If beauty is skin deep - protect it
Nov 1 2006
Western Mail
POOR diets, smoking, drinking and stress are leaving our skin looking up to four years older than it actually is, a survey reveals today.
The research claims the average Briton's skin looks three years older than it actually is.
It found that residents in the north- east of London suffer the most and are likely to have the oldest-looking skin in the UK, prematurely aged by three years and 11 months.
They are followed closely by those in the north-east of England, whose skin has prematurely aged by three-and-a-half years.
In contrast, those us living in Wales and people in the south-east of England have the youngest skin, but it still looks two years and eight months older than it should.
Elsewhere in the UK, people living in the south-west of England and in Scotland have skin prematurely aged by an average of two years and 10 months, people in the Midlands look three years and two months older, and those in Northern Ireland have a skin age of three years and four months older than it should be.
Dermatologists created the skin age formula by calculating factors including stress, sleep levels, diet, social habits, sun exposure and pollution, which all contribute to premature ageing.
The effects of too much sun exposure on the skin have been well documented - another recent study on cyclists in France showed that skin exposed to sun over a two-year period could age by around 10 years.
And a recent dramatic advertising campaign made clear how smoke could age your skin by showing a young girl's face wrinkling as she brushed on cigarette ash with a make-up brush.
And according to Melanie Harris, senior therapist at the St David's Marine Spa, Cardiff Bay, our diets have just as much effect on how our skin ages.
"You inherit certain skin types, but if you don't drink enough water and eat the right foods, your skin will age more quickly," she said.
"You need to eat five portions of fruit and veg a day, get enough vitamin C and omega three oils and drink plenty of water.
"And if you're not getting enough sleep, your skin will age."
She pointed to signs such as broken veins around the nose and cheek, bags under the eyes and dry patches of skin on the face, as evidence of ageing skin caused by a bad diet.
She explained that it was important for people to understand their bodies in order to know the impact such factors have on their skin.
"Some people have the tendency to be able to take greasy foods, others are better without enough sleep," she said.
She added that she was not surprised that people in Wales have younger-looking skin than their London equivalents, due to there being less pollution in Wales than in London.
"In polluted environments, or with air-conditioning units, your skin can't breathe," she said.
However, it's not all bad news. "The skin starts ageing from about the age of 17 but there are ways of preventing it from ageing so quickly," added Harris.
"Avoid smoke and alcohol, get enough sleep."
Dr Sean Lanigan, leading UK dermatologist and member of the British Association of Dermatologists, added, "The skin is a barometer for our general well-being.
"There are plenty of things that can be done to reduce the ageing process, the simplest being to drink more water, protect your skin from harmful ultraviolet rays and stop smoking."
How to tell if your skin looks older than it is
Stand in front of a mirror and lift the inside unexposed part of your arm so it is beside your face in the mirror.
If the skin inside your arm is smoother than that on your face, your facial skin is older.
Top 10 tips to prevent skin from ageing by Melanie Harris, senior therapist at St David's Marine Spa, Cardiff Bay
1. Drink plenty of water, at least eight glasses a day.
2. Exercise regularly to flush out toxins.
3. Eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, especially pomegranates, which contain free radicals that help get rid of toxins in the body, and berries rich in vitamin C.
4. Omega 3, either from oily fish or flax seed oil, will help prevent dry skin.
5. Eat foods rich in vitamin E, such as almonds, kiwi fruits and mangoes, as these help bust the free radicals found in air pollution, radiation and peroxides.
6. Cleanse your skin of dirt every morning and evening.
7. Wear a good moisturiser with an SPF every day.
8. Avoid alcohol.
9. Don't smoke and avoid smokey atmospheres.
10. Get enough sleep.
And Melanie Harris's five signs that skin is ageing quicker than it should be
1. Developing more open pores - they get worse as you get older.
2. Dry, flaky patches and saggy skin are signs that you are dehydrated, which causes skin to look older than it is.
3. Dark circles under your eyes are related to your liver and kidneys and a sign that you are not getting enough water.
4. Broken capillaries, or fine red veins, around the nose and cheeks are caused by extreme hot and cold temperatures, hot and cold foods and smoking and drinking.
5. Different textures and patches on your tongue, and the colour of your iris can also be a result of factors causing premature damage to your skin.
