Blame it on the rain?

No.
Blame it on Forks? Oh, I do.

Ever since getting completely consumed in the Twilight series (which I had initially completely dismissed as cheesy tween lit), the rain (which I used to loathe,) now holds a certain romantic and Gothic appeal that makes my EMO heart ache in the best way possible...

It used to be that when I looked at the window and saw rain, I was bummed. (I have naturally curly hair that I try to fool everyone into thinking is naturally straight.)


Now when I see the once dreaded precipitation I sigh, and wistfully think of the rain, mists, and clouds that were always present in the little town of Forks, making itself so conducive to a vampire habitat... Mental images of Edward, Bella, Jacob, and shirtless werewolf boys flash through my mind, and suddenly—the rain doesn’t seem so bad. (And my hair isn't even a concern.) Thanks Stephenie.

To go along with my new sunny attitude towards the rain, there is awesome “green” rain gear that enables anyone to get through the cloudy days both stylishly, dry, and environmentally conscious.

Enter Radley, one of the biggest handbag designers in the UK. Their moto is to make beautiful things that women fall in love with, and with their enivornmental concern I'd venture to say that Mother Nature might just count as one of their biggest fans.

Branching off from their handbag mainstay, they have started to develop eco-friendly accessories such as umbrellas and reusable shopping bags. They have developed a way to recycle plastic water bottles into adorable umbrellas, and there’s a certain irony to the whole idea that I love-- what was once used to keep water on the inside is now used to keep water on the outside. (The reusable bags are really cute too, but my Twilight slant focuses on the rain story.)

With a cheerful Radley umbrella in hand, I can only hope that I look as cute as Bella did in her big green rubber rain boots and yellow rain jacket, and that secretly, somewhere, a vampire is falling in love with me...

Tales from home shopping...

One early Sunday afternoon, as I lay in bed trying to recuperate from a crazzzy Bachelorette party that had occurred the evening before, I was flipping through the tv channels trying to find something good to fall asleep to. “Sleep timer” is a beautiful thing. Usually Sunday afternoons are rife with good, old movies and sitcoms from the 90’s and 80’s that you’d completely forgotten about. (For example, “Overboard” and “3rd Rock From the Sun” are two favorite newly rediscovered oldies but goodies.) However, this particular Sunday-- there was nothin’.

I thought maybe my timing was off, and if I just waited a few minutes and flipped through again, some of the channels that had previously been playing commercials would miraculously be back to the real, awesome programming? "Clueless" or "Bring It On," per chance?

So, I hopefully mustered up the strength to do a second channel run-through, but I wasn’t having any better luck...

Until…I got side-tracked by a smiling model having her shiny model hair fluffed and styled by a funny little man as she sat all resplendent-like in a salon chair. He was spraying stuff, scrunching stuff, and explaining stuff as he went along—and, her hair actually looked really good! Then they flashed her “before” picture, and the flat straight “before” hair was no competition for the glorious, voluminous coif she was sporting now. As this man worked his way down a line of model’s heads (that sounds so pervy), he transformed all of their average mall-do’s into locks worthy of Jennifer Aniston. I was completely and utterly hooked.

Seriously. I was so into the awesome hair makeovers that I was watching, that I was mildly shocked the next time I glanced at my clock and realized my designated napping time had long passed. Foiled! And by the unlikeliest of foes… well played QVC. Well played, indeed.

It turned out that this man, Denis Simioni, has been dubbed the Indiana Jones of beauty products, due to the unusual way he discovered and created his magnificent, Earth friendly Ojon line.

After getting wind that there was a certain, rare type of tree that grew deep in the rain forests, that was capable of producing an incredibly rich form of moisturizing oil, Denis chartered a small plane to fly him over the suspected area to see if he could aerially locate the source. Upon landing the plane, and hiking through the forests for hours, he stumbled into the villages of the Tawira, a tribe of South American Indians that have lived deep in the rain forests for at least five centuries. A friendly people, they were happy to show him their native Ojon tree, and share with him the methods for extracting the oil from it’s nuts.

