In Defense of the Selfie

I posted this "selfie" on Thursday night as I was about to head out the door to Open Stage. Why? Well, I was feeling pretty happy about my freshly-hennaed hair and how I was wearing it down, and how cute my magenta glitter lipstick looked, and I wanted to share it with the world. I think it's fun when dancers post a little "On my way to the show" picture too, as it builds the excitement.

Then today, I read this article titled "The Age of the Selfie" which suggested that I should not, in fact, be inflicting pictures of my face upon my friends. How dare I be so vain as to suggest that I might be a little pretty and that maybe people would like to see me? Well obviously I have a couple of problems with the anti-selfie sentiments that float around on the internet!

My first problem is the suggestion that there's something wrong with feeling that you are pretty or cute or that your new haircut is awesome. I don't have the best self-esteem but there are still days when I look in the mirror and think to myself "Self, you're so darned cute today, look at that outfit and that makeup, you're rockin' it!" And while I don't share all of those moments with the internet, sometimes I feel so good about myself that I do want to share, and then yes, I definitely enjoy the validating comments that I get from my friends.

It's no secret that girls and women suffer from a lot of image-based insecurity. Whether it comes from what we see in the media, or how we were treated when we were kids, or rude comments in the street, or a complicated combination of all that and more, it's a hard problem to combat. But it seems like there are segments of the population who feel like we're supposed to feel bad about ourselves, and that feeling good about how we look is horrible vanity. Oh, we should care about how we look, we should primp and preen and dress to impress, but as soon as we acknowledge that we did a good job making ourselves presentable, we're being narcissistic.

My second problem is that I think a lot of people who are against selfies have a deep misunderstanding of the nature of internet friendships. Sure, I have friends on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that I see in person regularly, but I also have friends who I rarely if ever see face-to-face. Some of them are friends who I've only known on-line, others are people who I met in person but they've since moved away. I LIKE seeing selfies of my long-distance friends. I like knowing what they've done with their hair, what kind of clothes they're wearing these days, what they're out doing in the city they live in now. And a lot of my friends LIKE seeing selfies of me. Especially now that I bellydance, they always want to see pictures of my new costumes, what sort of makeup looks I'm experimenting with, and of course, videos of me dancing.

My third and final problem with all this anti-selfie raging is that it is the smallest, stupidest of problems to worry about. Sick of seeing a friend's selfies? Just scroll past them. No big deal. If they post them constantly, you can even adjust your newsfeed on Facebook to not show their pictures. Honestly, what is it harming anybody if people like to post lots of pictures of themselves having fun, looking pretty, being bored, soliciting opinions on their new hair color, or anything like that? They're not spreading hateful opinions or damaging misinformation or overplayed memes. They're saying "Here's what I'd look like if you were here with me right now" and there's nothing wrong with that.

Beauty Blogging for Bellydancers Year-End Top Ten!

 Since I started Beauty Blogging for Bellydancers in January 2013, it seems only fitting that the last Friday of the year should be a retrospective of a few of my favorite products, ending with a couple that I haven't reviewed yet! Now, I'm not really good at ranking the things I love, so don't think of this as a "Top 10 Best Products" but more of a "the first ten things I thought of that I love and happen to have pictures of."

#1. Urban Decay Build-your-Own Palettes. While it's true that the colors in the palette I featured above had a "meh" pay-off, I really like the 6-pan build your own palette box they came in, and I also love my 4-pan with "Rock" in it. I also like that more and more companies are developing their own build-your own, because anything that makes it easier for me to take all my favorite colors in one easy package is OK with me.

 #2. BLAST FLIPSTICK! It is possible that I included these just because I love the name, but honestly, I do get a ton of use out of the berry-hued one.

#3. Lip Tar by Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics. I can't get enough of this stuff and I recommend it to everyone, I've even got my mom and my mother-in-law wearing it.

#4. Shiny, iridescent, color-shifting nail polish colors. This one is part of Maybelline's Color Show line but I like other brands, too.

