Beauty Tips for Ministers

Dewy Mama!

MotherBang is simply gaga over this product:

Sally Hansen Anti-Aging Skin Brightener with Retinol

MamaBang says you can wear it alone or with make-up, and it just makes her positively dewy and fabulous. All for under $7, and I see it on e-bay for even less!
Mama likes the Bare shade. It also comes in Bronze.

Let me know if you try it!

[This just in: This product has been discontinued! — PB, 5/5/07]

Minky Brunette And Shiny Hair

binoche
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

This is the Juliette Binoche we know and love. So French, so feminine, so gorgeous. Look at that minky brunette hair. Boys and girls, when the Lord said LET THERE BE LIGHT, He was also referring to your hair. Even if you’re sporting a dark hue, it can –and should be — shiny. Shiny = energy. Shiny = youth. If you’re coloring your hair a dark shade and not considering whether or not it reflects any light, run right to the mirror and do so right now.

Is it shiny? Or is it just lying on your head all flat and dark or all curly and fried like something just climbed up and died there?There is no reason you can’t have some signs of shiny life no matter what your hair color. I cannot stress enough that dead, dull hair is one of the first things I notice when I see someone I think seems to be really aging. Dull hair makes us look depleted.

Look what happens even to beautiful people when their hair reflects no light. Here’s Juliette trying for the “blondes have more fun” routine, and failing miserably (although to be fair to her, she may have dyed her hair for a movie role. If so, they can’t possibly be paying her enough):

Just awful. She’s chosen a notoriously hard shade of blond to pull off, and it looks like straw. Look how it ages her. Look how it takes away her mystery and luxe allure.

You don’t think clergy should have luxe allure? Come to think of it, I agree with you. However, there’s no reason we can’t put a little sumpin’-sumpin’ in our hair to keep it from being totally drabola. There are GAGILLIONS of products out there that can help.

PeaceBang recommends:

The Aveda Brilliant Line (especially the spray finishing gloss but be careful you don’t overuse it, as it can make hair greasy)

http://www.aveda.com/templates/products/multiproduct.tmpl?CATEGORY_ID=CATEGORY10538&PAGENUM=all

American Crew Pomade (for men)

http://www.mensroombarbershop.bigstep.com/category.html?UCIDs=789251

Got any more recommendations? Special tips from the Af-Am community on this issue?

Tarte Smooth Operator

SisterBang always bewails the coming of autumn, as she has olive-toned skin that tans beautifully in the summer* and fears that with the loss of the sun, not only will her mood plummet but worse… her skin will get ashy.

She recommends to you Tarte Smooth Operator oil free lightweight foundation. You apply it with a brush and according to The Sis, it leave your skin “smooth and not shiny.”

She likes it very much in helping her transition from summer-radiant to autumn-not-so-radiant.

PeaceBang has been reading with some interest about the olive oil-based DHC line (thanks to a reader for alerting me to it), and has been washing her face for the past few nights with a Trish McEvoy purifying oil (given as a sample). She feels that this oil-based cleansing is a potentially over-rated gimmick that does leave the face very soft, but so far doesn’t out-perform other cleansers. Since PeaceBang uses a calming toner from Origins, eye cream and night cream (by Juice Beauty Organics), she doesn’t necessarily need such a moisturizing cleanser. She is not very fond of the slight greasy residue it leaves behind, and the fact that it gets all over the place before she can get it on her face.

SisterBang recommends:
Tarte Smooth Operator oil free lightweight foundation

* When PeaceBang says “tans beautifully” she does not mean “bakes herself to a dry, terra cotta brown that makes her face look like a dried apple.” She means “achieves a lovely luminous glow in spite of her regular applications of sun protection.”

In Futile Search Of The Perfect Black Flat Shoes

It is a sad fact.
PeaceBang is very unhappy with her shoe collection.
She seems to have lots of cute pumps that aren’t really comfortable enough for a long day on her feet, and she’s not dressing up enough lately to warrant wearing them in the first place.
She has loads of fun, frivolous shoes that look like all kinds of fun in the closet but either don’t go with anything, or that just aren’t appropriate for PeaceBang’s busy schedule.

PeaceBang’s lower back has been bothering her lately, and she wants solid footwear. Solid but not frumpy. Say it with me, brothers and sisters!
“Solid but not frumpy!”

She has loads of sandals, but summer is over. Yet it’s not warm enough to wear boots yet, either, and your devoted blogging correspondent has plenty of those. Black boots with heels and without, tan boots, cowboy boots, faux snakeskin boots, zip-up riding boots that threaten to cut off the circulation in her chubby calves but dammit, she wears them anyway. Oh yes, PB has the boots. Her boots were made for walking… the parish and the corridors of hospitals and seminaries.

It would seem as though PeaceBang has plenty of shoes to wear. Which reminds me of a Garrison Keillor joke.*

And yet here we are agonizing over the shoe situation yet again. Is this simply the spiritual emptiness of the materialistic American female rearing its sinful head in the guise of shoe lust? It could be, so help me Jesus, and I freely admit I would ride through the night on a broomstick to dance around a fire with Manolo Blahnik or Jimmy Choo. I would sign my soul to Franco Sarto, in blood even, for a pair of comfortable black flats with a decent heel.

So what gives? All I’m seeing this season are monstrously chunky items that make one look as though one has been shod by the Goodyear Company, or twee little ballet flats that threaten to dissolve in the first puddle, and that make a grown woman look like Henrietta the Hippo. Remember her? She was that passive-aggressive pink-clad creature from “The New Zoo Review” who clearly needed some serious fellowship with Overeaters Anonymous. I do not wish to resemble Henrietta.

And so I look. I look in vain for a black flat that is comfortable, elegant, not boring or too preppy, that has some substance enough to support an extravagantly-sized voman, and that doesn’t hearken back to the days of the god-awful Doc Marten things I clomped around in in college.

Please help, before I swoon from despair.

* This is a Lena and Olle joke, repeated from memory so don’t blame me if it’s not that funny. I’m terrible at remembering jokes. You have to say Olle’s dialogue in a really thick Norwegian accent.

Olle comes home one afternoon early from work and he walks into his bedroom to see his wife Lena sitting naked on the bed and looking rather startled to see him. “Lena,” says Olle. “What the heck are ya doin’ over there in your birthday suit? We gotta go to the luttefisk supper in a half an hour, now.” And Lena says, “Well, I just don’t have anything to wear!” Whereupon Olle walks over to her closet and opens it, saying, “Don’t be silly, Lena! Why there’sa blue dress, there’s a yella dress, there’s a green dress, there’s a Sven…”

Rev. Country Club (Black Flat Search)

country club kill me
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

“Saaaay, Muffy? What say we get our hair blown out at Bobby’s before that meeting with the bishop. And then pop by Lily Pulitzer’s to pick up one of those darling grosgrain headbands I told you about! Alrighty? See you then. Ta for now! I’m on my way to tae boe!”

Did This in 1988 (Search For Black Flats)

did this in 1988
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

These are cute. Just as cute as they were in 1989 when I wore them with baby doll dresses and bike shorts. I just can’t do it again.

NEXT…!