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.

In an article published in Reconstructive and Plastic Surgery, a number of patients who had forehead lifts not only looked younger but also received the added benefit of an end to those debilitating headaches from Hell.

The link was first reported in that journal in December of 2004 and revisited again last summer.  In the most recent study, the 49 patients having a forehead lift – or brow lift – more than half (57 percent) also reported an end to their migraines.

There are reportedly 30 million migraine sufferers in America, and according to relieve-migraine-headache.com, 25 percent of women and 8 percent of men experience migraines in their lifetime.

The brow lift procedure severs the nerves and muscles in the forehead which may be migraine triggers.  Some patients in the most recent study were injected first in the forehead with Botox, which temporarily paralyzes the muscles and nerves.  If the recipient not only reaped the rewards of a fresher, wrinkle-free forehead, but also stopped having migraines, they also had a brow lift. The doctors who did the procedures would like to see further trials done, but the results are promising.

And while we jest, we are well aware that migraines are no laughing matter and would love to see this as a reasonable and relatively simple solution to a problem that afflicts so many.

That said, who do we talk to about a clinical trial to see if a butt lift will eliminate lower back pain?

• WebMD, which knows EVERYTHING medical, weighs in.
• Everything you want to know about migraines is here.
• Of course, plastic surgeons think this is VERY good news.

Everyone in Salem, Massachusetts has style.  Silly preppy; punk, pierced emo; flowing, gray-haired wiccans, flashy interior designers, international sailors, gaunt artists, mass-transportation yuppies, be-speckled historians – all coexist with storybook style.

This is a made-up story about one of those styled Salemites, a real person observed in a makeshift craft, off the north side of Derby Wharf.  I spotted him in the distance as my dog and I walked toward the lighthouse.  It was a tiny sailing vessel – like a Nutshell Pram, but with an odd kind of gaffe rig, at least to my limited knowledge.  The sail wasn’t the right color, either – dark brown, like deep leather.  As we walked, the sailor got closer to the wharf and I saw that it wasn’t sail material at all – it was like heavy cloth – jury-rigged correctly, but definitely cloth, fraying at the edges. And he was clumsily using his oar as a boom extension.

As the sailboat prepared to tack, I caught a real view of the sailor.  He had a bleach-blonde Mohawk, thick and bristled and surrounded by dark, shaved hair.  His shirt and pants were black, with some kind of graffiti on the back that resembled a skull from a distance.  Tattoos on his arms.  A punker – as unlikely a sailor as anyone could possibly be.  But there he was, navigating this hammered-together sailboat, if not quite successfully, at least skillfully.  He knew what he was trying to do.

When at last it was clear the sail was a failure, he pulled it down and began to row somewhere unknown.

I imagined his name as Francis, but was nicknamed Fish in high school for his love of the ocean.  Raised in Salem, he was an above-average student and musician, with an early love of punk rock and all things metal, which in Salem, doesn’t make you a bad person, but limits your career choices.  He has recently been traveling with the band Macrocosm; a decent-paying job both exhilarating and tedious.  He wasn’t hired to play, but hopes to get their attention by assembling and disassembling their instruments and equipment at each show, acting as an occasional bodyguard, scrambling backstage when something goes wrong.  The guys in the band are okay to work with – they mostly ignore him until something goes wrong – but when the opening music starts, his heart bursts from the adrenaline and appreciation of being there, feeling there, listening to an art form that gives him courage and kicks, life’s essentials.

The call about his sister’s cancer came a month ago, but everyone thought it was going to be a long haul.  Lots of tests, multiple doctors and caregivers, almost too many options, but he was told that “time would tell.”  Turns out they were wrong.  “She’s gone,” was all his Dad said 3 days ago.

Today was the funeral.  Fish never really knew his sister’s husband – they were so much older, but the 2 kids couldn’t lift up their heads for anyone, and were clearly afraid of him.  His dad, untouchable since the death of his wife, seemed to be physically pushing something inside him down.  Fish saw him holding his breath about every five minutes.

After the services, he and his dad sat in the backyard of his childhood home in Salem Willows, looking at the ocean, silent and awkward.  Fish noticed the old Sunfish upside-down along side the house, rusty mast hanging from hooks on the side of the garage.  His father said he gave the sail to someone else whose kids needed a new one. He scoffed when Fish suggested using the old canvas tarp to rig up a sail, but he helped when Fish started turning the boat over and brushing it off.  He stood with his hands in his pockets, mumbling that his son had no business betting that kind of money, that punk rock had replaced any sailing ability his son once had anyway, and that a staple gun would not hold the tarp in place, “ferchrisakes.”

