PRETTY FACE by Andreia Pedro

Pretty Face much more than that

Issue 1 Imperfections

Masthead Editor-in-chief / Creative director Andreia Pedro Graphic Designer Patricia Batista Copy Editing Robyn Turk and Patricia Medici Contributors

Aabey Francis-Favilla, Ana Brasil, Ana Viegas, Catia Pereira Matos, Mariana Cardoso, Sophia Cosby. Makeup Artists Asta Gost, Rita Fialho Photographers Camilla Glorioso, Hasan Bitirim, Sara Sandri, Roos Van de Kieft Acknowledgments Andrew Tucker and Patricia Batista. My sister Silvia and my parents Domingos and Teresa. And to my other family: my friends and Joe.

Editor’s letter

In 1984, two women came together to write a book that would later turn out to be very hard to find: Face Value: The Politics of Beauty by Robin Tolmach Lakoff and Raquel L. Scherr. Two academics who thought of beauty as the last taboo for women, and proceeded to confront it with their scholarly talent and intellect. The result is a book in which beauty is explored from a curious standpoint. A topic that is seen as “self-indulgent” or “reinforcing of the bad old stereotypes – women as vain and self-absorbed” has more to it than meets the eye. It is personal, deeply related to our sense of self, and to the darkest and lightest corners of our soul. I found this book on a hidden corner of a library and tracked it down online, until it finally was part of my night stand through the conception of PRETTY FACE.

or the makeup we put on. We find our singular self in the way we utilize these tools to empower ourselves. Much like the new movement of millennials who are embracing their body hair (page 16); or Florence Adepoju, who took her dissatisfaction with the industry into her own hands to build her beauty empire (page 20).

Beauty doesn’t take place on Instagram filtered pictures or insanely photoshoped editorials. Beauty is a relationship between our bodies, our health and our mental and emotional state. Trying to address beauty as vain and unimportant is part of the past. A past that still haunts women on the covers of glossy magazines, that still makes us feel ruled over by an unseen identity that dictates a beauty standard.

We keep in mind the cliché that “nobody is perfect” as an absolute truth, rather than a quote that we go back to when we are feeling pretty unperfect ourselves. We decided to adventure into the jungle of body sizes to discover why this is still a big deal in our society (page 48), and we also explored why imperfect food is sometimes the best solution (bye bye green smoothies and chia seeds! page 106).

Many of us aren’t interested in being shown the how-tos of beauty, because we always did it our way anyway. The beauty industry runs on unattainable expectations, when in fact the real thing is happening in our day to day lives. We are not the products we buy

Welcome to the first issue of PRETTY FACE. A beauty magazine for the low maintenance girls, for the imperfection lovers and for the women who see beauty in everything. Now put on that face mask, make a cup of tea and enjoy the read.

PRETTY FACE wants to expose imperfections rather than hide them. Covering up something doesn’t make it go away, on the opposite, it just makes us more exposed to being hurt and fragile. On this issue, journalist Sophia Cosby complements her favourite imperfection of the human body (page 74) and Aabye Francis-Favilla explains why she doesn’t wear makeup (page 86).

Andreia Pedro Editor-in-chief

Contributors

Mariana Cardoso is a 24-year-old jour-nalist based in Lisbon. She is a dreamer and a strong believer that anything is possible. All we have to do is fight for what we want and trust in ourselves. For the first issue of PRETTY FACE, Mariana elaborated on scent and it’s intimate effect on human beings. Perfect Imperfection: “I would say my perfect imperfection is my smile. It shows all my teeth’s and gums (which I hate), but you won’t get a more genuine smile than mine.”

Cátia Pereira Matos thought that she would pursue Fashion Design, but in the end she graduated in Journalism. Since then, she tries to harmonize writing and fashion. She worked for a glossy magazine for a year and now writes for the biggest Sunday newspaper in Portugal. In this issue, she made us rethink our relationship with food. Perfect Imperfection: “I learned to love my freckles, even in summer, when they get bigger and bolder because of the sun exposure”.

Hasan Bitirim is a fashion photo-grapher from Cyprus. He moved to England to study Photography at Falmouth University and is now based in London. He is passionate about expressing his own thoughts and feelings through image combined with fashion elements. He photographed Red Power and Make Up #IRL for PRETTY FACE. Perfect Imperfection: “My favourite imperfection is being too emotional.”

Sophia Cosby is a freelance writer, translator and stylist based in Switzerland. She is a modern minimalist and a tall girl with impeccable style. Her cat is named Zafron, but for some reason she only calls it Turkey. Perfect Imperfection: "Growing up, I was very insecure about my eyebrow-bones. They stick out quite a lot, looking kind of swollen. Or like a cavemen, as a kid in my school once said. Now I really like them. Not only because they give my eyebrows a nice arch, but because its a bone structure that runs in my family. My mother has them and so did her father. I love it when I look like my family."

Ana Viegas is a photographer based in Lisbon and was behind the camera for the editorial Knot & Dead Branches. She studied Graphic Design, followed by photographic and then photojournalism. She is in love with Iceland and Japan, the first for it’s music and the latter for it’s food. Perfect Imperfection: “I’m a perfectionist so all I can see is imperfections. I still don’t know how to answer this one”.

Aabye-Gayle D. Francis-Favilla is a graduate of the Nightingale-Bamford School and Wellesley College. She was also on the editorial staff of Nickelodeon Magazine. She currently maintains her own blog (www.aabsofsteel. wordpress.com) and contributes to The Body Is Not an Apology (an online magazine). Her writing also appears in Place &amp; Identity: An Anthology of Personal Essays. Aabye-Gayle lives in New York City with her husband and two cats—but, for the record, she’s a dog person. Perfect Imperfection: “I cherish the gap between my two front teeth. It’s something I share with my mother (now deceased) and my two siblings”.

Ana Brasil was born and raised in the Azores islands. She grew up during the 1990s watching MTV and never really got over grunge. Writing is both a struggle and a very pure form of freedom to her. She enjoys salted caramel and draft beer. Currently she’s learning how to knit. Perfect Imperfection: “When I was younger, I used to hate the gap between my front teeth. I actually dreamed of saving money to get them fixed. Eventually, I realised that a lot of guys thought it was a sexy feature. But the man that made me love it was my dad. He said that if Madonna had a tooth gap, it wasn’t a problem - otherwise she would have fixed it - and he would have fixed it too!”

Patrícia is 36 years old and she lives in beautiful Lisbon. As a child she dreamed of learning as much languages as she could to know and be able to understand people in the world. An impossible dream. Today she has a simpler one: to know and understand herself. She is the mind and hands that created PRETTY FACE's design. Perfect Imperfection: "My imperfection is wanting to be perfect and not believing that people love me as I am: imperfect."

Contents page 14 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

74 AN ODE TO DARK CIRCLES

16 HAIRY MATTERS

80 SKIN FIRST

Discover the answers to the most googled beauty questions

Time to embrace some body hair and kiss patriarchy goodbye!

20 INTERVIEW: FLORENCE ADEPOJU

PRETTY FACE talked to the 25-year-old leading the change in the Beauty Industry

30 POWER RED

The most beautiful parts of the human body are the less obvious ones

A curated selection of the new skincare essentials

86 WHY I DON’T WEAR MAKEUP

Explaining why au naturel is the best look

91 RUNWAY BEAUTY #IRL

Real girls interpret makeup looks from the runway

A visual journey through the symbolisms of red

40 SEX OBJECT

A piece of singular beauty about the misterys of growing up in a woman’s skin

102 THE SCENT OF INTIMACY

A piece on why scents are our most treasured memories

48 HEALTHY AT EVERY SIZE

106 #NORMAVORE

54 KNOTS & DEAD BRANCHES

114 ROOM SERVICE

Exploring the politics of body size in a world still obsessed by perfection

A Fashion Editorial inspired by nature and its uniqueness

70 WHEN DID FASHION BECOME SO UGLY Reflecting on Vetements and how it is changing modern aesthetics

Beans, cookies and chocolate? Bring it on, the body needs what it asks for

A décor tour around the room of one cool girl

122 EAT BEAUTIFUL

Wendy Rowe caters two simple recipes to achieve healthy skin

Pretty Face Pretty Face Pretty Face Pretty Face

much more than that much more than that much more than that much more than that

Frequently Asked Questions: Google Edition

When in doubt, ask Google. The most famous search engine in the world-wide web releases every year a list of most googled questions. The results presented above are from last year (2015) and can be interpreted as a sociological review of our times or as just a simple curiosity list. Image source: Kylie Cosmetics

Q: HOW TO DO THE KYLIE JENNER LIP CHALLENGE? A: Denying having lip fillers done, the youngest sister of the Kardashian clan triggered an online challenge which consisted in using a cupping lip suction method to achieve a temporary plump and full lip effect. The results drove some challenge takers to the hospital. Q: WHAT ARE LIP FILLERS? A: Perhaps the first question led to this second most frequently asked one. Lip fillers are a product (hyaluronic acid, collagen or your own fat from tissues) injected to the lips or to the skin around the mouth area. This method is expected to increase the volume and fullness of the lips and even out fine lines around the same area. Q: HOW TO REMOVE GEL NAIL POLISH? A: Quick and easy: dip cotton wool pads into acetone; place them over the nails; cut tin foil and place it over the cotton pads; wait approximately 10 minutes. Take it off. Q: HOW TO REMOVE ACRYLIC NAILS AT HOME? A : Do not try this at home: consult a nail salon for the matter, as it can result in weak and broken nails.

Q:HOW TO USE BEARD BALM? A: Take a few drops and apply over beard. Q: HOW TO DO A FRENCH BRAID? A: As Google suggest, the best option is to resume to Youtube for this matter. Q:HOW TO POP A DEEP ZIT? A: Rule number one of zit constitution: do not pop zits. Doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t matter what google says. You know better. Resist the temptation and use some tea tree oil, please. Q: HOW TO GET GLOWING SKIN? A: Everyone can relate to the desire to obtain glowing and healthy looking skin. But Google is as confused as we all are. Pages and pages of links and no definite awnsers leads us to believe that the quest for a healthy skin is an individual and long path. Q: HOW TO PUT BRAIDS IN A BUN? A: Yet again, Youtube is the right source for this question. Q:HOW TO MAKE YOUR HAIR NOT STATICY? A: Use water. Yep, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s simple, but it still works in emmergencies.

