This post was sponsored by Ulta as part of a Blog Blast Activation for Influence Central. I received complimentary products to facilitate my review. Having great looking hair often takes a lot of work. From coloring to straightening to blowouts, our hair gets tortured quite a bit. Once grays start to appear, the coloring becomes even […]

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As serious beauty junkies, we get psyched about every new product to hit the market. But we get even more excited when we find out our favorite celebrities are spearheading the campaigns for our top brands' swag. It's the perfect storm of pop culture obsession and shopping fanaticism! Next year brings some incredibly gorgeous faces (and complexions and heads of hair) to the beauty arena - keep reading for proof.

A new round of Soap & Glory Makeup is being added to their permanent collection for Spring/Summer 2016. Many of these items have already launched in the UK but we are finally seeing them here in the US. There are a few repromoted items as well such as Soap & Glory Love at First Blush […]

The post Soap & Glory Makeup Selections for Spring/Summer 2016 appeared first on Musings of a Muse.

The best way to welcome Winter as a beauty girl is to update your routine. While curling up with hot cocoa and a heating blanket is an ideal way to skip out on the freezing temperature, some of us still have to venture out into the elements. Dry skin and static-ridden strands are just a few of the issues caused by the skin-numbing air, but you can kick the arctic weather in the pants with these Winter beauty tips. Thunder, snow, and frigid windchills may ruin your day, but your hair and skin will be safe.

Source: Flickr user martinak15

Sometimes I can’t help but marvel at how quickly Alessandro Michele has taken Gucci and remade it in his image. In the span of only a couple seasons, he’s got my expectations of what Gucci will be so accurately and expertly set that, while looking through the images from the brand’s Fall 2016 runway show, all I could think was, “Wow, it’s all so gloriously Gucci.”

Part of that impression is because Michele is so far more of an overall wardrobe designer than a traditional season-to-season guy; instead of standing alone with distinct themes, the collections work together to move a singular vision forward, which means they’re less seasonally distinct and more long-term cohesive.

Disclosure: Contains affiliate links It was last year that I predicted that micellar water was going to become the next big thing. Guess what guys? That day has arrived and it is time to understand why micellar water is here, and why it’s here to stay. Micellar water by definition is soft water that contains tiny balls of cleansing oil, also known as micelles. These little bubbles effectively remove makeup and gently cleanse the skin without leaving behind an oily residue.  In addition to its powerful cleansing properties, micellar water gives the skin a huge boost of moisture. It’s no

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Not to toot my own horn, but I have mastered the art of meeting the parents. You see, I grew up an only child, surrounded by adults. I only spent time with other children at school and thus, quickly learned how to schmooze (and win over) even the most disapproving and austere of uncles, family friends, and teachers.

Little did I know that this life skill would serve me well once I entered the dating scene. Armed with a charming smile covered in a mother-approved shade of mauve (Bobbi Brown's Creamy Lip Color in Italian Rose if you're curious), I survived - nay, conquered - the third degree. A few moms ended up liking me more than their sons did, as they kept in touch long after the relationship had ended. But being a conversationalist is not crucial to being a pro with parents. It's all about looking the part.

I understand why you might be nervous about this big meeting - it could potentially make or break your partnership - but there's no need to stress. Above all, you need to remember that confidence is key. An aggressive mom can sniff out weakness like a shark can sense blood. And we all know that an essential component of courage is style. Once you've picked out the perfect outfit to meet the family, it's time to select the ideal beauty products for the occasion. Not sure whether nail art is appropriate? Nervous they won't like your signature scent? I've got you covered. I guarantee that if you follow these, your honey's parents will find you as enchanting, pretty, and wonderful as he or she does!

