As you may know, my favorite magazine is Allure, and the October 2007 issue is good because it features the Best Of Beauty, which is a huge list of the 200+ favorite products of Allure employees. 2,000 products were tested, and they narrowed it down to their favorites. Given the fact that there are way more than 2,000 products out there, only a fraction of all beauty products were tested, but I still think the list is a good place to start if you are looking for something new.
I don’t necessarily agree with all their choices (for example, their favorite sunscreen is Neutrogena UltraSheer Dry-Touch Sunblock SPF 55, and this is the sunscreen I lathered on twice an hour when I was sitting in the shade, with a hat on, once at the Hard Rock Pool here in Vegas, and I got totally freckled and burned after two hours!) That’s why I always go with Zinc Oxide-based sunblocks now. I haven’t gotten burned once since I switched!
After seeing an interesting product on the Allure list, I then go to Makeupalley.com to read reviews of the product. Then if it’s a skin care item, I cross-reference the product ingredients with my list of cosmetic acne ingredients (I would skip this step if I wasn’t prone to acne). If you don’t want to spend the $3.50 on the magazine, you can read the full Master List of Allure winners here.
The October issue also has some other interesting articles - breakthroughs in beauty products, a scary story about women totally obsessed with Botox, Restylane, and other cosmetic Dermatology treatments, and info about Green beauty products. There’s also an article called Hall of Fame, which features beauty products that have consistently won in their category over the years. Of course good ole Clinique Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion is on the list (it’s good, but not that great), and why Maybelline New York Great Lash Mascara wins all the time makes no sense to me, since it’s just an average mascara. Finally, you can enter to win free products every day at Best of Allure.com.
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October 6th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
a scary story about women totally obsessed with Botox, Restylane, and other cosmetic Dermatology treatments,
Actually the ’story behind the story’ is that of a journalist (Joan Kron) using unethical Bait and Hitch tactics to write scary stories.
I’m the “poster girl” featured in the story. I also have been helping patients become better informed about plastic surgery for the past 5 years. When Kron culled me for the story, she told me it was to be about ‘informed patients wishing to play a more active role in communicating to their doctors and also choosing the right doctors or procedures’. In this way she asked me to “help” with her story and implied she was to show case me in a favorable light because she felt I had done so much to help patients understand plastic procedures more and also help them choose good doctors.
Then she turned the theme into one of “Picky”, “dangerous” patients who “seize control” or who are “obsessed” and used my personage (photo personal identity) as a springboard to all mention of doctor gripes about those kinds of patients.
She BAITED me by telling me she admired things such as my knowledge and ability to communicate with doctors and select doctors and then HITCHED me to a theme that was about “difficult” patients. Something where she chose ME for attributes she “admired” but then twisted them to fit the hidden agenda of her story hitch. For example: being informed turned into “difficult”, ability to make good choices, turned into “picky”
playing a more active role in expressing what you want to the doctor became “controlling”.
Bait and Hitch journalism is when a journalist SUCKERS someone into a theme they don’t know about ahead of time because they can’t actually find someone who ‘fits’ it to lend their personage to it. So she found me, someone who is informed and makes good doctor selections and twisted the presentation of me around so she could have a free “poster girl” for her theme. It’s unethical in my opinion but it’s something journalists (eg. Kron) often do to plastic surgery patients when they want to peg fit them into their semi-sensationalistic themes. It’s because she could not find the people who actually fit into her theme participate that she stooped so low as to cull me into “helping her with her story” by telling me she wanted to do a piece on how informed patients are making great strides in proper procedure and doctor selection. Then hitched up my personage into a very disparaging theme.
That is ‘the story behind the story’. For more discussion of this, see: Makemeheal.com Message boards and look under the face lift section for a thread called “Miss J featured in Allure”
October 7th, 2007 at 1:38 am
Wow I’m sorry about what happened to you in regards to the article. I’ve read about so many celebrities that say they have the same problem with journalists, and they are afraid to trust them.
I’m sure the writer figured you never would have agreed to do the story if you knew her spin on it. And since the story was attention-grabbing, that’s the only reason it caught my attention enough to mention it here, thus giving Allure publicity. Well I definitely think it’s good for patients to be knowledgeable about their procedures, and I’m sorry you were tricked.
October 15th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Hi Jeni, Jane
I read Kron’s article, and I even posted about it at my blog in an entry entitled, Are You Being Difficult?, and I’ve got to say that I thought, all in all, it was a balanced article. Me? I’m not a doctor, but I work with a whole host of plastic surgeons across the country; right now I’m working with a Hawaii plastic surgeon (hey, someone’s got to do it). Anyway, I remember the writer calling you “informed,” Miss J. In my opinion, she was saying, this lady knows a lot - yes, she’s controlling - but she knows a lot. I think she was using you, yes, but using you as a good example. In other words, she was saying to the other readers out there, you haven’t had as many procedures as Jane and haven’t done as much research as Jane, so don’t be Jane. She’s informed, the rest of you are controlling. Anyway, I enjoyed it (enough to write now twice about it), and when I was writing my pieces, I personally was thinking of those other less informed, controlling patients, no you Miss J.