The Soul Sorority

Bikini bonsai...

Ayayay! I haven't bought this yet, but I know I will. Anyone tried it?

The ingenious folks at Bliss paired with Philips to make a female-friendly, waterproof "personal trimmer"...in other words, to make sure no woman has to don a bikini at the beach with (ahem) those hairs. This handy-dandy kit, sold at Sephora, claims to be irritation free (red bumps, be gone!) and comes with six attachments, a trial size body butter and scrub, and pads to prevent ingrown hairs. Plus, it's SO chic.

Mommy dearest...

You can thank your mom for your long legs and strong nails, or groan over the slow metabolism and grey hair genes you got stuck with, but either way, mom's a wealth of information when it comes to your health.

Here are five questions you should ask her for your own well-being:

1. How tall was mom at 21?
2. Did she have a rough pregnancy?
3. How are her eyes?
4. Any mental health problems?
5. What about her skin?

For more explanation, watch the video, where Women's Health Editor-in-Chief Tina Johnson talked to Natalie Morales on the Today Show.

Beauty, revisited...

I am the first to admit when I'm wrong, and ladies and gents, I was wrong.

A good friend of mine, who shall go unnamed, made a comment to me the other day that investing in herself IS worth it, because of the way it makes her feel. When she takes care of herself, she feels more confident, more self aware, more ready to tackle the world. So although she respected my views on beauty's fickle fate, she disagreed. (Yay!)

Here's the deal: I think I was a little too harsh in that post. Let me back up. First, let's take a little trip into my bathroom drawers -- all inhabited by my little friends, known to me as Sephora, Mac, Philosophy and Urban Decay. Among others. I am fanatical about makeup. I LOVE IT. In another life, I know I was supposed to be a makeup artist. I don't love it for it's masking qualities, as much as I love it for the way it makes me feel, and the way I can get creative with it. I could spend hours putting on different color eye shadows. If something happened and there was only one small slice of refrigerator real estate left, and it was a duel between cold cream and cold cuts, the cold cream would win every time, hands down.

My point is that I buy into beauty. I love facials. I love skincare. I buy beauty mags. I look for an antidote to my frizzy, curly hair. But what I DON'T do is put all my eggs into the beauty basket. That's the point I was trying to make. Like Valerie said, gorgeous is a bad stock to invest in. Now, is it good if it's part of a mutual fund? Absolutely. But throw intelligence, humor, optimism, balance, health, exercise, friendship, family and self confidence into that pot, too.

And I absolutely agree with my friend, that an investment into YOURSELF -- whether it's with makeup, exercise, alone time, massages or eating healthy -- is worth every penny. The feeling of confidence...priceless.

The beauty whip.

I was thinking the other day, about how we women often beat ourselves up over the most insignificant things -- a pimple, a pound, a wrinkle here or a line there -- and I ran across this quote by Valerie Monroe, beauty editor of O Mag...(I know, I'm obsessed)...

"It stinks even if you're gorgeous, by cultural standards. Valuable as it is, gorgeous is not a good stock to invest in. It has a completely predictable payout. No matter what you do, how well you take care of yourself, how much surgery you submit to, one day you are going to lose everything on this investment. You know this, I know this. Even so, we buy into the beauty rules, colluding with a culture that makes us feel so inadequate, whipping ourselves when we come up short. Which makes us -- come to think of it -- part of the problem."

Genius.

Botox, baby?

The problem with people who have been absolutely gorgeous their entire lives is that they think that things should happen to them just because they’re pretty. Like, pretty = opportunities.

It’s not their fault, really. Our society loves beautiful people. They are rewarded, praised, admired. So it’s only natural that things come easy to them. It's well known that attractive people get better jobs, bigger raises and more attention.

Me? I have only noticed a certain cuteness about myself in the last few years. And, it’s very rare that I acknowledge it. Up to that point, I’ve never figured beauty to equal opportunity, at least not in my case. My opportunities would come from hard work and perseverance. If a trait of mine read pretty, good looking, or even cute, well — that would just be a cherry on the cake, not the main ingredient.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Beauty fades. I love makeup as much as the next gal -- let's face it, I could spend hours in Sephora, drooling -- but I'm hip to the fact that all the antiaging creams, botox and liposuction treatments can't hold a finger to the power of gravity and DNA. At some point, the rug is going to slip out from under you. And if all you've been climbing is the Looks Ladder, you're going to have a pretty long way to fall, baby.