#5. THE WONDER PENCIL! Another product where I love the name, but this unassuming, affordable product really does come in handy and I use it all the time. 

#6. Spellbinding Eyeshadow Book. I haven't used this as much as I would like but I am really in love with the colors.

#7. Imperialis Facial Moisturizer by Lush Cosmetics. I LOVE this stuff. It makes my face smell like orange blossoms. It's a light, creamy moisturizer which keeps my skin from drying out in the desert air.

#8 and #9. Zoya brand nail polish and Jamberry nail wraps. I love Zoya for their unusual colors which tend to hold up well. Here I'm wearing Seraphina with a Black Friday exclusive Winter Morning nail wrap for a lovely, wintery nail look. Jamberry lets me have the fancy nail designs I'd never be able to master myself, without having to carve out time to go to the salon.

#10. e.l.f Lashes. They're affordable. They're available in a variety of styles. They're easy to buy at Target. And while I've been told the glue isn't great, it is latex-free. I honestly don't know why I've never reviewed these, as they're definitely perfect for bellydancers. I mean, at this price, you can even occasionally wear them for date-night or a party and not feel guilty.

New lip products from Urban Decay

 Please forgive the less than awesome nature of this photo, I should really allow myself more than 15 minutes to do my makeup before class. Anyway: fuchsia lipstick!

I figured I should try the new color-coordinated Revolution Lipstick and 24/7 Glide-On Lip Pencil from Urban Decay, because I do love things to match and it's so frustrating sometimes to find pencils and lipsticks that work perfectly together. You'd think that every company would make perfectly complimenting colors, but I have not found that to be the case.

I chose Jilted, a fuchsia-pink shade. The lipstick has a cool blue shift, which I thought was nifty and also probably a good way to tone down any yellowness in ones teeth. The liner does not have blue shimmer, but it does otherwise match perfectly, as you can see in this hand swatch:

What a nice color! I do feel like it's a bit intense for my skin tone, I definitely would never do it for day-wear and I felt like I should have done more with my eyes to balance it out... That said, it's also kind of fun to wear ridiculous fuchsia with blue shimmer lipstick. If I ever go to an 80s or glam-rock themed party, you KNOW this is what I am breaking out!

Both the liner and the lipstick went on pretty smoothly and delivered intense color. The lipstick is not very sticky and didn't leave a bunch of color on my water bottle during dance class. It stayed in place pretty well for an hour of drilling, so that's pretty good! However, my lips also felt pretty dry while using it, so definitely make sure you're well-moisturized before applying it. I like the formula enough that I might pick it up in other colors too! I think this will be a good one for dancers. There are a lot of shades in this collection that are intense enough to really pop on the big stage, and having perfectly-matching liners makes it easy to fill out your lips if needed.

Why you should be wearing lip tar for your next performance

 

I've already talked a bit about Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Lip Tar because I used the green as an accent over other colors. I was so happy with it that I decided I should get a color that I could wear for all of my bellydance performances. I've used it two or three times now and I have to say I am really happy with it! I chose "Vintage" which is a nice wine red with a bit of purple/magenta undertone. The Sephora website calls it a Deep Burgundy and it looks that way in the tube but that's not how it wears.

 It comes in a cute little zipper pouch with a cute little brush for application. The cute little brush comes with a little plastic sleeve and you should not lose that, or you will end up with lip tar all over the inside of your cute little zipper pouch. Learn from my mistakes!

 

Here is a handswatch (Blogger has a case of the dumbs today and rotated the image. No wonder I am considering migrating to Wordpress). This was the tiniest dot on the brush. You can see how the color varies in intensity depending on how much you blend it out.

And here it is on my face! I made my lips WAY big because we were dancing on the big stage under bright lights. Oh, stage makeup, you make me look so.... different. Anyway. Nice intense color.

