Beauty is subject to more crazy speculation and weird beliefs than almost any other major industry. In our quest to look good, we tend to pick up on anything that might help us have better skin, fewer wrinkes, more hair or less of it - and it amazes me how many of the silliest myths persist. I've picked out a few of my pet hates, and would love to hear what ludicrous claims you've heard made about beauty.
You need to drink two-and-a-half litres of water a day to keep your skin healthy
. In my experience, that much water affects very little beyond your bathroom habits. Make sure you drink a large glass with each meal and drink as much as you need to quench your thirst during the day, and your skin will be just fine.
Cellulite means there's too much bad stuff in your diet. Really? Well I'd love to know how it manages to affect newborn babies, anorexics and people who've never touched caffeine or alcohol. The dimpled effect we call cellulite is actually just fibrous bands under the skin, which pull down around pockets of fat, and is usually inherited.
Frizzy hair means poor health: not so. This is a pet rant of mine as I know that my own naturally frizzy and 'dull' looking hair turns as shiny and appears as 'healthy' as any straight-haired person's when I attack it with the GHDs.
Wrinkles are caused by dry skin. Wrinkles are caused by two things: ageing and the sun. To minimise them, all you can do is wear a good sunscreen, all year around if possible.
Cocoa butter can prevent or heal stretchmarks: I've consulted to several real-life pregnant women on this one and think we have the issue covered here.
The old adage 'if it's to good to true it probably is', has existed for a long time, yet still people keep hoping they'll be the one who gets lucky. In the cases of the lottery a very very few people manage to beat the odds, and occasionally on eBay you get a bargain due to someone misspelling their product. But when you see a Chloe bag selling for £50 you should smell a rat, and equally suspicion should kick in when you see GHD's selling for half their in store price point. But it's not always easy to tell that the company is fake, as many of the websites look very professional, have all the right logos and have a .co.uk URL!
Type 'Cheap GHD's' into Google and literally hundreds of sites come up promising you everything from limited edition models in multiple colours, to buying a model for the low price of £40 odd quid- around 60% cheaper!
So how do you spot a fake before you buy, and how can you double check your straightener is the real deal?
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Have you noticed that it's often the most widely accepted 'miracle cures' that turn out to be the most bogus? Everyone knows, for example that cranberry juice is the 'cure' for cystitis, but anyone who's ever had a UTI knows that it's completely uselss once you're at the 'ow it hurts' stage.
And now it looks like cocoa butter is to stretch marks what cranberry juice is to UTIs: a remedy so long-established, so inherently associated with the ills it's meant to cure that everyone just assumes it has to work.
To reinforce this belief, many of the best-known brands now sell cocoa butter with a picture of a pregnant lady on the front. But since the current baby boom kicked off, one unexpected fact I've learnt about pregnancy is that (a) stretch marks happen if you're genetically predisposed to them and (b) cocoa butter 'doesn't make the blindest bit of difference' - quoting Mother-to-be Katie Lee over at Parentdish. Her scepticism is backed up by a recent study, which shoes that application of cocoa butter does not prevent stretch marks - or to give the condition its medical name, striae gravidarum.
However, another expectant Mum - Laura over at Montpellier beauty blog - also wrote this morning that she's found some relief from using cocoa butter, although the benefits she's found seem to have more to do with soothing dryness than reducing the scarring itself. And I suspect it's these basic moisturising properties that have given cocoa butter its reputation as a miracle cure, along with benefits provided by the simple pleasure of massaging cream into a sore area.
If you suffer from stretch marks - either through pregnancy or for other reasons - would you agree that cocoa butter is useless? And if so, what do you find helpful?
What does the term icon mean nowadays? It's not something we tend to dwell to heavily on, letting the media do as they will with the term, and blissfully ignoring the bastardization of this once impressive word. It has been used in conjunction with many up and coming stars ( Agyness Deyn and Kate Moss, are two who have had the term bandied around) and I may even be guilty of having used it in describing some fresh faced starlets.
The actual meaning of the word become more significant when trying to write this column however and has led me down this rather introspective path. The original meaning of the word referred to religious iconography and then went on to mean something that symbolized something else- for instance you'd call the Eiffel Tower an iconic display of Parisian culture. Can one be an icon if you've hardly breathed however? Agyness Deyn may be cutting edge and hip, but the fact that she's barely out of braces (figuratively speaking) makes me uncomfortable with allowing her that tag.
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Day 2
A 6am start with clear bright skies and jogging up the hill with lots of racing and interval training is about the opposite to how I spend my Saturday mornings- the only time I'd ever be up this early is if I hadn't been to bed yet!. Yawning I chase after the other girls, placing on heavy foot in front of the other. Breakfast is a meagre bowl of muesli and then we're loaded onto a coach. After a 30 minute snooze I wake up to find we've arrived- and gleaming out the window is the sparkling Devon sea, with sandy dunes aplenty and seagulls cawing overhead.
We spend the next two hours strenuously circuit training and rope pulling, and I'm particularly appalling at the tug of war challenge, getting all girly and not wanting to break a nail. Next we take a seriously looong hike along the coastline, but thought he view is beautiful my hip flexors are really starting to ache- we've hardly begun and already I'm feeling tired and sore!
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In an attempt to look super svelte at the multiple weddings I'm attending this summer I'm heading down to Devon to try out the Ultimate BootCamp Weekend- think four days of enforced exercise, controlled diets and 5am wake up calls. My kit list request 4 pairs of trainer -2 outdoor, 1 indoor and 1 walking boot and a total of nine tops, so I guess I'm going to be worked pretty hard., This is the diary of my experience.
Day 1
I arrive in the wilds of Devon after a 3 hour train ride to meet four similarly nervous looking women at the train station. Two men wearing army gear introduce themselves and load up our bags in the minibus and drive us to the secret location - a country estate with 52 hectares of grassland and Enid Blyton style cottages, washed in white. The beds have Cath Kidston coverlets and everything is very quaint and adorable, with a notable lack of anything processed or chocolaty- it feels more like a vacation than an attempt to knock my body into shape.
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Sarah Fisher writes...
Everybody loves a bargain - and beauty can be an expensive hobby. Plenty of us shop around for the best value, browsing discount sites, department store sales, and of course, eBay.
But the enticing deals touted by many eBay sellers are often not as they seem. For years, eBay has been rife with counterfeit high-end cosmetics, manufactured cheaply and without safety regulation. They're passed off as genuine, netting a tidy profit for sellers. Scary, right? Find out how to shop safe and avoid the fakes after the jump.
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