The Visa Diaries

Sometimes when I write about things I buy, I am painfully aware of how trite they are in the larger scheme of things. Especially when preparing to write about something like eyeliner.  I do realize, for example, that the plugging the cap on BP’s busted oil well on the gulf is a much bigger deal in every way. But then I remind myself that the small scheme counts too, and that it is generally what we feel most on a day to day basis. So, with that in mind, in the small scheme of things, I was extremely excited to find an amazing eye pencil!

Sephora eye liner

How it happened was this: I was sitting in Union Square one fine warm evening this week, enjoying a delicious fallafel salad bowl from the oh-so-fun and oh-so-Amsterdammy Maoz, when I got chased away by a trio of crack-ed out street folks. Perhaps “inspired to leave” is a better way to phrase it. However, I should really thank them, because I then felt inspired to go look in Sephora, which I had originally passed by with the very strange thought, “I don’t really need anything from Sephora right now.” However, my slightly raving street friends encouraged me to reconsider, and I realized “Well, don’t I *always* need something from Sephora?” So I passed through the stripey facade in search of what it was that I needed without knowing it.

It didn’t take long for the fog in my head to clear, and for me to realize – duh! – exactly what I needed: a new blue-green eyeliner. I have a peacock blue liquid liner from Mac that always gets rave reviews, but it is a bit much for every day. I also have a greenish blue pencil liner from NARS, but I am saddened to report that it doesn’t work very well. For one thing, it seems like the sharp woody bits of the pencil start sticking up and practically tearing my eyelids off almost the day after I sharpen it. And for another, it is a pretty hard, dry consistency, and I basically have to stretch my eyelids to my ear, and/or press super heard to get it to mark at all. Ouch! I feel like I get a new wrinkle every time I use it. Which I am surprised about, frankly, form NARS, who is generally my favorite cosmetics company.

Anyway, this time I was looking for cheap and cheerful. I wanted a quick, summery make-up fix, not the heavy-duty image investment that so much of make-up, and most certainly anything that could be called skincare or a ‘cosmaceutical’, requires these days. I headed back to the Sephora house brand section, where I have had good luck with the occassional party color before. There is was, a perfect green amidst the broken testers and smeared pigments. I bought it untested, and my gamble was rewarded. The color is perfect for everyday – a a gray-ish green that mellows into a amazonian smokey seduction. The best part, however, is the texture – creamy and effortless as it glides on, it is also waterproof, which means it sticks there a bit longer than average. Often I believe you get what you pay for, but some lucky times, you just get more. Between Sephora and the crackheads, the stars were in alignment.

Oh dear. sigh. Has it really been so long? I know it must be bad when my father of all people says to me, “Kate, you’ve basically shut down visa diaries, haven’t you?” My father is not a man who is waiting for his latest dose of shopping gossip, so for him to notice – ouch.

Good thing Carter wrote just a little while ago, or else I would really only be hearing the lonely echo of my own tappity-taps on the keyboard. Good thing she wrote… except for the fact that she has just (and justly) shamed my more consumeristic and less socially conscious urges. How am I supposed to gloat about a new pair of shoes or sunglasses now that she has reduced them to nothing but a pile of toxic chemical inputs and permanent landfill outputs?? Ironically, I happen to be doing a project for a major cosmetics brand at work, and as a result have been buying all sorts of new make-up… not that I would tell you all about my peacock liquid eyeliner, or my new ‘deep throat’ blusher, because then I’d be shamed off the Internet – the shallow one who still bought lipgloss as the planet was burning…

Ok ok, I’m sure that’s a little extreme. I know that we are all making pained noises about the planet, while we semi-abashedly continue to buy take-out for every meal and forget to bring our eco-bags to Whole Foods. I am not the only one. But still, let’s have a think about less toxic lipgloss alternatives in the world of shopping and consumption. I mean honestly, there are a million and one ways to spend our money, and surely we can still shop and be decent global citizens at the same time.

Perhaps this is a good time to test out my theory that high design is good for the planet. Here’s why I think so: highly designed things are more expensive, so they create more wealth – more gdp, which is what the capitalists care about – with fewer natural resources. Plus, well designed and made products should also work better and be more pleasing to have around, so they generally raise satisfaction in using and owning them, and we will hang on to them longer. A truly classic design never goes out of style, and if for some reason it no longer fits into your home, it will be snapped up on eBay quicker than you can say “mid-century modern.”

