I really want to be excited about this Britney Spears/Candies/”Look Ma, no retouching!” business.

I mean, I really, really do. This blogger is psyched. Female Impersonator is pretty happy. And I get that it is super important to educate everyone (especially the young girls who make up the bulk of Britney’s fan base — wait, she still has a fan base, right?) on how photo retouching works so that we can stop assuming that the poreless perfection we see in magazines and on television bears any resemblance to reality.

But maybe it’s because Jessica Simpson just hopped on the cover of Marie Claire without any retouching or even makeup to promote her Vh1 show (and y’all know how I felt about that waste of time) — and was then promptly accused of actually wearing makeup because she looked so damn good. Maybe it’s because Kim Kardashian leaked unretouched photos of her bikini-clad self, like, months ago.

The whole thing is starting to feel like the new sex tape or baby bump rumor — the latest way waning starlets can exploit their own bodies for just a little more media attention, please. And hey, those are their bodies. They can point out their flaws (while claiming to have nothing left to prove) all they want. But let’s not pretend this is major progress. “Glad people are getting paid thousands of dollars to remove 2 millimeters from celebrity calves,” notes Nadine Jolie as she compares Brit’s before and after pics, above.

Right.

Because what all these “love me, love my (ever so tiny) muffin top” photos are actually saying is: “F*** retouching, I totally am this gorgeous.” Without getting into whatever innumerable beauty routines and insane diets they use to get that way. Without paying anything more than lip service to the idea that maybe women need not all conform to this one particular beauty myth.

I think I liked it better when the photos were fake and we all just had to keep reminding ourselves of that fact. Now the photos are real. But I’m not sure that means you can believe what you see.

What’s your take — are we in brave new world territory here? Or is Britney just psyched to be getting attention for something other than being totally insane?

Beauty U Student #1: Why are you on all fours?

Beauty U Student #2: That’s how they did it on the video!

Miss Jenny (sticking her head behind their curtain): What’s going on? Why is she kneeling like that?

Beauty U Student #2: Is this going to hurt?

Miss Jenny: The skin back there is much less sensitive than you’d think. You won’t feel a thing.

Silence.

Silence.

Beauty U Student #1 (hushed tones): Oh my God, what is that?

Miss Jenny: Someone get me the tea tree oil…You really shouldn’t be picking at that.

I’m sorry, dear readers, to ruin any illusions you might have had, but there is just nothing pretty about learning to wax, Brazilian-style.

*The Beauty U spa isn’t big enough to have separate treatment rooms, so we work in little curtained areas, sort of like a hospital ER, but with a “Music of the Rainforest” soundtrack.

Okay, I’ve told you that we’re sleep deprived and living on junk food. Now let’s talk wardrobe. The first few weeks at Beauty U, we took the dress code seriously: Black shirt, black pants or skirt, Beauty U apron or spa jacket on top. Professional is the watch word Miss Jenny keeps coming back to on this front. “You don’t have to look like a super model every day, girls — just keep it professional.”

But first of all? The polyester Beauty U aprons don’t withstand much washer-dryer action before they start to fray. Plus, when you spend the whole night mucking around with white or light-colored lotions and powders, an all-black uniform starts to seem like a questionable move. Then there’s that whole issue of jeans not fitting so well anymore. We might have started out in black dress pants and cute flats, but most of us are down to black sweat pants and sneakers now. I’ve figured out that if I wear my black yoga pants to school and then go to bed in them afterwards, it greatly increases the odds that I’ll be able to wake up in time to hit a yoga class before work the next morning. We’ve also generally stopped wearing makeup, because it’s just an extra hassle to wash it off before we practice facials anyway, and you already know how infrequently I brush my hair.

Again, big heaping soup spoons full of irony here. I think Miss Jenny keeps mentioning “looking professional” because in another month or so, we’ll be done with the textbook and ready to start working in the spa on real, live, not-fellow-student clients, and she’s hoping she can get some of us back into real pants by then. No promises.

So that’s where we are, gang: Three months and 176 hours down, six months and 424 hours to go. I can name almost every layer of the skin, apply eyeliner in an almost-straight line, and even give you a glycolic peel (if you can withstand the pain). As these last few posts show, the honeymoon period is ending. Most of my classmates started our program overflowing with excitement — they were passionate about makeup and skin care and thrilled to be pursuing a long-held dream that would lead to a glamorous and lucrative career.

I hear a lot less of that excitement now and a lot more worry about whether all this hard work will lead to a job that’s really better than their current low-paying service industry gig — or, given the economy, if there will be any jobs at all.

Now I’d love to hear from you: What did I miss in this Three Month State of Beauty U Report? What else are you dying to know about the inner workings of beauty school, this project, or the beauty industry in general? Put your questions in the comments or email me [beautyschooledproject (at) gmail (dot) com] and I’ll work on answering them in some upcoming posts!

