The Frenemy's Beauty Survey

The Frenemy is an awesome blogger. She did this fun survey a while back and I've wanted to do this for a while.

1) What are the 5 products you would take with you on a desert island?
SUNSCREEN in SPF 90+ (although I read anything above SPF 30 or so is basically the same as 30) in a huge Costco-sized container, chapstick (I use chapstick for lip balm the way everyone uses Kleenex to mean facial tissue) with sunscreen as well, black kohl chubby eyeliner pencil to outline my eyes to avoid glare a la the Egyptians (and also feel like a badass goddess), coconut oil (multiple uses), and Garnier Fructis leave-in conditioner. Can you tell I'm worried about sunburn? #theunbearablewhitenessofbeing
2) What are the 3 products you would splurge on if somebody gave you a giant gift card to Sephora?
This Benefit eyeliner, since I've heard it's good and I love doing winged eyeliner, a Really Good Red lipcolor, and either a really good eyebrow pencil or Benefit Lollitint
3) What’s the beauty product you are most afraid of using?
False eyelashes. I refuse.

4) What’s the lipstick that makes you feel the most powerful?
I don't know about feeling powerful. I think red lipstick looks really good on me, but I'm always paranoid it's coming off or smearing.
5) What’s your everyday makeup routine?
Aveeno sunscreen SPF 60 on my nose (and ears if I'm wearing my hair up and am going to be in the sun), hella old CoverGirl pressed powder I bought when I was like 18 for mattifying and shine, blush (either the pink CG I think or the peach Physician's Formula my sister gave me b/c it made her break out), eyebrow kit from e.l.f. to fill in brows, eye makeup. That can be a swipe of eyeliner, eyeshadow stick, full eyeshadow contouring, or winged eyeliner, etc. I usually save mascara (a sample of this one in black or CG naturalluxe in black-brown) for church and special occasions. Lipgloss or -stick or balm. Neutrogena concealer if I'm wearing contacts. The face stuff varies less than the eye or lip makeup.
6) Top 3 drugstore finds you cannot live without?
I buy almost everything at the drugstore, so I can't choose three. I'd say probably my e.l.f. studio makeup brushes. OH WAIT MY e.l.f. MAKEUP REMOVER PEN. Q-tips (knockoff) and cotton rounds.
7) Top 3 higher end finds that were actually worth the splurge?
I like never splurge on anything. I use coupons for the drugstore products I buy. I think my mom was the one who bought this, but I really like Cetaphil face cleanser. My mom and sister and I used to get Clinique Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion or Gel and I looooooved them. I may buy it again now that I have money. I also have this Clinique lipstick (Color Surge Bare Brilliance in 22 Pink Beach) that I love that's probably discontinued, but if they have it when I'm out of the tube I have I'll buy it again.
8) What’s your nighttime skincare routine?
Hahaha so bad for someone as old as I am. Half the time I just sleep with everything on. If I'm being good I use a makeup remover wipe, rinse with water, use this gr8 dollar store knockoff toner that is basically the exact same thing as Clinique's Clarifying Lotion 2 to wipe extra gunk off with a cotton round, and moisturize with Equate baby lotion. If I'm being medium, I wipe eyeliner off with a tissue. I also have eye makeup remover I got when my visiting cousin left it behind; I use it to take off my eye makeup with a cotton round (usually just if I was wearing liquid eyeliner and/or concealer). When I'm at my parents' I use Simple eye makeup remover pads (sample) and Cetaphil face cleanser, which is pretty good. Lately I've had dry patches around my mouth and I've been using coconut oil on them.
9) Products you keep buying even though you have too many?
Lipgloss, eyeshadow sticks, nail polish. Usually these are from the dollar store or e.l.f. products so they don't put too big of a dent in my pocket

10) Eyeshadow colors you gravitate towards? If you could only keep one eyeshadow palette, which one would you keep?
Browns (because they make my blueish eyes pop) and purples (my favorite color). I like grays a lot too. I don't really have palettes, just maybe duos and trios. Oh, I do have one mini travel palette in a fake metallic pewter snakeskin case. It has a purple trio (eggplant and two shades of lilac) in one side and a quad of sheer golden, brown, sheer silver, and sheer teal in the other. I use it a lot. It was a gift.
11)What’s the one makeup brush in your collection that you would keep if you had to get rid of the rest?
My e.l.f. blush brush, probably. It's a struggle deciding between that and my smudge and contour eyeshadow brushes (also e.l.f.).
12) What’s the one product you hate putting on?
I kind of suck at putting everything on. Stuff doesn't blend right, mascara clumps and gets on the wrong places, etc.