For example, if I could afford it, I would buy this chair from Linge Roset:

I have seriously been coveting this chair for almost 10 years, since I first saw it in the swanky Istanbul house of some Eurotrash friends of mine. Since it costs, like, mega-bucks, a couple of years ago I bought a pair of knock-offs at Urban Outfitters. They have the same general shape, but are missing the extra excessive cotton padding and pillow-y down-y feel. Result: as soon as I can afford it, I will buy the Ligne Rosset original, and get rid of my knock-offs. Hopefully not just trash them, hopefully pass them along, but still. The point is that it would have just been better to buy the real, good object that I wanted to begin with, and then keep that forever.

So, how is my Post-Lipglossist theory shaping up? I admit that probably there is still some hard scholarship to be done, but basically I think Post-Lipglossism is just a fancy word for that age old wisdom: Two Zaras do not a Prada make…! er, um, I mean quality is better than quantity…

BY CARTER

Today’s top story on nytimes.com was accompanied by the subhead “A pullback in spending raises the possibility that the country may be experiencing a rare decline in personal consumption.” And in my mind, this is a good thing.

For the last six months of my life, I have been trying to consume less. Moving all of my items across the country via Amtrak, and paying by the pound, made me evaluate all the stuff I have accumulated over the years and what is really essential in my life. Additionally, I decided when I moved to San Francisco that I would attempt to buy more used items and fewer brand new pieces. This hasn’t prevented me from taking a million trips to Ikea and Target (I chose to buy new silverware, dishes, and glasses, along with other items), but it has meant that every piece of furniture in my apartment (save one) is recycled in one way or another. I have chairs and small cabinets and curtain panels I found on the street, an antique mahogany dining table that I purchased from craigslist for a mere $80, a Le Corbusier chair I snatched for $120, and a quirky set of knicks and knacks that I’ve gathered at thrift stores and yard sales and giveaways. When I have bought new items, I have attempted to buy pieces that are somewhat natural (like all-wool rugs from Ikea) and new make-up from bare Escentuals.

I’ve attempted to go more natural with my make-up and personal care products… things like soap and body oils and lotions and lip balms that I needed to restock when I arrived in California. After reading up on most of my personal products on the Skin Deep database, I made the decision to pay a premium for higher-quality, more health- and earth-friendly products; this also meant that I relinquished my habit of buying lip glosses every few months that I didn’t need, lotions just because I like them, or shampoos just because they smell good. Instead, I now buy natural soaps that do not contain sulfates or artificial fragrances, and I’ve weened myself off Carmex in favor of cocoa butter (Carmex actually causes lips to chap and flake since it contains salicylic acid… in effect, Carmex can be addictive, not to mention its harmful rating on the Skin Deep database).

And one fact compounded all of these decisions: a few weeks ago, I heard on NPR that nothing in modern landfills biodegrades. Nothing. Food from the 1950s has been found in landfills, along with millions of other items that “ought” to biodegrade. Since modern landfills have no air circulation, and since biodegrading requires oxygen, there is no way for anything to decompose. Which essentially means that anything we throw away, we are leaving for our children to deal with. I had never realized this was the case.

Knowing this has made me even more acutely aware of my purchases: I really don’t need a new lipgloss if it means I’ll be throwing out an old one, which surely is not recyclable. And do I really need another planter for my apartment, or a plastic bird feeder? Is it possible to buy items that are 100% recyclable rather than things that will break easily and won’t be able to be fixed?

As I have lived here a bit longer, and now that I have accumulated most everything I need for my apartment (which, mind you, is filled with stuff — I’m certainly no saint), I have little to no desire to go shopping. I am trying to purchase items that can be reused for other needs (I bought heavy whipping cream yesterday in a charming miniature glass milk bottle that I’ll reuse as a vase).

Spending time in traffic or crowds searching for snazzy items that I simply do not need is not a way to spend my weekends. I’d now rather try to have fun instead of trying to get ahead by spending money. Of course, this doesn’t eliminate the fact that I still can’t recycle my toxic toothpaste-tube (I just can’t yet make the switch to natural toothpaste) and that I buy salad in a plastic box instead of a loose bunch stored in my reusable grocery bags. It’s a slow road to take: the one where you evaluate what your life is made of and decide if you want it to be made of things. It has taken me a long, long time to distance myself from my belongings. Only now am I attempting to see the effect my consumption has on everyone around me, and only now am I attempting to fill my life with things that have no tangible form.

