It’s been hard for me to relax this summer vacation, what with all the politikin’ and religiousity on the issue of hair going on. Out in California, where no one older than ten knows their true hair color, Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, who is no ‘looker’ herself, let’s be honest – took a potshot at her opponent’s hair, saying that she had seen Senator Barbara Boxer briefly on the TV that morning and asked out loud, into a mic she thought was turned off, “God, what is that hair?”  Senator Boxer demurred that if she got the votes from everyone who ever had a bad hair day, she’d win reelection by a landslide.

Then the fools folks at BP took another public relations hit over their refusal to use hair booms to help clean up that mess they made down in the Gulf.

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A pound of hair soaks up about a quart of oil, so beauty shops around the country organized the production of “hair sausages” – clippings from the salon floor stuffed into pantyhose – to send to those hapless BP execs who can’t seem to find their butts with both hands. Thousands of shops joined in. Local newspaper headlines blazed “Area Salons help with Gulf Cleanup” across our fair nation and into Canada.  To date, close to 500,000 pounds of hair is sitting in warehouses along the Gulf, waiting to be floated, but BP won’t use it.  They say it isn’t as good as artificial booms.  So now we have a whole new environmental problem – What to do with toxically dyed hair stuffed in smelly old nylons that were made out of petrochemicals to begin with!  Hell, I bet landfills won’t take ‘em!  Lordy, lordy, lordy.

And speaking of the Lord, the hairiest story yet of the summer came when Iran issued a haircut catalog of acceptable styles for Islamic men.  Worried that Western culture is seeping into – and on to – the heads of young Iranian men, the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance unveiled the haircuts in preparation for this week’s Veil and Chastity Day Festival (I don’t suppose they have a Tunnel of Love at that fair, do you?)  On the “no fly” list are ponytails, spiked hair, mullets (the Mullah’s outlawed mullets, heh-heh!) and anything too Western-looking, though one ‘do is distinctively an Elvis Presley rip-off.  The Ministry even outlawed eyebrow -shaping and those boys could use a little pluck!

Here in the States, we don’t let our religious organizations or politicians tell us how to wear our hair, unless you live in Utah, of course.  We get our guidance from a higher power – Lady Gaga or Proctor & Gamble, for example.  If my hair belonged to a religious organization it would be “The 34^th Church of the Heavenly Hue” or “Our Lady of the Tortured Tress.”  If my hair were a political candidate, she would be Donna Touchit from the proud State of Confusion, running for the 15^th time.

But someone is taking all this seriously.  I guess what Mama said was really true: “There are only three things you can’t get outa your hair or your clothes, daughter: petroleum products, preachers and politicians.“  Say Amen, somebody.

The good news is that the confusion will soon be over.  Because of Whole Food’s leadership, other health retail organizations will follow suit, so when a consumer buys a natural skin care product, they will know exactly what they are getting.  No more worry about deceptive advertising.

The bad news?  Right now, not many products will make the cut.  Consumers will be surprised at the products that have been fooling them all along on the “natural” shelves.  Unless they change their formulation, some of the most popular natural brands will be gone.  Zia Naturals?  Last of the alphabet becomes first out the door.  Nature’s Gate just got shut. Kiehl’s gets keihl-ed.  Derma E?  Derma gone.  100% USDA certification is hard to get, expensive, and here’s the real kicker – the skin and hair care products that have it, don’t sell well.

In 2009, there was no growth in the sale of organic beauty products.  None. Zip. Zilch. Research company Tabs Report pointed to three major issues: price, efficacy and “low overall importance of organics”  in that industry.  In other words, people have found that truly organic grooming and beauty brands cost too much, they don’t work, and consumers are losing interest in their social value. On top of that, they don’t smell good, either, since they can’t add perfume or blockers.  So what we will get from Whole Foods are brands you have probably never heard of and will find very different from the products currently residing in your medicine cabinet.  Look for Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, Terressentials, Trillium Organics and Vermont Soap, as some of the top brands.

The good news is that a trusted retailer has stepped up to demand truth in labeling in personal care products, the first of hopefully, many.  The bad news is that if you want pure products, your choices are about to get a lot smaller.

Men, on the other hand, are perfectly happy to be groomed by a woman. Even a fake one, if Gillette’s new campaign is to be believed.

