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Health and Beauty - August 2007

Hair Trends for Spring/Summer 2007

August 30th 2007 01:08
Like everyone else, I’ll be lining up outside a hair salon to hail the promise of extended sunshine and say goodbye to my boring, dark tired look that is winter. But before I do that, I thought I’d do some research to see what the experts say about what’s in for air this coming Spring/Summer.


Fringe, fringe, swoop

Jessica Alba
courtesy of beautifulhairstyles.com


Whether they’re short, long, uneven or straight, fringe is here to stay. And I, for one, am getting sick of the tufts of baby hair crowning the top of my head so as much as I hate the thought of flipping my hair back to keep my fringe out of my eyes, I hate looking like I have wings at my temples more. There is a particular style of fringe I’m thinking of going for, called the Swoop Bang – long fringe gently combed to the side of the face with a little flick at the end. This look is a perfect, sophisticated, low-maintenance addition to any length of hair.

60s Glam is Back!

Hilary Duff


BIG hair, teased at the crown to create volume. You can either leave it out with a little flip at the bottom or tie it back in a bun (like Hilary Duff above). Top it off with a wide bright headband or headwrap and you have a hairstyle to complement those short bright swing dresses.

Sleek Ponytail

The sleek, high ponytail is also in for those with longer hair. With a full-bodied back and a bit of curl, your mane will bounce along merrily atop your shoulders when you do the kangaroo bop.

Crop and Bob

Pink
courtesy of beautifulhairstyles.com

The shorter, the better, experts say. The best thing with this style is you don’t have to do much with it. You can tame it and comb it very close to your face – perfect for those with big, expressive eyes or you can just muss it up and make it as shaggy as you want.

Rihanna
courtesy of beautifulhairstyles.com

For those who don’t want a crop too severe, you can opt for the bob that’s been made famous by the likes of Rihanna and Posh, called the Inverted Bob which suits any shape of face. The style is cut short at the nape but gradually grows longer towards the front with the ends curling just under the chin. I’ve seen this style on a lot of women walking out of the salon recently and is apparently very easy to maintain.

Bye bye, hair straightener

Brittany Murphy
courtesy of beautifulhairstyles.com

If you’re fond of your long hair and would shriek like one of those girls from ANTM when their locks have been chopped off, I have good news for you. Most of us have natural waves in our hair (some more so than others) and we spend a good ten minutes or more ironing them out with a hair straightener. But experts are saying to embrace them as the soft, loose, wavy style is in. Unless your hair is screaming ‘split ends!’, you don’t even need to go to a hair salon for this. All you need to do is invest in a good frizz-free product that won’t make your hair limp, lank and oily at the end of the day.

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Posted By: Aimzster - Category: Hair Care
   


What was your worst beauty buy?

August 28th 2007 01:24
Recently my sister was conned persuaded into buying a plethora of skincare products to treat her acne-prone skin. Two weeks later, she lamented over the loss of $300 of her hard-earned money on products that had only made her skin cry out for hydration as it sprouted a multitude of big, red angry pimples. As much as I was tempted to ask her why she chose to trust a beauty therapist whose face resembled an abstract painting of oranges and blues and who looked like she wrestled with a cheap can of tan spray judging by the zigzag colours of her cleavage, sadly, it’s a tale I’ve heard (and moaned out myself) too often. In our desperate attempt to imitate the flawless, glowing faces of our favourite celebs and retain our youth, beauty products will continue to be a hit and miss and my sister was not the first – or the last – to vow revenge on these beauty companies for false advertising.

In the past several years, I’ve probably thrown out a hundred garbagefuls of useless beauty and cosmetic products. Here are only some of the products I bought in 2007 that I wish I hadn’t spent the time, money and effort on :

Honey Moisturising Shampoo & Conditioner from The Body Shop
The Body Shop Honey Moisturising Shampoo
The Body Shop contains all natural ingredients across their range of products and, after falling in-love with White Musk, I stupidly thought I’d feel the same for the Honey Moisturising Shampoo & Conditioner. Not so. Not only was I not fond of the nut smell (what happened to the scent of the main ingredient, honey?), the shampoo and conditioner combo only made my hair dry and brittle that I actually heard squeaking noises as I combed it. These are probably the worst shampoo and conditioner products I’ve ever used and that’s saying something considering my mum used to buy those $2 strawberry shampoos from The Reject Shop. And for $17.50 each, you’d think they’d do the job.

