Permanently Beautiful

Cats-eye Eye Makeup

Cat eyes glittering, Hollywood’s most gorgeous felines stalked the red carpet at Sunday’s Emmy Awards. Gowns were sleekly formfitting, sparkling with sequins and Swarovski crystals or cascading in multi-tiered ruffles flowing into sensually flared mermaid tails. This year’s biggest trends on the red carpet were the curvaceous mermaid silhouette, lots of sparkle, soft up-dos that were pouffy rather than head-hugging, sculpted bronze cheek bones, glossy natural lips and alluring cats-eye eye makeup.

Makeup artists used elongated eye liner and eye shadow combined with ultra-long lashes to create a mysterious cat-like eye. Glee star Lea Michele did a smoky-eyed take on the retro look. She elongated her eyes with dark, thick, black eye liner brought to a bold, swept-up point beyond the outer corner of each eye. Layers of thick, long, clumpy lashes were added to create a dark, dramatic eye.

Tron star Olivia Wilde took a lighter, more elegant, but no less dramatic, approach to achieve the feline look. Olivia lined her eyes with a bold stroke of dark eye liner, then added a pointed swoop of eye shadow, extending it from the outer half of her upper lid to a soft point at the tip of her eyebrow. However, Olivia’s eye makeup did little to detract attention from her barely-there lace gown.

You don’t need a Hollywood makeup artist to look good when you wear permanent makeup. Permanent makeup provides a perfect base for stand-alone natural beauty or for layering on the latest makeup style – the best of both worlds!

Natural gray-haired beauty.

The pursuit of youth is what usually drives American beauty trends. Women and men want to look younger, more attractive, more vital. Cosmetics and permanent makeup are sought out to wipe away the years. Americans spend millions of dollars each year trying to banish the lines, creases and wrinkles that come with aging. Our quest for youth makes the hottest new trend in hair color more than a little surprising. Gray is the hot new hair color. Celebrities from singer Pink and TV personality Jay Manuel to celeb Kelly Osbourne and singing sensation Lady Gaga have gone gray. For women and men in their 20s and 30s, going gray is a way to stand out and enhance individuality. But it’s also part power trip. Those who are indulging the trend say gray locks instantly convey an aura of intelligence and wisdom.

What we’ve noticed is that the gray hair fad is being adopted only by the young. Those gray locks frame youthful faces that are as yet unlined and unwrinkled. Men and women who come by their gray strands naturally know that wisdom comes not from a Clairol box but from years of hard-earned experience. These warriors of the corporate trenches have also learned that while a touch of gray may connote wisdom, the look of youthful vitality achieved from permanent makeup is a far greater asset in the workplace.

Beauty gives you a competitive edge in the workplace. It’s something most of us have long suspected but hated to admit — that attractive men and women rise faster and earn more in the business world. Known as “beauty bias,” it’s the reason the pretty girl gets the job and the cute guy gets the promotion. Fortunately, artistically-applied permanent makeup can level the playing field and make “beauty bias” work for you.

Consider these facts from an article published on Newsweek online:

• Attractive men earn 5% more and attractive women, 4% more than their average-looking coworkers.
• A handsome guy will earn $250,000 more over his lifetime than an ugly Joe.
• To compete more effectively at work, 13% of women and 10% of men would undergo cosmetic surgery.
• 57% of hiring managers admitted that unattractive people have a harder time landing a job than their more attractive counterparts, even if they have better qualifications.
• Hiring managers recommend job applicants spend as much time and money on their appearance as on their resume.
• In a ranking of desirable employee attributes, appearance ranked third behind experience and confidence, beating education which came in fourth.
• 84% of hiring managers said visibly older job candidates, particularly women, are usually passed over in favor of younger, more vigorous looking applicants.

Make the “beauty bias” work for you. Find out about permanent makeup today.

Working women who have struggled for decades to crash through the glass ceiling may be annoyed to find that hard work, long hours and superior business acumen may not be enough to propel them up the corporate ladder. A new research study by finance professors at Duke University found that facial traits play an important role in whether you move up the corporate ladder and can affect your chances of occupying that sweet corner office reserved for the company CEO. The only good news about the Duke study, titled “A Corporate Beauty Contest,” is that beauty parameters seem to apply equally to men and women. Males who lacked certain facial features were as unlikely as their female counterparts to rise in the corporate ranks.

The Duke study asked 2,000 people to rate the facial traits of corporate CEOs, non-CEOs and small business owners. Researchers found that CEOs judged to look competent earned better salaries and held loftier positions even when their companies did not perform as well as others.

Executives with strong jaw lines, small, piecing eyes and low, commanding eyebrows were judged to be competent executive and rose highest in the corporate hierarchy. Less competent executives were baby-faced with large, round eyes, high eyebrows and small chins. Although judged to be less competent, they were seen as warmer, more likable and more trustworthy.

Artistically applied permanent makeup can improve facial characteristics and camouflage facial defects to give you a more commanding appearance and enhance your climb up the corporate ladder.