Hairy Matters

Check your Instagram: body hair is everywhere. As many women move away from hair removal and wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be told how to look, a new movement is born. This is the time to embrace womanhood: with a full bush and a bare hairy leg. By Andreia Pedro

Image: Sophia Loren on the begining of career in the 50â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s - Google Images

The ritual of hair removal goes back to ancient Egypt, where women started using beeswax and sugar-based waxes to take off unwanted hair. A practice that survived until our days, and atill plays a role of special importance for women’s aesthetics. In 1915, Gillette democratized the razor for all women, which prompted a mass accession to underarm shaving. None of women’s body parts are safe from the dictatorship of hairless smooth skin, so much so, that in the late 80’s the pubic area was the target. Seven Brazilian sisters opened shops in New York City and popularized the full Brazilian Wax, the waxing technique that removes all hair in the pubic area. Sex and The City made the style even more popular in one of its episodes, teaching women all over the world how their pubic area should be styled. While some women throughout history have broken the mold - think about Frida Kahlo or Sophia Lauren- the general conception that women are ought to have no hair still remains. From an early age we are introduced to the fact that hair removal constitutes a warrant to womanhood, a societal standard, hard to shake. Keeping our body hair doesn’t even constitute an option, one that could be much simpler, painless and cheaper.

the beginning of puberty I was told consistently that I “needed” to shave them, especially by the girls in the year above me. Something I noticed when looking back was that at the time it was never the boys who teased me or pressured me, but always other girls. I begged my mum to let me shave my legs and after much argument she finally let me. It was this strange rite of passage in our culture when a mother shows a daughter how to shave properly. For her as a somewhat conservative woman, I believe it felt like I had let go of my childhood and was now desperate to be seen as a woman. This was true, I wanted to be seen as older, “sexy” and “grown up”. When I grew underarm hair, it was a normal thing to shave it straight off, I didn’t think twice about it and nor did anyone else I knew. When I began to grow pubic hair, it was again a normal thing to keep it “neat and tidy”, and when I reached the age of 14 it became instilled on me by my peers and my society that I had to shave it all off because “that’s what boys like”. And I did, all through the first relationships I was in between the ages of 14-16. Shaving my entire pubic area was always for them, not for me.

But in the past few year, embracing body hair has trickled into the mind of millennials and social media has enabled the spread of individual voices that are not satisfied with the current beauty standard. Female empowerment and respect for one’s body is in the forefront of the new body hair movement. From niche Instagram accounts to mainstream advertising campaigns (e.g. &Other Stories featured women with underarm body hair in their lingerie campaign for 2015), body hair is the natural feature enabling women to reclaim back their body. PRETTY FACE caught up with Megan Buys, a 19-year-old from Sydney, Australia. On her Instagram account (@meganfromthemoon) she shares her journey through self-love and acceptance and challenges the beauty concepts that haunts women today. When did you become aware of your body hair? What are the memories from your first removal? Awareness of my body hair was an ever-present idea for me. I grew up with dark hair on my legs as a child, and as my friends and I all moved towards

When did you stop removing your hair? I stopped removing all of my body hair at the beginning of this year [2016]. I had experimented with not shaving my legs for quite a while before that, but then I travelled to Indonesia and Hawaii where it was common for women not to shave and I finally felt comfortable lifting up my arms. Now being back in Australia, I feel this sense of embarrassment if I show my underarms and also if I’m being at all sexual with someone I want to be “neat and tidy” down there. Becoming more confident with my underarm hair has been an interesting challenge that I continue to explore.

Do you remove any of it? Yes, I do. I shave my pubic area, not all off but just to make it neater. I had this idea in my head that if I shaved anywhere or trimmed anywhere I’d be a hypocrite or I’d “cheating”, but the real idea is that I can do whatever I like and I don’t need to subscribe to one extreme or the other. I cut and style my hair, and I cut and style my pubes too. What are the reactions like? From family, friends, strangers and partners? My family (Dad, mum, sister) continually mock me in a fun-loving way, which I don’t mind. But I also get very harsh comments from my sister saying I’m disgusting and ugly and that I don’t take care of myself etc. No men I have been with have ever minded, however I have been in conversation and know that some prefer to go down on me if I was shaved/trimmed, which I understand. Other than that no one has commented or given me a strange look at all which I’m surprised about. How would you define the beauty ideal in our society? I feel every person has a different idea of what beauty is. To Australian society as a whole it is “beautiful” (as a woman) to be fit but thin, tanned but “white”, long hair, shaved, makeup but made to look natural, sexy but not “slutty”, mature and woman like but still cute and childlike, effort made to look effortless. Beauty today is a mass of contradictions that many people find themselves swinging between trying to keep up with what is “expected”. In your opinion, why do you think that a substantial number of women are deciding to stop removing their body hair? For many women, it’s a protest. It’s a “fuck you to whoever told me I needed to do this”. This is what it was for me in the beginning, but now it has merged into a simple choice that doesn’t really mean anything. In the same way, I put on a necklace or if I choose not to paint my nails. It’s just a choice about how I care for my body and looks that also happens to be an amazing movement that I love being a part of and that is meaningful. Why do you think that body hair is associated with lack of hygiene and self-care? The image that comes to mind when most people think of a woman who doesn’t shave is one of a “dirty hippy”, (something my dad said). I feel this has to

do with the way women have been portrayed for hundreds of years: perfect, childlike, always beautiful and poised. If we don’t match those standards from two centuries ago then we are automatically seen as lacking self-care and hygiene. Body hair on women is seen as primitive and animalistic, which is such a contradiction because a man’s hygiene is never question if he doesn’t shave his underarms, legs or pubic area. Do you feel there is a relation between body hair removal and women’s empowerment? Yes absolutely. I feel empowered because I now feel confident enough to make a choice that goes against the mainstream, hypocritical and unnecessary belief of the society I was raised in. That’s powerful. How do you feel that keeping our hair can contribute to a change in society? It can make people realize that they have the choice to live however they want and question whether their own ideals actually stem from inherent values or values placed upon them by a culture. It makes people question the way they live and what they believe in, and takes them out of the box the culture has built and allows people to see the level of freedom they have. To not just be dictated by an outdated idea that may not serve them, whether that be the expectation of shaved legs of something with a much higher level of severity. /

Madame Flow: Conquering the beauty world, one lipstick at a time

At 25, Florence Adepoju, has built an imperium of lip colours that suit every skin tone on the planet. The secret ingredient? Pigments, audacity and the deep understanding that every single woman is unique. Interview by Andreia Pedro / Image Source: MDMFlow

How did MdM Flow start? Tell us the story. When I was in college I was obsessed with science and art; I studied biology and chemistry and also art and design. Even though art and design were always what I loved the most, I thought I was I was going to use the science to build a stable career and then art was just going to become a hobby. One day I was looking at a Benefit Cosmetics Makeup counter and I stopped short. They started to do my makeup for me, and I was like, “I can’t afford anything”. [laughs] So the lady said, “If you can’t afford anything, are you looking for a job?”, I was like “Ok, yeah, I am looking for a job!”. And that’s literally how I got my first job in makeup. They were quite a young company back then, so the training was in the head offices, but now they are so big they probably would never do that.

wanted to work for a company, but there was no company I actually wanted to work for. And that was genuinely how I felt, so I felt I was just going to create the company that should exist.

And it made me think: this is what I want to do, I want to be in this industry. But at the same time, I still wanted to do something scientific because it’s something that I’m naturally good at. I just started searching on YouTube and I came across a video of students from the Cosmetic Science Degree at the London College of Fashion. I thought it was incredible because I never saw makeup being made before. Straight away I knew that was what I wanted to study. It was quite last minute when I decided that, so I emailed them and they said that there were only a few more places and I could come down for an interview. I really went for that interview thinking this is the industry I want to work in but I also want to start a business.

Working in luxury beauty retailers while learning how to formulate beauty products on your course really helped you find your own career path. How did that experience help to shape Mdm Flow? FA: From my experience in retail, I had so many issues with the products, the way they are developed, the way they look on different skin tones, the way they don’t show up on darker skin tones, colours are not available, the quantity of the colours isn’t great… And being in a degree and in an environment where I was constantly learning about the development process and being told how products should be made and then seeing that products in the market weren’t being made that way, I just thought it wasn’t right and I wanted to fix it. For me lipstick was a key thing, because women have issues with lipsticks but, when they do, they internalize it. If a woman uses a lipstick and the colour doesn’t look great on her she thinks ‘oh, it doesn’t suit me, it’s me, I have issues with me!” and they don’t think about the product. Without actually thinking, a product should be available to me that isn’t drying, or all these other things that especially younger woman internalize. They try a product and if it doesn’t suit them the way it suits a person of a paler complexion or a person of a different aesthetic, they internalize it.

When you work in retail, as much as you love it, there are always things that you would do differently, and you are constantly developing as you see things. That was how I was. So I got on to the degree and from the first day I thought, “this is so hard, this is the hardest thing I have done in my life and I am definitely not going to start a business”. [laughs] I decided to get more work experience and by the time it came to final year I was thinking about all the places where I didn’t want to work, so I needed to figure out where can I actually work. As part of my dissertation, I handmade lipsticks, and as I was making them, people on the course would take them as samples and they would ask why I didn’t sell them. And that’s when the idea of starting my own business actually came. Everyone else was applying for graduate rolls and there was nothing that actually excited me. That was a horrible experience for me because I just thought I would go to an interview and lie to someone and tell them I really

It can be exactly the same issue with clothes… Exactly! [If something doesn’t fit] “It’s me”. No, it’s not, their sizing is all wrong and they are not thinking about you the way they should be. My brand is really loud, really audacious, inspired by hip hop - and not just hip hop, but street culture - because I think that in street culture people take things that were not made for them and they make it part of their identities. For me, hip hop is the best example of that because here are kids of lower income backgrounds, a lot of them suddenly are getting money, and they are spending it on high end garments and they aspire to this lifestyle that wasn’t made specifically for them. Nobody makes a Gucci jumper thinking some poor kid from Brooklyn is going to aspire to buy that [laughs]. Maybe they do now, but at the beginning and at the inception of the movement that wasn’t the thought process behind it. For me, I think people get into fashion, beauty and

accessorizes to reclaim and create an identity for themselves, and with my brand I feel I am creating a beauty brand that is specifically catering to that consumer: the consumer that is confident enough to wear a colour or a style that wasn’t made with them in mind, and then make it their own thing. When I was working on the counters - and I worked in places like Selfridges, Boots, House of Fraiser, etc. – I was working for conservative brands and I would wear a skirt, a shirt and tie my hair up and I would feel really uncomfortable because I wasn’t being myself. And a group of girls looking all cool, wearing the kind of stuff that I would wear, would come to my counter and I could physically see that they felt nervous because they didn’t want to touch anything because it wasn’t a fully immersive environment created for them. I thought on how much it took for those girls to build themselves up and come to the counter just to buy a powder, and I though “what if I created a counter that they come into and they never want to leave?”. Because retail is not the prescribed thing. The world is becoming a lot more diverse, people are from different backgrounds, subcultures and tribes and I felt that fashion was better at creating that. From the high-end obsession in the 90’s came the streetwear movement, and that is why you have brands like Supreme that people can identify with. At the time I started my brand, I felt that there was no one really doing that, and all the brands that existed were keeping to the same pattern. It’s a funny thing because I’ve read on Elisabeth Arden and Estée Lauder, and a lot of the things that are standard in beauty nowadays are things that they created. Before Elizabeth Arden, you couldn’t buy makeup from a department store, you would have to go to a pharmacy. Before Estée Lauder, you would never get a gift with purchase, makeup was really protected and they would have to bring out the collection and it wasn’t really displayed in an attractive way. Max Factor, for example, made makeup for professionals and now you go to Boots and there it is… What about before MDM Flow? I feel that before MDM Flow, makeup was very serious in some ways and it was also very based on a dictatorship, on a conversation happening downwards from the brands. Brands saying to costumers “you need to buy this! This is what you need to complete your life!”. Whereas with MDM Flow we encourage a message coming from the consumer saying “you are catering to me! I need this and that from you”. Even now, as a growing brand, we have a very open relationship with our customers,