What I love about lip tar is that despite its name, it isn't sticky or goopy, so my hair doesn't get stuck in it. The color lasts forever and stays in place pretty well (sometimes I get a little transfer onto drinks, but not as much with an actual lipstick), but then when it's time to take it off... it comes right off! The instructions say to apply clear first, which I haven't done but I have found that putting down a lip primer first keeps it from leaving stains behind in any cracks in my lips, which makes for ease of removal.

I swear, this stuff is so magical I'd think it was made of pixie dust and unicorn tears, but the package insists that it is Vegan, Cruelty Free and Gluten Free (is gluten common in lip products? I really don't know). So it's a great product that you can feel great about using, and it comes in so many colors! No matter what your dance style, you can find the color you need, from a demure nude to a brilliant red to pure cyan blue and deep metallic black.

If my words aren't enough to convince you, I totally recommend going to Sephora to try some on. Wear it all day and decide for yourself! (Personally, I like to go to the store and put on Lovecraft because it's the sort of ridiculous sparkly pink I would never normally wear)

GLITTER EXTRAVAGANZA!

 Here we go, dear readers! I am going to review SEVEN different brands of glitter. Are you excited? I'm excited. Let's see what we've got:
1. Mica Beauty Cosmetics in Green.
2. Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics in Mint.
3. LASplash in Radiant Ivy. I really like that name, don't you?
4. Belle Pierre Cosmetics in Greentastic. I like that name, too!
5. Medusa's Makeup in Antoinette.
6. NYX in Pink. I can't find this glitter on their website so I think they don't make it anymore!
7. Blume Bauer Sparklies in Green with Envy.

 And here they are with their caps off so you can see them better (except for NYX, because you'd see less if I took the cap off). I hope you'll forgive me for not doing a hand swatch on this one, I didn't really want to have bits of glitter on my hand for the rest of the day. Now for my opinions on each one:

1. This is a very fine micro-glitter, possibly the finest in my collection, in a pure emerald green. I wore it all day on Wednesday and had zero fall-out, so I'd call that a WIN! I can't find green on their website, but they have some other pretty colors. Because it's so fine, it doesn't have as much impact as larger glitter, so it's better suited for gigs where you'll be close to the audience.

2. Also relatively fine and very sparkly pale green. I wore this alongside 2, which was a bad idea because they're so similar I couldn't tell which one was falling out on my face. Seems to have stayed on pretty well.

3. Fine clear glitter with green iridescence. I think this was the fallout culprit in last night's look and it doesn't seem to have stayed very well, so I'd say you can probably pass on this one even though it's such a pretty color.

4. Bright iridescent green. I like this one for big stage shows because it is so sparkly, it really has a big impact! I'd recommend wearing it over a darker eyeshadow so it doesn't look too neon, unless that's what you're looking for.

5. Fine ruby red. I bought this to wear over lipstick and it did the job perfectly. Looks kind of like crushed rubies, stays in place well. A good buy if you want to do the red glitter lip look.

6. This is what I've previously been using for my glitter lips. It's a little chunkier than all these micro glitters, and I am not a fan of the packaging, it's kind of hard to get the glitter out. But this iridescent pink is a nice choice to put over winter red, wine and purple lipsticks to soften them, so you may want to look for a similar shade in a different brand.

7. Nice medium green micro-glitter. I like this color because it's very leafy and looks good with the olive eyeshadow colors I prefer. I wore it last night and had some fallout while applying, but none once it was on. Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with Blume, but I don't think that makes me biased. This is objectively a nice glitter product.

 Here I am wearing four shades of glitter all in one! Sorry that I couldn't work every glitter into one look, but I think this is pretty good. I did a glitter ombre on my eyes using some light pearly green eyeshadow as the base, Medusa's Makeup glitter primer over that, and then color 3 in the corner of my eye, 2 in the middle, and 7 at the edge. I wish the lighting was better in this picture so you could see it. I'm going to play with the idea more and maybe do a quick tutorial once I've perfected it (I think I want a different shadow base and more color difference between my light and medium shades). I also put the red glitter over a red lip pencil for glitter lips.

