When I talked to the fabulously beautiful Senior editor Joanna Rubiner about doing a column on all things beauty-related in MASH magazine, it dawned on me that it was a great way to voice my opinion and possibly get feedback from other people. I decided on facial cream as my first topic. I had been on a quest for the perfect facial cream (mainly a night cream) for the past eight or so months to no avail. I was in middle of a dilemma and at the end of my rope. Growing up I never had a beauty regimen and neither did the women around me. I have a vague memory of my mother using Vaseline on her face before she went to bed at night. A more vivid memory was of going into a department store and rushing past the cosmetic counters in the front. I was more frightened by these "free sample" perfume girls in their fake doctor coats than I was of something like Jason from "Friday the 13th" (this was the early 80s). I would almost do a duck-and-cover to avoid locking eyes with the giveaway divas for fear of their inevitable pounce.

I moved from Boston to Los Angeles about five years ago for my job. The LA lifestyle was like a spiritual awakening--a blossoming of my desire for product. For some reason I really started getting into and having a field day at beauty supply stores with their containers, fake nails, different tweezers--all for the buying. Sometimes I'd have to drag myself out of a shop, frazzled with information overload. Initially, the thought of even going into one of these stores for your basic hair conditioner and a tube of 99 cent black lipstick would have sent my punk-rock hair into a tizzy. But the colors, the atmosphere and especially the variety--like a dude perusing the used bin at the record store, it all kept me coming back for more. At the same time I made the unfortunate discovery of beauty magazines. The glossy pages, the free perfume samples (again with the perfume!) and the 2% body fat sported on every model in this assembly of ads pretending to be a periodical. "Reading" these replaced the bible as my main source of spiritual guidance. Entering the contests and searching for the next cosmetic savior became my main source of entertainment on a Friday night.

One of these Friday nights I called an 800 number for some skin care products that I'd read about in one of the magazines--Dremu. I got some samples in the mail. Each of their products contains real emu oil (yes, the bird and no, they don't kill it). It is supposed to seep through seven layers of skin (I didn't even know I had seven) and work on those wrinkles. Here is what came in the package of samples:

GRIPE OF THE MONTH: The gripe of the month has to go to Sephora. What could be wrong in the coolest new store to come out in my lifetime? Well, I'll tell you. The Sephora brand mini-nail polishes. For starters they charge $3.50 for a .0005oz (I don't know what the size is because it doesn't say on the bottle)! The average sized bottle nail polish already carries a $3.50 price tag and the bottle is bigger. But my gripe isn't so much about the price as it is about the brush. It's the same sized brush as in a normal bottle of nail polish but the bottle is teeny. Just try to get the brush back in the bottle while doing your nails. A very messy feat, so I say, "Hey, Sephora, make the cutesy nail polish bottles bigger or make the brush smaller!"

--Cybele Parsignault

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