Taking up an inquiry about going without hose in the summer months, PeaceBang’s response to a recent commenter was YES, you can do it if you have nice, smooth legs, are otherwise respectfully dressed and clad, and have a lovely pedicure if your tootsies are showing. This isn’t a matter of age, exactly, but one might discern that she is aiming for a more mature image and opt to wear sheer hose with her summer outfits.

And let PeaceBang make this perfectly clear: it is NOT necessarily a fashion faux pas to wear hose with sandals or open-toed shoes. One simply must search for the sheerest possible hose and wear them with the seam carefully tucked under the toes, and not with Birkenstocks or any other super-casual shoe, of course. We are aiming for elegance here. And of course the fashionista clergy out there know full well that it has been au courant for some time to wear opaque hose with peep toed heels or flats in the fall and winter. The risk with the latter option is that the hose should not bunch up at the toe and ruin the line of the shoe — nor does this trend tend to look good on women with tiny feet, who risk looking as though they walk not on feet but on hooves.

THAT said, it is important that the bare-legged pastor keep her legs smooth, moisturized –and if she is of a particularly lily-white hue (think anywhere from pale to Casper the Friendly Ghost)– possibly fake- tanned with one of the many excellent products on the market.

PeaceBang loves, loves, loves Neutrogena Summer Glow Daily Moisturizer with SPF 20 but has been unable to find it in the stores this season and will have to resort to ordering it online. It is one of the only products that smells good, provides SPF protection and builds a natural-looking base of color after only one use. This is her go-to product for summer days and she recommends it far above any of the other color-adding products out there (and believe me, I’ve tried them all: Jergens comes in second, but other Neutrogena products smell hideous and make me Oompa Loompa-hued).

Darlings, learn from PeaceBang’s mistakes: DO NOT USE FAKE TAN SPRAYS ON SUNDAY MORNINGS. Even with plenty of time to dry, you’re likely to sweat a lot under your robes and you may, like PeaceBang once did, wind up with orange streaks running down into your Bandolino pumps by coffee hour.

Here’s how to do the Fake Tan Routine:

1. Shower. Shave your legs all the way up to the thigh (this takes the place of exfoliating, which you may also choose to do but which is too harsh for PeaceBang’s skin).
2. Dry yourself well.
3. Prepare a few cotton balls wetted with witch hazel.
4. Briskly and using broad circular motions, spray the front and back of each leg with the spray tan product, keeping at least a 6″ distance between the spray and your leg. DO NOT SOAK.
(5. Keep the cat out of the way.)
6. Wash your hands well with soap and water. Scrub under your nails.
7. Use the witch hazel to wipe the product off of your heels, where it may turn an ugly dirty brown. (I also make sure to rub the product into my ankles really well to avoid brown stains there).
8. Walk around in the buff for at least ten minutes. Standing in front of a fan works very nicely to expedite drying results.
9. Get dressed and go have some iced coffee.
10. Expect your lovely glow to last 3-5 days (don’t shave in the meanwhile).

This may sound like an arduous process but it really isn’t, and it helps the nuclear-white skinned among us to avoid pantyhose (worth it at any price!) and to look glowing and lovely in the leg area for special occasions. Believe me, I don’t apply this stuff a whole lot — it’s probably absolutely poisonous, for one thing, and I don’t have the time or patience, for another.

I have found that this L’Oreal product works very well and leaves me with a natural hue, not orangey at all.

Women of color, bare legged summertime is the season to bring out your most emollient moisturizers and apply them religiously. Cocoa butter or shea butter based products are wonderful, and if they add a bit of glow factor, even more fun! Sephora makes delicious body butters; the coconut almond flavor makes me swoon. The dog also likes it a bit too much — when I wear it he keeps mistaking my legs for a bowl full of cake batter that Mommy has invited him to lick clean. Max, yuck!