• Focus on your best features. Maybe you have gorgeously glossy, thick hair that your significant other obsesses over. Perhaps batting your enormous eyes is what lured him in. Regardless of what your most alluring asset is, you should accentuate it with tasteful styling products and makeup. Not sure where to start? If you've got kinky strands, learn how to preserve the pattern of your beguiling curls to make sure they look their best. Play up your luscious lips with tips on how to pick the right lipstick for your skin tone. Make those brown eyes look even more incredible with shadow tutorials designed to make them pop. Like I said, confidence is key, and drawing attention to your favorite feature will make you stand taller and prouder. Parents notice that kind of poise!
• Do not test trends. If you've never rocked colored eyeliner, contoured your cheekbones, or tried strobing, tonight is not the time. Stick to what you know, even if that's just a bit of bronzer [I'm addicted to Tarte Amazonian Clay Bronzer in Park Ave Princess ($30)], mascara, and a bit of fancy lip balm. That said, some moms can be enchanted by nail art. Try a more understated design like these sweet doilies or a classic french manicure. Know your audience.
• Get a good night's rest the night before. I'm all for fun nights out, but you want to get your beauty sleep before meeting the parents. Your skin will look brighter and clearer, and any fine lines will look less pronounced when you've caught up on Z's. Try an overnight mask to really wake up with a refreshed glow! But if you still wake up looking sallow, try a color-correcting concealer to add luminosity to your complexion and hide dark circles.
• Wear mascara. Even if mascara isn't part of your regular routine, slick some on (try a dark brown if black seems too intense). Mascara will open up your eyes and make them sparkle - perfect for long conversations with lots of eye contact. But don't go overboard; there's no need to apply falsies. It's important to curl your lashes before applying any mascara. This step will make your peepers look extralarge. If you have stubbornly straight lashes, heat your curler with a blowdryer first. This will act like a hot tool for your lids and hold the curl longer. Once your device is warm to the touch (not too hot - you don't want to burn yourself!), position it at the base of your lashes, squeeze for five seconds, and release. Then brush on a mascara that will give you a doe-eyed look [try Lancôme Hypnôse Doll Lashes Mascara ($28)]. Use a metal lash comb like Tweezerman's ($12) for a clump-free, defined fringe.
• Accentuate your cheeks with blush. No matter your skin tone, blush will liven up your complexion, making you look healthy and radiant . . . even if your nerves are making you look pale and feel nauseous.
• Don't spritz on too much perfume. As lovely as your favorite tuberose- and vanilla-packed fragrance is, stow it away for another occasion. You don't want to trigger your future in-laws' allergies! Try wearing Kai's lightly-scented body lotion ($38) or a subtle, fresh-smelling hairspray like Ouai Soft Hairspray ($26) if you can't leave the house without splashing on a scent.
• Book a blowout. Nothing puts a spring in my step like stepping onto the street sporting shiny, stylish strands. Family is sure to notice - after all, many moms and grandmas admire the flawless mane of Kate Middleton! But consider scheduling your appointment for the evening before - otherwise, you could risk being late if the salon is backed up. If you're concerned it won't look as sleek the next day, try these blowout-restoring tips.
• Brush and floss your teeth. Oral hygiene is always important, but foul breath will make far more of a bad impression than smudged eyeliner ever could. Tote this tiny breath spray from Hello! ($4) in your purse to mint up your mouth on the sly.
• Wear setting spray. One of my biggest beauty pet peeves is going in for a hug, then finding out my family member left foundation all over my clothing. While moms are big offenders of this sin, be the bigger person and do what you can to prevent smudgy mishaps. Setting spray will not only keep your makeup from rubbing off, but will help your look last longer. I'm a big fan of Urban Decay All Nighter Setting Spray ($30).
• Be true to yourself. If your everyday look is more Dita Von Teese than Betty Draper, then by all means, pop on your go-to red lip and cat eye. Nothing will make you feel more confident than your signature style.

Keep calm and get a massage!

If that isn't already on a T-shirt, it should be. Relaxing is easier said than done, and taking the extra step to book a massage can add even more stress. However, let's not forget all the glorious benefits of a good rub down -- like helping you get a good night's rest and quelling symptoms of depression.   

We reached out to Rachelle Richardson, founder and CEO of Lespri Spa Services -- which provides holistic massage, facials and other wellness treatments at your home or workplace -- to give us five quick reasons why we should all book a massage ASAP.  

1. To reduce stress

Stress reduction can help lower high blood pressure. Lower stress levels can also lead to the ability to cope with difficult situations.

2. To boost your immune system 

Swedish massage techniques increases blood flow and push nutrient-rich blood toward the heart. It can increase blood proteins, which help protect the body from infection.

3. To help ward off symptoms of depression

Massages help increase serotonin, the chemical responsible for maintaining mood balance. Its effect on lowering stress levels can promote a positive attitude.

4. To reduce the effects of a long commute and/or hours of sitting at a desk

Driving or sitting at a desk for an extended amount of time can cause your back muscles to become weak. Massage can alleviate the pain associated with the aches and pain that result.

5. To have a positive effect on job performance

Massages can increase mental alertness. They also lower your chance to develop stress related illnesses and decrease absenteeism. 

Do you want to be more mindful about eating healthy foods that’ll keep your mind and body at their best? Sign up for our newsletter and join our Eat Well, Feel Great challenge to learn how to fuel your body in the healthiest way possible. We’ll deliver tips, challenges and advice to your inbox every day. 

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Daniel Zapien dug pools for startup founders who were rising stars in Silicon Valley, and filled in pools for the ones whose companies had gone bust. Mike Sandoval valeted tech workers’ cars. Cecilia Chavez cleaned their sprawling houses, and Anthony King sold them crack from a homeless encampment. Their stories are the ones that rarely surface when people talk about the center of the tech industry.

