Permanently Beautiful

Red Lips on the Red Carpet

Naturally, the gowns were gorgeous, but what really stood out at Sunday’s Academy Awards telecast were the lush red lips many stars wore almost as an accessory. Best Actress winner Sandra Bullock gleamed almost as brightly as her Oscar statue in a stunning, form-fitting silver Marchesa gown with a beautifully embroidered bodice. With just a touch of jewelry at her ears and wrist, it was Sandra’s bright red lips that stole the show. Vera Farmiga matched her stunning lip color to the brilliant magenta silk crepe pleats that cascaded in lush curves down her strapless Marchesa column gown. Charlize Theron garnered a lot of attention with a unique deep amethyst Dior gown that featured hug pink satin rosettes placed directly over her breasts. Her beautiful deep red lip color did bring attention back to her face, but only briefly.

Deep, bright red lip color calls attention to your face and is the hot new look for spring and summer. Unfortunately, deep lip shades can be out of place in the workplace. Women who wear permanent makeup can enjoy the best of both worlds. They can have their lips colored the perfect shade of neutral pink or beige to match their skin tone for everyday wear and enhance their lips with a deeper shade of lip color for evening affairs. Permanent lip color doesn’t exclude you from wearing lipstick when you feel like a change. Simply apply lipstick or gloss directly over your permanent lip color.

Get a second look with Permanent Cosmetics for Men.

It’s all over in 15 to 20 seconds. That’s all the time guys have to make that all important first impression when they meet a woman. At least that’s the view of the authors of a fun and fascinating new book that will be in bookstores later this month. In Undateable: 311 Things Guys Do That Guarantee They Won’t Be Dating or Having Sex, authors Ellen Rakieten and Anne Coyle provide a hilarious field guide to male dating faux pas. Cringe-worthy wardrobe malfunctions, disastrous relationship-tanking behavior, unfortunate male mood-breakers and a host of other dating red flags are come under scrutiny. Sure, the book subjects male dating behavior to some hilarious ridicule, but it also provides thoughtful insight into the female mind and practical recommendations for getting past those first 20 make-or-break seconds successfully.

While Undateable focuses largely on fashion and behavior faux pas, it’s a person’s face that first captures attention and is the focal point of a large portion of those critical first 20 seconds when men and women meet. Permanent cosmetics for men can ensure that you make the most of each critical first encounter. Permanent cosmetics for men can camouflage unsightly facial scars and correct pigment problems, create a more symmetrical lip line and create fuller, more commanding eyebrows. Visit our Permanent Makeup for Men website to find out more. The clock is ticking!

Self-adjusting makeup is the latest buzz in fashion mags and at makeup counters. Makeup manufacturers from inexpensive Cover Girl and Almay to upscale Dior and Lancome have been debuting a variety of makeup products that seem to promise a highly personalized makeup experience by precisely matching the individual color of the wearer’s skin. Touted as a chemical break-through in the highly competitive world of commercial cosmetics, the hype is that these cutting-edge foundations, concealors and blushers are formulated with specialized shade-sensing agents that, ads claim, allow the makeup to almost magically mimic the color of your skin.

The commercial cosmetics industry has long sought ways to personalize its products. Gimmicks have come and gone. From simple color charts to intricate multi-choice wheels through quirky sliding gizmos, the makeup industry has tried any number of color-coded, number-matching, skin tone-identifying gimmicks to try to create a personal experience from mass marketed products produced for the largest number of users. This latest trick may be fun and some of the cosmetics do turn a pleasing color on the skin, but no mass-produced product will ever be truly personalized to the unique makeup requirements of a specific individual.

If you desire a truly personalized makeup experience, distinctively mixed and artistically applied permanent cosmetics will give you the perfect makeup colors and lines you desire to showcase and enhance your uniquely personal beauty.

Jen's Natural Look

Jennifer Aniston worked her way into American hearts as Rachel on Friends and never left. She’s the proverbial “girl next door,” fresh and wholesome looking. Jennifer uses a few special makeup tricks to create her very natural look. She may look like she’s not wearing makeup, but it’s a light hand and adept application that give Jen the natural appearance admired by so many.