Volume Shocking Mascara by Loreal
Loreal Volume Shocking Mascara
With its dual applicators (lash definition and a top coat) and shaped like an eye, the packaging was attractive. Of course, it also helps that someone like Aishwarya Rai is promoting it on TV. Which makes me wonder how long her make-up artist took to untangle the black clumps created by the top coat because it made my lashes stick together and were really clumpy, trying to separate them with a brush didn’t work. And what’s with up with making the base coat grey? As I didn’t want to apply too much of the top coat due to the clumpiness factor, it didn’t cover up the greys created by the base coat so my eyelashes looked like they were growing old with me. I am a fan of Loreal cosmetics but this was gets a thumbs down.

Veet Hair Removal Cream for Sensitive Skin
Veet Hair Removal Cream Sensitive
Shaving apparently only makes your hair grow back thicker and waxing hurts like hell. So why not try a hair removal cream? Apply it to a hairy patch, wipe it off after a few minutes and voila! Hair gone, leaving your skin feeling silky smooth – as the promo would have us believe. While I was prepared to accept that this hair cream didn’t make all my hair completely disappear – sometimes it resembled a forest with the trees chopped halfway down, I didn’t understand why the cream made my skin itchy, red and irritable, resulting in a scar (similar to one you’d get if you’d been distracted shaving) the next day. If this cream is for the sensitive skin, I would hate to try out the one for normal skin. So back to waxing I go.

Any of those backless, strapless adhesive bras
Backless Strapless Bra
If you’re a size bigger than a C, do not try any of these bras that supposedly offer all the support you need for your fuller size. Even though the cup I got was a size D, the cups didn’t even cover a quarter of my boobs and hung limply at the bottom like sagging excess skin.

What was your worst beauty buy so far for 2007?
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Posted By: Aimzster - Category: Skin Care, Hair Care, Stories
   


My Lemon Detox Experiment

August 23rd 2007 02:48
Since hearing that Beyonce Knowles publicly attributing her svelte figure in Dreamgirls to a Lemon Detox program, a friend of mine recently joined the cheerleading team for what is also called the Lemonade Diet.

After ten days, she said she lost ten kilos and was practically bouncing off the walls as she gushed how much more energised and happy she was because of her lemons. I thought ‘lemons’ was another word for some kind of recreational drug and I was about to walk out of her apartment then and there. Then she dragged me over to her fridge and showed me a drawerful of innocent-looking fresh lemons.

Lemons

She proceeded to tell me about the benefits of the Lemon Detox program – how it effectively cleanses your body, strengthens your immune system, makes you feel energised, gives you a positive, happier outlook on life while also clearing your skin, making your hair shinier and, most importantly to a lot of people, helps you lose weight. All these benefits just by replacing all solid foods with up to 10 glasses of the lemon mix a day (mix of lemons, maple syrup and cayenne pepper) between 5 to 14 days. As I rolled my eyes, thinking of other failed fad diets, she assured me that the drink provided enough nutrients to satisfy one’s hunger cravings.

I sat there, glowering as she continued to gush. Then I realised I had been doing that a lot lately over the course of winter. Glowering. Glowering at my hubby for taking up the pathway everytime we walk and practically pushing me onto the grass with a litter of shit; glowering because I can’t seem to ‘seal a steak’ properly; glowering at Billy Blanks everytime he tells me through the TV to stop bouncing. I had lost my motivation to exercise regularly and eat properly and while I imagined with horror the grease oozing out of my pores as I devour another KFC 2 piece feed, I couldn’t seem to stop.

