Permanently Beautiful

Happy Thanksgiving! You were up with the sun chopping and stuffing and peeling to get ready for the big feast. You’ve been darting back and forth between the kitchen and the tube trying to catch the big balloons and Broadway numbers in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Or you and your crew may even have decided to brave the cold and the crowds to try to elbow your way to the curb for a ringside seat! Whichever way your holiday began, it’s a certainty that the makeup you so carefully applied this morning has disappeared in a cloud of either potato steam or Manhattan exhaust fumes!

It’s not easy being a woman. If only there was a way to look beautiful every minute of every day — and night — without worrying about your makeup and constantly taking time to touch it up. Ah, but there is! Permanent makeup is a specialized form of cosmetic tattooing that enhances your natural beauty. No more long makeup sessions, no touch ups; just fabulous you 24/7. If you’re looking for a unique gift this holiday, give your special someone (or yourself) a gift she’ll thank you for every single day — and night! The gift of permanent makeup is a gift of perpetual beauty.

Contact the Whitney Center for Permanent Cosmetics for gift certificate information.

Thanksgiving is the biggest travel weekend of the year. Whether they travel by air, rail or auto, Thanksgiving sees more people going home to be with family than any other holiday. Maybe it’s those four fabulous days or the lure of roasting turkey that draws us home. Whatever your reason for returning to the nest, you want to make an impression on your family and show them that this bird has spread her wings in style!

Unfortunately, long hours traveling take a toll on skin and makeup. If you don’t take a few precautions, you’ll arrive home more bedraggled than magnificent. Oprah gal pal and cosmetics expert Paula Begoun offers makeup and skin care tips for holiday travelers. The hit author’s best recommendation: travel sans makeup! Paula says recirculated air, particularly in airplanes, is horribly drying to your face. Wearing makeup in such dry conditions can damage skin and cause even quality makeup to give your face that flakey undead look.

Best bet? Apply a good moisturizer or moisturizing toner at the start of your trip. Reapply as necessary during long trips. When you reach your destination, slip into the ladies room, wash up, remoisturize and apply your makeup. You’ll be fresh and fabulous when you greet your family. Of course, if you have permanent makeup, you look fabulous every hour of the day without makeup. Just moisturize to refresh your skin. The bonus? You still look hot when you say “hi” to the hunky guy in the next seat!

Women aren’t the only ones taken with the brooding vampire look popularized by Robert Pattinson in the hit movie Twilight and its just opening sequel New Moon. There are plenty of guys who are fans of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga. And even men who prefer Bram Stoker’s more brutal portrayal of the great fanged one in the 1992 film Dracula  to Twilight’s romanticized tortured hero have tuned in to the power of those brooding brows. For it’s Pattinson’s lush, full, dark eyebrows that have women swooning.

Those sexy brows dominate Pattinson’s face, giving him an allure of mystery and power with a “shivers down the back” touch of danger. What’s not to love? Eyebrows frame and define the face. Hollywood makeup artists, who deal in perception, know that thick dark brows indicate power and command. Even though Pattinson seems to have been born with superb brow genes, you can bet the Tinsletown paint and brush experts have plied their craft to make those brows look thicker, fuller and more brooding.

It’s a look that can benefit any man who wants to get ahead in life. Commanding brows make a man appear powerful, in charge, self-assured and confident. In business — and in matters of the heart — people respond to the way you look. For those without great brow genes, permanent makeup for men can create a strong, commanding but natural-looking eyebrow line. Find out more at Permanent Makeup for Men.

New Moon, the second eagerly-awaited installment in the Twilight Saga, is opening in theaters. With brooding, blood-sucking hunk Edward (Robert Pattinson) off doing vampire things, will beautiful Bella (Kristen Stewart) turn for comfort — and romance? — to mysterious werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner)? The allure of the Twilight series goes beyond teenybopper fandom. The best selling series by Stephenie Meyer has women of all ages turning pages late into the night. Sensuous and sexual without being explicit, Meyer has transformed sex into the more emotionally powerful yearning. In a Time magazine interview, saga screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg called it “safe sexuality. It’s the ultimate romantic ideal. You have the allure of danger. And yet there’s only so far you can go.”

Who knows how far you’ll go when you slip into New Moon’s mysterious “Twilight Eyes.” The dangerous allure of New Moon’s otherworldliness begins with the eyes. Create Bella’s sensuously tortured look by first defining eyes with a thin line of chocolate eyeliner. Thicken and define brows. Use a pale neutral pink shadow under the brow. Apply russet brown shadow lightly to eyelid, feathering and slightly smudging up toward inner brow terminus and slightly beyond outer eye line. Add a very light swipe of shadow under eye and feather slightly toward cheek; don’t smudge the eyeliner.

Permanent makeup provides the perfect foundation for Twilight Eyes or any look. Lush permanent eyebrows perfectly frame your face. Permanent eyeliner flawlessly defines eyes. Add shadow and you’re ready to prowl!

