looks olive here, but it's much yellower on the eyes). Expect a review soon! Those of you who commented on my last post seemed to agree that there's not much difference between Canadian and American beauty offerings, except that Americans have it easier price-wise. By and large, I found this to be true. There's far more overlap between CVS and Shoppers Drug Mart than there is between, say, CVS and Superdrug or Boots. I did hope to track d...