Hearing my friend humming to herself as she prepared another lemon drink and seeing the glow on her face, the sparkle in her eyes, I finally decided to try this detox program – not to lose weight (I am a firm believer that to lose weight and keep it off, you need to get off your ass and exercise, exercise, exercise) but to cleanse my digestive system so I could be regular again instead of feeling bloated and constipated which had sent me to many sessions of glowering, slumped over the toilet and my hubby threatening to lock me in there until I came out of my ‘black’ mood.

Planning to only do it four days or however long it took to get me regular, I began the program the next day. In addition to the lemon drink, I also had to drink a cup of laxative tea at night and a cup of salt water first thing in the morning, all to help with the bowel movements.

The taste of the lemon mix was surprisingly…nice. It doesn’t beat my cappuccino or Coke Zero but I wasn’t gagging on it like I was with the Poo Tea. The first six hours of the program was pretty good – no protests from my stomach at 10am when it realised it had skipped breakfast. I felt full and didn’t feel weak or lethargic from lack of solid food, although a little envious as the smell of lasagne heating in the microwave wafted into my office. Then 3pm rolled around and my stomach let out a long, loud, rumbling sound like my bellybutton was farting. And it refused to stop. For the next three days. In meetings, I had to conceal the rumbling sounds with a series of coughs that my throat was getting sore. During the quiet periods, I found myself snarling at the image of my friend cheerfully telling me I would not get hungry while also fighting the feeling of weakness creeping in.

Home was no better. I had to lock myself in the bedroom while hubby prepared his dinner and slept early to prevent myself from raiding the fridge. I had no energy to exercise and my mood only got worse. On top of glowering at everything, I started talking aloud to myself just to I could drown out the protests of my stomach. Despite drinking the laxative tea and the salt water, there were no bowel movements for the first two days. After it finally came on the afternoon of the third day, I thought I was going to pass out.

While I had lost half a kilo during the course of three days, my skin remained sallow, my eyes dull, my hair as brittle as always, I felt faint and very irritable. While my friend reminded me that I had to stick to the program for at least another three days to get the full benefits, I was sick of hearing my hubby now threatening to drive me into the middle of Blue Mountains and leave me there and told her, as nicely as I could, that the Lemon Detox program had done its job for me and that I would probably not look at lemons the same way again.

Have you tried the Lemonade Diet? Or any other fad diets?
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Posted By: Aimzster - Category: Beauty Food
   


The Essence of Kate

August 20th 2007 02:50
When I first saw fuzzy pictures of Kate Moss snorting cocaine, I thought Aha! Another supermodel whose career will go straight down the toilet. Then I realised what era I’m living in when Paris Hilton walking demurely in front of flashing cameras after her stint in jail or Britney in her lack of panties are considered hard-hitting news. Now I seem to see her (Kate, not Britney, pantyless or otherwise) everywhere – on TV, billboards, video clips, magazines, websites and at one point, even at a London display. Nowadays, when people talk about Kate, it’s like they’re gossiping about their glamorous next-door neighbour.

Kate Moss Fragrance

But if you think or you’re hoping Kate will just up and leave, you may as well hie yourself off to a bush in the country and feed on your toenails because Kate will infiltrate our TV screens, billboards, magazines and websites like never before when she launches her own new fragrance, called – wait for it – Kate.

With notes like orange blossom absolute, magnolia, lily of the valley, rose petal and sandalwood, amongst other things, Kate will be a pink-coloured floral musk which promises to capture the good and bad sides of the waif-like model in a small bottle. Kate assures potential buyers that she was very hands-on with the producing of the fragrance. More hands-on than JLO who walked out of the shower pointing to herself in her bathrobe, saying, “This. I want it to smell like this” and Glow was born? Surely not!