because I am not embarrassed to have an open conversation with my costumers on Instagram about what colours they want, for example. I used to work for L’Oreal’s social media and all the responses were always very planed and generic, almost insulting to the customer, very patronizing. The language that my brand uses is very real to real life, like speaking to somebody and that it’s just comfortable for our consumer to recognize that it’s not just about me, it’s about them and what they want. It’s about creating an experience that they’d be excited with. Do you have any first memories of becoming aware of the misrepresentation in the beauty industry? As a child, I was very self-aware, but I was also very stubborn. When I would go in to Boots with my friends, I knew that the colours weren’t suitable for my skin tone, so I just looked at nail polish because I knew that was the only thing that I could relate to. I think in some ways my defiance was what enabled me to start my business. I think that I’ve always been someone that, if I can’t relate, I just block it out and I don’t even make it a part of me, and as I got older instead of just being accepting of things that I couldn’t participate in, I’ve become more active in it and in expressing that. When I worked in makeup counters and they had launches in which I couldn’t wear the products, I was vocal about the fact that I was disappointed. And maybe when I got the opportunity to create products that were wearable, I did it. I don’t know the exact moment when I became aware of beauty but I’ve definitely always had an attitude that I think now translates into my career in the beauty industry. What did you feel that needed to change in the beauty industry? The number one thing that I needed to change was representation. We need to see more diversity, you need to see black women, Asian (specifically Indian) women in the industry at all ends. I think that in the industry, when diversity is put in, it’s still standardized. For example: here is a black woman, and she is just super dark and has an afro, and she represents every black woman. No! It’s crazy that if you want to name a black model, or an Asian model, or a short or bigger model there are only a hand full of names that you can think of. Brands like mine exist to make the industry truly diverse and representative of all the woman who buy their products. If all women saw closer representations of themselves in media and in beauty, they would have less issues of self-esteem.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;If all women saw closer representations of themselves in media and in beauty, they would have less issues of self-esteemâ&#x20AC;?

Do you remember the first lipstick you made? What colour was it? FA: I think it was my red one, Supreme. It was the pigment that I mostly liked. When I first started, I wasn’t thinking about developing a collection, even though I felt I wanted to start a business, it was emotional—these are the colours I like and the colours I am going to work with for my studies. Your lipsticks are made to be suitable on every skin colour. How is that possible? People ask me how do I choose the right lipstick, but something being suitable for you doesn’t mean you’ll necessary like it. I am sure there are things that you wear or the way you do your hair that other people think looks amazing and you don’t like it. Because not everything is you. For me, the important thing is about having the option. People with darker skin tones sometimes pick up dark lipsticks, they try it on and it looks grey. If a product looks red on a stick it should not look grey on your skin, it should look red. That might not be the perfect red for you, but the way it comes up and shows up on somebody else is the way it should show up on you. Even though it is suitable for anyone, if you don’t like a specific colour or any of the colours, that’s fine, because that might not be your taste. But at the end of the day if you do turn around and want to try something new or different, you know that there is a brand that you can come to, and with a quality that is going to look good on you. How do you formulate your products? It is a lot about colour. The way I formulate is more based on solving problems that my costumers face. People want lipsticks that have amazing colours but they have problems with the dryness, the quality or the staying power. For me the key thing is colour and that is the reason why I did it, but once I realized that people had other issues I built those quality insurances into my products. Now I have a product that is going to be nourishing on the skin, that isn’t going to dry up, that is going to stay all day, but at the same time, has the colour that you want. The brand has hip-hop as its heart. How does the rhythm flow between the music and the products? It’s a weird thing. I don’t always promote the fact that it is hip hop inspired in interviews because I want it to be so embedded in the way that we operate, in the way we represent ourselves and in our imagery, so that when people see my product they

think it’s cool but they don’t know why that is. We present a bold, audacious look but it is still very serious and heavy because I think that self-confidence and self-empowerment is very serious and heavy. Even though people try to make beauty a trivial thing, I think if something is a part of you and is a part of how you present yourself, it is very serious and very personal. I think that our messaging and branding and the way we present ourselves we want it to be fun and to be cool. But then to the woman that buy our products and put them on every day, I want them to know that this is not something that is going to let you down, it’s going to be something that is functional and suitable for however you want to use it. Literally, every day, like music on the radio. I sometimes feel that alternative lifestyles, or anything alternative, can be pigeonholed as being bad or different as opposed to being good for its uniqueness. A lot of people ask me, “Why are you inspired by hip hop if they are so many bad elements to it?”. But there are so many bad elements to everything. We are just choosing to buy into the aesthetic and the creative side because that is a very strong element. I think a lot of it stems from ignorance, if people maybe don’t enjoy hip hop music, they only see the negative representation of it. There is so much that exists in the world that is inspired by music and pop culture: the way we dress, the things we listen to, the way we communicate. A lot of it is inspired by the things that we take in, and I think that if it is something that is not personal to people they just reject it. What is it about the 90’s era that is so inspiring to you? I am massively inspired by Kelis in the 90’s, she was so badass. There are a lot of things in her music, or on the way she styled herself, that I personally relate to. Growing up, I never really looked at standard celebrity culture, and I say this because now music is a huge part of celebrity culture, but growing up being beautiful in mainstream media was very Hollywood and glamorous, and the people in glossy magazines were just a certain aesthetic, and I never wanted to be like that. I wanted to be like Kelis, like Alicia Keys with her braids and singing deep soulful songs. Creating outfits like Destiny’s Child and all that. Now society is a lot more accepting of these alternative ways of presenting yourself, but growing up it was almost like you can’t have a serious job in the City and dress like Kelis. Obviously not everything is always functional - you don’t want to go into an office in a belly top [laughs] - but if I am

going to be that creative I want to able to do it with my lipstick, my mascara, my hair…

How do you define being a feminist? I 100% define myself as a feminist, but at the same time I understand people who don’t. To define yourself as anything in this life is very weighty, especially when there are lot of positive connotations but people also think highly negatively of feminism. I think that it’s been important to me to define myself as a feminist because of my beliefs. I don’t think it’s prescribed, I don’t think women want to do exactly what men want to do, but I think women want autonomy and they want the ability to choose. I think feminism inspires men as much as it inspires women because society shouldn’t dictate someone’s family narrative, or if boys are into gaming and girls into fashion. “You have to be technically minded and you have to be more design driven”. That’s ridiculous. That’s my personal take on it and I also think that also in my career it would be ridiculous for me to have a brand that empowers women to be confident and to be themselves and to not call myself a feminist. I think a huge part of the confidence I have as a woman comes from my feminist ideals. With that said, MDM Flow is not a feminist brand, it isn’t a feminist product, you don’t have to be a feminist to wear it. I don’t think feminism should be some retail driven thing, like a fan club or whatever, it is really based on your ideals and your believes and all sorts of woman buy into my lipsticks. I think that is also a huge part of my feminism, understanding that some woman want to wear lipstick because they are trying to get a man whose going to enable them and some women are wearing it with their power suit and they are going to absolute kill it in the boardroom, that for me is fine. I think that is also why I am a feminist: for women to be able to play these different roles. Your take on feminism is really refreshing. It’s very broad and it’s curious because your brand is so bold. My ideals play a heavy role in how the brand is represented, but I am not a rigid person and I understand culture. I am from a really strong cultural background, both of my parents are Nigerian, and culture plays a massive role in how people identify. If you come from a culture where being subservient and obedient to a man is a key part of your culture and you enjoy it, you should absolutely be allowed

to live that reality; that is your choice as a woman. I think that feminism can be scary when it acts as black and white. Who is the MDM Flow girl to you? I don’t want to alienate anyone who buys my product, but I think the underlying commend is confidence—wherever— if it’s a woman who has been confident her whole life or is just confident in that shade. There is something audacious about picking up a golden bullet and using it. A lot of my costumers are very self-aware and self-assured and they don’t come to me to tell them what to buy or what to wear. They come to me because they really feel connected with what I am producing. You are building a beauty empire… Yes, 100%! … was that always your goal? I think I started my business wanting to have a business but I don’t think I realized what a business is. In my head, I thought I would create a lipstick, people would like it, people would buy it, and then I would just make more lipsticks and people would buy more and that would be it. At the beginning, I wasn’t thinking we are going to launch more products, we are going to go into production... Or really thinking about how it grows as a business, whereas now that I launched it and it is growing I am spending more time really thinking what’s my end goal, what I want to do, what I want to build and produce. Where do I see the end of my business? That is still something that I am thinking about, and I think even though some people think you need to have a specific plan and you need to know where you want to go I think that having a plan sometimes can be a hindrance because all you do is stick to that plan and you don’t really develop the other side of that. Whereas I feel my business has had the chance to really develop and see where it is going. The MDM Flow future. What is it like? The future of MDM Flow is just to continue to grow with more products and it is really important for me to build a community. I want girls who are into music, into boldness, into confidence, into quality cosmetics, to really feel that they have a tribe of women who subscribe to the same ideals that they do. It’s really about building a global community of girls who love what we do. /

Power Red

Throughout history and across cultures, the colour red has had strong symbolisms. A warm and positive colour, associated with our most physical needs and will to survive. It is exciting as much as confident, and for that reason holds an infinite power on the feminine universe. Photography by Hasan Bitirim / Creative Direction by Andreia Pedro

Ancient Sumerians are thought to be the first to invent and wear red lipstick, about 5.000 years ago. Today it lives on in cult products such as Ruby Woo by M.A.C., in the picture.

Closely related to the colour red, Blood representations range from life itself to death, guilt, passion, war and sacrifice.

w According to Colour Psychology, red

can have a profound influence on our mood, perceptions and actions.

On the nails, red is known for assuming a sexy, confident and glamourous mood. Here we have it in Throb by Illamasqua; Do you speak love? by Essence ; Fallen Angel by EstĂŠe Lauder and Juicy love by Essence.

In the English language, no colour has borrowed so extensively in the naming of its shades and tones as the colour red. Lipsticks names add even more denominations to the list. Here: Red in love by Yves Saint Laurent ; Decisive Poppy by EstĂŠe Lauder ; ...by Bourjois ; Passion by Clinique and ... by Dior.

In Ancient Greek mythology, the pomegranate was known as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;fruit of the deadâ&#x20AC;? and believed to have sprung from the blood of Adonis.