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The campaign is titled “What Women Want,” and presumes that men will groom the way an automated video response system tells them to.  The interactive service offers models Heather, Tulana, Jacqueline, Mikayla, and Adriana, aged 19-23, prompting guys through styling decisions.  First, you choose a gal who will offer her opinion.  Then your model has you choose the venue you are planning to attend – i.e. a graduation, a concert, job interview, even a “meet the parents” plan.  You’re offered pictures of twelve different hairstyles, while the model waits at the side of the screen, fidgeting, until a choice is made.  Hairdo and face hair decisions are guided the same way until ultimately your model tells you what she thinks and offers suggestions.  If you choose really goofy looks, like a Pompadour hairdo and a Van Dyck shave, your automated system will try to encourage you to change your mind.  “It’s not your best,” sultry Jacqueline told me of my fake choices.  “Shall we give it another go?”  Or sweet Heather, who frowns so cutely and remarks, “It’s not working for you, let’s do this…” to get me to try a different style.  It all results in a prompt to upload a personal picture to “try on” the new look.

I think this is a swell way to guide people into making the right decisions for businesses.  I’ve had some experience with the automated phone system of a cable company recently while trying to get my phone, Internet access and TV activated in my new home.  If it had only been some cute young man’s recorded voice on the phone, saying things like “I know you’d like to talk to Technical Support, but wouldn’t you rather just fantasize about what I look like and call it a night?”   Or, “My supervisor would just love to talk to you, but press 2 if you’d rather have an email picture of me sent to your cellphone, brought to you by Comcast.”

Perhaps if I had been given the kind of choices Gillette is offering to men, you wouldn’t be reading this now.

The study was done on mice who, as it turns out, have similar sex-based fat distribution pattern to humans.  But there were some definite surprises in the data, particularly for the men.

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First, fat tissue is completely different between men and women.  “”We found that out of about 40,000 mouse genes, only 138 are commonly found in both male and female fat cells,” said Dr. Deborah Clegg, assistant professor of internal medicine at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and senior author of the study.  Since the substance of fat is so different between the genders, the treatment must be different as well, and in that way, women have the advantage.  “Fat on the hips, thighs and butt is subcutaneous and therefore treatable with liposuction. However, belly fat in men is typically visceral and too deep to be treated with liposuction. The only way to reduce this kind of fat, which is considered a health risk, is with diet and exercise,” New Beauty reports.  Get on those bikes, boys!

But women got some bad news in the study as well, and dang, we knew this all along, too.  “In the female mice whose ovaries had been removed — a condition similar to human menopause — put on the high fat diet, weight gain was greater and more likely to be in the belly,” UPI reports.  So women’s fat cells relocate!  Just when we think we’ve got a solution to our “problem area,” it changes neighborhoods!

But Dr. Clegg gives us some hope.  “Although our new findings don’t explain why women begin storing fat in their bellies after menopause, the results do bring us a step closer to understanding the mechanisms behind the unwanted shift.”

Thanks, Dr. Clegg.  But at the risk of sounding vindictive, I’d feel better if those guys had some kinda “shift,” too.  Just once I’d like to see a man whose fat gut slipped to his backside.  But every woman knows – that ain’t going to happen.  It’s in our genes.

The next day was all about clothes. “We were ushered into Saks Fifth Ave. to the upper level exclusive dressing rooms. There we met our stylists and spent the day trying on shoes, dresses, pants, blouses, Spanx … and we were all given a bra fitting and new undergarments. (Wa-Hoo!!)”

So far, so good, she and her companion sister were thinking as they arrived on Monday at Harpo Studios. “Before” shots were taken in the “frumpy” outfits they were told to bring from home, and then the process began in a temporary salon built behind Oprah’s main set. From 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Goldie describes, she and eight other women were “bleached, plucked, polished and waxed” for their on-stage transformation. Each woman had her own producer who reevaluated the “dramatic change” every couple hours. One poor contestant had her hair dyed three times that day.

Goldie didn’t want to dye her hair. She comes from a family of “happy, white-haired women” and was quite proud of her locks. She used to joke that the only person who could get her to dye her hair was Oprah, and now that day had arrived.

“The head hair lady, Rita Hazen and her assistants, walked around me and stared at my hair. They felt it, took notes and then came back to give me ‘the talk.’ ‘We’ve decided that your best look is blond!’ Say what??, I sputtered!” But they insisted. “They said I wouldn’t notice the root grow-out as much as a blond … it would be ‘easy’ to keep up with this look, so, I became an Oprah Blond that day. My head was burned so much from the bleach that my scalp skin peeled off after I got home. NOT glamorous at all!!”

Tuesday morning she went back to Harpo for the taping, which was a lot of parading around on the set to the applause of a wishful audience. Directly afterwards they had a brief photo-op with Oprah and then the limo driver took them to the airport and it was all over – “except for the dang Oprah Blond sitting like shredded wheat on top of my head!”