Loaded with ideas, Denis spent the next three years developing and perfecting his line of hair, skin, and beauty products. First things first, he established an exclusive arrangement with the Tawira, so that his company was the only one allowed to profit from the Ojon trees. Then, he set up methods to extract the oil, in the least harmful way possible. For example, he brought in ovens to heat up the mixtures, so that trees wouldn’t have to be destroyed for fires. Ojon also limits the size of the annual harvests in order to protect the natural resources, and to ensure that authentic Ojon continues to be harvested and extracted by hand in the traditional way as a guarantee of purity and effectiveness.

The Tawira tribes are consulted on all aspects of the business — from product development to marketing. (Also smart from a marketing stand-point: limited supply = increased demand.) In cooperation with the Tawira, he developed a corporate partnership involving thousands of Tawira families. A portion of all profits from the sale of Ojon products goes directly to the Tawira Indian tribes, and the money is used to help preserve their traditional lifestyle and the region's rain forests, while setting up medical and educational facilities for the villagers. Ojon is not just taking from the land, but giving back as much as they considerately take.

I feel like this is the ultimate testament to the selling power of QVC and Ojon combined: after watching Ojon in action, and hearing the spiel, I actually went out to Sephora and bought the line. This is noteworthy because there are a lot of products I think sound cool, but only a small fraction of which that are actually purchased.

And, I was a completely happy and satisfied customer. The Ojon products smell soo good (as anyone around me can attest-- not because the perfume is that strong, but because I shove my hair in their face and say, “doesn’t my hair smell amazing!?” The smell is subtle—I however am not.) My hair seems to air dry nicer, blow-dry easier, and it feels so silky and soft.

So, if TV does rot your brain, at the very least the stuff growing out of mine is being well-nourished…

Living Proof: Dirty Hair Can Be Pretty Hair

Ursula was born in Brazil, and ever since we met in the 7th grade she has always been one of those effortlessly sophisticated and chic girls that you secretly want to be like/hate, except she is far too charming to ever be able to dislike.

Ursula is now in her early twenties, and flits all around Europe depending on wherever the breeze (or her job) takes her. Over Christmas, she managed to squeeze in a quick stop at home, and came over for a visit.
She breezed into the family room with a waft of good smells. We were all wearing sweats and engrossed in Guitar Hero, no doubt making fools of ourselves, while she looked casually gorgeous as usual, with her skin all aglow and her hair shinier than ever. *

In conversation, she mentioned in passing that she had just been to the gym for a Bikram yoga class with her mom, and had taken the world’s fastest shower afterwards in order to make it over to us at a decent time. The Nancy Drew in me perked up immediately at hearing this, and the subtle interrogation began – the recent bout of yoga in hell (Bikram yoga is usually an hour and half long, in a room purposely kept at 104˚F with 40% humidity!!! So that) explained her flush, but if she had just taken a shower, how was her super long, thick hair already dried?? Had she learned some new hair magic from the Chinese mystics during her airport wanderings? Did she discover a real-life genie bottle in the Alps? How did she achieve this amazing feat? (This really is a big deal to me, because I have really curly hair that I constantly am at war with in order to achieve some semblance of a look I’d want, and anyone with hair as perfect as hers must be involved in some sort of dark arts. Right?)

As Nancy Drew would have expected though, Ursula’s answer was the easy one and not the one that included hair magic. (Drats!) It turned out that yes, she had taken a shower-- but she didn’t wash her hair! Apparently, her Parisian hair stylist had advised her to be like all the other European girls, and only wash her hair once or twice a week-- as it’s much healthier for your hair. (She told him to shove it when he started dispensing his underarm shaving advice though. Mon dieu! She doesn’t want that hair thick and silky, mercibeaucoup!) She went on to tell us that Americans’ overzealous personal hygiene is considered comical in Europe. Could this be true? Who knew dirty hair could look so good?

Zut alors!