Sex Object, a memoir all women know too well

In a call for change, feminist Jessica Valenti writes about how street harassment has shaped womanhood. By Jessica Valenti/ Photography by Sara Sandri

The two worst times for dicks on the New York subway: when the train car is empty or when it’s crowded. As a teenager, if I found myself in an empty car, I would immediately leave – even if it meant changing cars as the train moved, which terrified me. Because, if I didn’t, I just knew the guy sitting across from me would inevitably lift his newspaper to reveal a semi hard cock, and even if he wasn’t planning on it, I sure wasn’t going to sit there and worry about it for the whole ride. On crowded train cars I didn’t see dicks – I felt them. Pressing into my hip, men pretending that the rocking up against me was just because of the jostling of the train. The first time I saw a penis on the subway, I was on the platform for the N train three blocks from my house in Queens, on my way to school. I was 12. I had just missed a train, so I was the only person there other than a man all the way at the other end of the platform. He was so far away that I could see only the outline of his shape, but soon I noticed his hand moving furiously – and that he was walking quickly towards me with his penis in his hand. I had always thought myself prepared for something like this; I knew I was supposed to yell or run, but I just stood there. I didn’t look away or turn around,

and even though I felt my knees giving out, my feet felt strongly planted to the ground. As another train started to pull into the station, he stopped midway down the platform and zipped himself up. The doors of the train opened and he walked on, normally. My feet still in the same place, I tapped a man in a suit coming off the car on the shoulder and asked for help in a small voice, but he didn’t stop moving. So I stood there. When the next train came, I got on, figuring I should get to school, but I got off one stop later, to call my parents from a station phone booth. I noticed that my hands and face had pins and needles. *** It’s called the cycle of violence, but in my family, female suffering is linear: abuse is passed down like the world’s worst birthright, largely skipping the men and marking the women with scars, night terrors (and fantastic senses of humour). My aunts and my mom joked about how often it happened to them when they were younger: the man who flashed a jacket open and had a big red bow on his cock; the neighbourhood pervert who masturbated visibly in his window as they walked to school as girls. (The cops told them the man could do whatever he wanted in his own house.) “Just point and

laugh,” my aunt said. “That usually sends them running.” Usually. Of course, what feels like a matrilineal curse is not really ours. We don’t own it; the shame and disgust belong to the perpetrators. At least, that’s what the books say. But the frequency with which women in my family have been hurt or sexually assaulted starts to feel like a flashing message encoded in our DNA: Hurt. Me. My daughter is five and I want to inoculate her against this. I want Layla to have her father’s lucky genes – genes that walk into a room and feel entitled to be there. Genes that feel safe. Not my out-ofplace chromosomes that are fight-or-flight ready. This is the one way in which I wish she was not mine. *** For months after the man showed me his penis on the subway platform, my father walked me up the stairs every morning to wait for the train. The booth worker let him through the gate without paying, after my dad explained what had happened. He gave him a bag of cherries from the tree that grew in our yard as a thank you every week. As we were talking on the platform under the sun, I noticed an odd shape under my father’s jacket. He tried to distract me with a joke, but when I asked him about it a second time, he pulled up his shirt to show me a metal pipe sticking out of the top of his trousers. He assured me that no cop would ever arrest him for beating a man who flashes children. Today he tells me he knew that was a lie, but he brought the pipe with him anyway. On the worst day – a few years later – I didn’t notice the man at all. The train was crowded; my mind was

elsewhere. I was listening to A Tribe Called Quest on my Walkman and thinking about how warm it was. When I stepped out of the subway, the sun hit my face and I was happy to be almost home. But when I started to put my hand in my back pocket, I felt something wet: I had made it the whole ride back without noticing that a man, whose face I would never see, had come on me. I wiped my hand on the lower leg of my jeans and looked around to see if anyone had noticed. I walked the three blocks home with my backpack slung as low as possible, so that no one walking behind me could see what had happened or could think I had peed myself. I peeled the jeans off when I got home and, even though most of the semen had landed on the pocket – giving me two, rather than just one, layers of protection – the skin on my ass was still damp from it. I ran the tub until there were two inches of scalding water along the bottom, squirted in some of my sister’s Victoria’s Secret vanilla-scented bath gel, and sat in it quickly, my shirt still on. I wrapped a pink towel around myself when I stepped out of the tub and turned my jeans inside out before putting them in the laundry basket so my mother wouldn’t find out. I knew she would cry. I piled some sheets on top of the jeans to be safe. Later I would find out that the guy rubbing up on you in the subway isn’t just an asshole – he has a disorder. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Association describes “frotteurism” as “recurrent, intense, or arousing sexual urges or fantasies, that involve touching and rubbing against a nonconsenting person”. There are online forums for men

– because, let’s be real, frotteurs are almost exclusively men – who rub on women and girls on the train, in bars, wherever they can do it while getting off unnoticed. They have handles like “Bum Feeler” and “Rock Hard”, and share stories of their exploits and pictures of the women they have surreptitiously dryhumped. Some give advice, such as backing away occasionally, so your victim gets the impression that you’re working hard not to touch her and that any contact is the fault of the crowd. “Women are forgiving if you can make it seem like this,” Rock Hard writes. “Almost like you can’t help it, not like you’ve preyed on them like a piece of meat.” *** There was a large mirrored cabinet above the sink at the house I grew up in. If I pulled out all three of the doors, I could create a three-way mirror to look at my face from all possible angles. I wrote in my diary at the time, I’m so ugly I can’t stand it. I have a big gross nose, pimples, hairy arms. I will never have a boy like me or a boyfriend. All of my friends are pretty and I will be the one with no one. I was feeling that loneliness acutely at the time, because I was obsessed with a boy named Matt. Matt – the first in a long line of blond boys I would fall for – told me once that I would be so, so pretty if not for my big nose. All I heard was, he thought I could be pretty! I started to measure my nose. First with my fingers, which I would try to keep the same distance apart as they were when they were on my face and then bring them over to my mother and her nose to demonstrate just how much bigger mine was compared with hers. She would insist that my nose

was smaller – the kind of well-meaning parenting that just inspired fury and distrust. The nicest thing someone said to me was that a lot of people my age had big noses, and that I would eventually “grow into it”. The comment acknowledged that the ugliness I was feeling was valid and not some childish self-hatred. It was the only thing that gave me hope, the idea that my face would slowly morph into something more proportional than the monstrosity I was currently working with. The thing about hating your face so intently is that it takes an extraordinary amount of care and attention. The obsession is almost contradictory, because you start to love the self-hatred a little bit. It becomes a part of your routine – you whisper, “I hate you” when you pass by a mirror, or you think it when trying on clothes or putting on makeup, acts that feel foolish at the time, because you know you’re not tricking anyone into thinking you’re beautiful. There’s nothing that you could pile on your body or face that would make it worthy. But at least I could bear to look. A friend I lived with for a short while had an ID card for work that she was supposed to keep around her neck at all times. To avoid having to look at the picture of herself, she carefully cut a small piece of yellow paper into a square and taped it over her face. Later, I would find plastic bags of vomit hidden underneath her bed, wrapped in towels meant to mask the smell that eventually led to their discovery. I started carrying a piece of paper with me that I would position over the bump on my nose when I looked in that three-way mirror to see what I might look like if it were gone. My father tells me my nose is part of my Italian heritage, that getting rid of it would be a slap in the face to our ethnicity. I tell him we’ll always have spaghetti. He is not convinced.

I imagined all of the things that would go right if I were just to have a smaller nose. I would have a boyfriend and the girls in school would stop making fun of me. That year, several girls would bring me to a playground to have a “talk” about why we could not be friends any more. Because I am too loud, because I agree with everything they say – desperate for approval in a way that is unseemly. We’re not trying to be mean, they say, it would just be better if you ate lunch somewhere else. I know if I looked more like them, with a small nose and long, light hair in braids and bows, I would not have to go to the building where the younger children are to eat lunch with my sister. I find out from my male friends that there are cute girls, pretty girls, hot girls, sexy girls, and sometimes variations or combinations of all of the above. The worst to be is a fat girl or an ugly girl. I was an ugly girl who became a sexy girl once my breasts grew in and I started telling dirty jokes with abandon. As soon as I “got a chest”, as my mom would say, the taunts about my face stopped as boys became more interested in feeling me up than making me cry. I started to forget about my face and mean girls, and focused on the things my body could do and inspire. During summer break, a male friend whom I had known since childhood put his hand on my breast as we watched a movie in the room over from our parents, saying nothing. I remained frozen, unsure what to do. Wasn’t he supposed to kiss me first? I was 11. *** We know that direct violence causes trauma; we have shelters, counsellors, services. We know that children who live in violent neighbourhoods are more likely to develop PTSD. Yet we still have no name for what happens to women living in a culture that hates them. When you catch a cold or a virus, your body has ways of letting you know that you are sick. But what diagnosis do you give to the shaking hands you get after a stranger whispers “pussy” in your ear on your way to work? What medicine can you take to stop being afraid that the cab driver is not actually taking you home? And what about those of us who walk through all this without feeling any of it – what does it say about the hoops our brain had to jump through to get to ambivalence? I don’t believe any of us walk away unscathed. I do know, though, that a lot of us point and laugh. The strategy of my aunts and mother is now my default reaction when a 15-year-old on Instagram calls me a cunt or when a grownup reporter writes something about my tits. Just keep pointing and laughing, rolling your eyes in the hope that some-

one will finally notice that this is not very funny. Pretending that these offences roll off our backs is strategic – don’t give them the satisfaction – but it isn’t the truth. You lose something along the way. Mocking the men who hurt us, as mockable as they are, starts to feel like acquiescing to the most condescending of catcalls: “You look better when you smile.” Because even subversive sarcasm adds a cool-girl nonchalance, an updated, sharper version of the expectation that women be forever pleasant. This sort of posturing is a performance that requires strength I do not have any more. My daughter is happy and brave. When she falls down or gets hurt, the first words out of her mouth are always: “I’m all right, Mom. I’m OK.” And she is. I want her to be OK always. So while my refusal to keep laughing or making people comfortable may seem like a real fucking downer, the truth is that this is what optimism looks like. Naming what is happening to us, telling the truth about it – as ugly and uncomfortable as it can be – means that we want it to change. That we know it is not inevitable. I want the line of my mother and grandmother, that world’s worst birth right of violations, to stop here.

This is an extract from Jessica Valenti’s memoir Sex Object, published by Harper Collins at £16.99.