De-Bug: Voices from the Underside of Silicon Valley, a book released last month, tries to change that. It shares a few dozen short and often funny accounts written by young people who have struggled to get by in the Bay Area, offering a raw look into the lives of residents bearing the brunt of gentrification.

“From the inside of the machinery, Silicon Valley was a starkly different place than the futuristic utopia it was projected to be,” co-editors Jean Melesaine and Raj Jayadev write in the preface about the impetus for the project.

“When the image boasted high incomes, most people just saw high rents,” they continue. “When it said more million-dollar homes, we saw more people becoming homeless.”

De-Bug comes out of the community organization Silicon Valley De-Bug, founded in 2001 by Jayadev and other assembly line workers at a Hewlett Packard plant. The collective focuses on criminal justice, advocating for defendants in courts and holding protests. They also produce a magazine and run a community darkroom for print photography. 

Melesaine, now 30, first came across De-Bug when she was 19. She started working with the collective regularly two years later after she had served time in jail. She was due to go back, because she couldn’t afford to pay the restitution fine, when Jayadev gave her a check to pay off the amount she owed. 

“[Jayadev] said, you don’t have to pay this back, but all I’m asking is that you come back every day,” Melesaine recalled. Since then, she’s been working with De-Bug as a writer, videographer and organizer.

More than half of the accounts in De-Bug are from around the time of the dot-com boom, when the organization first started collecting stories about living in Silicon Valley. But it feels incredibly timely, as rent continue to rise and longtime residents are increasingly being displaced.

HuffPost talked to Melesaine, who grew up in San Francisco and now lives in Oakland, about De-Bug and why Silicon Valley’s promise of opportunity should be open to all.

HuffPost: Why was it important for you to publish this book?  

Jean Melesaine: These are stories that people don’t even think of asking, like the ice cream man pushing the cart down the street. You never think to ask, what’s their experience? And so we asked. Without all these folks, Silicon Valley could not happen. 

How have things changed since you started collecting stories during the dot-com boom?

It's easier for folks in San Jose to disappear under all this gentrification and all this tech, because it’s been happening in San Jose for so long. But I think now San Francisco and Oakland are witnessing what San Jose has been going through for all these years.

I could walk into these neighborhoods that people used to say were so bad and see new cafes pop up, and I know that it’s not for someone who grew up in that neighborhood. The tech industry in the Bay Area, anywhere you go you can see that it’s spreading like crazy. Old neighborhoods that you walk into look completely different. 

What’s it like to be a low-wage worker in the Bay Area? Many people in the book talk about what they’ve had to do to make ends meet, including one man who sold his own blood to the medical lab where he worked for extra cash. Others talk frankly about illegal activity, like drug dealing or selling scrap metal.

A lot of the jobs or the work that folks [talk about in the book], they probably are not doing those same things anymore, because jobs change so much in Silicon Valley, especially if it’s a job for low-wage workers.

It’s hard to get a job if you have a record, and it’s really hard to get a job in San Jose. I have two younger brothers who have been trying to get jobs for many years, and they’ve only gotten jobs at temp agencies. A lot of these companies that say they’re hiring, they have contracts with temp agencies with lower pay.

It’s hard to survive in the city when the rent is three times more than their paycheck, so I think with criminal activity, you have to question, why do folks have to go to crime to survive?

Several individuals in De-Bug were homeless at one point, and one of the compelling stories came from Yaveth Gomez, who was living in his car despite making $58,000 a year. How do people afford to live in the Bay Area?

There’s a lot of families that we know that are facing eviction. There’s all these landlords that are trying to develop, that are pushing for new laws to help them evict folks faster.

I know a lot of folks who have lived in their car. You hear it a couple times and you’re shocked, and then you hear more people talk about it, and you’re like, OK, I guess going to the gym to shower and leaving your stuff in storage ... that’s just like regular life over here.

Stability in the Bay is so different. I have a couple friends, I could count on my hands, where they're stable. And then the rest -- you just don’t know what’s going to happen in the next year. Anything could happen.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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When kidnapped women are rescued by the Nigerian military from Boko Haram, it is far from the end of their struggles.

A report from UNICEF and International Alert released earlier this month revealed that women who were abducted by Boko Haram are often rejected by their families and communities once they return home.

“Many face marginalization, discrimination and rejection by family and community members due to social and cultural norms related to sexual violence,” the report found.

The report focused specifically on communities in the Borno state capital in northeast Nigeria, where around 95 percent of people displaced by Boko Haram violence live.

There are two main reasons families don’t welcome returning women with open arms: First, they are viewed with mistrust, as community members suspect they may have been radicalized by the militants. And second, the returning women are ostracized due to the stigma associated with sexual assault in their communities.

“The recent increase in female suicide bombers throughout Nigeria has reinforced the widely held belief that women and girls exposed to [Boko Haram] are contributing to the insecurity in the region,” the report says.