Nonetheless, when Fish was done, his dad rolled up the bottoms of his good pants and the two of them walked the boat through the low tide mud to about three feet of water.  Fish fell over the seat getting into the boat, but when he righted himself and took hold of the tiller, he looked up to meet the eyes of his father, eyes he hadn’t looked into in a long time, and smiled.  His father returned with a smirk, remarking “I can’t fucking believe you’re doing this.”

The rest of the family came out to the backyard when they heard the wailing.  Running toward him into the mudflats, they saw him bent over – perhaps insane with grief over the loss of his daughter, perhaps having a heart attack. They rushed to his side, pulling him up to find his face distorted and wet with tears as he pointed to the sea, gasping for air.

There in the distance was Fish, waist-deep in water, pulling a boat to shore with one arm as he held the other high in the air, displaying his middle finger pointed at his Dad.  They were both laughing hysterically.

So, if you’re an outtie, let’s face it. You’re now longing to be part of the innie crowd.

With umbilicoplasty, or the nicer-sounding belly button renewal or lift, your belly can be born again.  Whether you’ve had an outie all your life, or your belly button is starting to protrude after babies or the skin above your navel is starting to droop over it, this relatively simple surgery (in terms of time, recovery and cost) can reset your middle ground.

If you think about it, the belly button is just a fairly large scar that we all have.  After we’re born and the umbilical chord is cut and tied, some heal as innies, some as outies.  Like everything else on our bodies, they tend to change over time, be it from child birth, drastic weight gain or loss or just gravity.  For some, it becomes a real hot-button issue.  Women want to look good in a bikini or have that attractive spot to pierce; men with good abs don’t want a knot sticking out of a well toned mid-section.

Umbilicoplasty is different from a tummy tuck, focusing solely on the navel.  It is often done in conjunction with that surgery to make sure the belly button matches the newly flattened tummy.  If an umbilical hernia is causing the belly button to protrude, surgery to fix the hernia would precede the belly button lift.  When done on its own, umbilicoplasty takes about an hour with local anesthesia.  The incisions are usually hidden within the navel itself and downtime is about one day.  The surgical costs will likely range from $500-$2,000.

• Here’s a really wierd site about belly buttons.
• Did you ever wonder if Adam and Eve had belly buttons?  This Christian site has the answer.
• American Health and Beauty always has good information.

Well, this one that we found, Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE), is just that: another hole (or more accurately, series of holes) in your head. The hairs to be transplanted are extracted from the back and sides of the head using a tiny (.8 mm), circular punch that leaves little to no scarring. The hairs are then transplanted to the desired spot on the head. The description of the “punch” makes us think of a really, really little biscuit-cutter or something made by Ronco and sold during an infomercial.

The Foundation for Hair Restoration and Plastic Surgery touts this as a “breakthrough procedure,” and it could be, but it’s not exactly new. It started emerging in 2002, with recent advancements in the extraction “punch” that have made it smaller and less invasive.

They also call FUE “incisionless,” which we find hard to believe because a) pulling out tiny circular pieces of scalp sure sounds like there’s cutting involved even if the surgeon isn’t using a scalpel; and b) the extracted follicles are implanted in tiny incisions in the other part of the scalp.

One of the pros of FUE is supposed to be that because the scarring is minimal, men can wear their hair shorter or have a buzz cut.

Topping the list of cons is that it takes a long time – sometimes two or more sessions that can last up to 9 hours. And the best cost estimate we’ve found is $4 per graft. During some of those marathon sessions, as many as 1,200 grafts are being done. You do the math.

As with any plastic surgery, do your homework. Most of the information out there says this procedure isn’t right for everyone. And though more surgeons are offering FUE, that doesn’t mean they all have the experience to do it well. You know you need a bad hair transplant like you need …. well, you get the idea.

• True & Dorin, The Hair Loss Doctors, explain and offer the procedure here.
• Hair Loss Learning Center cautions about the hype on FUE.
• Want to see how it works?  The HairNetwork offers a video on YouTube.

Who knew? Apparently, the crew I roll with is too flat-chested to have warned me about this. As if worrying about sagging isn’t enough. Does the madness never end?

Well, possibly it does because Kush Support offers a non-surgical solution where no solution has gone before: the décolletage. Their little device offers “sleep support for your breasts.”  It’s basically a boob pillow that comes in three sizes and seven colors.

Inventor Cathinka Chandler developed Kush after learning there was no cream, exercise or device to battle or erase the effects of gravity from the cleavage of busty, side-sleeping women. The pressure of one breast on the other compounds the situation. For just $24.99, she and Kush can fix that.

The somewhat conical, plastic pillow is also marketed to offer comfort after breast augmentation as well as to pregnant women. The company says that the device is able to “offer more natural rest for the breasts,” and allow the user a better night’s sleep. And by judging from the pictures on the website, the seven different colors cleverly allow you to match it to either your skin tone or your lingerie.

