Image courtesy of IMAXTREE.com

How to get over your beauty shame-spiral when the embarrassment of mangy feet, beastly brows or lizard-skin keep you from booking a spa appointment.

It’s Saturday morning and I feel disheveled, anxious and embarrassed as I race into the Village Wellness Spa. Walking in the front door I’m instantly met with the steely glare of my no-nonsense esthetician, Polina.

“You are late,” she chirps before turning on her heel and trotting to the treatment room. I follow her feeling the same dread I get before a dentist appointment. My anxiety this time however isn’t because I haven’t flossed. No, what I am carrying around is far worse; I’ve a case of beauty-guilty.

It has been almost three months since my last spa visit—which has given me a host of disasters including feet that look like they belong in Lord of the Rings—and my poor maintenance-routine has caused me to tumble into a beauty-shame spiral.

To learn my beauty-shame confession, read on…

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YSL Paris Nuit de Fete Eau de Toilette

One of the undeniable perks of having PVR is the ability to pause live television at will. A carefully timed screen shot of this week’s Bachelorette episode allowed us to play beauty-detective and sleuth out what scent Emily Maynard wears to seduce her suitors.

Launched in 2007, YSL Paris Nuit de Fete Eau de Toilette Spray is a floral blend that centers around the rose (seriously, we wonder if the producers picked the scent for her). With top notes of of violet, bergamot and orange blossom and a a sultry base of sandalwood and vetiver this perfume reminds of caramelized rose treats from Ladurée.

For more fruity and floral summer fragrance selects, click here.

Deborah Hay as Beatrice and Ben Carlson as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. Courtesy of Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

There’s truth to the testy, inflamed love that defines one of Shakespeare’s wittiest couples—Beatrice and Benedick in the bard’s beloved rom-com Much Ado About Nothing. Just ask the real-life married couple, Canadian actors Ben Carlson and Deborah Hay, who star as feuding lovers in the Stratford Shakespeare Festival production, which opened its 60th anniversary season Monday night.

“We bicker in a different way,” says Hay, laughing, about the onstage pair’s “merry war” of wits. “We’re not using our jobs as a form of therapy!”

Set in steamy Brazil at the turn of the 20th century—a believable stretch from the likewise hot-blooded Sicilians Shakespeare originally created— the sparring mates are tricked into falling for one another in fatefully Shakespearean fashion. Read the rest of this entry

As pre-summer excitement rises (along with the temperature, hurrah!), I think it’s time for a little “what to switch up in your makeup bag” information. I know, I know, magazine editors are always telling you to give your beauty routine an overhaul every season and it can seem a little excessive — not to mention expensive. Plus, certain products are so beloved they fall into the “monogamous makeup” category. (Looking at you, Lancôme Definicils mascara). However as the weather gets warmer, I’ve made product tweaks in order to keep my makeup, skin and hair in the boss-like condition I require. Here’s what I’ve got in frequent rotation right now.

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Our Episode 7 recap of GIRLS.

The best party ever. Whenever that phrase is uttered, the speaker is in for a rude awakening. In this week’s episode, the girls head to a Bushwick warehouse party and commit four individual foibles that we all can learn from in our own pursuit of the ultimate good time.

1)  JESSA: Do not invite randoms.

Jessa wears ridiculous feathers, is late for parties and doesn’t store anyone’s number in her phone. Two of these things are pretty cool (her look was on the amazing side and being late is still fashionable), but one is foolish. If you don’t know who the text is from, it is best not to invite them to join you. Once they do,  they’re your responsibility.

This is Jessa’s cross to bear when she gets a text from a number she doesn’t recognize and invites the mystery person to the party. Surprise Jessa! It’s your boss, the father of the two little girls you look after, who has decided to do something about all that flirting and bring a bottle of white wine to a warehouse party.

His wife is out of town with their kids, and he decides to jump feet first into his midlife crisis. Jessa enjoys the attention, and invites him to dance. She drops his bottle of wine off a walkway, smashing it on two “crusty” punks, mouthing off to them and running away, giving him a taste of the youthful exuberance he is desperate for.

The fun doesn’t last long. The punks find them on the dance floor and kick his middle-aged ass, sending him (and Jessa) to the emergency room for a late-night patch up. In the harsh fluorescent light, their rendezvous becomes tragic. He cries, Jessa pats his head, and any sexual tension they had is gone– on her end at least. He still invites her home with him, and calls her a tease when she passes. Time to start saving numbers, Jessa?