Healthy at any size, a modern fairy tale Marketing campaigns will have us believe that society is more accepting of different body types, as does the occasional plus size model on the cover of a glossy magazine. But in reality, are we still confined by our own body size? Interview by Andreia Pedro/ Photography by Roos Van de Kieft

“I do not sympathize with fat people”, said a close friend of mine at a dinner party. The declaration shocked me as much as it terrorized me. My friend is an intensive health care professional and, as much as I understand that she could be addressing obesity as an illness, there was so much under covered in her statement that I could not just let it go. We (amicably) argued for about an hour on ´fat-shamming` and being healthy no matter what size you are, but even after the conversation was over I was not convinced. I probably took it a bit too personally, having a heavy frame as a common inheritance in my family, though it stunned me that anyone could be so repelled by a few extra pounds! We were not discussing severely obese people, we were talking about a heavy-curvy-insert-your-preferred- adjective-here type of body! More than often I’ve come to realize that body sizes are part of a bigger discussion that goes beyond aesthetics or health, like a type of body politics with multiple parties. Everyone has a say about the other body, even if they never experience living in any other than their own. Furthermore, guising fat shaming with health is a common mistake. Either

we admit it or not, fat people are seen in our society as lazy and hedonistic. The reason for this generalisation still confuses me and that is why I decided to dig a little deeper into the subject, to perhaps uncover some of the dirty secrets in body politics. Often, body sizes are seen as a black and white subject. No grey area. You are fat or you are skinny, no in between. That is why Amy Schumer was addressed as plus size on the cover of American Glamour’s magazine back in March this year, even though she goes between the American size 6 to 8. Schumer wasn’t happy and her response was prompt on Twitter stating, “I think there’s nothing wrong with being plus size. Beautiful healthy women. Plus size is considered size 16 in America. I go between a size 6 and an 8. @glamourmag put me in their plus size only issue without asking or letting me know and it doesn’t feel right to me. Young girls seeing my body type thinking that is plus size?”. On The Tonight Show, later that week, the actress stressed the fact that women don’t need body labels at all. To add to this list of regular sized women constantly being called out on their size are the likes of Mindy

Image Source: Glossier

Kaling or Lena Dunham. They are representative of diverse types of body that are rare in our standardised media industry. The simple fact that averaged sized bodies require a label and stand out from the crowed of perfectly photoshoped figures, just goes to show how much the perception of body in our society is ignorant and shallow. According to Rivkie Baum, Editor of Slink magazine, a plus size magazine for women, the media industry has a big input in the way we perceive our bodies. “I think the media historically has treated body size and shape as a trend, suggesting X is in or X is how we should now look. Therefor we assume a particular size is right. Anything else is outside the norm. The skewed discussion about equating health to body size and the representation of characteristics of a larger body in the media has also contributed to negative connotations”. Intolerance towards body diversity is largely related to the meaning that size and shape have in our culture. According to The Health Promotion Department at Brown University in the United States, “being thin or muscular has become associated with being ‘hard-working, successful, pop-

ular, beautiful, strong, and self-disciplined’. Being ‘fat’ is associated with being ‘lazy, ignorant, hated, ugly, weak, and lacking in will-power’. As a result, ‘fat’ isn’t a description like tall or redhead - it’s an indication of moral character: fat is bad. Size prejudice is absorbed at a very young age; children as young as five have ascribed negative characteristics to silhouettes of fatter children. In part, this is because size prejudice is also widely reinforced; media, friends, family, and even well-respected health professionals can echo the message that fatness is inherently wrong and dangerous, thereby exacerbating the pressure to control our bodies.” Who controls our bodies then? If our need for self-perfection comes from a society input external to ourselves, why do we internalize the perfect body as a need? The answer probably lays in the generalised beauty standard, something considered by general consent as an approved model. Also, self-love, an attribute that should come naturally to us, becomes addicted to a general sense of belonging and fitting to the norm. “Usually it’s a vicious cycle: the more a person focusses on their body the worse they feel about their appearance:

obsession generates dissatisfaction”, say the authors of The Adonis Complex, a book that elaborates on body image and men’s obsession with their physics. Even though women are more exposed and prone to elaborate on their body image, this discontent is gender neutral. In fact, it comes from a very early age. Riya Foxter, writer for XoJane, an online community for women’s empowerment, explains in one of her articles why she hated fat women since being a little girl, and why she stopped. In her own words, Foxter goes into explaining that, growing up in a working-class family in Ukraine, being fat was reserved as a luxury to the wealthy. Moving to the US introduced even more new standards of beauty in Foxter’s life, as being skinny was perpetuated as being accepted and popular. Being a feminist, it took a while for Foxter to realize that fat-shaming was as much of an equality issue as unequal pay or sexual assault, and taking a stand against fat women was not only unfair but misogynistic. “Fat women threaten the paradigm of beauty simply by existing. Fat shaming, like all aspects of the Beauty Standard, is built on a premise that women don’t own

their bodies. It’s also why strangers feel entitled to give you advice on what you should wear, how you should smile, whom and how often you could fuck, where you should be at what hours of the night and how short you could cut your hair if you want to retain your status as an appropriate penis receptacle”. The columnist takes a strong stand against the need for society to control women’s body in every way possible, and for her, women’s individual power is withdrawn from them in this vicious beauty standard. “A successful and a happy fat woman signals other women that they don’t have to starve themselves or be perpetually unhappy with their bodies to achieve professional and personal fulfilment. That threatens diet regimens everywhere, the advertising industry itself and millions of erections. Confident women are patriarchy’s greatest enemies, but fat women already knew that”. What’s size got to do with it? Anna Scholtz is the designer behind her plus size homonymous brand, a business she started based on the idea of giving attractive clothing options to the plus size costumer. Anna’s ethos towards body size is “celebratory rather than apologetic”, since

she believes that we all have highlights and lowlights of our body that we could underline. “I think women should enjoy being women and enjoy their curves in whatever size they are. If you have an attitude that you always want to hide away it doesn’t help you in life”. Although being always very proud of her 6-foot-tall figure, Anna was discovered as a plus sized model when she was 18, but it wasn’t until she was 40 that she discovered the power that fitness has over her life. “I was a lot bigger than what I am now, I lost quite a lot of weight. I’ve been training a lot in the last 5 years and it changed the relationship with my body because I feel very able now. When I was unfit I didn’t feel as well. Now, I am still a big woman but I am actually very strong”. For the designer, being fit has little to do with your size or weight. “I strongly believe that we get accused in the industry of promoting obesity and telling people it’s ok to be fat and unhealthy but I promote that you should be equal, you should have all the choices a skinny person has. You should have all the choices to look nice. I promote people to eat nutritious food, not junk food, to cook something for yourself and don’t buy any of the packaged stuff, because there are a lot of thin people who are unhealthy too. It’s more important to see how you eat and how you fuel your body and I think you can be happy at lots of different sizes”. The fashion designer also believes that fat is seen as a blasphemy in our society since she thinks that “a lot of people feel that people don’t look after themselves when they are bigger or they don’t value themselves enough or that they let themselves go. I think there is a lot of intolerance towards that. Yes, maybe it’s not everybody’s priority in life to constantly diet and constantly chase something unreasonable and naturally there are people with different body types. In either end of the [body size] spectrum it’s not healthy, but naturally there a lot of people in different sizes”. To Doctor Linda Bacon, “fat isn’t the problem, dieting is”. The health professor and researcher tries to demonstrate in her book Healthy At Every Size (HAES) how our perception of health has been mixed with misconceptions about our body size, through scientific studies and experiments. “A so-

ciety that rejects anyone whose body shape or size doesn’t match an impossible ideal is the problem”. The HAES program that preceded the book was a government-funded academic study that followed two groups of women. It compared obese women on a typical diet with another group who followed the HAES program. The latest supported women in accepting their bodies, listening to their internal cues of hunger and appetite, and after two years they had improved their health significantly, from blood pressure to cholesterol and depression, among others. The women that just dieted also improved their health but returned to their starting point within a year. Dr Bacon wants to break the prejudice surrounding weight loss and body image, and in her book she goes to expose myths such as that “anyone can lose weight if he or she tries to”. In fact, “biology dictates that most people regain the weight they lose, even if they continue their diet and exercise program”. It may seem an orthodox approach, but the HAES book doesn’t encourage people to give up, on the contrary, it encourages people to create a healthy environment for themselves and proves that health has much more to do with just the number on a scale. Rivkie Baum, sums up the momentum in fashion and body politics with the need for a change in conversation through media and society. “There´s no doubt great strides have been made but we have so far to go. We need to be able to talk about health separately from body size and promote health across a range of sizes. We also need to bring mental health and physical health together in discussions and not treat them separately. Better media representation across all platforms of course will also contribute to a better image”. Body politics are for sure a delicate subject. Even writing the word “fat” can sometimes feel wrong, but if we give it a second thought, it only feels so because we are constantly surrounded by the negative connotation of its meaning. It is, in the end, an adjective to a physical characteristic, not a label to someone’s personality, lifestyle or morals. If the social standards of body size offered a more diverse range of representation, then ‘perfection’ would be seen as a dirty word: an unobtainable goal and an illusory quest, made to blind us from what’s underneath. /

Knots & Dead Branches

Photography by Ana Viegas/ Styling and Production by Andreia Pedro Model: Ana Casian from Central Models

High neck sateen dress and lace top, both by Zara.

Left: Vintage cotton dress Right: Lace dress by Zara.

Plumetis top by Zara.

Lace top by &Other Stories and leather cropped trousers by Zara

Cotton ruffled top by H&M and classic denim skirt by Zara.

When did fashion become so ugly?

So you want to talk about Demna Gvasalia? Why not? Everyone else is. By Ana Brasil

Image source: Balenciaga and Vetements

It can take a young fashion designer many a lot of years before he gets anywhere. Vogue Italia’s September issue comes with an annual supplement that highlights fresh talent -let’s call it a ‘best of ’ new fashion designers. In the last most recent one, Vogue Talents 2016, besides recent graduates from the best schools universities around the world, you’ll find designers and brands that have five or six years of work behind them (see the Japanese brand The Reracs or JPlus eyewear if you don’t believe us). So where do people get this idea that success comes with from a snap of the fingers? Don’t blame it all on Instagram and Youtube stars. Point your finger rightfully at Demna Gvasalia. There is a lot of discussion around Vetements, but whether you like it or not, it the brand was an overnight success. The brandIt was only established in 2014 but public awe quickly came from

every corner. I-D called it “the biggest worldwide fashion phenomenon on the Internet age” and Kanye tweeted “I’m going to steal Demna from Balenciaga”. Oh yeah, being appointed creative director of one of the biggest fashion houses in the world helped, of course. Only a year after launching Vetements, Demna became Balenciaga’s creative director. Bam! Another smash hit. There’s an awkwardness in the root of his success that goes beyond his rise to fame. It starts with the shape and size of the garments and goes all the way through to the models he casts for his runway shows, which are held in Gothic churches and abandoned TV studios. Many wonder (and have written) about what it is Demna is trying to say to us as a society, but he seems to not be too bothered about being understood as long as every collection gets sold out.

The Vetements creative director told i-D that they had received an email from a man who had bought the ‘Polizei’ print trench coat and shortly after was arrested while wearing it around a park in Stuttgart. Even though no law in Germany protects the commercial use of the word for the police, the man spent two hours in custody. “They confiscated his trench coat, so we sent him another one. I don’t know how many other people will be arrested in Germany, because they all sold out quite fast”, said Demna. He is laughing at your expense.

