Amanda's Beauty Salon

I am not a high-maintenance lady. If leggings and oversized sweatshirts were appropriate office attire, I would toss every pair of slacks I own and buy stock in Old Navy in anticipation of the excessive amount of yoga pants I planned to purchase. I am most happy on my couch, fuzzy socks and a fleece blanket in tow, taking in the latest episode of the clusterfuck that is the Bachelor.

That said, I do enjoy hitting the town every once in a while and have a strong love for all things cosmetology. I've taken to not wearing makeup or doing much with my hair during the week--mainly because there's not a single male in my graduate program worth the extra half hour in the morning--but when I have free time and practice my skillz (once a year) or when I'm heading out, these are the rules I live and die by. 

1. Moisturize/prime your face and lids. 

Moisturizer isn't just for dry skin, people. Even oily skin (like mine) needs something a little extra to help maintain the right kind of moisture, especially in the top layer of skin. That moisture naturally helps protect your skin from the elements. Nowadays, many moisturizers come with a light SPF for added protection. Dry skin also wrinkles faster. As for primer, I can't say enough about the difference it makes. Picture a stucco wall. If you were to paint over the stucco, you would see differentiation in color, shadows and bumps. Primer serves as somewhat of a smoother. It adheres to your skin, filling in the microscopic cracks between pores, laugh lines, dimples etc. and makes your face a smooth, even canvas. It also gives your makeup something to stick to, so sweating or blinking won't leave you with streaky foundation or weird eye-makeup creases.

2. Don't sleep on wet hair. 

Unless you're going for the grungy, tousled, morning-after look or plan on flat ironing it pin-straight, dry your hair within an hour of showering. Aside from the fact that it feels disgusting to sleep on (and leaves you with a damp pillow), letting your hair air-dry for too long eliminates a lot of the body you are most likely seeking. I do not have the patience to heat up a hot pocket let alone stand at the mirror and dry each individual strand of hair the way the ladies do at the salon, but I am very picky about making sure my roots and bangs are dry 100% before styling.  The easiest laziest way to do this is to flip your head over and dry all of your hair and once, un-flip and use a round brush to style your bangs/front pieces. Fun fact: the pieces of your hair in the front will always be the most damaged (most exposure to sun/most likely to be touched/most styled/heat applied) and in turn will be the quickest to dry. Unless you're planning on rockin' a poof or a high pony, dry your bangs/front pieces as soon as you've towel-dried your mane. 

3. Change up your part. 

Bangs are like men, ladies; you gotta train 'em. Every hair follicle on your head has a direction it is comfortable going. If you recently got bangs after years of sporting a Kardashian-inspired center-part, chances are your hair is about to have a first-class freakout. Bangs need to be "trained" to go in a certain direction. Once hair is dry, it is much harder to force it out of its comfort zone. Part your hair how you want it as soon as you get out of the shower and pin bangs to the side. I tend to use several bobby pins; I'll place one right at the root, one in the middle and one to secure the whole strand by your ear. Let it air dry a bit, then take the dryer and go to town on your part with the bobby pins still in place. It won't happen overnight, but if you do it regularly, your bangs will eventually cooperate. Fun fact: just like your hair gets accustomed to shampoos and conditioners, your scalp gets accustomed to where your hair parts itself. If you move from a center-part to a side-part of vice versa, your hair will have tremendous volume. Trust me. 

4. Highlight and contour.

Eyes are attracted to light. Simple as pie. If you're trying to attract the eye to a point on your face, add something lighter than your foundation to it. If you're trying to give something an edge or downplay it, give it a little bronzer. For example, if you apply a dark line vertically on either side of your nose (Bronzer works. Sometimes I even use an eyeliner pencil, but blend it, of course.), the eye is drawn to the lighter strip between the lines, making your nose look smaller or straighter if you have a high bridge or have--like me--had your face smashed in while water tubing. Adding a little bronzer above your eyes where the outer corners of your eyebrows meet your hairline will make your face shape seem skinnier. Anywhere you add contour, mainly under your cheekbones, add a little highlight above for more definition. 

