Pretty Price Check (01.01.10)

Pretty Price Check: Your Friday round-up of how much we paid for beauty last week.

Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's $1000 face cream.

Shhh — technically, I’m still on blog-cation (oh ew, don’t you hate when bloggers combine that word with absolutely everything?). But there has been just so much news in the last two weeks that I thought I’d hop on with a special New Year’s Day edition of the Price Check. You know, to give you something to read while you recover from the first hangover of 2010.

• $295 is what you’ll pay for L’Oreal’s new five-volume book, 100,000 Years of Beauty. The Times-Picayune calls it “more scholarly than you’d expect from a beauty company.” As long as it includes a free gift with purchase.

• 36 is the number of times per day that women have negative thoughts about their bodies, according to a British TV show’s study (that’s peer-reviewed research, right?). (Via Skin Inc.)

• $1000+ face creams are going to save the Japanese economy, at least according to the country’s three largest cosmetics firms, who have each launched one.

And if our brand-spanking-new decade has you in beauty resolution mode, here are three that I’m making:

• Shop for a better world. Fair trade cosmetics will be a big beauty trend this year, though the industry is still working on the kinks on what, exactly, they mean by that. In the meantime, you can consult the Better World Shopping Guide (by UC-Davis professor Ellis Jones, founder of the nonprofit Better World Network) which grades all kinds of consumer goods on how their manufacturers do in terms of human rights, animal welfare, the environment, community involvement and social justice. (Via iheartdaily.)

• Don’t believe magazine cover lines that promise to make you skinny, successful, and clear-skinned — oh, like these in Jezebel’s 10 Best Cover Lies round-up. Women’s magazines are in a tough way and I don’t want to hate (also writing for them pays my rent), but they only put this crap on their covers because when they do, we buy them. Enough already.

• Stop talking about your weight. Or why you’re eating/not eating whatever it is you’re eating/not eating and how much you’ll exercise/not exercise to work it off/get fatter. Seriously, we should stop that. At best, it bores everyone to tears. At worst, those insecurities are helping make someone else feel even worse about herself. Or himself, though considering 1 in 5 American women has an eating disorder, it’s more likely a her. If you think I’m being preachy because I spend half my waking hours obsessing over how the beauty industry messes up women’s body image, go read “How to Handle My Eating Disorder in Your Home for the Holidays” by 22-year-old Meike Schleiff (a co-author of RED The Book, a collection of essays written by 58 American teen girls). Yes, now.

Happy New Year!

[Photo: Reuters]