DON’T TAKE YOUR BALENCIAGA’S TO THE PUB There’s this guy at work… Let’s call him Shawn. What you need to know about Shawn is that he’s your typical bloke. Love’s his football, getting smashed and smashing everything he can. So one day, in desperate need of finding some topic to chat to with him about – er, we don’t have a lot in common –, I showed him the runway pictures from Demna’s first show for Balenciaga. Needless to say Shawn was as disgusted as he was confused. He thought everything was ugly and he expressed those feelings saying that “iIf a girl wore any of that to the pub, I wouldn’t want to go near her!”. You could wonder about the taste of a man who bought a Hangover vest and wore it to a first date (and yes, we mean Hangover the movie, not some new indie designer), but he does have a point. Fortunately for Balenciaga, a lot of other people do want to wear it and they buy it too! “With Demna as Artistic Director of Balenciaga, the essence of exclusive haute couture, his work expresses a dramatic change in the character of high fashion”, wrote Suzy Menkes in an article for Vogue Japan. Fashion has always been a dream, until Gvasalia Demna turned it into a mirror. Those long sleeves that stretch almost to the knees, the jeans made of two pairs thorn apart and sewed together, the jackets with the double collar, that’s not who we want to be, but maybe that’s who we are. Maybe we’ve lost our way. Maybe all this information flowing around

just made us more confused – and messed up. Looking at a model wearing Vetements makes me think of those mornings where you’ve slept at someone’s house. You have the clothes you wore to go out at night – and that now look weird wrong for a Wednesday morning – and some clothes you can borrow from someone who’s not your shape nor size. You somehow manage to pull a look together mixing these two worlds and it’s a mess – still, there’s an element of cool that stands out. Demna may create the clothes, but it’s Lotta Volkova making the magic happen. The 32-year-old Russian is Vetement’s stylist, model and muse and has been labelled the “coolest woman in the world” by the Guardian. During an interview with the British newspaper last September, she said “of course conventionally beautiful things are beautiful but everyone finds them beautiful and I find that boring. I want to be inspired by things that not everyone knows.”. Lotta herself is not conventional, of course. Shawn would not try to chat her up at the pub. With her short neck and square face her features are as empty as they are striking. In spite of her intimidating look and awkwardness, she does not stand out so much in the runway as she is surrounded by other Vetement’s friends and collaborators that fit the script. Beauty is not perfection in this world and it does not follow the same rules. Despising usual standards, this collective of like-minded creatives puts brotherhood first leaving such frivolous things as beauty to the boring people. United they stand, and they do stand strong. However, the next time someone asks you when did fashion becaome so ugly, inquire if they’ve ever heard of a movement called punk. If they have any idea who Leigh Bowery was and/or if Maison Martin Margiela rings a bell. It’s not that fashion was always pretty, they were just looking at the Marks & Spencer Christmas catalogue while all the really exciting stuff was taking place. Demna’s great accomplishment is that, whether you like it or not, he made you look./

An Ode to Dark Circles

They say the eyes are the window for the soul, but in this fast-paced world, the answer is in the bags we carry under them. Sophia Cosby prases her love for under-eye dark circles in a world that is constantly on the quest for perfection. Image source: Glossier

Most societies in the world glorify stress. From New York to London to Tokyo, if you’re not working at least twelve hours a day, you’re seen as lazy. One always has to be busy! busy! busy! or be deemed incompetent. What’s worse is that, next to being busy bees, we also have to look like Gisele Bündchen while sending emails and trying to make the next deadline. Forget about bleary eyes, sweat stains and coffee breath: women (who else?) face the impossible expectation to be successful and camera-ready at all times. We praise stress, but turn our eyes away from the obvious physical repercussions that go along with staying up until the wee hours of the morning to write a report that’s due the next day. One look at a woman with pasty skin, grey hair, fine lines and a certain muskiness emanating from shirts that didn’t have time to be washed, and we turn up our noses and scoff that “she needs a holiday.” If we are this woman, we rush to a beauty counter after work, looking for an effective concealer to hide our exhaustion, a lipstick to brighten up our complexion and a clean-smelling perfume that wafts of accomplishment. Obviously this is ridiculous. Constantly feeling like you have to be busy in order to be good at what you do is an impossible notion, fabricated by the overachievers of this world. I suspect they’re in cahoots with the beauty industry, hoping to sell some more heavy duty makeup and aromatherapy infused skincare. Although I certainly do not condone a high stress lifestyle, I tend to romanticise its effects on the body. I’m particularly enamoured with under eye circles, those dark, purplish rings, seemingly carved into the skin, like a shadow cast by eyes that are going down with fatigue. Paired with otherwise and inexplicably glowing skin and a halfhearted smile, and I’m smitten. In a way I’ve always been attracted to outward signs of frailty. I find languor incredibly alluring. Already as a hormonal teenager, I found myself

gravitating towards tall, lanky boys. The paler, the better. With their quiet eyes downcast and their seemingly fragile nature, I soaked in every aspect of their paltry beauty. Although I’m still very much heterosexual, nowadays I can’t help staring at women with the same features. I’m obsessed with creating a narrative around their under eye circles. If they’re swollen and puffy, I imagine her spending the night with a heartbreaking novel, shedding affected tears on every page. If they appear more or less permanent, I picture her fighting with her flatmate, neighbour or lover, leaving her restless and sleepless time and again. If she’s really lucky, those exquisite, mauve rings are completely natural. Under eye circles are a fact of life. Everyone at one time or another wakes to find these shadows waiting for them when they look in the mirror. In those moments they should be embraced, or in the very least accepted as today’s inevitable companion. But to cover them up with mounds of concealer is reprehensible. To mask them is a denial of one’s humanity, a rejection of the blood that courses through one’s veins and pumps life into a heart that gives so much pleasure and even more pain. For under eye circles are a mark of both happiness and agony. When we face them we are reminded of the events, both good and bad, of the days and nights past. They are a prompt for reflection, to question why you look so tired on any given day. Do not hide from the reality of your life, your face will always reflect the mental and emotional state you’re in. Of course everyone is bewitched by different aspects of the human body. But I reject this struggle for perfection. It bores me. Especially when there are so many other interesting things, so many flaws and blemishes, to look at and worship. My only caveat is to never fall for anything that is fake, especially for the masks that other people wear. Love based on falsehoods is one that cannot last./

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Of course everyone is bewitched by different aspects of the human body. But I reject this struggle for perfection. It bores me.â&#x20AC;?

Skin First 80

Low-maintenance can be hard and the quest for the perfect base is the epitome of all beauty obsessions. Since skincare is anything but skin-deep, discover new products to add to your routine.

Cleanse

Milky Jelly Cleanser by Glossier

This is the ultimate daily face wash: use on dry skin to dissolve away makeup and grime, or on wet skin as you start your day. The pH-balanced, creamy gel formula is made with a blend of five skin conditioners so your face is left feeling healthy and soft, never tight. Its cleansing power comes from the same gentle cleaning agents youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d find in contact lens solution, so itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tough on impurities and still safe to use on your eyes. 77 ml, $18 (only available for delivery in 50 states of the USA and Puerto Rico).

Exfoliate

Purifying Facial Exfoliant Paste by Aesop

A cream-based exfoliating formulation suited to most skin types. Fine river-bed Quartz contained in a cream base sloughs away tired surface cells while Lactic Acid offers a mild chemical exfoliation to leave skin immaculately cleansed, soft and polished. / 100ml, ÂŁ25.

Skin saviour

The Green Balm by MOA

The original product by MOA is a 100% natural multi-purpose healing/beauty balm. This cult product is crammed with yarrow, used for centuries to heal and repair. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s purposes range from soothing dry and itchy skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis and minor rashes to help fade scarring or stretch marks. Keep a little pot handy for any little crisis. / 50ml , ÂŁ12,50.

High tech moisture

Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5 by The Ordinary

A hydration support formula with ultra-pure, vegan Hyaluronic Acid. The molecular size of Hyaluronic Acid determines its depth of delivery in the skin. This formulation combines low-, mediumand high-molecular weight HA, as well as a next-generation HA cross polymer at a combined concentration of 2% for multi-depth hydration in an oil- free formula. This system is supported with the addition of Vitamin B5 which also enhances surface hydration. /30 ml, ÂŁ5,90.

Indulgent care

Lapis Facial Oil by Herbivore Botanicals

Lapis Lazuli, a favourite stone of ancient Egypt, is known for its gorgeous deep blue color. The Lapis Facial Oil by Herbivore is named for the precious blue oil it contains, Blue Tansy. This oil holds a component called Azulene which acts as a powerful anti-inflammatory and antibacterial that aids in reducing redness and clarifying the complexion. Formulated for combination, oily, and blemish-prone skin types or any skin in need of relief from inflammation. / 50ml, ÂŁ57,68.

Image Resourse: The Body is not an Apology / web4camguy on Flickr

Why I Don’t Wear Makeup

By Aabye-Gayle Francis-Favilla for The Body Is Not an Apology Photography by Andreia Pedro

At an early age, I learned to associate cosmetics with performance — pretending, dancing, or acting. As an aspiring ballerina at Miss Janet’s Dance Studio, I wore makeup for the annual recital. My mother, who never wore makeup, would spread shadow on my eyelids and apply lipstick to my lips and cheeks. I saw cosmetics as being another part of my costume. The makeup was for my character; it wasn’t me. In college, I envied my makeup-wearing friends. For them, getting ready for a special occasion was a dramatic production involving powders, pencils, and an intricate assortment of apparatuses (some of which looked dangerous). All I did was shower, moisturize, and apply antiperspirant. It felt very anticlimactic by comparison. In preparing for my wedding, I was adamant that I wanted to look like me — not some idealized version of myself that I’d be unable to maintain indefinitely. I had no intention of wearing makeup. I had no plan to lose weight. When I walked down the aisle, I wanted my fiancée to see what he was really getting — the woman he loved and had asked to marry him — not some “new and improved,” dyed, painted, or slimmer version. I wanted to recognize myself in my wedding pictures, but I also wanted getting ready for my

matrimonial milestone to involve more than showering and putting on a dress — even if it was an elaborate bridal gown. So, at a friend’s suggestion, I decided to wear some makeup — the beginner’s version. I applied it myself: lip-gloss and foundation. Following my wedding, I began to work my little makeup duo (foundation and lip gloss) into my special occasion preparation ritual, but I had rules. I would not keep makeup in my purse. I would not “fix my face” in the bathroom or on my way to work. I’d apply it and let go of my concern for it after that. If it all wore off, so be it. Now while I realize some women wear makeup merely as a form of expression or an innocuous, auxiliary device, for me, wearing makeup raised a few red flags (or perhaps they were perfectly plum, poppy pink, or romantic rose). While I do feel more polished wearing some cosmetic covering, I also see the potential within myself of not being able to face the world with my bare face. I don’t want to become dependent on makeup. I don’t ever want to feel naked or unattractive without it. The possibility of that outcome (becoming dependent on cosmetics or needing it to maintain my self confidence) is why I think that makeup can be a tool of misogyny. When it is not