How does she do it? Jen only applies eyeliner to her top eyelid, usually leaving the bottom lid naked or applying only a faint, thin stroke of liner to the bottom lid. To enhance her natural look, Jennifer chooses eyeliners in pale grays and light browns. She counts on a medium coating of mascara on both top and bottom lashes to make her eyes pop. To enhance her eyes, Jennifer favors barely there, lightly applied eye shadow in pale grays, beiges, pinks and lavenders. Jen sticks to natural looking lip colors in light brown, peach or pink. Her trick is to color her lips just slightly darker than their natural color.

Permanent makeup can give you Jennifer Aniston’s natural look 24 hours a day without tedious time in front of the mirror. You can have permanent eyeliner in a natural shade tattooed on just your upper lid or add a barely there line to your lower lid. Permanent eye shadow can enhance your eyes with natural beauty 24/7 and it never cakes or creases. Your lips will always look naturally beautiful with permanent lip color. Permanent makeup is the ultimate natural look!

Want to see how you’d look with Twilight smoky eyes or neon blue Alice in Wonderland shadow? There’s an app for that! Want to learn how to create zigzag hair or add hair extensions? There’s an app for that! Want to know what this season’s hottest “must have” fashion is going to be? There’s an app for that!

Apps are revolutionizing the way we live. Apple led the way with apps for its iconic iPhone, recently broadening the app market by making its iPod Touch app friendly. Other smartphone makers have entered the fray with their own app stores. Savvy app designers have created universal apps that can work on both Apple and Microsoft-based systems. Apps are not only fun to use; they take the effort out of so many of life’s little chores. It’s no wonder that the beauty and fashion industries have begun embracing apps.

Apps make it possible to try on new looks from makeup to hairstyles to fashion accessories right on your smartphone. Sure you can do these things on the Internet, but now you can experiment with new looks while you’re on the go. Makeup apps can help you see how you’d look with permanent cosmetics. Try out different eyebrow arches, redefine the shape of your lips, experiment with thick or thin eyeliner or find the perfect lip shade. Save your “look” and an expert permanent cosmetics artist like Melany Whitney can create and even improve upon the perfection you seek.

It is politically correct today to recognize the inner beauty in each individual and eschew outward appearance as a measure of a person’s worth. But scientific studies have repeatedly shown that human beings are hard-wired to respond more positively to beauty. Beauty seems to be as much a survival skill as intelligence or strength. We trust and value attractive people. It is no accident that successful politicians, movie stars, television personalities and business leaders seem more attractive than the average Joe or Jill on the street.

In her 1999 groundbreaking book, Survival of the Prettiest, Harvard Medical School psychologist Nancy Etcoff applied the nature vs. nurture argument to the issue of physical beauty. What Etcoff discovered is that, despite our intellectual desire to peer beneath the surface, in practice we do judge people by their appearance — and beauty tips the scales in an individual’s favor every time. Etcoff found that beautiful people hold better jobs, are paid more, are promoted more often and seem to find an easier path to success. We may wish it were different, but the reality is that life is easier for beautiful people.

Some individuals are blessed with naturally beautiful features. The rest of us must rely on makeup, fashion and personal style to enhance our features. Fortunately, artistically applied permanent cosmetics can permanently enhance your best features while correcting small flaws that may detract from our appearance. When expertly applied by renowned permanent makeup artist Melany Whitney, permanent cosmetics can create a stunning, more beautiful you, ultimately enriching your appearance and your life.

Looking good has been important ever since humans first started walking upright. British archeologists recently discovered that Neanderthals, our hairy early forbearers, wore makeup 50,000 years ago. Makeup has played an important role in how humans define personal beauty ever since. Neanderthals may have used berry juices and natural clays to beautify their features. Ancient Egyptians are recognized as the first to create and use cosmetics extensively more than 6000 years ago. They mixed pulverized copper and lead ores with charred almonds and soot into pastes that they applied to lips and around eyes. Ancient Romans so valued cosmetics they created a specialized slave caste, the Cosmetae, devoted exclusively to the production of cosmetics.