ANYHOO, as the sun waxes stronger in these here parts, a girl starts to think about SPF products for the lips (and fellas should, too, since your lips are tender little darlings and shouldn’t be left out there all alone to bake unprotected). Turns out that most SPF products are just dull, though; waxy Chapsticky things that don’t slide easily over lipstick or Covergirl Outlast All Day Lipcolor (PeaceBang’s daily product), which is what *I* certainly want them to do. I would think that even men seek a lip product with ease of application and a decent taste (not overly minty or medicinal or herbal or fruity).

(Incidentally, there’s a lip balm called, no kidding, Chicken Poop out there. I wanted to recommend it but it has no sun protection factor. Darn.)

I did find a tropical-flavored lip balm during my January trip to Florida that has good SPF coverage, but it makes my lips taste like a shirt Don Johnson would have worn in “Miami Vice,” so it’s a choice of last resort. I want something sophisticated with little or no flavoring, thank you very much. A cruise around my local CVS yielded nothing interesting (and did you know that Burt’s Bees lip products don’t even have SPF in them??? I just assumed that they did!). A girl can’t smear Carmex all over her mouth, for heaven’s sake: have you tasted that stuff?

So I did a little googling around online and discovered that the good people at Revlon have a Super Lustrous Lip Gloss that looks to have not only nice, glossy color coverage but SPF 15. Has anyone tried this stuff? It’s expensive, so I’d rather not purchase it without having some advance word on it. It may be that getting SPF coverage into a gloss form is a costly process, which is why so few companies are doing it.

If you’re looking for a subtle hint of color, or a clear lip balm with SPF coverage, Kiehl’s makes a very fine product that lasts and lasts, and that comes in a tube, which I love. This would be a great gift for the guy in your life. I mean, isn’t that packaging positively MANLY? Kiehl’s has its own web site and is also available at upscale department stores. This lip balm costs about $9 but again, it last for a long time even if you use it every day.

Oh, and this advance word to you, my doves: do not ever rely on make-up to provide full sun coverage for your face. If you really want to protect yourself from all the ravages of the sun (and you should), it is wisest to apply your sunblock of choice before any make-up. After much searching and many flare-ups of red blotching on my face (curses on you, Neutrogena tinted sun block! Because I love your other products so much!), I am sticking this year with Alba Botanica Facial Sunscreen for Sensitive Skin.

I was using a Juice Beauty Organics product but it smells kind of yucky and I had a devil of a time getting the product out through the pump dispenser. I like that it’s entirely non-chemical and mineral based, but they’d do better to put it in a tube so a girl or guy can actually get the stuff out of the ever-lovin’ container.

When applying sunscreen, don’t forget to get your chest, your neck, the back of your neck, the edges of your face at the hairline (wherever that hairline may be), and your ears. Let’s not be worrying our dermatologists and requiring snippings of suspicious moles and bumps this year. Be safe out there and for heaven’s sake wear a hat when we’ll be in the sun for any prolonged period of time. And just this once, I’ll give you a pass: it doesn’t even have to be particularly fashionable or attractive, it just needs to keep your skin and scalp protected. Extra bonus for those who color our hair: wearing hats is a big deterrent to fading. So go get you one! They’re always on sale at TJ Maxx or Marshall’s and places like that.

I’ve used all kinds of moisturizers and my daily choice is a simple, unscented product from Trader Joe’s that works well in a no-nonsense kind of way.

But this, Sephora Body Butter works even better and smells like coconuty, almondy heaven. It sinks right into your skin, and to make it really effective, exfoliate first:

We like Nivea For Men’s inexpensive (around five bucks) Extra Gentle Face Wash (I love that “For Men” part, as though I, with girly sensitive skin, shouldn’t even get near it or I might catch a fatal case of TESTOSTERONE)

…
but the bummer is that the Protective Moisturizer with SPF in it gave him a humongous zit,

and he’s not a guy who breaks out in general. So I’m still on the look-out for something protective and inexpensive that won’t clog his pores and cause him to look at me with patient but somewhat pitying eyes and say, “I’m just going to stick with the Ivory soap, ‘kay?” Me: “But the cleanser works great! We need to find an SPF product that won’t make you break out!” Him: “Okay, but I haven’t had a zit this big in my entire life.”