Two weeks ago, two female suicide bombers killed more than 60 people in a Nigerian refugee camp for people displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency.

Beyond the fear of extremism, there is a widespread negative perception of women who have been sexually assaulted. 

“All women and girls who have experienced sexual violence during the conflict face stigmatization from communities,” the report says. “However, the potential rejection has been much more acute for those who have been associated with [Boko Haram] -- as abductees, living in ... strongholds, or ‘wives’ of ... combatants either by choice or force.”

When they return home, the women are effectively made three-time victims: once by Boko Haram’s abduction, a second time by the sexual assault and sometimes forced marriage and pregnancy they endure while in captivity and then a third time when they return to their families and are rejected by husbands, friends and community members.

Amid these hardships, there are organizations on the ground working hard to support victims, reduce the stigma around sexual violence and re-integrate abducted women and children into communities.

The Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations in Nigeria, facilitates workshops with victims in the Internally Displaced Persons camps, providing a space for them share their stories and connecting them to experts who can provide longer-term services.

"We go into the camp to provide psycho-social support," a FOMWAN staff member told The Huffington Post. "The women are traumatized, but now they feel free to speak to their experiences." 

Many of the women are returning pregnant, or with newborns or young children, Kimairis Toogood, peacebuilding adviser for International Alert, told HuffPost. After sharing their stories, the women are referred to experts from organizations like the International Organization for Migration, the International Federation of Women Lawyers Nigeria or Save the Children, all of which can continue to provide support services beyond the workshop.

“These are good initiatives, providing a platform for women to express themselves,” Albert Yusuf, project manager for International Alert, said. “That having been said, it is grossly inadequate in terms of the scale of what needs to be done.”

It is estimated that between 500 and 2,000 women and children have been abducted by Boko Haram since 2012. So far FOMWAN has conducted three workshops, serving about 122 women, according to the staff member. They intend to hold five more sessions.

"The methodology that seems to work is women talking to women," Toogood said. "It allows them to share their stories. Just sit down, have some coffee, talk. It works to break the stigma and allows women to feel empowered."

Another group working in the Internally Displaced Persons camps is Herwa Community Initiative. They are working with the victims as well as the larger community to reduce the stigma around sexual assault. 

“Women and girls need support,” Toogood said. “But there is also a need for the community and men to get support, to remove the stigma.”

Herwa facilitates dialogue between survivors of sexual violence from Boko Haram and community members to change perceptions around sexual assault.

The group assembles around 50 people and asks questions to the survivors about their experiences, and explores negative perceptions among community members around sexual violence, particularly when it comes to Boko Haram abductees. 

During the sessions, staff members typically ask participants if they'd be willing to accept women or girls who were abducted once they get back to the community.

The answers vary widely from community to community:

“Some say they would accept, some would not. But through dialogue, people can express their views freely, and we don’t move on until the question is resolved,” a Herwa staff member told HuffPost. “Most of the people at the start -- including survivors -- say they would not accept a lady who has been abducted. But by the end, some are willing to change their opinion.”

However, when it comes to children born from sexual violence, the results are not as encouraging.

The babies and toddlers of mothers who were abducted are being rejected, abandoned or abused at even higher rates than their mothers, according to the report. They are perceived as carrying “bad blood.”

“There are some camps where everyone is adamant that they would not accept the children,” the Herwa staff member said. “The memory is still very fresh.”

While the rejection of children may seem hard to understand, it is born from tough realities. When Boko Haram recruits young members, they give them assignments to prove their loyalty, the Herwa staff member explained. These assignments can involve killing someone close to them.

The report mentions accounts of women and girls returning from captivity and murdering their parents.

“We have heard of an insurgent who was being tested by the Boko Haram hierarchy,” the staff member elaborated. “They asked him to bring his mother to them. The community leader said to the mother that she shouldn’t go, but she went. The boy was asked to shoot her, and he did.”

While communities showed faith that relationships with the women and girls abducted could be rebuilt, the report says it is unlikely that the fear and suspicion of children will decrease.

The report outlined steps for NGOs and the government to take to ensure communities re-integrate women and children more successfully, including providing health services and emergency contraception for women; making employment opportunities available for women to support themselves and their families; and developing programs to support the children who have been rejected or abandoned.

H/T The Guardian

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By Jhem Arzaga

I was so excited when Malissa KISS Philippines told me they’re going to send me their products, wow! I’ve become a fan of this brand since I bought and tried their collagen cream mask before. Well, I shopped that online from their Singapore shop. Yep, you read it right– from Singapore! But you know what? Since their product [ Continue Reading.. ]

This is a post from JhemSays.com Read the original post: Malissa KISS Box of Beauty Haul + Giveaway

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