With my eyes open, you only see a little glitter. Also I think I shouldn't have done my water line in black with this look, I think the liner is a little heavy for the glitter. This calls for more experimentation.

The results: I danced 4 numbers at Open Stage. By the end of the night I had a little glitter fallout, my lips were still quite sparkly, and unfortunately, my eye glitter had started to build up in my crease. Ugh. But I was still pretty glittery, so not a total loss.

I hope that maybe I've introduced all you glitter-loving bellydancers to some new brands, or given you some ideas of what to shop for and what to avoid. Do you have a favorite glitter brand that I didn't review? Would you like to see more of one of the colors I didn't use in this week's look? Let me know in the comments!

Lipstick Review

 Today I'd like to discuss a decent drug store brand lipstick: COVERGIRL blastflipstick. Hey, before I get to reviewing, can we just agree that Blast Flipstick sounds like the two-fisted man-of-science hero of a 1950s monster movie? "Blast Flipstick! Manhattan is under attack by a giant pterodactyl! Jump into your FlipJet and save the day!"

 Silly name aside, these are a nice product because they have two blendable colors in each affordable tube (retail is about $7ish and they're often on sale at Target and I recently had a coupon). It's basically three colors in one, because you can wear either color on its own or layer or blend them (so probably more than three if you get really creative in your blending). The two colors I have are "Intense" (a plum and frosty pink combo) and "Minx" (chocolate brown and gold). At the top of this post I am wearing the darker shade of Intense with just a touch of the light over it.

 Here's your handy-dandy hand swatch. Pretty smooth colors!

This is an attempt at an ombre look with the lighter shade of Intense and a bit of the plum blended in at the center of my lips. You can see the that light shade is a nice, shimmery nude on me. I could actually do this for day wear if I ever wore lipstick when I wasn't performing.

Here's Minx, with the dark all over and the gold at the middle (bad lighting makes it look uniform). I like this color because it is brown, but it also allows my natural lip color to come through just a tiny bit, so it doesn't look weird (because brown lips are not always the best look for a fair, freckled Irish-Welsh girl like me). This is going to be my go-to color for steampunk and forest faerie looks, but it could go for a lot of other styles too! I could see it for a jungle girl look with leopard print, a chocolate-themed looked, or paired with brown leather. It's also nice for some vintage-inspired looks. I also have a feeling that it would look even browner if you put down a brown lip pencil over your lips first. I'll experiment with that.

So how does it rate for dancers? Well, it comes recommended by my teacher Jolie, and I generally feel like if a pro likes it, it must be good. But I took it for a test-run today. It held up well through an hour-long dance lesson. Then I went to lunch where I suffered a bit of color loss but still had most of it. So if you have a restaurant gig with two sets a night, you could wear this, eat a little hummus between sets and just need a quick touch-up. It might hold up even better with a lip primer -- I haven't worked much with those but they're on my to-try list.

I'm also pretty happy with the stickiness factor. I was whipping my hair around like a fiend and it only grabbed on a little bit and then let go. There's nothing worse to me than super-sticky lip products. This one seems to dress and settle pretty well, without drying your actual lips out like a matte lipstick.

This gets a definite thumbs up for me. I think it's a great way to add some color variety to your lip products without a huge money investment, which is great if you pretty much only wear lipstick for performances. And since it's a drug store brand it's easy to grab on the go if you realize on the way to a far-away gig that you forgot your lipstick.

Urban Decay Theodora Palette Review

 I wasn't going to buy this palette, really I wasn't. I already have two large UD palettes, two small ones, and a collection of their single shadows. And that's not even getting into what I own from other brands. Also, while I probably will eventually go see that Oz movie, I'm not so excited about it that I feel the need to buy promotional tie-in items. Above all else, I am trying to cut down on frivolous purchases to save up for Tribal Fest. But then I saw the early previews of the product and I really had to have it!