To be honest, it has been entirely more fulfilling than a new tube of lip gloss. The high is more subdued, but also a million times prolonged.

I have not been a very good blogger recently (if ever). Some of the things you are supposed to do as a blogger are: write short but regular posts, link to lots of other people’s blogs, and comment on other people’s blogs so they link back to you… generally be active and out there. I, on the other hand, am a hermit blogger, who occasionally comes out with an overly long post, but never really hangs out enough to become one of the bloggers-about-town. Alas.

In an effort to be more active and social as a blogger, I have asked my friend Carter to join me for the occasional guest-post (as occasional or frequent as she likes really). Carter and I were in grad school together. She is from Virginia, as she will most likely tell you herself, and thus infinitely more social than me, from New England. She is a good shopper too, and what do you know, studied a made-up major like culture-studies in college, so knows all about how to dissect her purchases for their hidden meaning with the best of ‘em.

So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I present the first work of the lovely, the scintillating, the beautiful, Miss Carter!!!

**********************

I have recently moved to California. The process of moving to California has been ongoing for over a year. It began last summer when I lived in San Francisco temporarily and was waiting to finish graduate school to move back. In that final year of school, I stopped shopping. At least, I stopped shopping for all the things that I would not dare move across the country: drug store lip glosses, strappy sandals and skirts and summer dresses (of no use in this fog and wind), nail polishes, lotions (I must have a million bottles), shampoos, soaps, wine glasses, more books. In other words, anything heavy, low quality, breakable, or summer-like.

This meant that when I actually arrived in California, I had a lot to purchase. Which has been a fun, tedious process. It’s amazing how much stuff is required to live, especially considering the fact that I am diligently trying to limit the amount of stuff I buy. I am determined to not re-clutter my life considering the fact that I left a lot of it back on the East Coast.

In this, my first message on Kate’s site, I’d like to tell you about one of the most mind-blowing products I’ve purchased in the last couple months. It’s called Bare Escentuals Get Started Kit, and I bought it in the ‘light’ shade family.

Let me preface this Lovefest by saying this starter kit was not my first introduction to mineral make-up. A couple years ago, I purchased mineral blush and mica-infused mineral shadow at Whole Foods in my first attempt to convert my make-up to products with a lower toxicity level than my standard issue. These products were okay, but since I was applying them with my standard brushes, they often went onto my face too heavily. I rarely used them.

Then I got to SF, which has had an intense effect on my skin. Suddenly, my skin became about 10 times more oily and I needed to switch foundations and shampoos. I knew I wanted to buy decent products that weren’t completely carcinogenic, and my newfound job meant that $60 for four powders and three brushes no longer seemed too expensive (compared to my grad school budget, where this purchase would’ve been a week’s worth of food). I decided to take the plunge.

I wandered into the Sephora that is about 10 blocks from my house and picked up the starter kit, feeling slightly like I’d drunk the Kool-Aid and that I was a sucker for betting on this miracle box of goodies. I got home, opened the cardboard box to find one bottle of Skin Revver-Upper, a serum used to prep the skin for powder application, four loose mineral powders, one brush that resembles a blush brush, one stubby Kabuki brush, and one flat-headed, long-bristled brush for concealer application. I had figured that Bare Escentuals would not replace my Burt’s Bees waxy concealer, which I do still like. But I was wrong.

After getting out the powders and brushes and unwrapping their packaging (boo for plastic bags since the entire box was also shrink-wrapped), I opened the DVD with usage instructions. Here’s where the magic begins.

The DVD is amazing. It’s like watching an extended infomercial for Cindy Crawford’s make-up or Pro-Activ solution. It’s chock-full of soft lighting, fake novices, and new converts to Bare Escentuals. It’s like a pep rally for your make-up application, and it’s hosted by the founder of the company, which happens to be based in SF. Though I’m a little unnerved by how different she looks in the video compared to her picture on the box’s exterior, I watch.