“Femine facades haves become the norm - what’s expected. Maybe you’re born with it. Maybe you bought it”

used from a perspective of self-love, makeup can breed bouts of self-hatred in women — or at least dissatisfaction. Makeup makes me look for my face’s flaws rather than accepting my face as it is. I start to wonder what else I need to improve or cover up with this or that color. Are my lashes too thin? Are my lips well enough defined? Do my cheeks have the right hue? Is my complexion all right? For as much confidence as makeup gives me when I’m wearing it, it takes a proportional amount away when it comes off. I hate having to worry that it will rub off if I give someone a real hug. I don’t like the feeling of sweating through it, so I don’t want to wear makeup to weddings (where I intend to dance a lot) or during the summer months. In the winter, while perspiration isn’t an issue, there is the chance that my “face” will rub off on my sweaters, hats, and scarves. I find that unacceptable. Some time ago I decided to let my hair go gray without dyeing it. Part of my reasoning was to be chemical free after an unfortunate incident with hair relaxer left me with a semi-bald spot. However, another big part of it is that I think dyeing my hair would nudge me into an antagonistic posture towards aging. I worry that our culture is subtly (and not so subtly) waging war against the body — a result of an unhealthy obsession with youth and perfection. We tell women that they’re beautiful and that they should love themselves. We tell little girls to have self-confidence and that they can be anything they want to be. But then, and often with the same breath, we suggest they can be beautiful (or confident) only when they are not quite themselves. We sell women (both young and old) productsw to “fix” or “improve” their appearance — wrinkle removers, concealers, eyelash enhancers, and other colorful cover-ups. The young want to look mature. The mature want to look young. No one really wants to look

like herself. Everyone wants to look unflawed. Feminine façades have become the norm — what’s expected. Maybe you’re born with it. Maybe you bought it (or had your plastic surgeon inject it). I want to avoid falling prey to a self-erasing mentality when I look at myself in the mirror. Bodies are imperfect and asymmetrical. Bodies come in a myriad of sizes, shapes and colors. Bodies grow older. I don’t want to view aging as an adversary that I have to fight or the imperfections of my face and form as mistakes I have to hide. That’s not a safe approach to loving myself well. If I could dye my hair or put makeup on my face and have both be adornments rather than keystones, I wouldn’t take such a structured stance. If I didn’t see the potential within me to become a woman ashamed of what the makeup or hair dye covers, I could choose them for myself. I wish I could rid our culture of cosmetic dependence. I wish I lived in a world where every woman was encouraged to be satisfied with her face instead of bombarded by messages offering ways to improve it or cover over it. I wish the majority of our society viewed makeup as an optional accessory as opposed to the required response to any perceived deficiency. I have enough insecurity that I’m working on. I don’t want to buy or apply more at the cosmetics counter. So I’ve made up my mind about makeup. At least for now, I’m not wearing it. I don’t mean for this to be a battle cry. I don’t presume to speak for all women either. I simply know that if I’m going to be a woman capable of self-confidence and self-love, then I can’t allow my face to feel like a façade. Every shape, size, and shade of humanity has aesthetic value. My hope is that all people will learn to love their appearance and see that they are beautiful — and that wearing makeup (or dyeing one’s hair) won’t be compulsory, but something each person feels free to choose or refuse. /

Runway Beauty #IRL 91

*in real life Surely, they are not always meant to be wearable, but runway makeup has the powerful gift of transforming oneself. Real girls reproduce Spring/Summer 17 trends and remind us of what beauty is all about. Makeup and Hair by Asta Gost/ Photography by Hasan Bitirim Creative Direction by Andreia Pedro

Patricia, music nerd, wearing makeup inspired by Preen Thornton Bregazzi

Fiona, book worm, with a look inspired by Fendi

Anelia, intersectional feminist, wearing makeup inspired by Salvatore Ferragamo

Filipa, motorcycle enthusiast, with a look inspired by Marc Jacobs

100

Beatriz, soprano, interpreting Rochasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s makeup look

The Scent of Intimacy

In one breath memories you thought were left behind can return fresher than ever. Smell is one powerful sense. by Mariana Cardoso Photograhy by Camilla Glorioso camillaglorioso.com / @camillaglorioso

103

104

Picture this: you are at a park, sitting under a tree, reading a book. It’s your time to relax and enjoy the rare sunbeams that London has to offer. As you immerse yourself in your book, someone passes by leaving their scent behind. Instantly you’re drawn away from reading. Your brain can only focus on that smell, the same your mother used to put on before leaving for work and kissing you goodbye. You smile as all these memories come to mind. It’s as simple as that: different scents bring different remembrances to our minds and it can take days, months or even years until you ever get a taste of that same smell. As soon as you breathe it in, your brain associates it with an image, a memory thought forgotten. It’s either good or bad.

alter the smell of perfume, since the reaction between your body and alcohol is going to change your perfume scent on your skin.

I still remember my father’s wedding day. My parents had been divorced for three years. We were all beginning a new adventure, never had I thought that one day I would be a guest at my father’s wedding. But there I was. The clock was ticking nonstop. The hour was getting closer and closer. As soon as I saw my dad ready in his tuxedo I walked to him and gave him a hug. I will never forget the mixture of scents in the winery that served for the location of the new chapter in my father’s life. Acre and stale, the smell of the wine barrels mixed with the scent of the sun dried flowers of late summer. But there was one scent that overtook the other ones. The perfume my father was wearing was the same my ex-boyfriend wore throughout our entire relationship. So every time I got near my father, and therefore his perfume, I could only remember the times I spent with the man I believed I would one day marry. I laughed. Kept the memories to myself. And tried to not breathe every time I hugged my father.

Just as our fingers have unique prints, our bodies have a signature odor. Our noses can detect over a trillion smells. According to a study conducted at Rockefeller University in New York City, our noses can detect over a trillion smells, and understating how we process the complex information contained in scents can open a window into how our brain functions. Scent designer Lizzie Ostrom believes that smell is the least understood scent of them all. She recently combined her encyclopaedic knowledge into a book – Perfume: A Century of Scents – and is also the inventor of Ode, a fragrance-release system designed to subconsciously stimulate the appetites of dementia patients.

Even though the fragrance on my father’s skin was close enough remind me of a past relationship, the truth is that it wasn’t the same. Perfumes smell different on different people and it depends on facts such as the skin’s PH, diet habits or body temperature. Even something like a hangover can

Niche perfume brand Escentric Molecules took this very seriously and encapsulated a scent that smells different on everyone, thanks to its one molecule composition, giving an almost pheromonic effect. Accordingly called Molecule 01, the perfume contains only the aroma-chemical Iso E Super, which, on its own, is less of a fragrance than an effect. The wearer may notice a subtle, velvety, woody note which will vanish, then re-surface after some time. The impact on other people is also recognizable, since many times we can’t smell our own scent.

Like an alarm clock, Ode releases hunger-stimulating scents around mealtimes. “Originally I thought about developing a perfume to make people feel comforted. But dementia isn’t just about a decline in memory and behaviour change; it’s also about physical decline. The thing that came up again and again when I was researching it was weight loss. When people get admitted to care, they often just stop eating so much. So I thought about how to artificially create smells that whet the appetite. It seemed like an obvious way to help address behaviour-related malnutrition”, she recently told COS magazine.

One thing is for sure: you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go wrong when it comes to scents. Either theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re good or bad, but can always rely on them to bring back nostalgic moments or to recall something you have forgotten. One memory of a certain smell and all your past comes to your present, leaving the future of smell an unpredictable combination of possibilities. /

106

#Normavore: Bring back (normal) food

Fast food, superfood, food on the go, gourmet, organicâ&#x20AC;Ś We tend to label everything, even the food that goes in our mouths. Why are we overthinking food so much? By CĂĄtia Pereira Matos Photography by Andreia Pedro

108

Friday night, dinner at Daniel’s. Beers are on the kitchen table, all your friends are there and oh, also that giant pizza, right under your nose. But it certainly has gluten. And cheese, lots of cheese. No way you’re going to touch that. So you start to eat your kale salad with avocado and cherry tomatoes – organic, of course – seasoned with homemade pesto and topped with finely chopped Fairtrade almonds. “Yummy, so healthy! Exactly what I need”, you think, while keeping your eyes on the pizza. There is no question that food plays a central role and healthy eating seems like the only way to go. Social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter are filled with celebrities and bloggers attributing their glowing appearance and overall health to eating ‘clean’, fresh, unprocessed food. But some people have had enough of those wellness gurus with their filtered images of salad bowls and are now turning to an intuitive approach to eating. Meaning: they eat whatever they like. Beef is no enemy, fish is totally acceptable and vegetables do not need to be necessarily organic. With no regrets, these individuals are capable of eating - and actually enjoy eating – an ice cream made from cow’s milk, a slice of wheat bread with peanut butter and jelly and a bar of chocolate once in a while. They are tired of diets and people telling them what to consume so they decided to shut those noisy voices up by eating according to their body needs preferences.

This is the underlying premise of Intuitive Eating. It emerged around the late 1970s in America, when people began to realise the flaws of diets, but it was only in 1995 that the term became popular, after Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch published the first edition of the book Intuitive Eating. To eat intuitively you basically need to pay attention to your body’s hunger signals. You eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full. On the surface this may sound simplistic, but it is a rather complex behaviour due to the diet-centric culture we live in. To get rid of diet-outdated notions was a real struggle for Kelsey Miller, author of Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life. She had spent her whole life dieting, labelling foods as “good” or “bad”, counting calories, punishing herself whenever she slipped off the wagon, bingeing on fatty and sugary foods and then feeling miserable. Until she decided to be the one in charge of her body. A few months later, her Anti-Diet Project was born. For three years now, Miller has written her weekly column on Refinery29 – one of the largest independent websites in the United States – where she writes about intuitive eating, body positivity and shares her experiences towards a healthier relationship with food. Her first few days of Intuitive Eating were a carbohydrate madness, with bagels, pasta, pizza, chocolate. “I started to panic. Then, one fateful lunchtime, I asked myself what I wanted to eat.

109

110

The answer was a big, fat kale salad with grilled salmon and lemon vinaigrette. I listened to that signal, too”, Miller recalls, in one of her first articles for The Anti-Diet Project column. This also happened to Magda Gonçalves, who checked-in in at a medical centre in the United States to cure her binge eating disorder. Her mission was to win the never-ending battle against and her motivation was to feel happy and confident again. But she started to freak out when the doctors told her she could eat everything she liked. “It wasn’t easy. In my entire life I never had that kind of permission to eat those foods nor had tools on how to eat them without feeling guilty afterwards. Those foods were on my blacklist for a reason: I didn’t know how to behave around them. It was all or nothing.” At that time, Magda weighted 253lbs. She dropped more than 99lbs since. Today, Magda has found her balance and aims to help people to find theirs. She became an Eating Psychology Coach in 2014, certified by he Institute for the Psychology of Eating in Colorado, USA. “I’m constantly seeing individuals who think they’ll gain weight just by eating that cookie, that slice of cake. They think: ‘I will eat this because it’s good for me and I won’t eat that because it makes me fat’. What happens next is a period of restriction followed by compulsion. It that yo-yo cycle that we

need to break”, says the Portuguese coacher. “Most people are super healthy food-wise but live in a deep mental jail when it comes to their eating patterns.” Even though she is a strict vegan, Ana Castro, 25, knows how to listen her body and sees herself as an intuitive eater. Four years after moving to London and coming across Kip Andersen’s documentary Cowspiracy, the full-time pet sitter decided to switch to a no-meat-eggs-or-dairy diet - and she did it despite her clumsiness in the kitchen and her hate-hate relationship for all things green. “At first I couldn’t eat fresh vegetables. Not a single one. Convenient, easily microwaveable food was my thing”, Ana admits. Now she’s trying to incorporate more veggies into her diet but still eats frozen foods, like fake meatballs and lasagne. “And I don’t care if my pizza has gluten - I’ll eat it”, she says. “All these labels - gluten free, soy free, sugar free, low salt – are making people crazy. I eat whatever I like, whenever I truly want, as long as it’s vegan.” Magda agrees with Ana’s point of view. “When a client of mine has a craving I always say: do it, go eat it. But we must learn how to do it. Sometimes we need to respect portions. I don’t believe in abolition. But I do believe in moderation and balance.” Now go taste that last slice pizza that is right under your nose - nobody eats kale salad on Friday night.

