To be honest, I know most of this stuff cold by now. (We all do.) The only places I get tripped up are on the waxing, where we have to use honey instead of wax, I guess because state board proctors don’t want to worry about test models getting crazy skin reactions. So I use honey, but, because it’s honey, I just squeeze it out of the bottle onto my stick and then “wax,” and it turns out, you’re supposed to dip the stick into the bottle of honey like it’s a real waxing pot. Well, sure.

The other, more major catastrophe comes during my daytime makeup application. There’s a cardinal, locked in stone, absolute, cosmic truth type of state board rule that if you drop something and then you go to pick it up, you automatically fail. Sanitation issues and all. So if you drop something, you have to just live without it. Which is okay if it’s an Q-tip or a sponge, because you bring about five million of those.

But if it is the brown/black pencil that has your eyeliner on one end and your brow pencil on the other, and you accidentally drop that in the trash while sharpening it, well, then, you’re SOL on the eyeliner and brow pencil applications, aren’t you?

In the end, it only costs me about four points and I get an 88. (You need a 70 to pass.) Which means I’ve crossed the is and dotted the ts and I’ll be done with Beauty U as of this week! I’m not putting an exact day on it yet… you know how the school is about keeping track of hours and such. But I’m already getting emotional about being done with this whole crazy experience.

So while I go off and mull over all of that (plus buy five extra eyeliner and brow pencils to take with me to the actual state board exam, in case I drop all of them), I thought I’d give you a quickie link round-up of cool things that you can go read by other people.

• Definatalie is rejecting the notion of the flattering outfit. For real? We can do that? Why didn’t we do it years ago? God. Genius.

• Echidne of the Snakes is talking about Broken Dolls, as in, those haute couture shots of women looking dead but stylish! What’s your take on this? Is it art or does it just condone violence against women, plus unrealistic beauty standards in some kind of sick two birds/one stone deal?

• Jezebel’s Sadie Stein has a great round-up of The Mind-Boggling History of Fad Diets. I think the Sleeping Beauty one is my favorite because it’s just so darn practical.

• And more Jezebel awesomeness is Jessica Coen’s post about Why You Must See Unretouched Images, And Why You Must See Them Repeatedly. All I can say is, amen sister. (Actually, I also said this, awhile back, when we were talking about airbrushing at Beauty U — you can know it’s fake. But it’s still really hard to believe it.)

Just as we were getting our heads above water on the whole Pretzel Crisps thin campaign, too. It’s like maybe a new study just came out about women not being paranoid, insecure freaks and the advertising community saw the data and thought, “You know? That really gets in the way of what we come here to do.”

1. Oh hey, Gap. We were just talking about you. Thanks for this little pep talk. (And just how are we supposed to follow these instructions when you don’t make pants that fit?)

[Via Feministing, who has a link for you to send Gap an email, yay!]

2. I shouldn’t even be annoyed with SlimFast. Because, really, ads that make you feel bad about your body are kind of a diet drink’s birthright. If not them, who? But I do get so very exhausted by the wedding weight loss frenzy. It’s just not nice.

[Via This Week in Lady News.]

3. But let’s end on a happy note: Because Jezebel reports that Pretzel Crisps will be taking these ads down due to their complete lack of taste. And helpful feedback from ticked-off bloggers (like my new favorite, Stephanie Marcus) and this guerilla artist who notes, actually, you can.

What about you guys? Spotting any (not) great ads out there? Link away in the comments and we’ll make our own Hall of Shame.

Or so concludes the fashion industry, according to Plus Size Wars by Ginia Bellafante in Sunday’s Times Magazine. I give you Exhibit A:

The most formidable obstacle lies in creating a prototype. If you already have a line of clothing and a set system of sizing, you cannot simply make bigger sizes. You need whole new systems of pattern-making. “The proportions of the body change as you gain weight, but for women within a certain range of size, there is a predictability to how much, born out by research dating to the 1560s,” explained Kathleen Fasanella, who has made patterns for women’s coats and jackets for three decades. “We know pretty well what a size 6 woman will look like if she edges up to a 10; her bustline might increase an inch,” Fasanella said. “But if a woman goes from a size 16 to a 20, you just can’t say with any certainty how her dimensions will change.”

A paragraph later, Fasanella follows that up with this:

“You’ll have some people who gain weight entirely in their trunk, some people who will gain it in their hips,” Fasanella continued. “As someone getting into plus-size, you can either make clothing that is shapeless and avoid the question altogether or target a segment of the market that, let’s say, favors a woman who gets larger in the hip. You really have to narrow down your customer.” A designer must then find a fit model who represents that type and develop a pattern around her. But even within the subcategories, there are levels of differentiation. “Armholes are an issue,” Fasanella told me, by way of example. “If you have decided to go after the woman who is top-heavy, well, some gain weight in their upper arms and some do not. There are so many variables; you never win. It’s like making computers and then deciding you want to make monitors; a monitor is still a computer product, but it’s a whole new kind of engineering.”