5. Know what kind of eyes you have (and what kind you want). 

Eye makeup is the most difficult and most fun to do. It is like magic; you can make your eyes appear smaller or larger with a few strokes of liner, but you can also ruin your whole look if you don't do it right. Many a time have I left the house looking a hot-damn-mess after repeated application, removal, re-application and re-removal of eye makeup that just wasn't workin' out. First, know what you're working with. If you have smaller or almond-shaped eyes and are intending on making them appear rounded or larger, stick with a thin pencil liner for the bottom lashes. Too much blending or smudging will make the line on the bottom thicker, straighter and ultimately more block-like. Straight lines=smaller eyes. You want to focus on rounded strokes at the outer corners of the top and bottom lashes. This gives more of an open, circular look to your eye and will, from a distance, make your eye look larger and more open. Only line from the center of your pupil out towards your ear; if your tear ducts aren't lined, the insides of your eyes will be brighter and appear wider. If you have larger eyes and are looking to make them look a little smaller or make your bottom lash line appear less curved, use pencil or kohl liner on your waterlines. The starkness against the whites of your eyes will diminish the appearance of their size. Also, the thicker the smudge, the smaller your eye will appear. 

6. Use different mascara on your top and bottom lashes. 

Seriously. Your bottom lashes are shorter and thinner so they need different attention than your top lashes. I always use a defining or separating mascara on the bottom. They aren't really going to get a lot of volume or curl to them, so be using a mascara that separates, the lashes you do have down there will get mascara applied all over them. As for top lashes, I have recently started to hold my wand vertically and brush it along the tips of my lashes before applying in the traditional horizontal sweep. The curl of your lashes comes from the root, but most of what you see is the end of your lash. They need attention, too! 

7. Heat is your friend. 

I always do hair first makeup second, but never turn off my straightener, waver or curling wand when I'm finished. This is because the heat from these tools can prove very useful when doing your makeup. For example, heating your lash curler with a hair dryer is a fine art. If you apply the heat for too long, you are going to burn your eyelid because that metal lash curler eats heat for breakfast. However, if you stick your eyelash curler between the plates of your flat iron, the lash curler absorbs the heat much slower (because it isn't a forced heat) and is less likely to burn you. Sometimes, an eyeliner (especially those clickable ones) can be stubborn and nobody wants to tell a story later of how you went blind from putting too much pressure on an eyeliner pencil. Don't fret! Hold the pencil about an inch away from the heated hair tool of your choice and viola, the liner will glide across your eye like a figure skater. Test the liner on the back of your hand first, though. We don't need any burned retinas up in here. 

8. Don't use a curling iron. 

...At least not for regular curls. Traditional curling irons are a thing of the past. The barrel of an old school curling iron doesn't heat evenly, making your curls hotter in some places than others and less likely to stay. Also, those pesky clamps do more harm than good. God forbid you curl your hair in the wrong direction, you will have a kink in your hair that no straightener can undo. Try a curling wand instead. 99% of them are ceramic like a flat iron and distribute heat evenly and forcefully. I have extremely thick, corse hair and I only hold my hair in place on my wand for 5-10 seconds. You also can control what kind of curl you want. Do you want Shirley Temple curls? Probably hopefully not, but you can achieve them by wrapping the hair closely together around the barrel. If you want looser waves, leave lots of space between hair pieces when you wrap. Beachy waves can be achieved by wrapping your hair around an old school curling iron without opening the clamp. Just wrap your hair around the whole thing and run your fingers through when you're done. Boom. 

9. Teasing isn't necessarily a bad thing. 

Backcombing can give you serious volume. It can also give you serious hair damage, so do it sparingly. Part your hair in a semi-circle around your crown. Using a wiry round-brush or comb, hold hair away from your head in two-inch sections, spray the roots with hairspray and comb downwards towards your scalp. Start combing at your root and move upwards towards the ends of your strands. If you let go and it looks like the cover of There's Something About Mary, you, my friend, have succeeded. After you tease everything, flip your head back and start to smooth the pieces together with a regular paddle brush. Perfect for a summer evening or a night at a bar where your hair is likely to get flattened. 

10. Do not, under any circumstances, use lip liner. 

Self explanatory. 

The Friend Zone

Word on the street is that a close friendship between a guy and a girl is simply a predecessor for a relationship. I have found this to be true in my lifetime but not necessarily to be fact. For example, I just spent six amazing days with six amazing guys on vacation. All of them are attractive and wonderful in their own way, but the chance that any of them end up as the future Mr. Amanda Scarpa is slim. I know what you may be thinking: Are they all paraplegics with one eye and four teeth? To that I can give a solid no, and furthermore attest that all of them will make wonderful husbands one day. They just won't be mine.

