Book review: Allure: Confessions of a Beauty Editor by Linda Wells

Trick of the Trade

Cutting off cherished long hair can be traumatic, so consider easing yourself in step-by-step. First, take a picture of yourself against a dark background, and use a Sharpie to black out your hair to the desired length to see how it might look.

I was fairly happy with this book until I came to this tiny throwaway section on page 123. After a moment of confusion, I realized that the author was assuming that all her readers had light-colored hair. Oh, I'll say it. She was assuming that all her readers were blonde like her.

Well, hello!!! (invisible woman waving).

I'd gone until page 123 before noticing that almost all the models were white.

And young. But of course models have to be young, else they won't be models, and would have no place in a beauty book.

Alright, now that I have gotten that out of my system, on to the book itself. It is fairly basic and perfect for the absolute newbie. I did find the section on salon etiquette (i.e. tipping) to be very enlightening since this has always been an area of confusion for me. The section on hair I also found interesting. The other sections I felt were very basic. However in all honesty I think all the sections were equally basic.

For the average Allure (or magazine) reader, I'd say skip this book. It seems to be rehashing much of what you can get in Allure (or any women's magazine) anyway (wear sunscreen! test foundation on your jawline!). For the newbie or almost-newbie though, there are plenty of interesting nuggets in this book. For example (and here I'm exposing how little I knew before):

To find the (perfect lipstick shade), test shades by covering half your mouth with lipstick and leaving the other half bare. If the lipstick side is the same tone as the naked side but slightly deeper and glossier, then you've nailed it.

Stars? None for diversity, ***** if you're a newbie, * if you're not, and none for the misleading title (there's no titillation to be had from this book, unless you count the naked body slathered in body scrub, said scrub artfully placed strategically so that it looked natural and yet no naughty bits showed).