A recent study gives new meaning to the  phrase Femme Fatale. Apparently, looks can kill! At least if the look is from a beautiful woman and the target of her gaze is your typical male! 

In a study conducted by University of Valencia researchers, men’s cortisol levels increased markedly when they were left alone with a beautiful woman. Cortisol is a stress hormone produced when an individual is under physical or psychological stress. High levels of cortisol have been linked to heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and impotency. Tests showed that the more beautiful the woman, the higher a man’s cortisol level rose.

The study involved 84 men. Two men and an attractive woman were placed in a room. One man left the room, leaving the other man alone with the woman. In each instance, the man’s cortisol levels rose. Researchers linked the stress hormone increase to the man’s perceived courtship opportunity. In other words, as he thought about hitting on the woman, his stress levels went up. Stress seemed to be directly proportional to the man’s confidence in his potential success. Women that a man considered to be out of his league produced the most stress.

Permanent makeup can help you keep your man on his toes. When you look gorgeous 24/7, imagine what you’re doing to his stress levels? Does this mean men will give up beautiful women to protect their health? Something tells me they’ll chance it!

Dr. Mehmet Oz

In a moving segment on the Dr. Oz Show (click the link to watch), Melany Whitney was able to change the life of a woman whose badly scarred face had haunted her for 27 years. At the age of 15, Suzanne’s face was shattered in a devastating car accident. It took doctors 10 hours and 500 stitches to reconstruct her face, leaving massive, ugly scars. Five plastic surgeries were able to repair most of the facial damage but not the hideous scars. Even makeup was not able to hide all of the scarring that slashed across Suzanne’s face. At the age of 42, Suzanne felt doomed to a life where people quickly turned away on meeting her and children found her frightening. Every time she passed a mirror or caught her reflection in a shop window, she was reminded afresh of the horror of that moment long ago when her life changed forever.

Moved by Suzanne’s plight, Dr. Oz sent her to Melany. Melany carefully mixed permanent cosmetic color pigments to precisely match Suzanne’s facial skin tone. She then injected and blended the pigment into the skin layers along the white scars on her face, completely hiding the scars. When Suzanne joined Dr. Oz and Melany on stage to show off her new face, she was ecstatic. For the first time, she said, her daughter had told her, “Mommy, you’re so beautiful.”

Watch the video on our website to see how Melany and permanent cosmetics changed Suzanne’s life.

Before you even consider purchasing permanent makeup we recommend that you check out your prospective technician’s gallery of clients. On our own website we have before and after images of clients for all the procedures we offer:  eyebrows, eyeliner, lips, full face treatments, hair loss coverage, and a variety of scar camouflage procedures. As you evaluate your technician, do you see what you like? Is the skill repeated over numerous times? Is there a consistent professional application?

Take time to evaluate your prospective technician carefully. Yes, it is true that sometime client’s ask for a technician to do eyebrows in a certain color or style that the technician may not select to do normally, but if you see images over and over of a specific arch type, thickness, or color mismatch in the before and after images of multiple clients, you should be cautious in choosing that professional to do your own procedure.

As you review our own gallery you will see that Melany does not do eyebrows a certain way or with a certain color. She adjusts her own style to fit the needs of each face, skin type, and client. That is the mark of a true expert!

If your prospective permanent makeup technician does not have a photo portfolio to show you examples of their own work, I would recommend that you wait and not use that technician as they may be new in the field or not have work that they will want to show off to prospective clients.

In this field seeing a wide illustration of results will help you to make the decision of which professional you want to do your own permanent makeup. We know that when you choose us at the Whitney Center of Permanent Cosmetics that we will make sure that your permanent makeup is a beautiful, natural-looking reflection of your own personal unique beauty. Don’t just trust what we say, look at the photos of our clients that prove it!

We invite you to view Melany Whitney’s oil paintings to see her wonderful artistic abilities and eye for color and detail.

Glam-rock is back and it has put punky, dramatic, kohl-rimmed eyes back in the spotlight. With the opening of the Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning film The Runaways, eye makeup is stepping back in time to revisit the 1960s when Joan Jett and Cherie Currie formed one of rock’s most famous all-girl bands. In keeping with the film’s realistic portrayal of the young teens’ rise to fame, makeup artists were instructed to create a look that was realistic, teen-aged blemishes and all. Without the typical Hollywood flawless skin to wow the camera, makeup artists for The Runaways focused on the eyes.

Pouring over old magazine ads and watching hours of concert footage of the real Runaways performing, makeup artists for the film focused on weird, tiny details to create an authentic look on screen. For instance, Jett and Currie painted only one fingernail red. But it was their dark smoky eyes that created the band’s signature look in the ’60s.

With permanent cosmetics you can create your own permanent signature look. Permanent eyes can rim your lids in thin or thick permanent eyeliner in the color of your choice so you look beautiful day and nice. When you want to glam or punk it up, add a thicker layer right over your permanent cosmetics. Permanent makeup gives you the best of both worlds.

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.

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.