A new ad hitting glossy magazines this week features an unretouched model's flawless skin. The no-Photoshop trend has hit advertising, and it looks really, really good. This week, national fashion magazines printed a new campaign by the cosmetics company, Make Up For Ever, featuring a woman (okay, a model) without any digital enhancement or airbrushing.
Let's get the cynicism out of the way: the model may be unretouched but she's also a young, gorgeous woman with flawless skin, wearing a ton of professional grade make-up in addition to the foundation being advertised.
That said, a make-up ad, or any ad where a woman hasn't been digitally enhanced, is a welcome change. Airbrushing and digital retouching are industry standards in ad campaigns and magazine covers. But after a few national magazines got attention for featuring unretouched celebrity photo shoots and ad campaigns sparked outrage for Photoshopping already flattering images, the trend of going au natural started catching on.
And that's a good thing. We need to remember what skin looks like...approximately. And we
Blog Posts by Piper Weiss, Shine Staff
Finally! The first ever unretouched make-up ad
By Piper Weiss, Shine Staff | Fashion – Wed, Mar 16, 2011 7:27 PM EDTShould The Bachelor stop marrying people off?
By Piper Weiss, Shine Staff | Love + Sex – Wed, Mar 16, 2011 1:02 AM EDT
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Too-late-to-be-a-spoiler-alert: Bachelor Brad picked single mom Emily to be his Bachelor bride last night. She said yes, then she said maybe later. In another "Bachelor" finale filled with the "most shocking moments in Bachelor history" (that's Chris Harrison-speak for totally normal outcome), Brad and Emily revealed they were supposed to marry last night on live TV but she called it off (watch above).
In "Bachelor" context, surrounded by a Greek Chorus audience of disapproving women, the couple seemed to be in big trouble. Host/therapist Chris even asked Emily why on earth she'd sabotage her own wedding.
Her reasoning was so rational it pulled apart the threads the series is based on. Sure, she's still a little traumatized from losing her first love. But also: She has a kid, she lives in a different city, and she's spent the past three months watching her fiance hook up with other women on TV, a few only days before their engagement. Heck, they haven't even seen each other in aThe world's most eligible royals
By Piper Weiss, Shine Staff | Love + Sex – Tue, Mar 15, 2011 7:59 PM EDT
Will who? Monaco's Pierre Casiraghi is one of a handful of single royals still looking for a princess. (Venturelli/WireImage)The April 29 wedding may be the happiest day for Prince William and his bride Kate Middleton, but it's a dream-dashing day for anyone hoping to be a modern day princess. Or is it? Will may be spoken for, but there are still a handful of eligible royals living the bachelor life and shirking old world conventions of their families. Recalibrate your fantasies to these single princes, poised to inherit titles and billions of dollars, if they can ever find their Cinderella.England's Prince Harry
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The ginger-haired 26 year-old little brother of William is keeping busy with his Best Man duties for the royal wedding. But he's a prince in his own right, serving as second lieutenant in the Blues and Royals regiment of the Household Cavalry, after a brief stint on the front lines in Afghanistan. Known for his wild party streak, he's been linked off-and-on for several years to British socialite Chelsy Davy. Currently, their status is said to be 'on', but American women take heart: he's rumoredHow Twitter reunited a family after Japan's tsunami
By Piper Weiss, Shine Staff | Work + Money – Mon, Mar 14, 2011 8:22 PM EDT
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Canon Purdy tells her sister Megan (with their mom) she's safe, after Japan's devastating tsunami. (Courtesy of TodayShow.com)
Before this weekend, Megan Walsh used Twitter to share shopping deals and her love of Lady Gaga with friends. But this weekend, after Japan's devastating Tsunami, she began sending a very different kind of message on Twitter: "Please help find my sister, an American unaccounted for in Minamisanriku."
On Friday, Canon Purdy, a 25-year-old English teacher became one of the tens of thousands missing when an earthquake tore through Japan and triggered a series of catastrophic natural disasters (we have some of the latest videos here). Purdy had arrived in the coastal fishing village of Minamisanriku, just as the area was ravaged by the tsunami. After teaching in an local elementary school, she had returned to the town to see her students graduate. But only hours later, the school had become an evacuation center housing survivors.
Back in San Francisco, Purdy's sibling, Walsh, took the internet, reaching out to reporters and anchors at CNN, NBC, BBC and Time through Twitter, in hopesHow to remember anything: lessons from a memory champion
By Piper Weiss, Shine Staff | Vitality – Thu, Mar 10, 2011 11:28 PM EST
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Joshua Foer keeps a Post-it note above his computer that says "Don't forget to remember." The author of the new book "Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything" went from a man with an average memory to the official U.S. Memory Champ in 2006 by immersing himself in the world of professional memorizing. After studying the skills to learn entire dictionaries, he became convinced that anyone could have an exceptional memory. You just need to know certain memory techniques. Here are six secrets from his book to becoming a savant.
