“Now that’s what I call buttery!”
Those are the words my precocious 9-year-old son uttered enthusiastically when he glided his finger over the smooth surface of the new NIVEA Vanilla & Macadamia Kiss Lip Butter ($3.99 at most food, drug, and mass market retailers).
Every October, L’Occitane reveals a new limited edition collection of shea butter products with distinctive packaging meant to conjure up excitement for the holiday season, lure in long-time fans of the brand’s shea range (like yours truly, who has been known to carry a 100ml tin of shea butter in her always bulging handbag), and attract new and hopefully soon-to-be-undyingly-loyal customers.
Last time I visited Puerto Rico, my stepmom led me to one of the hedged shrubs in front of the house she’s been sharing with my dad for over a decade now and, dipping her hand into the thicket of leaves, plucked out this gorgeous white blossom and said, “Mira, una gardenia.” I caressed the velvety soft, yellowish white petals and, enthralled, leaned in to smell the tropical blossom, letting the sweet, feminine fragrance fill my nostrils.
It used to be that women obsessed primarily about acne, cellulite, and tiny lines and wrinkles — laugh lines, crow’s feet, those two vertical lines between the eyebrows that are colloquially dubbed “the elevens,” and so forth.
We’ve all tried our fair share of face masks — paper ones, mud-based formulas, peel-off types, brightening and exfoliating sorts, and so forth — but have you ever heard of a lip mask?
Until recently, the last time I used ChapStick, I was riding shotgun in my dad’s El Camino (which was the color of chewed-up grape bubblegum), wearing the hideous Smurfs-colored plaid skirt, matching vest, and white button-down shirt required by my Catholic middle school’s uniform code.
Close your eyes and picture a pair of tweezers.
Save for some folks with legitimate forms of albinism, I may just be the palest Puerto Rican girl ever — and I get teased rather relentlessly for it (during a recent visit to PR, my father actually compared my skin tone to the color of a white styrofoam cooler).
You know that cooling sensation you feel as you slather on an aloe-based formula on sunburnt skin?
Last year, I rounded up some of the most popular BB Creams in the market and broke down the benefits and disadvantages of each but, since then, even more brands have jumped on the BB bandwagon, with Wei, Lancôme, Ole Henriksen, Origins, and Too Faced among them.