2)  MARNIE: Do not share your sad story.

Marnie sees herself as the most mature member of her group of friends, but when it comes to her breakup, she’s proven herself to be the opposite. Formerly sad sack Charlie is playing with his band at the party—this band has expanded with multiple players and instruments, and seems from the crowd’s reaction not to suck. Marnie, despite having ripped his heart out with a mid-sex breakup only weeks before, can’t resist saying hi. When he says it’s nice to see her face, she responds with a self-centered “I thought it would be.”

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A photograph from Into the Depths by Meaghan Ogilvie, which is featured in our June 2012 issue. All photos by Meaghan Ogilvie.

Meaghan Ogilvie is an award-winning Toronto photographer best known for her lovely underwater tableaux such as “Ascension” (above), which illustrates the “Water World” feature in the June 2012 issue of ELLE Canada.

Our associate art director Elena Viltovkaia chatted with Meaghan about creativity, inspiration and the thrill of rolling in the deep.

What inspired you to start taking pictures? 

My initial inspiration came from sitting in my grandparent’s basement flipping through old National Geographic magazines in the ’80. My family didn’t have a lot of money, so vacations were non-existent. I’ve always been at my happiest around animals and nature. I promised myself that one day I would go on adventures to explore and document and then share my experiences to inspire others to do the same.

I also used the camera as a means to express myself because I was so shy growing up. I hated being shy, but I feel very grateful for that experience now. It definitely made me more sensitive and intuitive.

What drives your creative process? 

The need to constantly learn, explore and evolve.

What are you inspired by?

Anything from a song, a smell, an intimate exchange between people, nature, animals, a movie, something challenging, something violent, something gentle, something sad.

What are the main themes of your work?

Bringing awareness to issues I believe are worth fighting for by using the human form to communicate experiences. My underwater work, for example, was inspired by seeing the effects of my father’s degenerative neurological disorder Multiple Systems Atrophy (MSA). The disease rapidly shuts down all motor skills and is similar to Parkinson’s, but progresses more quickly. The cause of MSA is unknown and currently there is no cure. It was a very difficult time and I was inspired to create images that celebrated freedom of mobility and weightlessness rather than focus on the negative effects of the disease.

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Image courtesy of M.A.C Cosmetics

The directional beauty looks of Ruffian have had people taking over the blogosphere—and, more recently, jamming Twitter feeds—since Brian Wolk and Claude Morais, the brand’s New York-based design duo, first paired up in 2004. “Beauty is essential to realizing our vision,” says Wolk, when we meet at Toronto’s Ritz-Carlton for the debut of their fall/winter collection. “The right makeup and nails are what finish the look,” adds Morais.

The secret to the models’ half-moon “Ruffian manicures,” however, isn’t a team of backstage nail-art elves. (I know; I was disappointed too.) “Obviously we can’t do 30 manicures backstage, so we use appliqués,” explains Morais. After the show, the designers caught models leaving with the nail appliqués they had worn on the runway. “Girls were sneaking away with them still on,” says Morais. “We knew we had something.” The stroke of genius to which he is referring is their new limited-edition collaboration—which includes three sets of faux nails and three coordinating lipstick shades—with M.A.C Cosmetics.

The designers’ passion for intricate manicures is contagious. “They’re like spectator shoes for nails!” enthuses Wolk, as he applies a prepster appliqué to my finger. But, he warns, steer clear of the “dirty words ‘press-on.’” “Stick-on nails can be tacky, but these won’t pop off when you’re digging in your purse,” says Morais. “These are a luxury accessory.”

Scott Schuman, The Sartorialist. Photo courtesy of Christopher Peterson.

Another day, another designer saying crazy things. This time, it’s Pucci’s Peter Dundas, who told Harper’s Bazaar that he commutes from Paris to Florence every day by air (which takes an hour and a half). “I own 20 to 25 pieces of taxidermy; between whole deers, boar heads, croc heads, plus the birds there are quite a few. I also collect insects. A lot of the animals have been relinquished to the basement.” Cue PETA and climate change protesters in 3…2…1… [The Cut]

In news that surprises absolutely no one, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention report that the flesh-eating carp used in fish pedicures—where fishies eat the dead skin on your feet—could spread infections like HIV and Hepatitis C. Anyone else think it’s totally plausible that a zombie apocalypse could be sparked by fish? [Ecouterre]

Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist fame—you know, the guy who once told the Globe and Mail that he’s “good at the sex”—gave another revealing interview to GQ, and he didn’t hold back. Remember when Dolce & Gabbana put bloggers in the front row, on their own little podiums, with laptops? “They got a humongous amount of press,” Schuman fumes. “Look we brought the bloggers in and gave them the front row. Look at the dancing-monkey bloggers! I could barely bring myself to sit down….Like, Oh, look at the cute bloggers! Isn’t that cute! Are they playing Angry Birds? When you’ve got Ron Frasch behind you going, “I spent two f—ing million dollars on D&G’s last collection, and I’m sitting here? For these little schmucks?” [GQ]

More style scoop after the jump!

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In the fall of 1987, I had the chance to spend 10 days in Iran. I was traveling overland from London to Kathmandu and it was one of the countries along my route. The war with Iraq was still on—as evidenced by the green entrails from the scud missiles that lit up the evening sky—but I was naively unafraid. I also was surprisingly unfazed when I learned I had to be covered from head-to-toe during my time in the country so that I wasn’t violation of the conservative Islamic dress codes set for women.

I remember buying yards of black cloth in a Turkish market days before I planned to enter Iran. I cut a hole in the center of the cloth to create a makeshift cloak and used the remainder of the material to fashion a headscarf to cover my hair.  I looked completely ridiculous—even the gaggle of chador-clothed Iranian women would quietly giggle and point to me on the street. But without exception, the people I met during my short time in Iran were kind, gracious and curious. They wanted to share with me what was happening in their country; in particular how it had changed so dramatically under Ayatollah Khomeini’s rule. Rights and freedoms as well as intellectual and cultural pursuits had been severely curtailed and they wanted me to understand that it hadn’t always been that way.

It was such a profound life lesson for a young Canadian girl who hadn’t experienced any of these kinds of indignities and persecutions. Since that time, I have always followed developments in Iran with a more profound interest. With that in mind, it was an honour to be able to publish Susan McClelland’s piece on Nazanin Afshin-Jam in our June issue. She and Afshin-Jam—a noted human rights activist—were on hand this week at Indigo books in Toronto for the launch of their book, The Tale of Two Nazanins.

The book recounts how Afshin-Jam— the daughter of Iranian dissidents—grew up to become a Miss World pageant contestant, recording artist and noted women’s rights crusader. She told the crowd at Indigo’s Bloor Street store that she had always been interested in alleviating the suffering of others—even as a young girl—but that her life took on a different direction the day she received an email about a 17-year-old Kurdish girl named Nazanin Fatehi who was facing execution in Iran because she had stabbed a man who had tried to rape her. “No one else was trying to do anything to help her, so I thought why not me?” she said.

The book recounts how she launched an international campaign that eventually secured Fatehi’s release in 2007. Sadly, Fatehi and her family disappeared in 2010 and Afshin-Jam fears for the worst. She continues to lobby on behalf of other children with her Foundation, stopchildexecutions.com and is creating a charity entitled United People of Iran to support efforts to empower Iranians to see freedom and democracy. When asked what she wanted to accomplish with the book, Afshin-Jam said that she hoped it would inspire others to find causes they care about and to get involved. “I think in our culture we tend to look for heroes to save us, but each of us has the power to make change.”

What are some of the issues you care most about? How does that concern translate into action? Please share your stories with our readers.

Thomas Wolfe said, “You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood.” In this episode of GIRLS, Hannah discovers that she definitely can’t—although when things get tough in the big city, she gives it a try. She is jobless again and Marnie is anxious about rent, so it’s perfect timing to have a reason to go home for the weekend – her parents’ 30th  anniversary. She is seeking financial assistance and reassurance that moving to New York was the right call. She gets one of the two.

Here are four reasons that Hannah can’t go home again:

1. Her sex life

Hannah has taken some hits in the romance department of late—finding out her ex is gay, discovering that her crush Adam gave her HPV, and that while she believed they were a couple, he believed they’d ended things.  It’s no surprise then, that during her weekend at home, when the co-owner of a pharmacy asks her out she’s eager to have a normal date with a normal guy, or as she puts it:

“I have been dating someone who treats my heart like it’s monkey meat. I feel like a delusional, invisible person half the time, so I need to learn what it’s like to be treated well before it’s too late for me.”

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