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THINK you've seen it all when it comes to cosmetic surgery?
Look more closely.
Eyelash transplant surgery is poised to become the new must-have procedure for women and the occasional man convinced that beauty is not so much in the eye of the beholder as attached to the eye itself.
Using procedures pioneered by the hair loss industry for balding men, surgeons are using "plug and sew" techniques to give women long, sweeping lashes once achieved only by glued-on extensions and thick lashings of mascara.
And just like the human hair they originate from, these lashes just keep on growing.
"Longer, thicker lashes are a ubiquitous sign of beauty.
Eyelash transplantation does for the eyes what breast augmentation does for the figure," said Dr Alan Bauman, a leading proponent of eyelash transplants.
"This is a brand new procedure for the general public (and) it is going to explode," Dr Bauman said.
Under the procedure, a small incision is made at the back of the scalp to remove 30 or 40 hair follicles, which are carefully sewn one by one on to the patient's eyelids.
Only light sedation and local anaesthetics are used and the cost is around $4000 an eye.
The technique was first confined to patients who had suffered burns or had congenital malformations of the eye.
But about 80 per cent are now done for cosmetic reasons.
Dr Sara Wasserbauer, a Northern California hair restoration surgeon, said she had been inundated by requests.
"I have been getting a ton of eyelash inquiries," she said.
The surgery is not for everyone. The transplanted lashes grow just like head hair and need to be trimmed regularly and sometimes curled.
Very curly head hair makes for lashes with too much kink.
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The Mixer™ : A New Beauty Product and a Revolution in Root Touch-Ups
It makes perfect sense that the company launching The Mixer™ is called ‘Colour Revolution’. This new and innovative product is indeed a revolutionary concept when it comes to root touch up products – the unique selling proposition is its single, streamlined applicator which is ready to use at a moment’s notice. No messy mixing; the permanent colour and developer are stored separately in the applicator and only mix at the point of application.
Toronto,ON (PRWEB) October 24, 2006 -- The driving force behind this new beauty product are business associates and good friends, Ruth Stern and Pauline Ashworth who, as with many successful new business ventures, found that in order to get the kind of hair product they were searching for they would have to invent it for themselves Both women have backgrounds in the fashion, beauty, natural health and marketing fields, and their combined qualifications and total dedication are at the root of the research, design and development of The Mixer™ which has taken three years to come to market."
Pauline and I are both thrilled to have developed an easy, "real" answer to a persistent problem," says Ruth Stern. "Our research has shown us that those people who have tried and tested The Mixer™ are as excited as we are about the product which just reinforces that the leap of faith we made three years ago was all worthwhile."
Besides the obvious benefit of the 'no messy mixing' quality of The Mixer™ there are all kinds of advantages for busy people on the go. The portability of the product makes it an ideal accessory for the business or holiday traveller. Just imagine arriving at a business conference and under the glare of the lights in your hotel bathroom you see the unsightly growth of grey that for some reason seemed to happen overnight. The answer would be The Mixer™ – just take 30 minutes in your hotel room to get rid of those nasty roots or the grey that crept up on you. The Mixer™ is fast, clean and natural looking. Also, of course, fewer costly salon visits make The Mixer™ an extremely attractive addition to anyone's preferred beauty routine.
The design of the patent pending, efficient applicator for The Mixer™ was done by Ruth and Pauline in collaboration with industrial engineers, and for the manufacture of the colour, they chose a company that is recognized for its state of the art production and quality control systems as well as the brand name hair colour products it produces. The end result is a salon quality product in a range of six shades for women and three for men. The product appeal is enhanced by the packaging which features subtle combinations of aqua with brown for women and the reverse for men. This sleek image immediately sets it apart as being a unique high quality and superior beauty item.
Priced at $26 it is available world wide at www.colour-revolution.ca.At retail, The Mixer™ will be available at Clyde's Pharmacy in New York City in November, 2006 and soon through selected retailers and exclusive spas across North America.
For further details or to book an interview with Ruth Stern and Pauline Ashworth please contact:
Canada: Celia Love905-513-1889
United States: Alison Mazzola Communications212.755.2100 fax: 212.755.8723
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Beauty Junkies. Inside Our $15 Billion Obsession With Cosmetic Surgery.