“My blond hair looked good for the camera. My sister loved it. My husband loved it. I hated it. It was harsh. My hair was dry as straw and my poor scalp looked and felt like the Mojave Desert! My husband convinced me to keep it for a year. Reluctantly, I agreed and marked the date on my calendar. Exactly one year later I stopped and have never dyed my hair again.”

Goldie explained to LookinGood that this makeover routine had nothing to do with the person chosen: it’s all about TV drama. From her description, they choose people who will look good on camera, present well and can showcase new style and esthetic technique, then they gussy them up for one day on camera – and send them home. Goldie didn’t learn a thing from the specialists. “There was no advice for you to take home,” she laughed, “except maybe that jewel tones look good one everyone.”  Big help.

What she did learn was about the process and something about herself. She hated the chemicals and what it did to her scalp and is still a bit baffled that no one listened to her during the session. She hated the maintenance of color and trying to achieve the same result each time. She hated the expense. But the biggest reason was simple: “I felt less authentic,” she said.

In the end, maybe she did end up with a makeover of sorts after all.

Diana Lewis Jewell was Goldie’s inspiration for going back to her natural gray.  Jewell will appear on The Today Show, Wednesday, June 2, 2010.

One day not long ago, a crack FBI agent found that Greig had some plastic surgery done before she disappeared.  Whitey likes his girls young and sassy, evidently.  She had a facelift, a nose job, liposuction, and breast implants, and she was only 43 years old then.  It must have been an AHA! moment when the agent also realized that it was highly likely that she (and perhaps even HE) might be a candidate for cosmetic adjustments in the future.  So, what did the Bureau do?

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They took out an ad in the April-May edition of Plastic Surgery News, a newsletter that goes out to nearly 6,000 plastic surgeons around the world!  It was a full-page color ad with pictures of both fugitives and details of all Greig’s nips/tucks, right down to the product and lot number engraved on each of her implants!

I won’t get started about implants being used as tracking devices (“Lieutenant, I think we’ve picked up a signal from her left nipple!”), but only because these people are seriously dangerous citizens.  In fact, I want to be helpful, so it occurs to me that the FBI might not know that plastic surgeons readily use the Internet now to “capture” customers.  They should simply ask physicians to be alert for particular kinds of questions in email correspondence from potential patients.  Questions like:

1)    Are you willing to do house calls?  If yes:

a.     Do you mind being blindfolded during the trip?

b.     Are you claustrophobic?

2)    If you are not willing to travel:

a.     Can you do this surgery without actually looking at me?

b.     How many exits are there in the recovery room?

3)    Do you take unmarked bills for payment?

4)    As a gesture of your commitment to doctor/patient confidentiality, please include with your reply, the location of the schools where your children attend classes.

The story of Whitey Bulger and Boston’s Winter Hill Gang is filled with treachery, murder and corrupt law enforcement officials.  There are already best-selling books and it’s almost guaranteed to make a blockbuster movie someday.  And now, with the addition of tracking Catherine Greig’s implants – well, this is just the stuff of Hollywood, don’t you think?

In her honor then, LookinGood will help you feel more foolish by offering advice on the gifts you’re going to spend money on anyway, despite Anna’s protests.

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Do: Gift them a makeup consultant.  Maybe their looks are timeless. But a professional makeup consultant will analyze her client’s skin, discuss with her about the look she wants and not only apply the makeup, but give a lesson on how to apply it to achieve the same look at home.  The deal might even include products and/or samples, or at least discounts on them. There are private makeup artists, estheticians at spas, even the department stores have makeup professionals who will apply their brand for free by appointment.   Spa and private consultants run $200-$500.

Do: Give them spa certificates.  She will be pampered and primped for as little as 30 minutes or as long as the whole day to find her outer beauty.  Prices range anywhere from $50-$500, depending on the spa and your region.  Check the website of mom’s favorite place or yours.  If you’re having trouble finding a place, or want to let her choose for herself, spafinder.com is also an option.

Do: If she has had a child or two, give her a Mommy Makeover.  First, pull out your checkbook.  Includes breast enhancement and tummy tuck – sometimes a little lipo just to even things out.   An easy $15,000 to $20,000.

Don’t: Buy her perfume.  No matter how many ads you see, do not succumb to the temptation.  Unless she tells you exactly what she wants, you will not get it right.

Anna Jarvis, look what you’ve done.

But Paula takes the “cop” part of her job quite seriously, and I believe, like other tough cops, she is suffering post traumatic stress disorder.  After 30 years of exposing deceptive labeling, distorted claims and advertising gimmicks, she’s a little, well, testy. Consider this opening to her blog a couple weeks ago:

“Exhaustion has set in big time. I’m tired of saying so much about the cosmetic industry as I watch it endlessly spiral out of control in an ugly tangle of lies, half-truths, and just plain idiocy…”

You are my hero, Paula, but geez, lighten up. Today we sing your praises, and make sure that everyone knows all the resources you have to offer.