It’s good to know that if I ever bust into that C-cup category or beyond, there’s a tool to fight cleavage wrinkles. Of course, what’s keeping me up at night now is the knowledge that I didn’t come up with the idea. Just when I was getting over the Pet Rock.

Turns out, peptides are amino acids, or the building blocks of protein. There are basically four types of peptides used in skin care products: acetyl hexapeptide-3, palmitoyl pentapeptide-3, palmitoyl oligopeptide and copper peptides.  Each is thought to have a different, positive effect on skin, but there isn’t a lot of research to back up claims made by the product manufacturers.

As popular as peptides are, whether or not they are worth all the hoopla may be in the face of the user. In one post, thebeautybrains.com calls the anti-wrinkle, anti-aging claims bunk, saying there is little or no supporting evidence.  Another post says that “recent evidence indicates certain peptides can interact with skin to trigger biological activity,” but also notes that the tests were done on tetrapeptide, which wasn’t found in products when that article was originally written.

If you are reading labels, peptides break down like this:

• acetyl hexapeptide-3 is thought to relax facial wrinkles
• palmitoyl pentapeptide-3 and palmitoyl oligopeptide may stimulate production of collagen and hyaluronic acid in various layers of the skin, increasing elasticity and smoothness
• copper peptides, according to wrinklereview.com, “have been studied due to their ability to encourage the skin to heal wounds” … a peptide pep talk for the skin? The website adds that because they’re not an anti-wrinkle ingredient, they aren’t used in today’s skin care products like they were years ago.
• palmitoyl tetrapeptide-7 is one of the few peptides with research to support its effectiveness. It has been shown to slow glycation damage.

Paula Begoun, the Cosmetics Cop, says that peptides can’t be proven or disproven as topical applications because they aren’t absorbed enough into the skin.  The bottom line is that it appears that using them won’t hurt your skin, and a unproven possibility that they do help.  Having peptides as the main ingredient of a product, however, isn’t reason enough to buy it.

More information on peptides can be found on these sites:

• WrinkleReview.com
• TheDermBlog.com

Let’s get the snorts and guffaws over with: Cosmetic tattooing, or micro-pigmentation, does involve someone sticking inked needles into your face. And, in the spirit of full disclosure, this will be a pro-permanent makeup article.  I immediately went home and had it done.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

The process has many names, but it is the same technique that produced pin-up girls on the forearms of WWII veterans, skulls on the biceps of bikers, and little butterflies on the shoulder of your underage daughter – electric needles are used to inject permanent dye into the skin.  Cosmetic tattooing is used to help with reconstructive surgery, simulate facial hair lost through chemotherapy or alopecia, cover scars or, in my case, address laziness.  I like to wake up with makeup.

Micro-pigmentation uses extremely small pigment granules for coloring on the face or other sensitive areas of the body, because it is for esthetic enhancement rather than art.  Estheticians apply permanent eyeliner, lip liner and full lip color, eyebrow enhancement, beauty marks, areola recreation, as well as scar camouflage.  The dyes used for makeup are different than the ones used for a Grateful Dead logo and the procedure is relatively quick and mostly painless. Depending on the size of the area, it takes around 40 minutes to an hour, and two sessions are needed with a couple weeks in between treatments.  There is mild discomfort, but most specialists use a topical anesthetic to numb the skin.  The cost varies – anywhere from $300-$500 for eyebrows, up to $2,000 for areola work and it is likely that the work will fade after a few years, especially if you spend a lot of time in the sun.

The bad news is that while there are lots of different colors and pigments, “none, including the hair dye henna, are actually approved by the FDA for skin injection,” says WebMD.com.  Risks include infections, inadequate sterilization of the needles, allergic reactions, scarring, and bleeding of the dye into surrounding skin.  The American Association of Blood Banks requires a one-year wait between getting a tattoo and donating blood because of the risk of hepatitis or HIV contamination.  Most states now heavily regulate and inspect tattoo parlors, but consumers should be sure to do their research, check references and above all, make sure the environment is clean.

Having said all that, the results can be fabulous (I told you this was a PRO article.) Tattooed eyebrows, when done correctly, are indistinguishable from real ones.  Faded lips have new color and scars disappear.  I have worn thin eyeliner since I was 12 years old, but sight problems were making it more and more difficult to apply well.  Two sessions and two years later I have positively no complaints and awaken, like the women on my trip, suspiciously well made up.  Now if I could just tattoo out the wrinkles…

Week of July 26 – August 1, 2010

• Avon Board Sued by Shareholders

Earlier this year, four executives from Avon in China were suspended as a result of a bribery scandal involving the president, chief financial officer, a government affairs executive at its China unit, and a senior executive in New York who was Avon’s head of internal audit until the middle of last year.  Now, as the investigation costs mount upwards of $65 million, the County of York Retirement Plan, a shareholder of Avon, is suing the Board of Directors “claiming they failed to prevent improper payments in China,” reports Bloomberg Business Week and other sources.  The lawsuit alleges that Avon’s investigation is now looking at additional countries, not just China.  Ding, dong – Avon calling.