Why is it that an overwhelming amount of people believe that a woman and a man cannot be platonic friends? I understand where the stigma comes from; there are many cases where a "friendship" is formed when one of the participants wants something more substantial but settles for friendship because it's better than nothing. In other cases, a friendship carries a sexual tension that is visible to anyone within twenty feet but never amounts to much more than an extended hug hello or goodbye. Maybe these tense situations are more prevalent, but there is that exceptional friendship that meerly consists of pajamas, junk food and tv watching.

I have several of these relationships in my life and I am extremely blessed to say so. Men offer a completely different perspective on life situations (usually less emotional, more concise versions) than women and are able to open my eyes to things that my estrogen may have been blocking. I know not to bring fashion questions or conversations about bodily fuctions to the man table (many of my guy friends still choose to believe that women don't/can't/won't poop), but when it comes to relationships, food and sports, guys have just as much to offer as women do.

So, we've learned that a male/female friendship can be extremely beneficial to all parties. Why, then, is it so impossible for some people to recognize that when we say we're going to watch a movie, we legitimatelly are going to watch the movie? My closest guy friend and I do lots of things together that could be considered couple-y because we're not in relationships. I hear it all the time from my friends: "You guys spend so much time together. I won't be surprised a year from now when you're engaged." Sorry to throw your wedding bells overboard, but we enjoy each others' company in a strictly separate-beds capacity. It bothers me that if my roommate and I snuggle and watch a movie it's viewed as cute but if a guy friend and I do it it's viewed as something more.

These thoughts about the double standard of opposite-sex friendship got me to thinking: are we only "friends" with people of the opposite sex who we don't find attractive? Depending on how close of a friendship you have, sometimes the only thing missing from making it into a full-fledged relationship is the physical component. Does that mean that all of my guy friends gross me out? Again, I give a firm no. I like to think that I have a pretty decent-looking group of friends; many are athletic, smart, funny and outgoing. But there's a huge difference between being able to acknowledge that someone is attractive and actually being attracted to them.

In summation, I'd like to say to people everywhere that men and woman can be friends without benefits and if you've never had a close friend of the opposite sex, you're missing out. Perhaps one day I'll have a close friend that turns into the cohost of my wedding, but for now I'm just happy to know that I'll have so many male friends cheering me on from the first pew.

Top Ten of 2011

So, 2011 has come to a close and the looming dreariness of January is close at hand. I'd like to take this opportunity to chronicle the last 12 months of my life with a top ten list of milestones. In preparing for this blog, I realized that some pretty important things happened to me this past year and that 2012 is likely to pale in comparison. Unless of course I finally meet Ryan Reynolds.

1. New Car- It ain't no Lexus, but my cute little Silver Pontiac Vibe makes me happy every day. As a crossover, it allows me to not feel like a mouse on the highway while still getting awesome gas mileage. In fact, it gets only two MPG less than my old car (The Corolla got 33 MPG on the highway). It has folding back seats for all my shit (or in most cases my friends' shit)and a regular three-prong outlet in the front seat for phone chargers, hair straighteners etc.

2. Movin' Out- September 5, 2011 marked the day I started referring to the house on Flourtown Ave. as "my mom's house". I now am the proud renter of an overpriced one-bedroom apartment in upstate New Jersey. Included in the rent is heat and hot water. Other amenities include horrendous parking and elephants upstairs.

3. Graduate School- With the economy in such great condition, the best move for me career-wise was to go back to school this fall. I was blessed enough to be offered full tuition at Montclair State University and now am pursuing a Masters degree in Counseling. This will be the next two years of my life, so it's a good thing that the school is so close to New York City where I might run into Kourtney Kardashian.

4. Taylor Swift- compared to moving out or graduate school, seeing Taylor Swift might seem like a silly "milestone" to include. Sadly, I think I was more excited the day her tickets came in the mail than the day I got the key to my apartment. Judge me. Go ahead. I have no fear of sharing my girl crush on T Dizzle and I'm including the concert in this list because it was one of te est days of 2011.

5. BFF Wedding- you know you're old when you have your own car, your own place and your college roommate is married. November 19, 2011 was my first time as a bridesmaid and an all-around awesome time. I am so happy for her and am so glad someone else is pioneering the ways of marriage and home ownership so she can show me the way in the year 2050!

6. Camp- on a whim, I decided to work at a sleep away camp in New Hampshire this summer. That whim ended up bringing me to some of the most wonderful people I have ever known. Looking forward to the summer of 2012 more and more every day.