Britney Spears Curious
Curious to find out how Britney's career will unfold in the near future? I am!
Yup. Kate’s jumped on the celebrity fragrance bandwagon, joining the growing multitude of celebrities (ie Sarah Jessica Parker, Kylie Minogue, David Beckham, Sean Puffy, P Diddy, Do A Dee-Dee – whatever he’s calling himself these days) who have lent their names and faces to fragrances since the massive success of JLo’s butt, Glow. They've all decided if we can’t have their money and lifestyle, us plebs can convince ourselves we are so much more connected to our idols by smelling like them. With 23% of the top 100 fragrances sold in the US each year being celebrity-endorsed, the list of celebrity fragrances naturally won’t end with Kate. Within the next months, expect scents by the likes of Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera to become the #1 item on many a young girl’s Xmas wish list. And if Britney, who has lost all credibility when she dropped her undies, still manages to top the celebrity perfume sales charts with Curious, methinks it will only be a matter of time before a rehabilitated Lindsay Lohan comes up with her own essence of skank.

Kate comes out in Europe and Asia in September but will be released in US early next year. It’s expected to rake in 65 million pounds in sales within the next two years, but she’s not stopping there. There are talks she’s even producing her own skincare range. Now you can smell AND look like Kate!

Have you ever bought a perfume endorsed by a celebrity?
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Posted By: Aimzster - Category: Fragrances
   


Colour me down under

August 16th 2007 01:33
So you’ve just had your hair dyed a fabulous colour, so different from your old drab one that you’re walking home like one of those gals from a Vidal Sassoon ad. Then you get home, strip in front of the mirror and realise the carpet doesn’t quite match the curtains. What do you do? Before, you only had three options :

1.The dreaded Brazilian. Yes, you’re nice and smooth but are the pain and indignity worth it? And is it really safe to be pulling and tearing away at the skin of your nether regions like that? All I’m saying is if your eyelids can sag…
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Coping with Stress

August 14th 2007 01:05
Some say a little bit of stress in your life is good for you, it gives an otherwise ho-hum life a much needed excitement. On the other hand, everyone knows prolonged stress is extremely bad for your mental and physical health. The negative effects are endless – migraines, insomnia, heart attack, lowering of the immune system, triggering unhealthy behaviour like smoking, overeating, drug-taking and can make you appear older than you actually are.

Unfortunately, stress is all too much a part of our daily routine but some people cope with their stress better than most. I, for one, was born a stresshead - high strung, impatient people usually are. I used to stress about everything, including stupid things like running out of milk in the midst of making coffee or merging into the next lane on a freeway. I imagined myself a steam train gathering full speed – I felt the heat rising from my shoulders, spreading through the back of my neck, covering my ears with a buzzing sound and filling the rest of my head that I think my eyes are going to pop out and I have the urge to lash out physically, by either yelling out a string of expletives or slamming my fist into something, or both. And having a human-sized dummy made up of bubble wrap in your room to punch every time I was stressed only fuelled my violent tendencies.
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Wanted : A damn good eye cream

August 9th 2007 01:14
Being of Asian descent, I was never endowed with lids you could freely apply any shade of eyeshadow to. But with the years passing, my eyelids have been getting heavier and heavier that I feel, within the next decade, they would droop right down to my line of vision and I would have to pry them up with a peg – or get plastic surgery. Nowadays, when I stare at someone, I make the conscious effort to raise my eyebrows slightly so I don’t look like I’m growling at them.

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7 Beauty Tips my Mother told me

August 6th 2007 01:12
My mother is a character. Everyone tells me so everytime I relay stories of those times she didn’t let me out of a van as the rest of the family piled into church because I was wearing a hanging shirt (you know those cropped shirts in the 80s that expose your belly when you lift up your arms over your head?) or the time she chased me around the house with an iron when she spotted a crease down the side of my dress.

In my 30 years, my mum has sprouted one old wives’ tale after another which I accepted in my later years with the rolling of the eyes and a groan. While some of her old wives’ tales turned out to be true (milk does make the bones stronger and thumb-sucking can damage your teeth to a certain extent), there have been what I think are some doozies -
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How To Keep The Hair Dye In Longer

August 2nd 2007 08:55
I've been using hair dye for two years now, and I've learned how to keep it in better. Did you know that red fades fastest, too?

So here are a few tips from moi: (me


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Posted By: Dianna G - Category: Hair Care
   


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