Her reference book, “Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me” is currently in its 9^th edition, despite the fact that she swore in her 8^th she was never going to do this again.  Each volume contains the latest skin care research, and more than 1,300 pages of product reviews in alphabetical order.  She adds little happy or sad faces next to the name of the product so we don’t have to actually read the review if we don’t want to.  It will take up more space than that dusty old Webster’s, but you will never go to the cosmetics counter without her again.

Beguon has several different websites and the branding gets confusing, but they all offer a little something different.

• Beautypedia.com is her reference book online, and requires a subscription of about $24 a year.  It has the added bonus of being updated constantly, and featuring special reports on newly introduced products, “Paula’s picks” and the animal-testing status of most companies.  Best of all, Beautypedia is available in an IPod app, so you can take it to Sephora with you.
• CosmeticsCop.com is her general website where she promotes herself and sells her own skin care line, Paula’s Choice.  A few LookinGood members are using her products now, and like them so far.  Stay tuned.
• Her blog is called BeautyBunch.com and this is where Paula gets to rant in print about ‘endless spirals’, but also subjects like eye cream and popping pimples.

Lastly, she has an online radio show every Thursday night at 9 ET, 8 CT and 6 PT.  She and her long-time collaborator Bryan Barron present a weekly theme or a guest and take callers who have questions about skin and makeup.  Subjects range from wrinkles to wraps, but the show is a little like listening to your mother lecture you about standing up straight – for an hour.

Paula Begoun is my hero but, much like my mother, she has no sense of humor (my mother’s computer is broken, obviously).  Even her products come in drab little white bottles that look like the lotions you take home from the hospital.  Nonetheless, she has done womankind a justice by indexing and reviewing all those products, and keeping the cosmetics companies honest.  Someone has to do it – it might as well be a curmudgeon.

Are you as sick of Brook Shields as we are?  She has hawked more products and processes than LookinGood has written about, and Sarah Haskins from Current TV chronicles her progress.  Check it out.

If YouTube was considered a search engine, it would be second only to Google.  More than just a place to watch your favorite music videos about lipstick stains, it’s a how-to gold mine, with users posting clips showing you how to do everything from riding a bike to open heart surgery.   LookinGood often uses it as a reference, picking and choosing tidbits as we need them. But when we started looking for a channel to subscribe to – someone we could turn to regularly for makeup needs, we found the pickin’s to be slim.

The best makeup videos out there are done, not surprisingly, by young women.  they are most comfortable with the medium of YouTube.  Many are professional and relevant to our over-39-year-old needs,  but users need to get comfortable taking advice from someone who looks like they are also going to sell you Girl Scout cookies.

• Our favorite “kid” skincare advisor is Michelle Phan, who is now a spokeswoman for Lancome.  If you can get over the fact that she does videos about “theme park makeup” (like Disneyland), she’s a real makeup artist who does excellent demonstrations on the application of foundation, the use of brushes and a whole host of color techniques.
• Makeup Geek is a bit older, with a straight-forward approach about achieving results like contouring to make your face look thinner or how to apply normal-looking eyeliner.
• MakeupByCheri is another one we found with decent how-to applications on using powder blushes or how to put on mascara.  She IS a 22 years old, however, so occasionally subscribers are subjected to chronicles of loud road trips that and unintelligible slang.
• Wayne Goss is a makeup artist from the UK who teaches both men and women all the basics as well as those special occasion-night-on-the-town looks.  It is a little odd to watch a man apply purple eye shadow, but this is 2010, what can we say?
• Women of color have The Accidental Beauty who needs some lighting expertise for her videos, and Lady Elle, who has the best personality and music.

And as for the over-40 set or over-50 set, fuhgeddaboudit, unless you want to watch a clip on “how to look like a cougar.”  Most of the videos are sitcoms waiting to happen (you read it here first), taking themselves way too seriously without offering anything useful, like Lanaindiana (“Hi, this is Lana, welcoming you back to my bathroom” or  Amy Miranda who offers bad audio and “Saturday night pub” makeup.

Because YouTube is also a social media marketing tool, cosmetics and personal care companies post a lot of how-to videos, as do salons and makeup artists, like Allison Saunders, and MAC Cosmetics.  We found this especially true when it comes to men’s grooming.  There aren’t a lot of guys in their bedrooms with their mischievous cats offering grooming and shaving tips.  Most, like AlphaM. Image Consulting or posts from the Grooming Lounge guys, are quasi-professional or professionally made.  That doesn’t mean the videos aren’t helpful, it just means they’re trying to sell you something.