By Alex Kuczynski. 290 pages. $24.95. Doubleday.
"'It's only liposuction' are the three most dangerous words in the English language," screams an outraged former patient played by Jill Clayburgh. She's standing on a street corner in a business suit, shoving fliers at alarmed pedestrians. Each flier features a gruesome photograph of her botched stomach liposuction. It looks as if a pit bull was the doctor.
This scene appears in "Nip/Tuck," the subversive television drama that, in the words of its creator, is "anti-plastic-surgery" because "for the most part, plastic surgery does not solve your problems." The word seems to be getting around. Now we have Alex Kuczynski's "Beauty Junkies: Inside Our $15 Billion Obsession With Cosmetic Surgery," just in time to protect a few other bellies from butchery.
But it may well be a losing battle. Cosmetic surgery is now so prevalent that it could qualify as a national epidemic. And under all that Botox - the gateway procedure - as well as the face-lifts and tummy tucks, lies a sinister story, as deep as it is shallow. In exploring it, Kuczynski, a former reporter for The New York Times who now contributes the Critical Shopper column to Thursday Styles, has performed a real service. She gives you everything you need to know - the menu of procedures (right down to toe liposuction), the price tags, the names of doctors and dentists, the drugs, the implements and implants, the celebrity patients. She also lays out the dangers, the disasters and the deaths.
Along with the reporting, Kuczynski provides delicious tidbits for the cocktail-party circuit: that, for example, the synthetic collagen called Cosmoplast is manufactured from fetal foreskin stem cells harvested from a single baby boy, who would now be a teenager. (It's probably a good thing, she notes, that he doesn't know that cells from his penis are filling "the lips of hundreds of thousands of men and women around the planet." He might need as many therapists.)Kuczynski manages to sustain that light tone, and doesn't spoil the illusion inherent in her subject by looking very far below the surface for the "why" of it all. She neglects, for example, to mention the sobering recent studies suggesting that women who have had cosmetic surgery are three times as likely as their sagging peers to kill themselves. In other words, depressed women are the most common beauty junkies.
Make that depressed women with extra cash. Cosmetic surgery is still mostly an elitist preoccupation, though some plucky girls take up collections on the Internet, promising their benefactors pictures of their new breasts. Indulging in just a few of the procedures outlined in Kuczynski's book can cost more than $50,000.
How did this practice of self-mutilation, masquerading as a search for beauty, become not only a society-sanctioned addiction but a $15 billion industry? Economic greed and insecure women are such a potent combination that plastic surgery now rivals, economically, the far less disingenuous, much-criticized pornography industry. Which one, you have to wonder, hurts women more? Kuczynski connects the two, proposing that the desire to look like a porn star is one of the most prevalent motivations for the society ladies who indulge in the most cosmetic surgery. "Beauty Junkies" documents, in morbid detail, an obsession that represents a failure in the 150-year battle of American feminism to empower women. One of the faces of so-called third wave feminism may be the literally paralyzed mask of the surgically remastered woman.
Kuczynski is well equipped, given her own surgical dabbling, for her subject. Her book is, in fact, a curious hybrid - half investigation, half memoir. "I was myself a beauty junkie," she has admitted in an interview, adding: "I think of myself as a method journalist. ... I couldn't have written this book without knowing intimately the experience of the cosmetic surgery patient. I don't think anybody at The Times would say, She's shallow because she had puffy upper eyelids and had them fixed. The extent of the procedures that I subjected myself to was not so over-the-top that it invites ridicule."This is debatable. Two-thirds of the way into her book, Kuczynski takes a detailed detour into an account of her own adventures, lasting almost a decade, with "what we refer to in New York as maintenance." This personal story - in which she moves from microdermabrasion to collagen treatments to Botox injections to liposuction, eyelid surgery and Restylane-plumped lips - may sell more books, enliven the gossip columns and provide a necessary pre-emptive strike against her critics. But Kuczynski's objective-subjective straddle can be compromising; at the very least, it argues against the supposition, in this age of the memoir, that one's vanity is expiated by self-exposure. This bright, well-employed, sophisticated woman confesses to being "honest and brutal and bitchy" and then proves her claim while cruelly assessing the sewn-up skin flaps on a formerly obese lawyer, a doctor's "prize patient" at a medical conference in New York. This vulnerable and brave woman is, in fact, one of the few truly poignant characters in the book, but Kuczynski demonstrates no compassion for her.