I decide to do my make-up while I watch the DVD, and to do it without a mirror because I haven’t bought a handheld mirror yet in SF. Throughout the video, the mantra ’swirl and tap’ must be repeated a million times. And it’s a good thing, because it’s what makes this stuff so potent. So here I am, sitting on a bare wood floor, powders and brushes surrounding my 12″ and me, and I’m swirling and tapping away. I’m convinced that the make-up won’t really work since it’s just powder, not the crème powder I’m used to using. I go through two foundations: light and fairly light, using both the full coverage brush and the baby Kabuki brush. I then apply concealer using the light foundation powder and concealer brush. Then, I use the powder called ‘Warmth,’ which is like a bronzer or a blush, but not really either of those… imagine something that gives you a little life after applying a matte foundation. And finally, I use the all-over ‘Mineral Veil’ to finish my application.

And then I went to the mirror, expecting to see a face looking the same as before I watched the soft-lit DVD, before I saw the blonde and the brunette novices apply their own faces. And I was shocked at my own face. In fact, I’m still shocked each day as I apply this make-up. When the founder-woman of Bare Escentuals says that you won’t see make-up, you’ll just see coverage, she means it. It’s amazing. It also means that you won’t _feel_ make-up, which is really very exciting to me because I hate kissing boys and feeling like I have something on me that might come off on them. And I never realized it, but normal make-up also causes your face to feel heavier than I think this stuff does.

Once in front of the mirror, I do another cover-up application (the first didn’t provide enough coverage), and then I stare at myself, amazed that this powder has not covered my freckles where I don’t want them covered, but has camouflaged my broken capillaries, my uneven skin, the darkness under my eyes. I gather a new glass jar to hold my new brushes, and I put away the powders on their own little shelf in my cabinet.

Kids, I’ve officially drunk the Kool-Aid. I’d encourage you to do the same.

Lately, I have been really into “feeling my feelings.” Those of you who know me, know that I have a bit of a soft-spot for things leaning toward the “self-help” genre of things (only good quality self-help, to be fair). Feeling my feelings came from reading “Families and How to Survive Them” by Robin Skynner, a classic about family therapy, as well as “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle, a rather extreme neo-spiritual book about living in the here and now. Skynnard explains that as children we learn from our families that certain types of feelings are unacceptable, such as jealously, or failure, or anger, and then whenever we start to feel those things we have to repress them, leading to various sorts of problems. Tolle simply thinks that the doorway to all the aliveness and excitement that we are seeking by striving toward the future, actually lies in the here and now.

So anyway, psycho-woo-woo-ness aside, this feeling my feelings has been really working for me, and I have gotten so sanctimonious about it that I have even recently lectured two of my good friends to give up their avoidance and deflection techniques and just sit with their uncomfortable feelings. Under this new way of thinking, shopping would constitute just such an avoidance technique.

For example, imagine that it is a somewhat drippy, gray Sunday in London. I’ve had a nice lie-in, and don’t have much planned for the day. I spend some time surfing the net, have a nice breakfast, and then start to feel a bit glum, the Sunday blues kicking in. The thing to do would be to sit there with those blues, make a bit more room for melancholy in my life, not panic and resist it when it starts to show up, but instead get a little curious about it and just think, well, maybe this time is about being a little glum, and that’s ok.

The thing that I would *not* want to do, if I were trying to feel my feelings, would be to go shopping, because that buzz of a new purchase, the little fantasy (”oh the places I will go in these shoes?” “oh how chic will I look in this top!”) that goes along with it, would be covering up, distracting me from my underlying feeling. Then, as soon as the “purchase high” wears off, I’d be left right back where I started, except a bit poorer and perhaps with a new pair of shoes, rather than having gone through the feeling and being left with the deeper pleasure of having expanded my emotional range and comfort zone.

Or, in this case, I’d be left with some new skin care products, such as, hypothetically speaking, say a rosewater facial toner… errr, to be specific. I really didn’t mean to. I really was still feeling sanctimonious and ocnvinced about my new method. I just decided I would pop out and get a coffee, because, after all, one can certainly sip coffee and feel melancholy at the same time. But once on Portobello Road, the consumerist wonderland just sort of takes over. And I did need some new toner, because London tap water is so hard on the skin. So I stopped by Neal’s Yard – what could be the harm in that? Its all natural, apothecary-esque, full of herbs and essential oils. Neal’s Yard has been into that natural shit since long before Gwynnie or Madonna made it boho hip.

Anyway, I emerged the proud new owner of a rosewater facial toner, and with a slight buzz. Melancholy completely forgotten. So, I fell off the wagon… Does that mean I have to call my friends and come clean?