Maybe it was a case of me hearing what I wanted to hear, because I hate showers? I know, I know, I hear it all the time, “That’s so crazy! Showers are so nice!” Um, no they’re not! They are time consuming clusterfucks, what with the washing, conditioning, exfoliating, dancing (it’s the only part that makes showering tolerable for me-- but it definitely tacks on the time in the shower, I mean, you can’t really expect me to turn off the water half-way through Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” dance, can you?), shaving, moisturizing, blow-drying, and everything else that goes into one’s grooming… UGH! It turns into a very time and energy consuming event, but maybe, hopefully, those feisty Europeans are on to something..?

Enter MIT’s foray into the world of hair products, with the introduction of their line “Living Proof.”

Determined to fight frizz from a scientific approach, an MIT scientist dissected and examined “frizz” to get to the Achilles heel of the foe and defeat it, as opposed to the current practice of coming up with products that help you live with it.

Getting right down to the nitty-gritty, they started working on ways to protect the hair follicle from being susceptible to moisture’s wily, invasive rapist ways. (If you know that frizz is caused by moisture, please skip to the next paragraph. If you’re one of those freakish/lucky girls that was born with naturally pin-straight hair, and has never had to worry about frizz before-- please read on, if you care to, for a quick crash course on frizz. “Frizz” is caused by moisture in the air-- aka humidity. Humidity affects hair in two primary ways: changing the surface texture of the hair fiber by making it rough and full of friction, and increasing absorption of water by the interior of the hair shaft. Or, in plainer English, the water gets all up inside the hair shaft despite the hair saying “No! No! I’m worth the wait!” and causes all sorts of complications resulting in the hair looking really bad and feeling both ashamed and used.)

Everyone loves before and afters!

In the past, hair companies were trying to fight the war on frizz by producing silicon based hair products as a way to tame the existing frizziness.

The brains at MIT weren’t interested in dealing with frizz period though, and went right to the root of the problem. To this end, they developed a brand new chemical that is similar to the Teflon coating used on cookware, but for your hair-- PolyfluoroEster (PFE) works by adhering tightly to the hair, and smoothing down the hair shaft to prevent moisture from being absorbed in the first place. There is a lot more scientific gobbledy gook involved, but basically the PFE chemicals in Living Proof’s hair products cut down on the surface tension on the hair, which provides some amazing benefits such as shinier, frizz-free hair, hair that is actually coated in a substance that acts as a repellent to dirt and oil, and the longer you use the stuff- the higher the PFE concentration is in your hair, so the shinier and silkier it gets!

Obviously, this sounds too good to be true, but don’t worry- before I brought the topic to your attention I did my due diligence and read the comments of people who have already bought and used these products. The line seemed to receive predominantly rave reviews.

What first caught my interest with “Living Proof” is that the Teflon-for-your-hair actually repels the nasty stuff that is naturally attracted to your hair; which means less washing needed! If your hair stays cleaner for longer, than the advantage’s to using Living Proof are as multi-layered as a "Rachel" cut:

• Obviously you’re giving yourself a self-esteem boost, because lord knows your hair is your best accessory-- and if your hair’s looking really good, chances are you’re feeling good!

• You’re also saving yourself tons of previous, priceless TIME by cutting down your needed showering and styling.

• If you’re washing your hair less-- you’re also significantly cutting down on your environmental “footprint,” as your average amount of water usage is slashed, and the electricity used for your blow-dryer (or any other styling tools) is likewise exponentially decreased!**

Intrigued? I am.

Want to try it now? I do! Check it out at Sephora.com.

Armed with these products (which come in really cute packaging, by the by)- we can now reap all of the benefits of the European girls' hair-washing habits, but maintain our “clean” American aesthetic. It’s Miley’s dream of combining “the best of both worlds…”

*The girl pictured is not Ursula-- but is actually actress Eliza Dushku, who is often styled by Living Proof And she's super hot. Correlation is obvious, no?

**I don’t know how Living Proof is manufactured, so I’ll feel like a bonafide jack-ass if after touting it’s “green” advantages I find out that 5 tons of nuclear waste is created with every 12 ounces of product made?