All of which leads Bellafante to surmise: “Thin people are more like one another; heavier people are less like one another. With more weight comes more variation.”

Well, I call bullsh*t.

Because here’s Exhibit B: My best friend A. and me. We are pretty much the same height, weight, and clothing size. We have the same taste in clothes. And yet, we rarely buy the exact same thing because it never, ever looks right on both of us.

I have a short torso and longer legs and gain all my weight in my middle. She has a long torso, tiny waist, and shorter legs. We figured out a long time ago that if you sliced us in half and put her torso on my legs, we would be roughly Heidi Klum’s height and if you did it the other way around, we would be Snooki-sized. This means that whenever we go shopping, we grab all the clothes we both like, then go into the dressing room and pass things back and forth as we figure out which dress is sized for someone with a waist and which jeans assume an absence of hips and so on.

We are not plus sized. We are just women, doing what women always have to do, because standard clothing sizes are always making generalizations about our bodies that in no way reflect reality. Check out this comment from Becca, a few weeks ago, about being told that Gap jeans — Gap! The epitome of All-American Every Girl mall fashion! — don’t fit her “body type” for Exhibit C.

So, attention fashion industry: Please do get over yourself. The variety of larger bodies does not explain why you can’t make a wider variety of clothing sizes. The whole “plus size” debacle is just the most glaring example of your failure on this front, because most brands don’t even try. Obviously the economic pressures of mass-market fashion dictate cookie cutter clothing. So let’s just admit that, shall we? You suck at making pants that fit. Passing that buck to larger women for daring to be shaped differently (read: just like human beings tend to be)? Now, you just suck.

To everyone above a size 12: There’s no doubt you have it rougher on the average retail outing and it effing blows. But if it helps (I mean, I know it doesn’t, but still) whenever you see a smaller woman dragging armloads of clothes into a fitting room, know that it’s not just a fit of “Anthropologie makes the prettiest dresses!” ecstasy. It’s mostly because Anthropologie (and insert-your-favorite-store-here) dresses are cut for people without rib cages and she has to try on that much crap to find anything that works.

A lot of the time, we don’t really have that many more options. It only looks that way on the store mannequins.

[Photo of the most terrifying store mannequins I could find: "clothes!" by s2art via Flickr.]

Oy. I left you hanging on Friday and I’m so sorry. It wasn’t all that Birkenstock angst, I promise (much more on that topic, responding to your many, excellent and thought-provoking comments, coming later this week). Just the perfect storm of school, work, blogging and make-up time reaching a bit of a “something’s gotta give today” point. Rest assured that I’ll be doing my best to avoid any further interruptions to your regularly scheduled Beauty Schooled programming as I slog through the remaining 8.5 weeks of Beauty U. (Yes! 8.5 weeks, can you stand it? Are you new to the blog and thinking, damn, how did I miss the first 30+ weeks? No tears, you can click the In Class category and work your way through.)

But enough about me. Let’s get down to business and find out what we all paid for pretty last week (and over the weekend, too):

• 33 to 44 lbs were airbrushed onto skinny model Kamilla Wladyka for a recent cover of Healthy Magazine, because she, um, wasn’t. And they’re not the only ones committing reverse retouching. Man, this is a weird one. I’m all for showing more realistic sizes in magazines… but they should be real, right? ( Via Change.org.)

• An 8-year-old girl was kicked out of the classroom because her teacher couldn’t stand the smell of her hair styling product. It’s a tough one because of the race implications (the little girl is biracial, the teacher is white and handled the situation badly) but I also want to put some responsibility on the makers of that hair product. Why are gels marketed to kids given such strong fragrances, especially when we know these fragrances often contain phthalates and other chemicals that are known to interfere with healthy hormonal development? (Also via Change.org because I’m really into them this week.)

• 5: The number of times American Apparel founder Dov Charney has been sued for sexual harrassment. Latest AA debacle: Gawker’s discovery of their “Full Body Head to Toe” employment policy that requires wanna-be t-shirt folders to submit a full body photo with their resume. And remember that whole employee eyebrow policy? And the best butt contest? Also the fact that they don’t make school girl skirts or short shorts larger than a size 6? Mmm’kay. We’re done with them now. (Via The Investigative Fund.)

I don’t have a favorite new blog to suggest this week because I’m hopelessly behind on blog reading as per usual — nevertheless, I’d love to know which blogs (beauty-related or even not so much!) that you’re loving lately! (Feel free to plug your own, of course.)

