Free A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style by Tim Gunn, Kate Maloney Page B

for perusal. Store windows, butter knives, and bathroom mirrors all do their part to let us know how our kisser is looking at any given moment. This can be a blessing if it means discovering and removing the frisée from one’s teeth before a meeting. It can also become oppressive.
    What starts as mere looking often segues into scanning and searching. With narrowed eyes we hunt,first for incipient blemishes and then, as the years pass, for blemishes, fine lines, and suspicious pigmentation. The skin of our faces seems to be always threatening some fresh hell. To placate it, we must offer supplication in the form of expensive creams, tonics, scrubs, and masques. What we suggest, as difficult as it seems, is to regard one’s face less like an angry demi-god and more like, well, part of you. Practice looking in that magnifying mirror once a day and saying, “Hello, gorgeous.” Until you get comfortable with the idea, you may want to do this in the privacy of your home.
     

     
    Although regimens vary from woman to woman, there are a few basics that should not be ignored. First, everyoneneeds something to hold the hair off their face as they go through their morning and evening toilettes. Make yours whimsical; find the most outré clip or headband available. This is one of the few times that silk flowers or feathers are just perfect. There are very few chances in life to wear fake orange chrysanthemums on your head. Doing so while you wash your face is a lovely way to begin and end the day. It adds a fun, “Showgirl at the Copa” feeling to even the most mundane bathrooms. And headbands and clips are much more comfortable than pasties! *
     
    As you go through your cleansing and exfoliating, please be gentle. From the first exposure to Noxzema onward, we often feel that if it doesn’t hurt, it isn’t working. Every dermis is different, but you would be amazed by how well the skin may respond to a bit less intervention. You should retire for the evening feeling soft and moisturized, not worn out from an epic struggle with fifteen different serums.
     
    Unless those fifteen serums are fun to use and really work for you, how about trying the following program: Apply outré hair accessory; wash face while humming something from
Carmen
; dry with fluffy towel and apply moisturizer; pat on some eye cream while doing leg kicks. These are good for the bottom. Keep the pelvis in bistro position, point your toes, and focus on using the back of the legs to lift the leg directly behind you. Five on each side. Now, slick on a bit of lip balm, nothing too mentholated for evening. Brush your teeth and trot off to bed.
     
    In the morning, don’t forget to apply your sunblock. There are now so many to choose from, and so many formulations available, there is no good excuse for skipping this step. Even if you have a darker skin tone and an eighty-year-old grandmother who looks forty, you still have no excuse. Perhaps you won’t wrinkle, but you can still get blotchy. Use that SPF!
     
CROWNING GLORY
     
    Take a look at the following syllogism:
    Long hair is beautiful
.
     
    I have long hair
.
     
    Ergo, my hair is beautiful
.
     
    Does this resonate with you? Unless you can honestly say that your long hair is in great condition, with no hints of dry fuzziness, stringy sections, or last summer’s highlights somewhere around your ears, you need to do some honest assessment. And we understand, it isn’t easy, especially right now. American culture seems to be in the grip of a pagan cult that worships the flatiron. Every couple of seasons, the Velcro roller gets up there on the altar as well. This trend is hardly new. The most cursory research seems to suggest that the idea of the “crowning glory” dates back to the Old Testament. In the early usages, it’s God being discussed, not Jessica Simpson, and it seems to be at least metaphorically a real crown, not a head of loose, beachy waves He’s sporting. Still, it’s an enduring idea