More than 5000 years ago, ancient Chinese mixed gelatin, beeswax, egg and tree sap into the first nail polishes. Different colors were worn by different social castes with gold and red reserved for royals. Japanese geishas fashioned “lipsticks” from crushed flower petals and sticks of wax and used rice powder to whiten their faces. During the European Renaissance, light-colored skin was associated with the leisure lifestyle of aristocrats. Both women and men used powder to lighten their skin and appear more aristocratic. Even practical American colonial women used burnt matches to line and darken their eyes.

The use of makeup as a beauty enhancement has a long and storied history. Permanent makeup is the newest incarnation of personal enhancement, the most modern way to achieve the most beautiful YOU!

In good news for breast cancer survivors, a new survey of women who underwent paramedical tattooing to create nipple-areolas as part of breast reconstruction surgery after mastectomy found a high rate of long-term patient satisfaction. Published in the Annals of Plastic Surgery, the report demonstrates acceptance by both the medical community and breast cancer patients of nipple-areola tattooing as a viable alternative to additional surgery in breast reconstruction.

Six years following paramedical tattooing, fully 84% of the women surveyed continued to rate their nipple-areola tattoo as satisfactorily pleasing in appearance; and 86% of patients agreed they would again choose a nipple-areola tattoo over other possible breast reconstruction options. Two to six years post surgery, more than half of the women (57%) surveyed reported that their nipple-areola tattoo still looked like a normal areola. Fewer than 3% reported problems with rash or infection post-procedure.

While 60% of tattoos in the study were marginally lighter in coloration than the natural areola, only 10% required any touching up to correct for excessive fading. Expert paramedical tattoo artist Melany Whitney has developed a procedure that minimizes potential fading of nipple-areola tattoos. By implanting a second layer of pigments six weeks after the initial implantation of permanent cosmetics, Melany is able to increase color retention and tattoo longevity. She has received no complaints about premature fading from her nipple-areola patients. In fact, Melany’s clients have been amazed by the realism and illusion of nipple protrusion achieved by Melany’s unique artistry and expert tattooing technique.

Dove is chipping away at America’s idealistic views about beauty, doing its part to show that each of us is beautiful in our own way. Dove used the Super Bowl to tackle stereotypes about men’s grooming. Using the tag line “Be Comfortable in Your Own Skin,” Dove used buff athletic men to portray moisturizing and skin care as a healthy way for a man to nurture his body.

For centuries men took a bare bones approach to grooming. A shower and a shave was the male standard. In the 1800s, male grooming products were introduced at upscale barbershops and men’s clubs, but were sneered at by the Joe on the street. With the exception of hair pomades which faded in and out of style and were considered more of a necessity than a matter of vanity, male toiletries comprised an extremely thin market through the 1950s. The 1960s sexual revolution heralded a turning point in male grooming standards. By the 1960s men’s toiletries had become a fast growing market, although selection was still limited to basics like shaving cream, hair gel and aftershave.

It wasn’t until 2000 that male fragrances exploded onto the cosmetics market, opening the door to skin care and other grooming products designed specifically for men. Today most men take as much care in their appearance as women and many turn to permanent cosmetics to enhance their appearance, camouflage scars or correct flawed features. To find out more about male permanent cosmetics, visit our permanent makeup site for men.

Tomorrow scour your wardrobe for bright red clothing and put on your brightest red lipstick. It’s time to Go Red to support women’s heart health. February 5 is National Wear Red Day when millions of women and the men who love them don red to call attention to heart disease, the No. 1 killer of women in the U.S. The American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign encourages women to learn more about heart health and how to prevent heart disease. Click here to take the AHA’s quick Heart Check Up to assess your heart health. On the same site check out Better U diet and exercise tips to promote good heart health.

You’ll want to keep that tube of red lipstick handy after tomorrow. Bright electric reds, oranges and pinks are this spring’s hot new lip colors. You can apply them right over your permanent lip color. Much like popular new lip stains but with less fuss, permanent makeup subtly colors lips in the perfect shade for your skin tone and personal preference. Permanent lips are beautiful naked or with a touch of lip gloss when you’re on the go and provide the perfect base when you feel like a change and want to command attention with one of this spring’s bright corals or hot reds.