In addition to the story of the $6,000 she spent to suction fat "out of my rear," Kuczynski tells a tale of her two eyelids. She had them lifted - the "puffy" problem - though she displays, with admirable humility, one of her pretty blue "before" eyes on her book's jacket. Sixteen times. At nearly 40, she has now sworn off surgery and informs us not only that aging is inevitable - "time's winged chariot will catch up to you and march all over your face" - but that she gets "smarter every year." Her surgical obsession, she confesses, did not achieve "its ultimate goal: happiness and satisfaction."
Kuczynski's book is most interesting when she switches from the confessional to the informative, as in her brief but fascinating chapter on the history of plastic surgery. In the second half of the 16th century, an ingenious method of rhinoplasty was devised by an Italian doctor, Gaspare Tagliacozzi, for a Knight of Malta whose nose had been mangled in a duel. Tagliacozzi cut two parallel incisions in one of the man's upper arms, encouraging the wound to heal with the flap hanging loose. Two weeks later, he secured the flap onto the man's face, holding the arm in place with a sling. After several weeks of this inconvenience, when the arm tissue had grown into the remaining nose tissue, the arm was cut free. Thus began the first of six surgeries to shape the lump of scar tissue into something resembling a nose. (This elaborate procedure was admittedly imperfect. A sneeze could blow the whole thing right off your face and across the dinner table.)
Kuczynski's story of the beauty regimen of Mrs. X, the wife of a film-industry executive, demonstrates just how far we've come since the knight's battle of honor - although there's very little honor here. The compulsive activities of this "Hollywood housewife," suggest a kind of cosmetic Münchausen syndrome. Her basic maintenance routine involves hair coloring and styling (twice a week), facials (once a week) and full-body waxing (once a week), as well as periodic use of tanners, regular manicures, teeth cleaning and whitening. Her face and body are slathered with expensive creams made from caviar, 24-karat gold, human growth hormone or wild yam extract. For keeping her muscles toned, there's Pilates, tennis and Rolfing. Mrs. X also visits two or three plastic surgeons about three times a year to discuss what needs fixing. She has been injected with Gore-Tex, Botox and Artecoll, and is a member of a Restylane frequent-user awards program. (How many miles of Restylane gets you a freebie?) She has had liposuction and breast augmentation - in, out, then in again, but bigger - and has "done" her eyes and brows. "She is," Kuczynski notes, "among her peer group, considered the norm."
Last year, Mrs. X crossed the final frontier with labiaplasty - getting that whole mess down there cleaned up, tightened up and, as it were, re-virginized. Genital cosmetic surgery is, according to Kuzcynski, one of the most rapidly growing "areas in the field." Finally, the doctors have located the original sin and defanged the vagina dentata. This creation of an alternate surface through surgery - the Jungian shadow side taking a walk on the outside - raises interesting spiritual questions. At the pearly gates - and many Americans claim to believe in heaven - will St. Peter turn a blind eye to your body and see your soul? Or will he fail to recognize your reconstructed self and direct you to the unknown-persons department for all eternity?At its most extreme, this craze for plastic surgery is more than a display of culturally conditioned self-hatred. It is, rather, a current manifestation of female masochism - a sister compulsion to anorexia, bulimia, cutting and excessive tattooing and piercing. Here ritual, aesthetics, theatrics and exhibitionism are ceremonious enactments of self-annihilation in the hope of transcendence (if you're a romantic) or escape (if you're a realist). These are death and resurrection exercises. Self-loathing, on the other hand, keeps you firmly in the eternal hell of the here and now.
But unlike religious or sexual masochism, which is free (except for the occasional dominatrix), plastic surgery is expensive - even if, as more and more people do, you put it on a credit card. It has become a perversion of a perversion, thanks to the cynicism of the pharmaceutical and medical industries, dynamo publicists and doctors who on occasion perform what one of Kuczynski's sources calls a "P.W.B." or "positive wallet biopsy." How paradoxical that in our society masochism is considered a pathology to be cured, while cosmetic surgery is celebrated and encouraged, especially in popular women's magazines.