111

112

What about #Normavore?

Instagram: the house of #healthyeating. Your feed shows you green juices that clean your body from inside out (#eatyourgreens), fruity bowls full of colours and vitamins (#eattherainbow), quinoa salads with lots of seeds and fancy toppings (#eatclean) – they’re all the same beautiful looking pictures of superfoods combined together and served on unusual objects. Not a single burger with good old French fries among them. Where has all the normal food gone? What happened to those classics meals we used to eat? For many, the healthy eating movement has reached its saturation point and some millennials are now embracing a new trend called Normavore (and no, a resemblance with Normcore is not pure coincide). Just like the fashion trend, Normavore is all about unpretentiousness. The term was first used by American restaurateur David Chang, founder of Momufuku restaurant group and owner of two Michelin stars, and it refers to someone who likes to eat ‘normal-looking’ food. Think about simple, affordable food; everyday basics which are often overlooked, like that homemade carrot soup your mum does better than anyone else, and that

shepherds’ pie from your childhood that looks unappealing but is actually delicious. After a glimpse at Bella Younger’s Instagram account we can say this 28-year-old comedian from London is a huge fan of Normavore. She is the brains behind the page Delicious Stella – again, a resemblance with the clean eating guru Delicious Ella is no accident - followed by 147k and counting. Younger has become ‘instafamous’ by mocking wellness gurus like Ella Woodward, who has been trying to inspire people to eat healthier through her posts, photos and words. Woodward has written three cookbooks on healthy eating, with the fourth one coming out in January 2017, while Younger has just-published her first book, a parody about her self-described “unhealthy life”. On Instagram, she shares pictures of her “clean eats” – examples include an avo toast (slice of bread with mashed avocado topped with gummy fried eggs), energy bites (mini donuts sprinkled with sugar) and a coconut juice cleanse (four Malibu cans). Bella has no problem with anyone who wants to eat more vegetables; she just wants to point out that is fine not to eat extremely healthy all the time. /

113

Room Service

114

The strange satisfaction of going through other peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s things sits between the options of being rude or just a stalker. But Beauty voyeurism can be as healthy as scrolling through the #shelfie hashtag on Instagram. Pretty Face decided to put shame aside and asked Rose Williams to let us into the privacy of her room. The 26-year-old living in London is the proud owner of one of the best pinkish white hair youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll ever see. She offered us a cup of noodles over a talk on what beauty is all about. Interview and Photography by Andreia Pedro

115

116

ON SPACE & ART

“I like to paint. … I paint oil paintings, abstract ones. They’ are based around the idea of free expression, kid’s work and drawings. At university, my dissertation was about kid’s drawings, it’s stages and what drives kids and adults to draw, and the differences between the two. Kids are drawing for a different reason and it’s usually because they just want to, there is just something in them that just needs to get out. They like the movement and the colours.… So, when a kid draws something, depending on the age, they will oftenjust draw and when someone asks them what it is, then they decide what it is. I just keep that in mind with my work. I like to think about what it could be, because also you can never explain what it is to anyone

afterwards, so it’s good to decide afterwards because then you are the audience, you are doing exactly the same that a stranger is going to do to your own work, he is just going to look at it and be like: what is it? I don’t really have anything in mind before I paint. It’s more about the action of it, and the feeling of it and the performance of it rather than what’s its actually going to look like. I moved here so I could paint with more space. The house is a bit weird, a bit grimy. I don’t go in the kitchen because it’s disgusting. When I got here it had a stripy pink and cream wallpaper, really disgusting with patterns on it, and I completely changed it. I just needed light, so white it is.”

117

A staple in Rose’s beauty box. Lime Crime’s pallettes: Venus and Venus II. The second is a follow up to the cult-favourite that spearheaded the reddish-brown eye trend in 2015 // £27

118

ON BEAUTY

“I think Beauty is a tough subject… I was street scouted for a Dove commercial and they wanted to know what beauty is for me. My answer was super cringe because I know that is the sort of thing they would use. I told them that when I was younger I did athletics and football, so I was really active and my body was really muscly. I had a boy’s figure and I hated it. Since then I’ve put on weight and now I feel better. So, they loved that and that’s what I said… ‘And then I realize beauty is only skin

deep… ‘ [laughs]. They were just trying to get me to define beauty and I didn’t really know what to say, because it’s really broad, isn’t it? Because for me beauty is often associated with how you feel and your mannerisms. If you are confident in yourself you just look amazing, easily. There are some people that you can’t tell how attractive they are just from a picture, you have to meet them, and talk to them, and look at their body language. It’s about how people use and live in their bodies. “

The basics all layed down. From top left: Hitting pan as only a loved one would, the Sleek Solstice Highlighting Palette (£10) // Collection 2000’s Lasting Perfection Concealer (£4.19) // Boujois Feutre Eyeliner in Noir Moka (£6.99) // Natural Collection Lash Length Mascara, times two (£1.99) // Rimmell London Good to Go Highlighter (£4,99) // Real Techniques Buffing Brush (Sold with the Core Collection set £14,78) // Blush brush (brand erased due to use) // Eye Shading Brush from Look Good Feel Better, the only charity that specifically deals with the visible side-effects of cancer treatment (£7) // MAC Studio Fix Fluid Foundation (£22) // Yves Saint Laurent Le Teint Touche Eclait Foundation and a little trick: when you run out of it just go to the YSL counter and ask them for a sample, and you can save spending £32.50 for a while // Four Rimmell Exaggerate Automatic Lip Liner (£3.99) // L’Oreal Never Fail Lipliner (Price upon request) // Bourjois Rouge Velvet Lipstick in Honey Mood (£8,99) .

119

Rose’s favourite lipstick Hearthbreaker by Sleek.

120

ON MAKE-UP

“I wear more make-up than I would want to, I think. I think it’s because I wear clothes that you would associate with boys, always quite baggy, tomboyish… And obviously, I’ve got short hair as well and I always feel that I have to compensate with make-up as well. I feel like I shouldn’t have to do that to feel more confident, and maybe it’s not even for me but for others. I’ve been thinking about that recently actually. I like when people wear colourful make-up, not because they are trying to cover up anything but they just put on like war paint, it doesn’t make them look better but it’s just fun to wear. I think I maybe will do that instead, just go a bit more mental on

my face. I don’t know. My natural hair colour is grey-mousy blondie brownie, boring… It’s fair hair but it’s not blonde. I started having it dyied when I was like 13, blonde, and I’ve had it that colour ever since. I bleach it myself, but only one time it fell out. I bleached it like I always do but I must have left it the chemical in too long and the whole back of my hair fell out. So, after, I was like ‘I’m never ever going to dye my hair ever again’. But then I did. [laughs] I have to do it tonight, actually. I’ve had it pink for seven7 years now. And I just can’t wait for when I have white hairs! It will be amazing because I won’t have to dye it anymore.” /

Keeping it tidy, all beauty products in a paper box from ikea. Space saver!

121

Hair maintenance kit. From top left: Total Bleach Kit by Bleach London (£7) // Lee Stafford Bleach Blondes Shampoo, a purple tone shampoo to knock out those nasty, brassy tones of blonde hair (£6,99) // The best, cheapest and simplest dry shampoo: talc powder. This one is the classic Johnson’s Baby Powder (£1,05) // What was once the Elixir Ultimate Oil by Kérastase is now a mixture of different hair oils that Rose can’t remember the recipe for. Works great, she assures // Scissors for cutting out those split ends.

Eat Beautiful

123

You are what you eat and, according to renowned make-up artist Wendy Rowe, food is the key to achieving impeccable skin. With over 20 years of experience, Wendyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s uncomplicated and holistic approach to beauty is focused on taking care of your skin from the inside out. Now she gathered what she has learned in Eat Beautiful, a handbook for nourished skin where each of the 70 recipes correlates to an essential skin-feeding ingredient that will help target specific skin problems. Credits: Eat Beautiful by Wendy Rowe, with photography by David Loftus and Camilla Akrans (Ebury Press, ÂŁ20) / www.wendyrowe.com

Fig salad

Good for detoxifying the system, figs add a touch of natural sweetness, providing a healthier alternative to processed sugars, which can be detrimental to your skin.

SERVES 2// 230 CALORIES PER SERVING

• 100g burrata or buffalo mozzarella • 2 fresh figs, quartered • 2 large handfuls of rocket • 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil • 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar • Fresh basil, to serve

Break the burrata or mozzarella into bite-sized pieces and place in a bowl with the figs. Add the rocket and mix well to make sure everything is evenly distributed. Dress at the last minute, drizzling over the olive oil and balsamic vinegar in a zigzag motion and scatter over basil leaves to serve.

Gluten-free rhubarb crumble The recipe is a twist on traditional crumble, using gluten-free flour with added walnuts for a dose of omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants that are so essential for skin health.

SERVES 6//311 CALORIES PER SERVING

• 6 tbsp rice flour (or other gluten-free flour) • 3 tsp Stevia • 150g butter, cut into cubes • 2 handfuls of walnuts, crushed • 10 sticks of rhubarb, cut into 1cm pieces • 1 apple, peeled, cored and chopped into bite-sized pieces • Handful of dried cranberries • Juice of ½ lemon TO SERVE (OPTIONAL) • Crème fraîche infused with a vanilla pod (halved and seeds removed) • Vanilla ice cream Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan. Combine the flour and 2 teaspoons of the Stevia in a mixing bowl. Using your fingertips, rub in the butter until the mixture is crumbly in texture. Add the walnuts and set aside. Place the rhubarb, apple and cranberries in a saucepan with 2 tablespoons of water and the rest of the Stevia. Cook down over a medium heat for 10–15

minutes or until the fruit is plump, soft and juicy but still holding its shape. Add the lemon juice to the fruit mixture and stir to combine. Place the cooked fruit in a small ovenproof dish and top with the crumble mixture. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes or until browned on top, and serve with vanilla-infused crème fraîche or ice cream, if you wish.

INDEX Index

126

&Other Stories 64,66 Aesop 82 Bourjois 35 Clinique 35 Dior Beauty 35 Essence 34 Estee Lauder 34, 35 Glossier 81 Herbivore Botanicals 85 H&M 68 Illamasqua 34 M.A.C 31 MDM Flow 20 MOA 83 The Ordinary 84 Yves Saint Laurent Beauty Zara 56,59,60,63,64,68

“If you look closely at a tree you’ll notice it’s knots and dead branches, just like our bodies. What we learn is that beauty and imperfection go together wonderfully”. Matthew Fox