Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

Hey! I promise that my blog still exists and that I'm still alive. Look, I even have a pin to prove it: Appropriately, I took this photo while waiting outside my therapist's office. However, posts have been scarce this month for a few reasons: I don't know where my money will come from after August, where I'll be living, or whether I'll even stay in academia, so most of my energy has been devoted to sorting that out I'll probably be defending my dissertation in a few months and it needs a lot of editing plus an introduction, hahaha kill me I've been revising an article that I want to send off again by the end of the month The weather has been shitty and overcast for most of May, limiting my ability to take decent photos Literally everything else in the world is awful?? I have a habit of announcing a blog hiatus only to write a post two days later, so I'm not going to do that now, but I think it's fair to say that posting may be slow over the next fe...

Welcome to the first, and saltier, of my two 2016 roundup posts! A few notes before we begin: There are 13 products on this list simply because I was disappointed by 13 products last year (not a large number, considering how many I tried).  As always, the products are listed in chronological order of purchase, not from best to worst or vice versa. I've linked to my original reviews where available.  I returned several of these products, sometimes too quickly to take photos. In those cases, I've used the brands' product shots. I also lost a number of my photos while clearing my phone's memory last year. Not all of these products are total fails. I kept and still use a few of them, since I don't subscribe to the KonMari doctrine of getting rid of anything that I don't absolutely love. Especially in the case of color cosmetics, if a product fulfills a specific purpose but isn't perfect, I'll often keep using it instead of buying yet another product in the s...

Surfacing briefly from the dissertation abyss to give you my November update! I'm proud to say that I made only one beauty order on Black Friday —I bought some new clothes that I really needed, so I couldn't justify splurging on makeup too. And November was my birthday month, so I received a few makeup gifts, including a lipstick I'd wanted for a while. But I did yield to temptation a few times, and here are the results: New Makeup & Polish: L-R: NYX lip liner in Brooklyn Thorn, ColourPop Let's Play, Sinful Colors Nice Guise. NYX Suede Matte Lip Liner in Brooklyn Thorn: $4 ColourPop Lippie Stix in Let's Play: $5 Sinful Colors nail polish in Nice Guise: $2 Zoya nail polishes (not pictured) in Aubrey, Jules, Serenity, and Troy: $3 each plus $6.95 shipping = $18.95 Total: $29.95 NYX recently released a bunch of lip liners that match their Liquid Suede lipsticks. Since my mom sent me the Liquid Suede in Brooklyn Thorn for my birthday (more on that later), I picked u...

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...