Dare one note that this particular form of self-mortification intimates a kind of subcutaneous eroticism? Perhaps unwittingly, Kuczynski titles her own confessional chapter "My Love Affair With Dr. Michelle." After all, the doctor is an authority figure (whether male or female) who inserts various instruments into the body in order to implant "injectable fillers." It's difficult not to recall that in the late 19th century, doctors were the first to offer the vibrator cure for hysterical women. That too was once considered a legitimate "medical" practice. Kuczynski finishes her book having sworn off surgery herself - after her Restylane "large yam" lip debacle. "By the time this book comes out," she writes proudly, "I won't have had a Botox shot or a collagen shot for a year." You go, girl! However, her simplistic admonishment to "stop and think. And think and stop," will deter no one intent on surgical self-improvement. It doesn't even begin to confront the hunger being assuaged by external alteration.
Asked if she ever considered a career, Mrs. X, the film-colony wife, replies: "No, because I was never going to be that good at anything. Or at least I was never going to be so good at anything that I would have made a difference." The disguise of a woman who has sewn, injected and scraped her surface into a masked carapace is only a distraction from her profound, perhaps unconscious sadness. Here the pathos in the Bride of Frankenstein's agonized cinematic scream finds a brand-new face.
Toni Bentley, a former dancer with the New York City Ballet, is the author, most recently, of "The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir."
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Why Beauty Is In The Eye Of Photoshop
Thursday October 19, 2006
You look on the cover of a fashion or beauty magazine and you wonder: how in the world can that woman look that good?
The answer may just be that she doesn't.
A new ad campaign from Dove soap has exposed the sometimes ugly facade behind the world of beauty. And it may surprise you how easy it is to take a plain Jane and turn her into a glowing goddess.
Stephanie Betts has become something of a cause celebre as a result of the ad (which you can see online by clicking here.) It shows a fairly average looking woman being transformed into a runway model though make-up, hairstyle, high priced clothing and most of all - the computer program Photoshop.
Experts took her visage and stretched her neck, thinned out parts here and there, changed the shape of her face and literally made her something she's not. The result - an apparent high priced fashion model where an average person had just stood.
"It really showed that these things I'm seeing and wanting to be and I know so many other girls are trying to achieve, it's unattainable," Betts reflects. "It's not real."
The wizards who perform this PC prestidigitation realize they often have to be blunt about the changes they're making.
"Don't take any offence from anything I'm going to do," warns Greg Danbrooke of Studio One as he prepares for another transformation. "Shrink the nose down. Maybe give the eye a bit more open expression. Push the mouth open a little more. Slim you down a bit and do the usual tweaks we usually do."
The final result - a transformation that not even a plastic surgeon could create. "Not and survive you couldn't, no," contends Danbrooke.
Betts believes she's learned a great lesson from her exposure and hopes other girls understand the message about self-image that it carries. "So many of the images out there aren't real, and I think that's why this film is so great. It's exposing that."
Which may mean beauty is no longer skin deep. It's actually pretty shallow.
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Potatoes, pineapples to dress environmentally-minded fashionistas
by Brett KlineMon Oct 16, 1:44 PM ET
Some of the tastiest fruit and veg is no longer just for eating -- the ethical fashion industry has decided it has a place in your wardrobe too.
Sweet potatoes and pineapples were among the foods to make their way on to the catwalk of the Ethical Fashion Show, which was held here in the world's fashion capital, over the weekend.
Using the sweet spuds, Les Racines du Ciel, a small clothing manufacturer based in the northwestern Brittany region of France, has adapted a traditional Chinese practice to Western clothing styles.
"In southern China and only in southern China, silk is lacquered with a sweet potato paste and then buried in the ground," said Natalie Goyette, the company's development director.
"Then the silk is rinsed up to 30 times, and comes out with a soft off-black color that I find beautiful," she said.
"And the sweet potato dye makes the silk water repellent and able to absorb perspiration very well."
She was among scores of fashion professionals to attend the opening night of the show, now in its third year, and was one of more than 60 designers with stands at the show.
