Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    

Cynthia, you are so right about Frizz-Eaze (or however it's spelled). When I
moved to Louisiana from California, I stepped off the plane and wham! That
humidity hit, and all of of a sudden my waist-length hair had turned into a
4' afro. It stuck out all over the place and made me look excessively
deranged. It took me a while to discover Frizz-Ease but the difference is
phenomenal. I had to experiment for a while to find out how much to apply
etc. Then I discovered another drug store product, an imitation of Frizz-
ease made by I think St. Ives. It has the same ingredients and works just as
well, for half the price. I think the FrizzEase is about $8 or $9 for a
little bottle, and the same size St. Ives is only $3.99. I can't tell the
difference.

The other product I can't live without since I have long psychotic hair is
some kind of detangler. The ones I like best are Paul Mitchell and Biolage.
I haven't found a drugstore brand that works as well. Without a detangler,
you can literally hear the hairs breaking when the comb hits them. Also,
these products are very light. I find that some conditioners add too much
weight to my long hair and drag it down. I did end up cutting off about two
feet of hair after I came to Louisiana, partly because of the humidity and
partly because of the fashions here--if you have long hair in Berkeley,
people think you're just an aging hippie, but here in the south they assume
you're a Pentecostal and they won't ask you to dance. Now it's just below my
shoulders, and naturally has more body and lift. So I don't have to worry
quite so much about heavy products weighing it down, they don't seem to as
much. But with longer hair, that was a big concern.
  

    
Leroy is talking about one of the more important things to judge for
when you buy a hair product and that is weight. These days, there are
dimethicones in hair products, ie: silicone-type products which add
shine but don't hve the weight or the dirt-catching properties of an
oil product. The new gleamer sprays are all silicones; the silicones
are also inlipsticks -- they're form a kind of chemical net which traps
pigment in each hole in the net which gives light more surfaces to
refract off of which makes lipsticks (and the hair shiner) make
whatever suface they are on seem much more glossy and therefore healthy
looking. 
  

    

Cynthia, I read somewhere that silicone in hair products is bad because it
makes hair brittle and more breakable. Have you heard this? So i carefully
read all the labels to make sure there's no silicone, not realizing that
dimethicones are the same thing. Yikes!
  

    
I think you an over-use anything. The new gleamer sprays are all
silicone products. Once in a whie, I don't think they're ad. The other
alternative is hair spray whose main ingredient is alcohol to promote
instant drying and alcohol is as drying a substance that ever was put
into cosmetics. So it's a case of damned if you do, damned if you
don't.

Any kind of product will build up in the hair, so once a week, I try
to use a shampoo that will strip product but not color and i don't use
it very often. I try to rinse with apple cider vinegar to get all he
suffectants out of my hair (the latering agents that build up logn with
the oils from conditioners) and o the weekend, I try not to put any
product in my hair if I'm not seeing anyone just to give it a rest.
  

    
Honey... how did Minnie keep herself looking so fresh into her
ninties?
  

    
Makeup, Really, a LOT of makeup. Hi honey, how you been?
  

    
Plus: she lied about her age. It's a rotten trick, but it works. 

I, of course, would NEVER do anything like that. 
  

    
You have been telling me you are 42... should I believe that?
  

    
NOpe. You've been to my birthday parties. YOU figure it out. My lips
are sealed. With Lipfinity. 
  

    
I thought those were crayons you used on your lips!
  

    
Well, now that the conversation has completely stopped, perhaps a word
of explanation.

Really and I had a mutual friend named Minnie Rabinowitz who was one
of the backers behind the old Club Nine. There she would be, circles of
rouge on her aging cheeks, her hair done up in spit curls around her
face, sitting there in a red leatherette booth, bobbing her head to the
music of Chris Isaak who was the house band at Nine at the time. She
was a kick, our Minnie. She never told us how old she was and when she
died, we realized that instead of 80-something, she was well into her
90s. Minnie was like a Sherman Tank. . . she just kept moving. She was
one of the first successful female real estate people in San Francisco
and she would call up our mutual friend Mark with a new deal jsut about
every week. 

Minnie died a few eyars ago; we had a great party for her and we all
miss her very much. My last really hilarious memory of Minnie: Somebody
hoisting her into my friend Mark's '72 Dodge van. Minnie was a cool
girl and she did love her rouge. 
  

    
Minnie used to call me up several times a week to inquire "how are
gonna make some money honey?" Then she would say... "why does Cynthia
use crayons on her lips? Why doesn't she use lipstick like the rest of
us?"
  

    

!!!


Cynthia, I have another question. What is in these new "wakeup
makeup" products? Of course I bought the Almay one (drugstore cosmetics ho
that I am) and it has titanium dioxide and something that starts with an O
listed as active ingredients. I put some on this morning and it actually
did tingle very faintly, in a nice way.

So what is this stuff? Does it have any actual benefits? Or is it bad for
me?
  

    

I think that wakeup makeup and Minnie and her rouge and Cynthia and her
crayons is a perfect note to end on, and from which to say thank you
Cynthia and all the rest of you whose participation made this such an
interesting and fun interview.

We didn't get all the way through the book, but there's certainly more
there for those of you want to buy a copy and learn more.

You are all welcome to stay and talk as long as you like, of course.  But
thanks for the two weeks you spent with us.
  

    
Stephanie: I haven't too much knowledge of what you're talking about.
The "O" these days is oxygen. . . and just like tea tree oil, vitamin
c, vitamin e, etc., is probably a gimnmick ingredient. Check how far
down in the ingredient list it is. mostly, cosmetics are oil, water and
stabilizers. . . anything else is icing. whichp robably doesn't work. 
  

    
. . . and let me say, Linda, thank you so much for allowing me to spew
on here about my favorite subjects.