Build a "memory palace": "Housing" a list of things you need to memorize is essential.
"The idea is to create a space in the mind's eye, a place that you know well and can easily visualize and then populate that imagined place with images representing whatever you want to remember," writes Foer. It's a method used all the way back in Ancient Rome, when orators needed to commit their speeches to memory and when books hadn't yetThe morning after pill effective the night before, says report
By Piper Weiss, Shine Staff | Healthy Living – Wed, Mar 9, 2011 10:55 PM EST
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(Getty Images)
Birth control breakthrough: the morning-after pill may be worth taking the night before. A new report from the journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, suggests that the one-time hormone pill is safe and effective at preventing pregnancies when taken just before sex. While it's not as sure-fire as a once-daily pill or patch, it was found to be 11 percent more effective than condoms at preventing pregnancy over a one-year period.
The morning-after pill, sold as Plan B One-Step or First Choice, is not abortive but preventative like daily birth control pills. It contains a high dose of levonorgestrel, a synthetic hormone that stops ovulation. Technically, the FDA approved pill is designed to be taken one time within 72 hours after sex. But the report, which looked at 15 studies of over 8,400 women, focuses on the off-label use of the pill. Most women in the studies split the pill in half and took it around the time they were planning to be intimate. Twenty-two percent experienced irregularThe $200 Kate Middleton Barbie
By Piper Weiss, Shine Staff | Work + Money – Wed, Mar 9, 2011 7:52 PM EST
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The Move over Princess Barbie, there's a new royal in town. The Franklin Mint has just released a 16-inch plastic version of Kate Middleton. The "Portrait of a Princess" doll is hand-painted, drenched in "simulated" sapphires and diamonds and boasts a price-tag of $195. The Mint, also known as Grand Central Station for royal memorabilia, expects their latest product to break sales records and generate a younger demographic of collectors.
Kate's not the first Palace bride to be replicated in doll form. The Mint released its own commemorative version of Lady Di in 1997. Since then, several companies have followed suit. The most controversial Di doll was released in 2006 and actually said 25 historic phrases including, "I sit here in sadness." That doll cost under $30.
This new princess doll doesn't come with a voice box, but it does come with a miniature version of the now-famous blue silk engagement dress and matching faux jewelry. It's also got a "soft vinyl body and chestnut brownJoran Van Der Sloot to plead temporary insanity
By Piper Weiss, Shine Staff | Work + Money – Wed, Mar 9, 2011 2:06 AM EST
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Joran Van Der Sloot could get away with murder, and most believe, for the second time. The man accused of strangling a 21-year-old Peruvian woman to death, plans to plea temporary insanity in order to receive a 20-month prison sentence, reports The Daily Mail. He's accused of strangling Stephany Flores, a young woman he took back to his hotel after a night out in Lima. The act of deadly brutality, which he confessed to, was committed five years after he was linked to the disappearance of Natalee Holloway.
According to the Mail, Van Der Sloot's temporary insanity plea for the murder of Flores hinges on his connection to Holloway: "His lawyer said he will argue that his client became enraged after Miss Flores learned of his relation to Miss Holloway by reading an e-mail on his laptop."
While his "temporary insanity" plea seems totally far-fetched and implausible, the privileged Van Der Sloot has tested the limits of international law before. If his plea is rejected he could face 15Happy Fat Tuesday: 8 awesomely embarrassing celebrity Mardi Gras photos
By Piper Weiss, Shine Staff | Work + Money – Wed, Mar 9, 2011 1:38 AM ESTWhy do women flash on Mardi Gras?
By Piper Weiss, Shine Staff | Work + Money – Wed, Mar 9, 2011 1:09 AM EST
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It's 'Fat Tuesday,' the international holiday where women flash their breasts for cheap iridescent beads. Apparently this is something we've been doing since 1889 on the balconies of Bourbon street (though others date it back only to the 1970s). Maybe back then the beads were of higher quality and the need for them was more pressing. But why are we still flashing?
One sociologist who interviewed what he described as "beadw----s" for the journal of Deviant Behavior, sites a rush of pleasure as the reason behind Mardi Gras flashing. He pegged the illegal "parade of stripping" as a "playful form of exhibitionism," according to Miller-McCune's website.
Relationship writer Rich Santos has a more dude-like take. He writes: "One night I was separated from my friends on a balcony, shaking beads at the girls in the street. These girls were desperate for beads, even though you could go into any store and buy the beads for a dollar...All the women who flashed were the same: over 25 and very