7. Cruise- a Cosmo article last January highlighted a website that offered discount cruises booked less than a month before the departure date. In May, two of my friends and I ventured to South Carolina via road trip (never again) and then to the Bahamas by way of Carnival Cruise Lines. I snorkeled, drank out of a pineapple and fell in love (briefly) with the cruise director.

8. Quit the worst job I ever had- one of these days, I'll do a whole post about horrible jobs I've had, but for now let's just enjoy my most recent departure. The job itself was thankless and awkward, but the work environment was somehow worse. The blessing of this experience was meeting a girl who turned into my only reason for going to work every day. We've since both left and also led a mass exodus of 7-10 others who just couldn't handle it anymore. We planned to glitter bomb the place on our last day, but glitter is just too expensive.

9. Finally went to the south- Some girl I hardly know or like invited me to come visit her in New Orleans last May and I accepted to be polite. I've always wanted to go to the south and this was a perfect time to go and see what it was all about. Saw the landmarks, enjoyed a lazy river and of course ate my weight in Cajun spices.

10. OBX vacation- after nearly ten years of friendship, my high school crew and I finally orchestrated a successful trip that was father than our neighborhood Friendly's. We rented a gorgeous house in North Carolina and spent the week between Christmas and New Years eating, drinking, beaching and laughing. I am ready to sit in a room alone for at least 24 full hours, but after that I think I'm gonna wake up and really miss the sound of FIFA coming from the basement.

Sturdy Girls Unite!

Christmas is in less than a week and by some strange twist of fate, my longtime group of friends has finally managed to book an actual vacation for the time between Christmas and New Years. In preparation for the upcoming festivities (which includes two parties to celebrate Christmas and New Year's), I have been spending a lot of time searching for the perfect dresses to don on these occasions. Much of this shopping has been done online, so naturally the size chart from each site has been a frequent visitor to my desktop. 

For most of my adult life, I've been limited to the larges and extra larges on the dress rack due to the massive gift(s) mother nature gave me in the fifth grade. This is infuriating when my waist and hips coincide with the female average in this country, but I don't want to look like an overstuffed pepper and often make my way to the plus size or grandma section of the store. I would detest my upper half far less if companies took into account those of us who simply cannot squeeze into little triangle-top bathing suits or strapless mini dresses, but judging by my recent experience with the size charts of today, it seems I'll be doomed to the grandma section for eternity. 

The facts stand that most companies would rather have fewer customers walking around in their product-as long as they were size four or smaller-than have more business and expand their line to include sizes above a 10. High-end fashion moguls call it an "aesthetic choice" to not include larger sizes suggesting that anything larger than a 10 looks bad in the clothing. This concept of "larger", however, is something that is all relative to the population in question. 

Large: adjective. Of greater size than the ordinary, esp. with reference to a size of clothing or to the size of a packaged commodity.

If the average dress size of an American woman is a 14, doesn't than mean that these clothes are all extra small? It baffles me that the supply and demand is so inverted in this case. Here, businesses have a group of women (who seem to be the overwhelming majority due to recent obesity poll in the United States) who are ready and willing to spend money on clothing that fits and instead of making themselves more marketable and more profitable, they're deciding to limit their target audience to a small percentage of the population. News flash: sturdy girls have money, too. 

 In my case, finding dresses or tops is usually the issue, so when I find something that fits, I'll take six of them. That is until I check the price tag. Why on god's green earth is this flimsy piece of cotton with a sequin on it $75.00? It seems unfair that some women can find stylish, trendy outfits for next-to-nothing while others are reduced to dressing up a nice muumuu with a belt. Furthermore, while the fashion industry has made tremendous strides in at least recognizing average-looking women, the runways are still bamboozling viewers everywhere when they release their plus size collections. 

This is a plus-sized model. Right.

A few years back, Glamour did an editorial on plus size models and the shocking findings suggested that maybe these models weren't really all that "plus-sized" to begin with. One model (who wears a size 12, lower than the national average) admitted to wearing padding under her clothes in other to fill out the clothing when she's been booked for a plus size gig. Why are you booking someone who doesn't fit the clothes? It's one thing to tailor a shirt or pants but entirely something different to inflate someone to fit a dress two or three sizes larger! The reasoning? The booking editor at Glamour says that there aren't many plus size models available due to lack of employment opportunities for such models. 