Also, gentlemen, what do you do with dry, flaky skin under sideburns? Can you exfoliate the skin under sideburns? As SweetieBang loses his deep, glowing, Florida tan (*sob*), his skin is peeling a little bit. He says leave it alone and let it peel. But we all know that PeaceBang is plotting better methods. A soft, dry brush? A masque? Aveeno exfoliating pads?

Many of us preach under strong lights or in heavy vestments that make us sweat. On days we’re not preaching, we often leave the house in the a.m. hours, run around to a series of meetings or activities and then to a round of the same in the evening. We don’t have a lot of time to do elaborate touch-ups, and we can get very shiny and sweaty punims.*

Blotting paper is terrific. It essentially allows you to powder your nose without powdering your nose. Blotting papers are tissue-thin (be careful taking them out of the package; lightly wet your fingertip first or you may pull out a whole wad instead of just the one you need) and you simply press them against your forehead, sides of nose, and chin. You will be amazed at how much oil winds up on the paper, so please don’t do this in public — it’s not a genteel, lady-like act the way pulling out a compact and discreetly banging on your schnoz after lunch can be.

For gals, blotting papers have the virtue of not adding another layer of make-up to your face, which is a good thing if you’re at the beginning of your day and don’t want to get cakey. If your make-up has worn off entirely, by all means give your face a swipe with a powder compact and blush and use the blotting papers just to avoid unseemly shine.

These come in a lovely holder so you’re sure not to accidentally smoosh them in your purse.

These don’t come with a holder but they’re pretty and old-school, and PeaceBang has used them on and off them since her teen years with no complaints.

* Yiddish for face, but you must know that by now if you’re a regular reader of this blog!

But hark! PeaceBang has been trying a sample of this rose cream from all-natural line Korres and really loves it. No, it doesn’t so much smell like a rose garden as old-school cold cream, but the scent doesn’t last and it’s an excellent product for guys and gals alike.

The price is high but it’s a far superior product to most of the drugstore brands I use, and for those of you who like the au natural thing, I thought you’d like to check out Korres in general. I’m impressed.

While PeaceBang loved the space age silver packaging, she could often not get the bloody thing to twist open of a morning (before coffee), and by midday she found little black snowflakes peppering her cheeks, no doubt giving her the friends and congregants the impression that she was auditioning to be an extra in the latest bus-and-truck of “Les Miserable.”

3-D Lash is B-A-D. Stick with Max Factor Stretch & Separate Waterproof Mascara. Love, love, love it. It’s hard to find but you can order it online.

My old pal Jud from Naples, Florida swears that Neutrogena products are THE way to go. And he has oodles of dough to buy whatever skin products his little heart desires, so I’ll take that compliment to Neutrogena as pretty high praise.

Remember to rinse well and MOISTURIZE with an SPF product! An eye cream wouldn’t hurt you, either! It’s not make-up, it absorbs nicely into the skin, and it will give you a nice, “Gee Sam, you look well-rested today” glow.

Guys with goatees, I have a question for you: are you aware that if your goatee if half-grey and half brown/black/auburn, it will look splotchy and unkempt from the back row of the church or from any kind of distance? PeaceBang thinks that well-groomed goatees are very handsome, but she does want to whisper in your ear that if you were to comb a little bit of touch-up color into it on Sundays (especially if you serve a large, more formal congregation), no one could fault you.

While a nice goatee is a sexy, virile statement (a full beard seems to PeaceBang a more patriarchal statement, and not in a “DOWN WITH THE PATRIARCHY” way - more like a Biblical patriarch way), it needs to be carefully groomed. ‘Nuff said? And if you’re under 30, watch it with the facial hair. Baby faced preachers sporting beards make PeaceBang want to pet their heads and say, “There, there, son, I know you desperately want us to take you vewy sewiously, but you’re trying way too hard. Shave the punim already and let your words show us how mature you are.”