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Here Comes The Sun, Little Darlings

Here on the Eastern seaboard, Bostonian-type people are wandering around in a happy daze, squinting like little moles and bumping into each other because the sun is finally out and we can’t *see* anything!

PeaceBang is sure she doesn’t have to remind you that the sun is getting more and more dangerous to human Earthlings all the time. So darlings, for real, please make serious sun protection a non-optional part of your daily toilette.

Find a good sunscreen with UVA/UBA protection and apply it DAILY, paying special attention to your face. Make sure your nose is covered. Get back into your hairline, where so many cancerous moles can develop. Keep your head covered if you’re going to be outdoors for a long period of time. Protect your ears.

If you have sensitive skin and react badly to chemical sunscreens, PeaceBang encourages you to look into titanium dioxide-based sunblock, or any other of the physical sunblocks that are widely available on the market. These will not irritate your skin like the more typical old-school sunscreens.

PeaceBang Recommends

Highly

Dermadoctor Body Guard SPF 30

This is a fantastic product by Dr. Audrey Kunin that treats your skin as it protects it. It does not go on white and greasy even on dark black skins, absorbs beautifully, and kept the very fair-skinned PeaceBang from burning this weekend, which is amazing. $25 for 4oz.

Murad Oilfree Sunblock SPF 30
Wonderful smell, easily available, goes on well and lasts. $30

Peter Thomas Roth Ultralite Oilfree Sunblock
Slightly medicinal smell, but goes on very well and doesn’t have much of a greasy sheen to it. $26

Not So Recommended
Bliss Oilfree Sunban Face SPF 30+
This goes on very liquidy, and has a slightly chickeny smell. Yuck. $27

Jason’s Sunbrella Sunblock
A great buy at $11 but goes on like clown white. While I was able to rub it into my fair skin and look slightly less conspicuously white than Marcel Marceau, I cannot recommend it for anyone but the lightest of skins, and even then it leaves a weird other-worldly glow that may lead your friends to suspect that you’ve been taking pinches of arsenic.

Please, readers, submit your own favorites in the comments section! I use Neutrogena and Aveeno products myself, and highly recommend the Neutrogena (Aveeno seems to sweat right off). However, in the interest of not having to buy too many skin care products, I like to take advantage of the generous sample policy offered by Sephora, where their salesclerks are always incredibly helpful and willing to discuss the finer points of titanium dioxide with me and to let me smell, feel and take notes on every kind of product they offer. Kisses to them!

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Reading Image In Times Of Crisis


katie couric
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

Ahh, you think that PeaceBang’s insistence that clergypeople try to project an image consciously rather than unconsciously is silly, do you?

You think that PeaceBang banging the drum of being camera-ready in a highly visual world is frivolous, do ye?

You wonder why PeaceBang is trying so hard to get religious leaders to pay closer attention to the details of their voice, posture, presence and comportment, dost thou?

Today’s New York Times, a periodical not exactly known for its frivolity, analyzes the television coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings by several major network anchors, including NBC’s Katie Couric and ABC’s Charles Gibson:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/arts/television/19watc.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Charles Gibson is praised for his authenticity and for “keeping an even keel,” while Brian Williams of the “NBC Nightly News” turns “long-winded and cloying” in personal interviews.

Miss Couric, “who anchored Monday’s broadcast in white slacks and very little make-up to signal to viewers that she was hard at work in the field,” is criticized for emoting on camera with “gauzy, sorrowful looks.” Mr. Gibson is described as “rumpled, pleasant and serious” onscreen.

PeaceBang brings this article to your attention nout not to say that it is fair, or that it is even good journalism, or to start a kind of American Idol competition between news anchors, but simply to point out that contemporary Americans are becoming more and more expert readers of image, and more and more conscious of how those who seek their trust gain it through a combination of personal relationship, public trustworthiness, and that ineffable thing called “presence.”

We must know all that we can about our own pastoral and leadership presence. We are responsible for it. We have been trained well, most of us, to be deeply in touch with our insides. Being in touch with our outsides is different work, and challenging work, but it matters. Oh, it matters, my friends.

Personal to Miss Couric: Yes, I agree with you that it was snide and sexist for the NY Times to comment on your make-up or lack thereof, but you’re powerful enough to let that roll off your back, I hope. As for white slacks, why not a nice navy? At least ’til after Memorial Day? White seems a little beachy for such a tragic story.

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Professor Lucinda Roy


Professor Lucinda Roy
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

Darlings, PeaceBang hasn’t felt much like being your cheeky correspondent this week, but she feels that she should say aloud what we’re all thinking,

“Professor Lucinda Roy, you are one class act.”

Seriously. Amidst the horrors of the Virginia Tech massacre, Dr. Roy has spoken to the media several times about her experience with the profoundly troubled Cheo Seung-Hui. On every occasion that I’ve seen, she has been composed, articulate, compassionate, and dressed in a manner that communicates total respect for her profession and her school.

Let us watch, and learn, and hope to God that we are never put in a similar situation.

Lord have mercy.

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Marcia, Marcia, Marcia



Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

Maureen McCormick, honey, you don’t NEED to go on “Celebrity Fit Club.” You’re fine; you don’t need to go on a special television show to lose weight and humiliate yourself. Just cut back on the Twizzlers and the tuna melts. PeaceBang only wishes she was that “overweight!”

You may, however, choose to enroll in “Celebrity Eyeshadow Rehab,” where they’ll teach you that it’s really not necessary to match your eye shadow to your dress. There can even be a big televised finale where you fling your hideous blue eyeshadow into the garbage, fully reformed.

Also, Maureen? White go-go boots? And… no, I’m not even going to talk about the dress. You’re Marcia Brady and that gives you special immunity.

[Thanks to the Fug Girls for the photo]