So I say, to all the fashion entrepreneurs of our time, someone PLEASE be ballsy enough to make dresses to fit my chest or her hips or her ass that are affordable and cute. Is that too much to ask? You'll be surprised at the business you get, believe me.

The Personality Traits I Just Can't Handle

1.       Speaking quietly and or mumbling. I don’t mean in a library or when you’re trying to be discreet.  I mean in general. I’m sorry, WHAT DID YOU SAY? My dog-ears must not be working properly. Speak up for god’s sake. If the teacher calls on you, everyone is already silent waiting for your reply. You might as well make your response audible so she doesn’t have to ask you to repeat yourself nine times. Which leads me to…

2.       People who ask you a question you legitimately answered less than a minute ago. It’s fine when it happens once in a while or if you come into a conversation late. However, we all know those people who you’re talking to and their eyes are slowly drifting over your left shoulder and you know that you could quickly switch the conversation to that time you went to prison for killing a man over a sandwich and they wouldn’t even flinch. The most aggravating part is when they ask you something you just spent five minutes describing in detail. Worst of all is when they do it more than once in a conversation. At that point, I reserve my right to pivot on the spot and walk away from you.

3. People who know how to use their phones but don’t. That’s right, I’m getting personal with these, now. We all have them; those friends who are constantly on their phones playing games, reading emails and texting others yet can’t seem to respond to you when you text or call them. The excuses I’ve heard are incredible. Somehow I’ve never seen you without your phone in hand and yet miraculously when I text you, your phone has sprouted legs and walked away from you. Equally comical is the text you get the next morning saying, “Sorry, my phone died.” My response to that? I COULD HAVE DIED. Maybe I was texting you with my last ounce of energy after being hit by a car laying in the middle of 309 waiting for death. Usually, it’s just cause I wanted to make plans, but the above situation could happen.

4. When people transpose letters in words regularly. I admit, I may say a word wrong the first time I see it, but for the most part, I live my life by the “sound it out” rule. For example, Chipotle. I see that to the untrained eye this may look like chip-pot-tul or sheep-paw-tul but there is no excuse for saying chip-ol-tay. The T is on the other side of the L, people. CHIP-OLT-LAY.

5. Improper usage of their, there and they’re, to, two and too and it’s/its. Judge me if you dare, but I can almost hear my bff emitting a groan just reading the title because I know she shares my disgust for people who can’t distinguish the differences between these common words. Their: possessive. At their house. Easy to remember because there’s an “I” in it. Think I, me, my, possessive. There: direction or place. Over there. He got there around nine. They’re: contraction. That little mark isn’t chocolate from your fingers; it’s an apostrophe. It indicates that two words have now become one. Think of the apostrophe as a priest and the words are getting married. They + are. And they lived happily ever after.

6. People who think they look awesome but really they look awful. In no way am I suggesting I look put-together or sexy at all times but I can at least admit that when I try, I look decent. I know this because I am 100% aware of when I look a hot damn mess. If you can admit this to yourself, you must be open enough to acknowledge the times you do look awesome. Enter stage left: the chick who spent hours on herself and still looks a hot damn mess. She tried to look like that. She bought those pants with those holes or knew she was only buying half of a shirt. These types of ladies say they’re following a trend or trying to make a statement. Sorry, folks. If I’m wearing sweatpants, it’s not because I’m trying to make a statement. It’s because I’m trying to get my eat on at Friendly’s.

7. Selfishness. Self-explanatory.

8. When you’re never wrong. Being able to admit you’re wrong is hard to do, but admitting to being wrong doesn't make you weak, it makes you stronger. There are those people who will never say the words, “You’re right. I was wrong.” I have friends that won’t ever utter these words. Either they don’t see that they’re wrong (scary) or they just won’t admit it (scarier). If everyone in the room knows you’re wrong, who are you trying to fool, yourself?

9. People who can’t handle confrontation. Believe me, I hate it as much as the next gal, but being in a sorority taught me some valuable lessons about personality types and what to expect when fights break out. There’s always that person who just walks away. “I’m not dealing with this. You’re all bitches!” Then, there’s the mirror. “Oh, yeah? Well you blew me off last year so you suck, too!” Parents tend to be the worst at this. If they’re loosing a battle of words with their child, they’ll bring up some chore you didn’t do when you were 8 and throw it into the conversation like it’s relevant. “Well, yes, I did forget to clean my hamster’s cage that one time but what does that have to do with me taking the car?”