• 76: The age of beloved Golden Girl Rue McClanahan, who died yesterday. Eat The Damn Cake had a great piece last week about Taking Back the Cute; why women who aren’t tiny, young, and traditionally beautiful should get to act girlish and adorable if they so please (and women who are these things should get to be taken seriously when they want and basically, we should all get to break the rules about how the world thinks we should look and behave whenever we damn well want to!). Blanche got that. And it was pretty trailblazing of her.

• $2000-$5000: What you’ll pay for dimple implants. (If you’re that kind of rich, will you come pay my mortgage first?) (Via Lemondrop.)

• Over 10 percent of her income: What the average Iranian woman now spends on cosmetics. (Via BellaSugar, who has a very thoughtful take on the matter.)

• 4 times: How much longer it takes the average woman to get ready for work on Monday versus Friday. That would be why I’m typing this in my PJs. At noon. Because doing a ton of beauty work before you even get to work-work? Not so much. (If you missed it, check out my series on Beauty Labor for more about why this is; stat via Jezebel.)

New Favorite Blog: (Actually I’ve been liking this one for QUITE awhile) re:Cycling, which is the blog for the Society of Menstrual Research, where the always insightful Elizabeth Kissling takes on the feminine hygiene industry. Hint: It’s a lot like the beauty industry, if this ad that equates moist towelettes for your ladyparts with courage is anything to go by.

Oh and shameless self-promotion time: Tuesday’s Tip Jar got republished over on Jezebel, where it has clocked over 300 comments. A lot of folks think 13 is a pretty legit age for an eyebrow wax and Nine’s parents probably have her best interests at heart. Others are totally skeeved. What do you think? Comment here or there.

[Best of Blanche video via Bitch from YouTube.]

• 132 lbs: The weight of this (5’8″) Hooters waitress, who was given a 30 day gym membership and told to drop some pounds by Hooters management. Of course, enforcing weight loss among your employees is pretty questionable no matter what their size but I include her stats for the shock value. If you weren’t already boycotting Hooters on principle, please, let’s start that now. (Via Lemondrop; above photo from same.)

• 23.8 percent of executive board seats are occupied by women at fashion, beauty and retail brand companies, according to a study commissioned by WWD. The really scary news? This is a way higher percentage than at other kinds of publicly held companies. You know, because these brands are selling girly products, so we’re (sort of) allowed to play. (Via StyleList.)

• 30 percent of consumers are concerned about the validity of natural and organic claims on beauty products. Can’t imagine where they’re getting that. (Via GCI)

New Favorite Blog: OMG, OMG, OMG! Have you discovered The Seventeen Magazine Project yet? Jamie Keiles is an 18-year-old high school senior in Eastern PA who is spending 30 days following every bit of advice she can glean from the latest issue of Seventeen and Seventeen.com. I would really like to be her best friend, not just because I think we have the same hair, but also because she’s been making these awesome pie charts showing how 75 percent of Seventeen’s advertising is related to Stuff That Makes You Look Better — all the while also dissecting the ramifications of pigtails and ripped sweatshirts.

Speaking of compliments and favorite new blogs… I am loving how yesterday’s cross-post by Eat The Damn Cake’s Kate got everyone all fired up to do some complimenting already. And would like to direct your attention to a prime complimenting opportunity known as The Fresh Reflection. From their Welcome post:

We have decided to make changing the perception of ourselves official. The goal of this blog is to tell each other what WE see. The beauty WE see in YOU. Every day we will post a photo of a woman. Someone we know or don’t know. And then we ask you to leave a comment to tell that woman what YOU see in them. What do YOU think is beautiful about them that they may have missed?

But I warn you now, if you read that blog while playing Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” (or if you have maybe recently watched the Heathrow airport scenes from Love Actually) you might not stop crying for a week. Oh people. All so f*cking beautiful and we never have any idea about it.

And now, I’m off to enjoy a long weekend, during which I plan to wear absolutely no makeup or hair products and compliment people with wild abandon. I encourage you to do the same!

Back on Tuesday. xo

Oh Ellen. Not you too.

COVERGIRL has announced the winner of their “Stand Up for Beauty” Video Contest. (Remember their Campaign Declaration Cloud, that read like a spambot’s mash-up of “love your body” rhetoric mixed with “buy our products” reminders? How could you forget?)

You can go watch the video on their website real quick, and then come back and we’ll talk about Nicole, “an Ohio gal” who is “funny, ambitious, and positive” and just netted herself $50K by making faces at the camera while putting on makeup and fessing up to her lady ‘stache.