13) Best makeup tip you love telling other people about?
I can't think of one.

14) Is there a product you started using recently that you can’t believe you didn’t use before?
Brow filler. After my e.l.f. kit is done I think I'll splurge for something a Sephora girl pushes on me. The e.l.f. kit is ok, although the gel color is too dark and the brow powder is too light and reddish. My mom has an Anastasia Beverly Hills brow gel wand (like mascara), but the eyebrow hairs are not what I need to be darker. There are gaps in my brows where the hairs refuse to grow in/over and I need them filled in. I look like Groucho Marx's granddaughter rather than Frida Kahlo with this kit. I've only just started doing it, so I'm sure I'll get the hang of it.

15) Best Beauty Advice?
Do what you want and what works for you. Take care of your skin.

Flash book reviews: October

There was an ebook I read in October that I'm not going to share the title of because it was stupid, but it annoyed me that the Mexican American protagonist was said to have "two middle names" which turned out to be just her full name, including both parents' surnames, which is the Spanish naming custom. I don't remember exactly what the protagonist's name was anymore, but I'll use Maria Elena Garcia Romero as an example. The author/characters were trying to pass this off as Maria (again, not her name but I don't remember what it was) having two middle names, Elena and Garcia, even though that is NOT how the naming thing works in Hispanic cultures. Both surnames are considered just that, surnames. AND, they said that the surnames were her mother's first and her father's second. That is not how it works either!!!!! You always put the father's surname first and then the mother's. UGH. Authors, do your research before writing stuff about people from cultures that are not yours. This annoyed me a lot.

Graveyard Shift by Angela Roquet, early-mid October (free Nook ebook)
This book is about a Reaper (Grim is their boss) whose job is transporting souls to the proper afterlife and making sure demons don't get them. She's drawn into a larger political scheme that threatens the very fabric of Limbo and has to juggle that plus dating an angel. This is the first in a series so it didn't have a resolved ending. There is a lot of exposition, basically tons of world-building through explanation. None of the characters really stood out to me much. I thought it was interesting how all the different mythological and religious characters from various cultures coexisted in Limbo (I don't think that's the actual name but I don't remember what it was and I'm too lazy to look it up). I also thought it sucked that the protagonist and her friends went through the same stuff as ordinary human people: a job that can be a drag, having to pay overpriced rent, etc. This author's definitely read Pratchett and Gaiman but isn't them. I can read any amount of fantasy but when it involves angels I get uneasy. I kind of want to know what happens next but I doubt I'll go out of my way to get the other books. Maybe if I come across them in the library or their ebooks become free. 3.9/5

The Shadow and the Rose by Amanda DeWees. October 12 (free Nook ebook)
This book is based on Tam Lin (one of the few fairytales I haven't read) and is the first of a series. An ordinary girl falls in love with a hot dude who is in thrall of a powerful gorgeous woman and has to save him. I had high hopes for this one (I love books where the girl saves the guy as well as fairytale retellings) but it fell flat. The characters all were cardboard cutouts and I was mad at myself for not figuring out what the villainess was before being told, despite it being pretty obvious in hindsight. There was a bizarre plot point that just made it too much for me. I do want to read the others, kinda. 3.9/5

The Ink Readers by Thomas Holdeveult. October 12 (free Nook ebook)
This is a short story/novella set in a Thailand village about wishes. There's a wish festival and the villagers have different wishes that all end up coming true in some way, although not in the way the wishers expected. The writing was lyrical and humorous, but ultimately I am skeptical of white authors writing about cultures not their own. I feel like it might be a little dodgy race/cultural appropriation-wise, and I hated that a child in the book died (and this somehow answered his wish? His murderers got their comeuppance at least). There was some crude stuff too. 3.9/5