• Poll: How Much Is Beauty Worth at Work?

Unfortunately, a lot.  Newsweek polled corporate managers and the public about attitudes toward looks in the workplace and found that “in the current job market, paying attention to your looks isn’t just about vanity, it’s about economic survival, “ they report in last week’s edition.  “63 percent [of those polled] said being physically attractive is beneficial to men who are looking for work, and 72 percent said it was an advantage for women.”  It gets worse.  Managers also reported that they would hesitate hiring someone significantly overweight, even though about 75% of Americans are considered to be carrying too much poundage.  And the worst news:  “Eighty-four percent of managers said they believe some bosses would hesitate before hiring a qualified job candidate who looked much older than his or her co-workers.”  So on those days you feel tired and bloated, just don’t go to work.  It could affect your career.

• The First Mobile Perfume Recommendation Tool

Will the app’s never cease?  Fragrance experts at Givaudan have designed an iPhone application to help consumers navigate the perfume market, and it is free from the Apple App Store.  Once a personal profile is created in the iPerfumer, it can be used to pick out a person’s “best-suited perfumes.”  Multiple profiles can be created for friends and family, to aid gift giving.  The application also tells you how popular brands are.  “Unlike other perfume selection tools, iPerfumer does not rely purely on olfactive categorization to make recommendations; its’ suggestions are based on an algorithmic calculation derived from the individual user and the fragrance preferences of the iPerfumer user community.”  Wow.  Now our phones are going to tell us how to drive AND smell.

Have a great weekend, and don’t let your cell boss you around.

The Wieden & Kennedy creative campaign has been a wild success, with a series of ads promoting “the perfect man.”  The handsome, buff, naked-from-the-waist-up Mustafa addresses his rapid-fire Barry White dialogue to women: “Hello ladies, how are you?  Fantastic. Does your man look like me? No! Can he smell like me? Yes! Should he use Old Spice Body Wash? I don’t know – do you like the smell of adventure?  Do you want a man who smells like he can bake a gourmet cake in the dream kitchen he built for you with his own hands? Of course you do…” and then it goes on.  Mustafa moves from a beach to a kitchen to the woods where he dives off a waterfall into a hottub that falls away to show him sitting on a motorcycle.  Another commercial has him moving seamlessly from the shower to a boat to sitting on a horse, with costume and prop changes dropping in – all the while telling the ladies that since we can’t have him, we should encourage our men to at least smell like him.

The social media strategy is nothing short of brilliant.  The Old Spice man posts video answers to selected questions on Facebook and answers Twitter messages on YouTube.  One video shows him standing outside the shower, hands on hips, reciting his 140 character response to @wspencer:  “Am typing while running from stampede of scantily-clad female admirers who appeared after trying #oldspice. Is there an antidote?” Another has him apologizing that he can’t answer everyone who writes because “after all, I am just one ridiculously handsome man.”  On Facebook, he has agreed (in theory) to adopting someone and gives advice about facial hair.

This new cult status, however, does not seem to be the reason for an uptick in Old Spice sales.  In fact, year-to-date figures, compared to other men’s personal care products who don’t own ‘the perfect man’ are flat as the arches in my feet.  Advertising Age reports that several men’s products – sibling brand Gillette, Beierdorf’s Nivea,  Dove and Axe, have made the same, if not better gains over the last few months, giving away high-value coupons and through unremarkable advertising. “Consider the four weeks ended June 13, possibly the best month ever for P&G body wash. Old Spice’s sales were up 106% from the prior-year period, jumping 4.8 share points in a category that grew 17.7%. But sales of Gillette body wash, also backed by buy-one-get-one-free coupons and by TV ads (but not Mr. Mustafa), were up a lot more, 277% and 3.9 share points, though it’s by far a smaller brand in the category,“ reports the trade magazine.

Men’s personal care products are on the rise, but whether or not Mustafa is selling more Old Spice is a mystery.  What is not a mystery is that women LOVE him.  The former wide receiver may have had a hard time landing in a permanent football franchise after gigs with the Seattle Seahawks, the Tennessee Titans, Oakland Raiders, Cleveland Browns and finally Barcelona for the NFL Europe, but this guy is a keeper in Hollywood and has put Old Spice back on the shelves.

But watch out – OHDOCTAH has launched a counter-ad for Dove, based on the theory that “ladies don’t like sleeping on bricks…they like more cushion” and therefore will go with a guy built like a Sumo wrestler who uses Dove Body Wash.

This whole advertising campaign is the best entertainment this summer has to offer.