Hi! I’m Nikki. When I was a kid I used to get picked on. I was kind of awkward and hairy. They called me “Mustache Girl?” Yeah, I have a little bit of uh, hair on my upper lip. But it doesn’t matter to me what they say. I know with CoverGirl, I can feel beautiful just being me. I don’t have to be Miss Popularity. I don’t have to be serious and conform. I can be funny or quirky. I can fall down sometimes! If I want to. I don’t have to spend a fortune to feel pretty. I don’t have to wear designer clothes. I don’t have to be a Size Zero. Ha ha. I don’t have to shave my legs every day — but I don’t have to have a mustache either. Hmm. I can be glamorous and sexy and I think nerdy can be kind of cute. I don’t have to wear makeup, but I like to. Not for you, but for me. Because I. Am. Beautiful.

So on the surface, this is good stuff, right? Nikki looks and sounds cute as a button. Yay, (some types of) body hair! Yay no more Size Zeros! (Nikki looks to be about a four.) Yay being funny AND sexy all at the same time!

I mean, good Lord. If “pretty can be funny” is a message we still need to clarify — in today’s post-Tina Fey/Sarah Silverman/Jennifer Aniston/Etc world — then grasshoppers, we have more work to do than I even thought.

Because no kidding, pretty can be funny. Pretty girls get to fall down, wear glasses, make fart jokes, and even, under very specific comedic circumstances, eat pizza or cheese in public. That’s not radical. They’ve been doing it on every sitcom since “I Love Lucy.” They get to do all of this stuff because they’re so gosh darn adorable — and thus, all their wacky antics are cute, not threatening or weird.

It’s when you don’t fit the beauty mold to a perfect size 0 to 6 that we run into trouble. If Nikki lets her mustache grow in, then no, we don’t want to watch her make goofy faces anymore.

But we actually don’t need to clarify that. I’m not pointing out anything we don’t all already know, in the marrow of our beings. This is how the beauty industry works now. Plain old insecurity isn’t selling? Women are cottoning on to the “you’ll buy this product if we make you feel bad enough” marketing plan? Then let’s talk about how great and smart and strong they are — while continuing to show the same exact beauty visuals (thin, poreless, hairless) we’ve been using for years. The products are the same. The goal (look like this to be happy and beloved!) is the same. The only thing they’ve changed is the display copy. And as my friend Gayle Forman points out today, over in her blog post, “fat,” images are so much stronger than the written word.

Which is why this Stand Up For Beauty campaign (and, I fear, the whole Dove Real Beauty/Britney sans airbrushing advertising trend) is not any kind of step in the right direction.

It’s just the same old CoverGirl commercial playing dress-up.

PS. No word on what Nikki plans to do with her $50K beyond the website’s nonsensical explanation that she’ll use it to “make her possible true!” By the by, Nikki is also “Inspired by family and friends, especially her mom.” It’s like CoverGirl’s ad writers literally just Google “words women like to hear,” (or maybe “words Oprah has used recently:” possible! moms! inspiration!) slap them down on paper and then go to lunch.

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?

The interweb is all abuzz about the newest J.Crew catalog. (I just moved and it doesn’t seem to have followed me, so thanks to Sociological Images for the tip on this.) Were you to compare the apparent ages of these two models, you might think we pulled the first spread from a new tween line. But no. It is, in fact, from the women’s (as in grown-up) section of the catalog.

Even better: While the female model is, well, just a model (and apparently, one prone to dropping flower pots at that, thanks again to SI for pointing that out), the male models in this catalog are all real “green-minded guys:” Goat farmers, green roof designers, you get the idea, who are identified by name and featured in fancy Q&As on the website. Yet another opportunity for the green movement to act like it’s actually a secret no-girls-allowed club. (Remember PETA’s obsession with naked chicks and Method’s creepy stalker soap-bubble ad? Oh! Not to mention the Miss Earth Girls Pageant!) We love that. You’re welcome for all the checks I write, by the way. (Please stop sending the damn address labels already.)

Meanwhile, over on Salon, Tracy Clark-Flory posts about receiving an email chain outraged at the uber-skinniness of the latest crop of J. Crew girls — and shamefacedly admits that she didn’t even notice. Tracy, you’re not alone. I flipped through a few old catalogs I seem to be carting around and J.Crew ladies have been barely filling out their Matchstick Cut Jeans for years now. It’s interesting that the whole anorexic model fervor usually heats up during Fashion Week, when  hungry girls are up on every catwalk except the one where the token designer has hired the token “plus size” lady to close the show/make headlines for him — yet here we have one of the biggest mall chains (read: Supposed to be clothes for the rest of us) promoting the same disturbing standard all throughout the year.

Of course, J. Crew styles itself as couture for the mall shopper (a much higher price point than Gap or Banana, those random $1000 coats that show up in every collection). And it’s not like they’re the only mid-market chain to use frighteningly thin models. (Hi, American Apparel. Hi, Abercrombie.) So it’s hardly surprising that we’ve gotten so numb to this look.

But it is scary.