Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

In general, I don't trust beauty brands, religious sects, or political movements with extremely charismatic figureheads. The kind of person who attracts fanatical devotees tends to be the kind of person who wants fanatical devotees, who lives for adulation and drama , who needs to be the center of attention at all times — a narcissist, in other words. Once you've known one narcissist you've known them all, and you become wary of anyone who displays the symptoms of narcissism, whether it's Donald Trump, Jeffree Star, or that professor who gave a talk in my department last week and unbuttoned his shirt a few inches too far. Kat Von D is another charismatic figurehead who has always set off my narcissist detector. I've been hearing great things about her makeup for years, but I've also been hearing terrible things about her for years. (I don't feel like rehashing all her controversies here, though they're easy enough to find if you're interested.) Wha...

A lot of stuff here! Let's get into it: New Makeup/Polish: Marc Jacobs Le Marc Lip Creme in Rei of Light: $30 Studded X mini duo (Kat Von D Studded Kiss + Formula X) in Mercy: $7.50 NYX Velvet Matte Lipstick in Midnight Muse: gift from my mom NYX Jumbo Pencil in Black Bean: ditto Total: $37.50 Rei of Light was my big-ticket planned purchase for this month. Having worn it a few times, I'm not sure it's my Platonic rusty orange, as it pulls darker and redder than I thought it would. But I really like it and think I'll wear it a lot this fall, so no harm done. By contrast, the Kat Von D/Formula X duo was a total impulse purchase. After I finished rewriting my third dissertation chapter, I slipped back into the habit of checking all my procrastination sites, including Temptalia. Christine posted about the Sephora end-of-summer sale, and I just couldn't resist the Mercy duo. I wish every lipstick came in a mini version: I don't need a full-sized metallic berry lipst...

I've been in three different time zones in the past week, and I feel weird. I originally planned to write this post two evenings ago while my skin absorbed the dewy coolness of a Tony Moly aloe sheet mask. Instead I fell asleep with the light on and my face unwashed. The same thing happened last night. Tonight, though, I will triumph over jet lag. And I'll be in one place for the next couple of weeks (I'm in San Francisco for my biannual visit), so I'll be posting a bit more frequently. That said, I'm working on my dissertation and preparing for another go at the job market, and I feel guilty when I use my precious and finite amount of writing energy on anything non-academic. I know it's irrational; I know that the energy I put into my blog isn't interchangeable with the energy I put into my academic writing. But it's so hard to relax these days. I haven't even been visiting my favorite websites very often. I used to read almost every article on xoVa...

I made my stage debut in 1996 at the age of eight, in my elementary school's production of The Phantom Tollbooth . I had two roles: the Spelling Bee (marred by a wardrobe malfunction: part of my headband fell off and I pouted for the rest of the scene) and the Senses Taker. For the second role, I wore a severe bun, a prim, high-necked brown dress, and a pair of fake glasses, and asked Milo and his companions to tell me "when you were born, where you were born, why you were born, the schools you've attended, the schools you haven't attended..." Years would pass before I understood that the name of my role was a pun on "census taker," and that the adult world didn't actually contain a career path based on taking people's senses, except perhaps anesthesiology. Years would pass, too, before I understood why asking someone which schools they hadn't attended and which people they hadn't met was so funny. In the spirit of the Senses Taker, I tho...

I keep a running beauty wishlist over at Pinterest , and I thought I'd wax poetic about a handful of those items on the blog. 1. NARS Audacious Lipstick in Audrey Image from NARS . For the past few weeks, I've been zealously hunting down reviews of the NARS Audacious Lipsticks, which became available online in mid-August but didn't show up in stores until today. That is, today was their official launch date, though I saw a few of them in the window of a San Francisco NARS boutique two weeks ago. Apologies for my reflected Strand tote bag and yellow paisley torso. I would have gone into the store, but I was in a hurry, so this will have to do... The lipsticks have received almost nothing but praise: Temptalia gave As to 32 of the 40 shades, and as we all know, there's no grade inflation on her blog. I confess I'm a little disappointed in the overall shade range, though. I'm not the only one who has noticed many dupes and near-dupes within the Audacious line. By ...