Hello hello! sorry for the silence. have been busy – ahem – spring breaking. I escaped the interminable east coast winter for the slightly sooner terminating London winter. Plus, as I am graduating soon – eek! – have had to do some groveling to potential employers. And, amidst the groveling, amidst the portfolio schlepping, I did manage to do some shopping. It was necessary, in fact, to pick up my spirits after said schlep/grovel routine. There really is little as demoralizing and tiring as trying to convince people that you are utterly, charmingly employable.

One afternoon my meetings happened to be just next to Selfridges – how convenient. In addition to just about everything fabulous, Selfridges has one of the greatest make-up halls ever, big concessions of all the top brands in this grand atrium space. And, what a coinky-dink, I just happened to need some new foundation. Now, I have long been of the “treat the root cause, not the surface symptoms” school of things, which puts me, of course, at loggerheads with the guiding ethos of contemporary american society. never-the-less, I’d much rather go to the gym than take a diet pill, and much rather eat well and use good skin-care products than smather my face with make-up. However, a good foundation is always good to have about, and I’d lost my old one, so into the make-up melee I trotted with glee.

First stop: NARS. NARS is probably my favorite cosmetics brand, simply from a branding point of view. Their packaging is both classy and hip, with its rubberized black compacts and ultra-thin Helvetica wordmark. I love the white on white thing they’ve done with their new skin-care line – all in all very sleek without being brittle.

When you do not want to buy anything, there is nothing scarier than a cosmetics salesperson – they are a special breed of catty pushiness. But when you are already resigned to parting with some cash, there is no conflict of interest, and it can really be a joy to see what colored goo they put all over your face. (Last Halloween when my friend Rebecca dressed up as Nicole Richie, she spent over an hour at the Lancome counter!). So I asked to try their foundation, and happily settled in as she proceeded to fuss, test color, prep, and apply a full face of make-up.

Now, NARS has brilliant packaging, as we’ve said, great make-up colors in general, and I love their “Custard” concealer. But I was not feeling this foundation. I almost bought it out of guilt and obligation – that’s what happens when they’ve done all this fussing over you. But fortunately the lady had also showed me a powder and some eyeshadow colors that I did like, so at the last minute I skipped the foundation, and did the Nico power and Misfit eyeshadow duo. With a “push-brush” to apply the eyeshadow of course… god this job-hunting must really have gotten to me!

However, that still left me foundation-less. I was going to leave it that way… but then decided to quickly nip over to MAC on my way out. And am I glad I did! I must now give MAC the title of undisputed foundation champions. They have like 5 or 6 different formulations, in colors that match my skin tone perfectly. Of course I sat through a whole new session of make-up application (isn’t school vacation great?), and at the end walked away with something I never thought I would buy – a compact of creme foundation! craziness, I know! Creme make-up recalls all that old goopy pan-cakey stuff, but I swear this stuff makes me look like a china doll – it simultaneously covers up unevenness and blemishes, while giving a truly natural, dewey finish.

Amazing… for all my puritanism about treating root causes, give me a good surface cure, and I’m converted. I feel conflicted – half ashamed but yet sooooo pleased with my new complexion cheat…

I think Duty-Free is a big misnomer. Every time I travel internationally, I feel absolutely duty-bound to buy something at the airport, either on the way there, or on the way back, or both. Whoever idea duty-free was, is a genius. Actually, I seem to remember reading in some glossy mag that it was the idea of somebody called Frank Miller (father to the ugly Miller sisters, who pay publicists to get them into the social pages of said glossy mags). Well then, Mr. Miller was a genius.

Let’s be honest, the “duty-free” part is what consumer psychologists (I took a class in this last term) call an “enabling attribute.” An enabling attribute is something like anti-lock breaks on an expensive sports car – a practical feature that we use to rationalize a purchase that is really big-fat indulgence. The 10% or 15% that we save in tax at duty-free, which usually becomes rather insignificant by the time you count in vagaries of exchange rate and product availability, just lets us delude ourselves that we are being a responsible shopper.

The slight discount, supposedly unavailable ina any other venue, is just like the car salesman who says, “I’ll give you this price if you buy now, but if you come back tomorrow, it might not be available.” Another thing I learned in that consumer psychology class is that we are much more motivated by fear of potential regret – ie, we’d rather plonk down for something we don’t really need, than wake up tomorrow morning with despair in the pit of our stomach because we missed out on the only jar of Creme de la Mer that will ever be available to us in our whole lives! See, it taps into something really irrational.

