Saturday, August 05, 2006

The Case for the Makeup Overhaul

Before I begin, let me say this: Oh, yes, Maggie Gyllenhaal got unfugged. FINALLY. And with a side dish of P-Sars, to boot. (Though, personally, I still prefer the term Sarspaawn to refer to the eventual result of their mating. And I still think it's going to be a girl.) I've been predicting this for so many months now, people, and I'm hoping that the hormones settle enough that she starts dressing like a decent celebrity for a change. Well done.

*****

Those of you who have seen me lurking around Blogdorf Goodman for the Rock The Gloss challenge may have noticed that I've been... well, rocking more of the lip product lately. And not just that, but I've been wearing some shades of familiar products that, while awesome on their own, may have been sadly relegated to the big storehouse in the sky.

I'm not the kind of person who gets really miffed whenever my favorite products get discontinued. I don't wage massive message-board flamewars with cosmetic companies whenever I hear that my favorite soap or lipstick has been pulled out of the market to make way for new product. But, because I've been such an extreme bargain hunter, I have a tendency to snap up certain things - which I'm sure are still quite hygienically sound - that will eventually get phased out of the market for reasons known only to their manufacturers and distributors.

The VOV Candy Gloss, for example, was bought at a Korean store in Honolulu that was phasing out some of their cosmetics stock. I don't even think that the gloss that I have - which comes in an automatic-pen style container similar to the Stila lip gloss - is even available; a quick Google search turned up this page, which means that it may have been repackaged or discontinued. (In any case, my shade looks more like the Pink Gold 08 shown under the Candy Gloss section.) Same with the Tony & Tina lip stain, which I got for about $5 at Sephora when they started phasing their stock out, and the Avon Glazewear in Delish, which I got for $2.99 around the same time that Avon started repackaging all of their products.

Consider, also, the circumstances that I am in right now: I don't mind being away from Hawaii, and I don't mind not going shopping, but... well, I live about half an hour away from Manila, where all the serious cosmetics stores are, and I don't always go there all the time. Here in my home town, even the American drugstore brands are considered luxuries.

On top of that, I seem to have inherited my mother's habit of using every cosmetic product in the shelf until they have been reduced to almost nothing - regardless of how long they have been sitting on said shelf. As of this writing, there are a bunch of lipsticks in my Mom's collection that have been there since the last time I came home to the Philippines, and she's still wearing them down to stubs. From an economic standpoint, it's a sound strategy... but it's also something that would make a serious cosmetics fanatic blanch.

But please, don't cry for me just because I can't get a decent lipstick and I've yet to find an Avon Lady who will save me from this predicament. There are bigger problems to worry about, and higher priorities to serve; I'm sure I'll be able to survive.

Now that you know all this, it's time for me to admit that I've never been much of a "lemming" when it comes to beauty products - it's rare for me to buy something that looks good on someone else, and rarer still for someone to buy something that looks good on me. Then again, considering that I did cave on the Revlon Super Lustrous Gloss in Raisin Glaze on somebody else's recommendation, that might change soon.

And here's another thing: While I'm sure that it's going to be hard for me to find another version of my Elizabeth Arden Exceptional Lipstick in Shimmer, I think I may have found the next best thing online: EA's Color Intrigue Lipstick in CZJ 11. How could I resist a lipstick named after Catherine Zeta Jones? Maybe I should see if I could get to an EA counter on my next trip to Manila.

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