The silk is shipped to the company in the town of Quimper in Brittany, where it is used to make gowns that are extremely soft to the touch but resemble leather.
Les Racines du Ciel also makes silk scarves dyed with a Japanese fruit called kakishibu, giving them colors ranging from pink to brown, Goyette said.
"Our part of ethical fashion and fair trade is the use of organic materials, such as silk, and cotton for use in denims and knits."
But she said that her work was not simply about clothing.
"Maybe I am too idealistic, but I want to change the world," she added, "to make it a better place, environmentally speaking."
At another stand, Grace Trance, from San Francisco-based Grace Trance Designs, is showing off a skirt made of pineapple fibers, called pina cloth.
The skirts are a yellow colour but do not come from the fruit itself, but rather from the pina leaves.
"The tradition comes from the Philippines," Trance said, "where the leaves are used to make barong shirts. The leaves are softened and the fibers are stripped from them."
Other brightly-colored stands display fish-scale jewelry and light leather jackets by John Estrada from Colombia, traditional silk robes from Torgo in Mongolia and haute couture dresses in hemp and bamboo by Los Angeles-based Deborah Linquist.
"I'm the only designer at this show using pina leaves," Trance said. "I find the fabric we get from the fiber to be beautiful."
Another material sharing the ethical spotlight is bamboo, which comes from China and India.
"Bamboo is a natural grass that grows incredibly quickly and is then transformed into a fiber," said Summer Rayne Oaks, a fashion consultant who has written extensively on bamboo for the S4trends.com website, which focuses on sustainable fashion development.
Oakes, 22, is a New York-based fashion model with a degree in natural resources and alternative development from Cornell University in New York State.
"Bamboo is used instead of cotton by a growing number of designers because it has what industry people call great drape, meaning it fits perfectly on human bodies," she said.
Ethical fashion falls into two parts: the organic materials used in the clothing, such as cotton, silk, bamboo and hemp, and the work to make the garments, which puts mostly women in non-exploitative, labour-friendly structures in African countries or elsewhere in the developing world.
But industry consultants attending the show said they were mindful of another trend concerning not the materials used, but the manufacturing and marketing of the clothes.
They questioned whether the bulk of manufacturing will continue to be done by small companies, or by clothing giants increasingly jumping into the fair trade game.
"Think of food," said Eric Olsen, the head of Business and Social Responsibility, a San Francisco-based consultancy group for clothing majors.
"Twenty years ago, organic food was made by small alternative companies. Today, health food in America is mainstream. Everyone is reading labels. More health food is made by agro giants than by niche market producers.
"This is the question for the ethical fashion business: who will be able to reach the mass public?"
Olsen pointed out that the majors had the capacity to invest in materials and labour.
"In the West, the financial figures may be small, but for example, for the town in Ghana making the clothing, it is a major investment and major income."
Global Mamas, a women's collective based in Ghana, showed off their batik print dresses during the runway show in a video produced by Tabeisa, a London-based investment group for artisans in developing countries with the slogan 'Exchange Designs, Change Lives'.
Another company seeking change is France's largest catalogue group, La Redoute, which also took part in the show. It is running a competition to find an ethical fashion collection to go into its catalogue.
"We want to take ethical fashion out of its position as a niche market and make it accessible to the public," said Elisabeth Cazorla, director of apparel merchandising at La Redoute.
Cazorla said the company had done a customer survey.
"Three years ago, the interest in ethical fashion was minimal," she said. "Now 50 percent of our clients say they want to buy fair trade products. That is remarkable."
Last year, La Redoute sold more than 200,000 organic cotton T-shirts for between nine and 25 euros each.
And in one case, a plant and flower-based cosmetics and skin care company, Aveda, based in Blaine, Minnesota in the United States, began small and has become a multinational with 7,000 sales outlets in 24 countries, as well as being one of the sponsors of the Ethical Fashion Show.
One example of its fair trade practices is a pact between Aveda, owned by US cosmetics giant Estee Lauder, with aborigines in central Australia to guarantee them a good price on their sandalwood, used in health and beauty products.
Nicole Kaldes, Aveda's representative at the Paris show, said: "It is great to have an environmental story behind the materials but if the product doesn't look and feel great, it wont sell. And small companies may need investment by large groups to continue making products that look and feel great."
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