The other genius things about duty free are that it happens at just the right time, when we are in holiday-mode, and thus ready to loosen all our normal responsible thinking, and have a good time. Those Gucci sunglasses that seem just a bit excessive in the normal course of things, all of a sudden seem the perfect emblem of our free-holiday-spirit. Go on, burn out the credit card – after all, in comparison to the price of the plane ticket and the rest of the trip, that new watch is just a drop in the bucket!!

And, even better, if we just think about it right, we can see that duty-free saves us even more money. First of all, there’s the fact that I always sample profusely, and use it as an opportunity to bolster my skin defenses against the coming onslaught of dry, recycled airplane air. I’d say two different kinds of eye gel, a moisturizer, and a refreshing facial mist is about par for a session of sampling at duty-free before boarding. The more expensive, obviously, the better – Chanel, La Prairie, and Creme de la Mer are all good stops.

Then, duty-free also saves us money by preventing the waste of unused foreign currency. Rather than just stuffing it in those “Change for Good” envelopes on the plane, if we have $5 worth of foreign currency left on the way back, it makes perfect sense to buy part of a $100 hat with that, the rest on credit card, just so you’re not wasting money. yeah.

For all of these reasons, for its very embodiment of holiday-ness, I look forward to duty-free. I look forward to whiling away the time before my flight amongst all the cosmetic concessions, and get annoyed when I am late to the airport and it cuts into my duty-free time. It represents holiday time, and in that sense (and that sense only) is actually duty-free.

That I will make a purchase at duty-free is almost a given. With all of these pressures, I am feeling extremely virtuous to say, this time my purchase was all of a Clarins juicy lip gloss, in the perfect bright-red, white-girl-in-the sunshine color.

Er, at least I was that good in New York. In Hong Kong a pair of sunglasses might have crept in. But I needed those.

I am about to start on my xmas shopping, so watch this space for bigger items soon, but first I wanted to quickly muse on the random beauty of the late-night Walgreens run. I am lucky enough to live right next to a 24-hour Walgreens, one of the only things that does stay open all night in this town. This past Wednesday, after my big critique, and after the multiple sleepless nights leading up to it, and a lot of pizza and beer to celebrate with classmates, I found myself hitting the WG with my friend Bethany on our way home.

Somehow through my stupor, a profound appreciation for Walgreen welled up in my heart. Where else can you get protein bars with your cold medicine, cheesy christmas decorations with your toilet paper with your blank CDs? I love the way Walgreens has *everything* from food to electronics, to cleaning supplies to office supplies to drugs. I love how it is all bathed on terrible fluorescent light, and is all terrible beige peg-board shelving and mottled white linoleum. I sort of even love that there is always a drug addict plaintively asking for change outside the door, and a couple of jaded bored salespeople inside, and how when the line gets really long they make an announcement telling you the cosmetics counter is open. I love how they give you cash back, any amount even if you only buy a $.99 pack of gum, and how they sell drug panaceas for all sorts on ailments that are unmentionable in good company – just about one of the only places where you can let it all hang out, be broken. I love their hideous script typeface logo, that they have decided to modernize by rendering in blue and red neon. I love Walgreens because it is so utilitarian (and not in that trendy Home Depot way) so practical, so bell-and-whistle free, yet they always have everything. I love walking out with orange zest kitchen cleaner in the same bag with my Edy’s Toll-House cookie dough ice cream and a new pair of Tweezerman tweezers, and that its next door and open all the time.

Sometimes convenience without pretension is so comforting.

As I said, Arvind and I were in LA last weekend. Back for almost a week, my tan is definitely beginning to fade. My fake tan, that is. Arvind benefits from a year round toasty brown skin color, and has no qualms about complaining that I “glow in the dark” at night. He is a big proponent of the suntan for me, and is always rather disappointed when I resist. (I must come clean and admit that the biggest reason I resist is not for the sensible prevention of skin cancer, but for the vain prevention of wrinkles… but to the same end.)

So, we have agreed upon the fake-bake in sunny situations that might otherwise call for a tan. I have tried several of the apply-at-home lotions, and though the results are good enough, its rather a lot of hard work to apply, and more than I can be bothered to do on a regular basis. So, he was thrilled to learn that there was a spray tanning salon just a block from our hotel. (Rather inexplicably, this salon also has regular UV tanning beds – why anybody would pay for sunshine in LA is beyond me.)