Did you see Taylor Swift’s grand slam at the CMA awards last night? Barely 19 and she wins Entertainer of the Year, the youngest country music star to do so. Taylor also took home Female Vocalist of the Year, Music Video of the Year for Love Story and Album of the Year with Fearless. Absolutely gorgeous and adoringly humble, Taylor called her whole band up on stage with her.

Did you notice how natural and understated Taylor’s makeup was? It enhanced her beauty without detracting by overemphasizing a single feature. And what about Carrie Underwood’s barely there lip color. It focused attention on her beautiful eyes and those unbelievably hot sequined hot pants! Leann Rimes should have spent less time in front of the makeup mirror. Her eyes were a horror queen disaster. Adding dark shadow under the brows to smudged smoky eyes made her face unattractively top heavy. For smoky eyes stick with natural, light shadows. And what about country diva Naomi Judd? Her stretched and shiny face was shades lighter than the rest of her skin. Too much plastic surgery or a poor makeup job? Maybe both. Check out makeup and gowns from country’s biggest night on Socialite Life.

Natural-looking makeup that balances your face and enhances your personal beauty requires an expert touch. Permanent cosmetic expert Melany Whitney combines artistic talent with expert technique to create permanent makeup that is permanently beautiful and natural looking.

The holidays are fast approaching and you can probably already feel the first little tendrils of holiday stress creeping up your spinal column. By Black Friday many of us are gripped in the tentacles of a major holiday meltdown! Of course we love the holidays, but they’re also stress, Stress STRESS! Shopping, baking, decorating, tree trimming parties, gift wrapping, gift exchanges with friends, holiday lunch with your BFF, more shopping, office parties, MORE shopping, the annual gathering of the clan (MAJOR STRESS!), condo cocktail parties, trading gifts with your sweetie — WHEW! and New Year’s Eve is still to come!

If TIME is the gift you crave most during the holidays, permanent makeup is your perfect holiday stress reliever. Permanent makeup, artistically applied by nationally-recognized cosmetic tattoo expert Melany Whitney, can shave hours off the time you spend getting ready to do all the important things you want to do during the holidays so you can spend more time doing them. Think of all the hours you spend every week preparing your face before applying makeup, applying it, then taking it all off again at night. And that doesn’t count the time spent refreshing it during the day and before you go out at night. No wonder there’s never enough time.

When your natural beauty is enhanced by permanent cosmetics, you just quickly cleanse, moisturize and you’re out the door. All that time you used to spend in front of the bathroom mirror, you can now spend enjoying friends and family!

Facial scars leave their mark not only on the skin but on the soul. There is something about our face that more than any other part of our body determines our comfort with ourselves. Perhaps it’s that our face is the window through which others see us. Most see only the reflection in the glass; few come close enough to peer past the surface into the soul. With no knowledge of our depths, we are judged by our face.

Facial scars can be damaging to our sense of self. Even a small scar from a childhood injury or teenaged acne can undermine our self confidence and make us feel ugly when we gaze in the mirror. I know a young woman who had thyroid cancer surgery. Despite understanding the necessity, she was so devastated and embarrassed by the thin scar that slit across her throat that it destroyed the way she saw herself. It did not matter that others saw only a minor imperfection; she saw a monstrosity. For years she wore turtlenecks and multi-strand chokers until she was finally able to come to terms with her appearance.

Cosmetic tattooing performed by an artistically accomplished paramedical tattoo artist like Melany Whitney can permanently hide facial scars and restore your confidence in your natural beauty. Prominent plastic surgeons nationwide frequently refer their patients to Melany to remove the embarrassment of unsightly scars or natural skin imperfections. There is no need to suffer. Cosmetic tattooing can restore your natural beauty.

With the last chocolate bar a fading memory, it’s time to put away the Halloween grease paint and start thinking about your holiday look. Thanksgiving marks the start of holiday festivities. Dress up cocktail parties, family gatherings, office bashes, potlucks with friends, dancing ’til dawn, shopping junkets with the girls – a girl’s got to look good! So what’s hot for the holidays? Sex, smoke and shimmer!

Soft, smoky eyes get the holiday touch with a little shimmery shadow on the lid. Carefully apply then smudge a thin line of deep brown or gray eyeliner to top and bottom lashes. Stay away from black; you don’t want sepulcher eyes (Halloween is over). Add mascara, a swipe of shimmery blush to your cheeks and finish with a light lipstick or gloss. Stay away from dark lips to keep the focus on your eyes. Permanent eyeliner adds depth to your eyes. Smudge a little eyeliner on top to smoke up your eyes.

Go sexy this holiday with deep red lips. Line lips first, then use a lipstick brush to fill with your favorite show-stopping red color. Shimmer a sparkling blush along your cheek bones. For this look, keep the focus on your sexy lips by pairing with a light matte eye shadow that’s close to your skin tone and a swipe of mascara. Permanent makeup creates a perfect lip line for the sexiest lips this holiday. Create permanent lips in your favorite lipstick color or apply new shades over the ideal background for your skin tone.