Until I Found You by Victoria Bylin. mid-late October (free Nook ebook)
Christian romance set in SoCal. The heroine is a graphic designer who has to take care of her grandmother who's had a stroke. On her way there she gets into a dramatic car accident and is saved by a hot newly Christian magazine editor and like many other books the heroine has to Learn To Trust and Open Her Heart To Both Love And Jesus etc. etc. Also the endangered California condors are a theme throughout (they mate for life!). Here is a bulleted list of all the things I found problematic, typically from a feminist standpoint:

• super wimpy and damsel in distress-y heroine, always crying and needing to be saved by the hero
•  Bad thing happens, heroine cries and the hero saves/helps her, rinse and repeat. It's like that was the only thing the author knew to do to move the plot along and create conflict.
• all-too-common work vs. family choice that women so often have to make, made to be about her faith and relationship with the guy. Like choosing to continue as a famous rich celebrity's graphic designer for her spa ads would have been the unChristian thing to do and then the guy wouldn't have been able to be with her because of her worldiness? choosing self?, which is bogus. The core choice by itself is already hard enough without adding that.
• Seriously, the famous celebrity and the hero squared off on a virtual battle over the heroine's soul. I'm not kidding. The celebrity was all "I'm going to make her my successor and the daughter I never had and I won't let YOU get in the way!" and her plastic surgeries and focus on youth and multiple failed marriages are harped on a lot. This book takes a really weird and regressive view of Women With Ambition.
• guy's one night stand (before he became a Christian, of course) painted as abandonment to the resulting baby he didn't even know about, because he just slept with the woman and didn't make a commitment. O...kay? They took precautions against getting pregnant which didn't work, but the woman didn't tell him she was pregnant. She obviously didn't want him in the picture and only hit him up for financial help for all the medical bills and funeral costs after the baby died. That's really sad but it doesn't really mean he Abandoned the baby. It wasn't his fault. 
• grandmother's anecdotes about not being able to have children and her resulting grief and emotional estrangement from her husband painted as her being Selfish and Self-Centered and A Bad Wife As Well As A Bad Christian. Her husband, instead of trying to comfort her in her grief, was all "is that all I am to you, just someone who can give you a baby?" Once she repented and "served her husband with her body" EW EW EW EW EW, she eventually got the baby she so craved. 
• The baby grew up and got married and had the protagonist and died tragically young along with his wife, so clearly no one in this story is allowed to have nice things. Lotta death in this book. Body count: the grandfather (past), the heroine's parents (past), the hero's baby (past). P. unnecessary imo

3/5

Science Fiction & Fantasy class essays: Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness & Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland

Gender and Science Fiction

Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland both deal with alternately gendered societies, but in different ways. Herland is a country that has been peopled only with women for hundreds of years; the women become pregnant independently, through asexual reproduction. The Left Hand of Darkness takes place in Winter, where everyone is genderless, except during their mating periods when one individual becomes male and one individual becomes female in order to reproduce. These lands are seen as very strange by the protagonists, who are men from our society/world.

The authors of both these books were women, which is unsurprising considering how in-depth and concerned with gender and its role in our and the alternate societies both stories are. In contrast, male SF writers such as Burroughs and Bradbury have written SF stories where the male themes of exploration and colonization/domination take place on Mars, a newer Wilder West. Many men who wrote SF have used the genre as a way to satirize their cultures or human nature, but they have not dealt with gender anywhere near as much as these two authors have. But then, men don't really have to deal with gender the way women do.

Broadly, female SF writers use SF as a way to imagine a differently cultured world, a different society, where gender does not shape the people, their destinies and their culture the way it does in our world or society. They want to explore worlds where gender is a non-issue: Gilman because there are no men and as such only one gender with nothing to contrast with, and Le Guin because no one has a gender and everyone is the same. To me, these books earn their science fiction status not because they take place on other planets (only Le Guin's does), but because they deal with the soft sciences: sociology and psychology.