Well, my first spray tanning experience turned out to be a complete ordeal. We had dinner the first night in town with my lovely friends Melissa and West, and coincidentally Melissa said she had tons of extra tans at this place because they had used to live in the area and then had moved away. “Give them my name when you go in,” she said. So the next day I potter in, and tell them I am Melissa Hampton. H-a-m-p-t-o-n I spell it out. The guy looks though his database, then said, “I’m sorry Melissa, but you haven’t been in for a tan in 535 days. You had 13 tans left in your package, but it has expired. However, if you buy a new package of tans for $500, all of your old tans will be reinstated.” Some in some instant karma for having tried to get a free tan, I was now in the uncomfortable pickle of having to buy a several hundred dollar multi-tan package…! Speechless I stammered and muttered that I had moved away, didn’t want o buy a whole new package so as not waste them again, etc etc. I thought I was going to have to walk away, pale as ever, as I didn’t see any way to come clean and just buy one tan as regular-old-Kate.

After lots of muttering, looking at the floor, and hedging toward the door, the guy offered to reinstate my/ Melissa’s whole package if I bought just one tan, so I did that (for $50!! jeez, I could buy a whole jar of eye cream for that much. I might have well have gone for the regular (free) sunshine!).

But then the problem was that I couldn’t ask him how to use the thing, seeing as I had supposedly done it many times before. So I go into my little cubicle, where there are no instructions, strip, and step into the booth, where there are still no instructions. There is only a big green button that says “start.” I push the button, and after a few seconds, nozzles start moving and spraying, but seemingly not evenly or all over. I hop around and turn myself around trying to get even coverage, as the noxious stuff goes up my nose and dribbles and streaks down my torso and legs. The the spraying stops, and some blowing starts. Then the spraying starts again. And then its over.

I am left wet – unevenly wet, unfortunately – with little rivers of bronze water snaking down my calves, and absolutely no idea what do next. I see a plate at the back of the booth, where I was obviously supposed to have stood, rather than directly in front of the nozzles. Panic builds at the thought of tan zebra streaks forming in the pattern of the drips on my legs, and as I scurry to spread the liquid evenly with my hands, I realize that my palms and fingernails are all going to be died an unnatural brown. Panic mounts.

FYI to anybody who goes in for a spray tan without instructions: stand at the back of the booth. Let the first sprat cover your front, then turn around for the second spray to do your back. Then towel off all the liquid evenly – this is the key. Then make sure you wash your hands thoroughly and scrub off under the nails. I finally broke down and asked the guy at the front, who looked at me very strangely, but did tell me what to do.

Fortunately, the damage was not as bad as I feared. Apart from strangely dark elbows and between my toes, I quite enjoyed the golden goddess look

Despite the fact that this blog is not meant as a product-endorsement platform, I must do a bit of raving about my latest skin care purchase. I was wondering around town the other day, in the mood for a little shoppy-shoppy, specifically a little beauty shoppy-shoppy, and found my way to Origins. Now Origins is not usually my choice cosmetic brand. For all of my own new agey/ woo-woo/ yoga proclivities, I want skin care products that are going to work. To me that usually means some scientific-looking “breakthrough” rather than some smell-good combo of essential vegetable blarney. I’ve slathered on enough fruit enzymes and nut-oil creams in my time, and woken up the next morning with absolutely zero visible improvement, to be a bit skeptical about the beautifying properties of the plant kingdom.

However, as options for quality cosmetic outlets in New Haven are limited, Origins it was. I walked out with a small green bottle of something called “Plantidote“:

According to the product schpiel, Plantidote is formulated out of some groovy mushrooms by Dr. Andrew Weil, whom Origins is promoting as a holistic health guru. It turns out that “inflammation” is the root of many evils according to Dr. Weil, and these lovely mushrooms calm our overly inflamed selves.

Turns out, this stuff is fantastic. I have truly been feeling radiant-of-visage ever since using it.

Skin is so important to how we look. I read once that whether we are having a good or bad hair day is the biggest factor that affects our mood. I think skin is at least as important. Obviously a big zit can just totally shoot your confidence and make you want to catch some good re-runs on a friday night instead of facing social scrutiny, but I think that less obvious gradations on the skin-glow factor can have big self-perception implications as well. You know how there are those people that just have nice skin? And how it seems like you would just face the world with a greater joie-de-vivre if you were one of them? Well, I now feel like one of them. Thanks, Dr. Weil.