Have I not made myself clear on this subject?

Because the trend of beauty products packaged to resemble junk food is still going strong, according Sephora’s Beauty and the Blog, which is breathlessly heralding the forthcoming launch of Cake Beauty on Sephora.com. The products are named things like Satin Sugar and Deserted Island, and bear the not-at-all-condescending tagline “You Deserve This.”

Let’s go over this one more time then: Cake is for eating. Not for wearing on your face. And especially not for telling yourself you’re not allowed to eat it, but smelling the plastic beauty product version of it is just as satisfying. Because it is not.

So please, have your cake and… you know the rest.

]]> http://beautyschooledproject.com/2010/02/03/more-forbidden-food-beauty-products-glossed-over/feed/ 3 virginia600 Cake+Beauty http://beautyschooledproject.com/2010/01/21/more-thoughts-on-chemical-peels/ http://beautyschooledproject.com/2010/01/21/more-thoughts-on-chemical-peels/#comments Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:37:28 +0000 virginia600 http://beautyschooledproject.com/?p=557 ]]> My 600-hour adventure in esthetics school. Learn about the project or catch up with weeks 1-9.

Stephanie and I are talking about how she did just fine with Monday’s alpha hydroxy acid peel, while I cried like a little tiny girl. For starters, she’s had more experience with peels because one of her best friends is an esthetician who hooks her up at cost, while I was a peel virgin. “I think you do kind of work up to being able to tolerate them,” she says.

“Also, keep in mind that Stephanie’s skin is much thicker than yours,” says Miss Jenny. What she means is, Stephanie is black. According to Milady’s, page 212:

Black skin is prone to hyperkeratosis [My note: This is esthetics speak for "an excessive build-up of dead skin cells."] thus needing more exfoliation and deep pore cleansing. Black skin does not age as quickly because of the differences in physiology and the additional sun protection. However hyperpigmentation [Me again: "brown discoloration from melanin production due to sun or irritation"] is a greater problem for darker skin types.

Milady’s follows up that explanation with a photo of a black woman and the helpful caption, “ethnic skin is more fragile than it looks.”It goes on to note that “Asian skin is considered to be one of the more sensitive skin types,” while “Hispanic skin is usually oilier and needs more deep cleansing treatments.” And, “if you want to specialize in ethnic skin care, there are educational resources and advanced classes addressing this area of study.”

“Wow, that’s a lot of generalizations about my skin,” says Stephanie after we read that section out loud in class. Plus, some none-too-subtle reinforcement of racial stereotypes (those oily Hispanics, eh?). Not to sound all “We Are The World,” but color aside, Stephanie and I have noticed that our skin is a lot more similar than it is different; we both break out along our jawlines, get dry around our noses, and get dark circles under our eyes.

But here’s another reason that Stephanie handled the peel better than me: “It reminds me of this Fair & White skin cream I tried once to even out my dark spots,” she says. “Actually that was way worse — I got a little in my eye and thought I was going blind.”

Oh, you mean Fair & White, as in one of the skin lightening creams that the New York Times ran a front page story about last weekend, because they contain steroids and mercury, not to mention hydroquinone, which I told you about when Sammy Sosa went ghost-faced on us last fall? Yep, I bet those do make your basic glycolic peel feel like a walk in the park.

And so maybe Milady’s has a point, because for sure, nobody has ever tried to sell me a skin whitening cream. But does that make “ethnic skin” and “Caucasian skin” so fundamentally different? Or does it just mean the beauty industry has figured out different ways to get our money?

[Photo: Amazon]

• 10: The number of plastic surgery operations that reality TV star Heidi Montag had in a single day, according to her “Addicted to Plastic Surgery” interview with People Magazine. Um, you think? (Via DoubleX.)

• $40: How much it costs to make a jar of Creme de la Mer moisturizer. (Via Jezebel.)

• $745: How much that jar of Creme de la Mer retails for at Saks Fifth Avenue.

• 20: The number of garbage bags full of sliced up unsold clothing spotted outside a Manhattan H&M store on a typical night. The store makes unsold merchandise unwearable before trashing them, to prevent them flooding thrift stores at even cheaper prices. (Via New York Times.)

PS. I don’t want to get all preachy and say “for the price of a lip gloss you can help save lives,” but, you know, you could do that. So just in case you haven’t donated yet and are looking for the right cause, The Nation has a comprehensive list of worthy organizations on the ground in Haiti who could use your help, plus a link where you can urge the White House to do more already.

And lest you think international tragedies aren’t on the beauty community’s radar, Teen Vogue beauty director Eva Chen is organizing a clothing drive, which is a nice way to help if extra cash (for lipstick or life saving) just isn’t in your budget right now. Let’s hope H&M gets that memo.