Inside the box of the Urban Decay Theodora Palette you will find the following items: the palette tin itself (containing 6 shadow pans and a liner), a lipstick pencil, and an instruction card detailing how to copy Mila Kunis's look from the movie. The funny thing is that her look does not use the eye colors I am most excited about! But it is a pretty nice brown smoky look which could be used for a night out, or dressed up with a little glitter to match a brown costume for a performance.

One of the big selling points for me is that this palette comes in a build-your-own box, so you can take the shadows out, put others in, transfer them into the smaller 4-pan build your own, and replace them with something else if you run out. The colors are (clockwise, starting from the upper left), Broken, Beware, Bewitch, West, Spell (duo shadow black glitter/gold glitter) and Jealous (due shade medium green/light green). These are all NEW colors and these Oz palettes are the first time UD has used duo-color shadows like this. It also comes with the new, exclusive super saturated lip pencil in Theodora (quickly becoming one of my favorite things ever) and a 24/7 liner pencil in Zero, aka the color that UD puts in everything when they can't think of a different color, I guess. I mean, if this is your first palette it's great to get a black eye pencil with it, but I must have 4 of these pencils now.

ARM SWATCHES! Thank you, Dawn Sehar, for explaining to me why beauty bloggers like arm swatches. This one shows the liner, the lip pencil (I drew a heart for you all because I did this on Valentine's Day), and then the shadow colors in the order I listed them above. As you can see, Broken is almost the same color as my skin, the browns all show up nicely, and the glitters and greens did not show up too well. This was done without any sort of primer, by the way. I'm running low and didn't want to use it all on my arm.

And how does it look on my face? Well, I didn't think I could fit ALL THE COLORS on my eyes without looking insane, so I focused on the four colors not used in Mila Kunis's look (so both shades of Spell and Jealous). I put the darker Jealous all over my lid and applied the lighter one up towards my brow bone, making a nice green gradient that looks really good with my fair skin, hazel eyes and red hair. I did a bit of dark Spell in the outer corner of my eye, and the light Spell in the inner corner and under my lash line. I wasn't too thrilled with the darker version of spell... it didn't really deliver much punch. But the golden one looked really nice, especially with the greens. I lined it with the Zero pencil, added some Super Curl mascara from a different UD palette, and colored my brows in with my UD brow box. Oh yes, and this was applied over Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion, because I love that stuff.

And then there's the lips! OK, this pencil is the number one reason why I bought this palette. I was planning a vintage pin-up inspired look for the party last week, and I saw this color and I knew it was just right for my lips. It did not disappoint! This candy-apple red with a hint of sparkle just looks so good on me -- and I say that as a girl who started out her make-up wearing like sure that she would never enjoy wearing red lipstick. This color really minimizes the yellow in my teeth. I don't know if it actually makes them look less yellow, or if it's so in-your-face bright that my teeth just fade into the background, shamed by the awesomeness that surrounds them.

Am I saying that a lip pencil is worth spending about $50 on a palette? No. But I am saying that if, like me, you were teetering on the edge of indecision, it might be what pushes you over.

But wait... this is a cosmetics review by a dancer, for dancers! So how does all this hold up for dancing? Well, I have worn the lip pencil for two gigs and have been pretty happy with how it's held up all night. It doesn't wear off easily and it doesn't come off on your teeth and it's not too sticky. As for the eyeshadows and liner, I did not test this particular look with a gig, but I almost always wear Urban Decay shadows and 24/7 Liner and I am happy with how they hold up, as long as they're applied over a primer.

I am admittedly a little disappointed by the lack of color intensity in the two due-color pans. I think that if I was going to use Jealous for a performance I might have to add another, darker color. The black Spell seems to be a total wash, though it may prove itself after further experimentation. The gold Spell does seem pretty nice, and despite complaints on-line I didn't really notice too much glitter fall-out... but then again, I just wore it to dinner and Target, I wasn't working it too hard.