This week, I sent Deenie to Bliss to check out the Fat Girl Slim line and get a massage (tough life, eh?).  Her report, here:

 ”Jolie readers:  Because you’re so beauty-savvy, you won’t be surprised to see me gush over Bliss Spa.  With 8 locations across the U.S., one opening in Scottsdale, a spa in London and locations soon coming to Doha and Hong Kong, Bliss has become a household name since the early 90’s.  Bliss isn’t your average walk-in, lie down, drop-your-pants and get waxed where-the-sun-don’t-shine spa.  They lend you a robe and flip flops!  Give you a locker!  Stuff you with brownies and lemon water!  I fell in love with their Triple Oxygen Facial and Brazilian Bikini Wax long ago, but recently have been introduced to their fabulous at home spa solutions.  It’s beach time (although Nadine has been enjoying Los Angeles sun for months, grumbles the pale New Yorker), and that means skinny time.  Thankfully Bliss knows how to help a girl out when she just can’t do any more sit-ups or stand to eat another grilled chicken salad (dressing on the side).

Fat Girl Slim and the Love Handler are the first two of Bliss’s cellulite busting creams in the Fat Girl line.  Intended for use during the day, Bliss claims the Love Handler is a “liquid workout for lazy abdominals, with 8 hour release caffeine and energizing amino acids.”  A sister to the LH, Fat Girl Slim works similarly but with QuSome-encapsulated caffeine molecules and can be used from the neck down.  Completing the trifecta, a new sister is born—and born to sleep.  Just released a few days ago, Fat Girl Sleep is packed with Bliss’s slenderiZZZe complex and has a lovely lavender scent with which you can rub you flub before slipping under your sheets.  Overnight, dimple diminishers are released to help you take full advantage of your 8 hours…or 6 (let’s be honest). 

And while we’re talking summer, Bliss and Philips have just released a Bikini Perfect kit- your own at-home hair removal kit for those times you poor (or lazy) moments.  More cool new Bliss products to keep you looking young and skinny are available online.  But until next time, good night and good luck.”

Deenie went to a party on my behalf last week…but neither of us could figure out what exactly the event was for.  Regardless, she writes…:

“Oh, the glamour. Oh, the glitz. Oh, the boys. So, I attended an Evenings in Vogue event last Friday at 1 Oak, on behalf of my better blogging half, Nadine.  The music was loud, the girls were sexy, the boys were sexier, and the drinks were pomegranate martinis. Enough said.

As if those hot tickets weren’t enough to entice me in, there were booths of “events,” like at a fair…only instead of face painting with donkeys clomping about, they offered portrait painting against a backdrop of posing models. St. Ives offered a manicure booth (which I partook) and the CoverGirl station was equipped with every product in their inventory, including their new TruBlend family of products. The make-up artists at CoverGirl diligently beautified the milling hotties with Outlast All-day Lipcolor- one way to make all the sexy lips look even sexier.

After all that pampering and perusing I was pooped. I may or may not have grabbed several risotto balls from the caterer’s tray before leaving the vixens. Sigh.  Tough night.”

Deenie writes: “What feels soft like velvet, is made by a team of scientists, and has the ability to make your skin glow like the light inside your refrigerator?  A robotic youth-granting puppy?  Nay!  It’s MLab, a super-effective line of anti-aging skin-care products. Until now, the line’s only been sold in the prestigious White Hall at Harrod’s in London (those wily Brits, they’ve got amazing skincare, the royals and tea at the Ritz on their side?  Time to catch up!) but it’s launched just this week in the US.  Phew.

With clinically active ingredients from 45% to 75%, MLab is Not Kidding Around with your collagen, people.  It’s suitable for all skin-types and has products from cleansers to serums to body creams.  (So what if I have the ass of a 25-year-old?  I want the ass of a 21 year old!)  The anti-aging cream has the highest amount of clinically active ingredients and goes for $260 a pop–expensive, but let’s face it, you can’t put a price on Botox-free fabulousness.  (Don’t worry, the rest of the line is cheaper.)  The formula combines peptides and antioxidants and is crazy hydrating, reducing fine lines, increasing elasticity, and making skin look luminous.  And luckily you don’t have be an AARP member to see the benefits: I’m mid-twenties, and my skin is already looking better!”

Deenie writes:

“Friday, I had a date–not your standard boozy affair in the Meatpacking District, but instead a life-affirming, positive encounter: I met with people who have been touched by cancer, whether the scars were their own, their coworkers’, or their loved-ones’.  Cancer and Careers is an organization striving to help women make decisions about their career, offering advice on how to continue working effectively, and (best of all) helping them find ways to feel and look beautiful in spite of their illness.   Six years ago, Carlotta Jacobson, Present of Cosmetic Executive Women, and Kate Sweeney, CEW Executive Director, realized that five of their forty CEW board members had been diagnosed with cancer.  What happens when a former Harper’s Bazaar Beauty Editor and a Producer at Oxygen.com get together to help their sisters in need? One badass organization! The website www.cancerandcareers.org (in English and Spanish!) is easy-to-use and chock full of information to help women decide when and how to tell others about their illness. 

Cancer and Careers offers support for not only those working with cancer but for their loved ones as well.  I was sixteen when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer; if only I’d known Matthew Zacharay, founder of I’m Too Young For This (www.imtooyoungforthis.org).  Zachary, a former concert pianist, was diagnosed with brain cancer at 21 and founded his organization in 2004 to offer counsel to afflicted young people whose suffering and experiences are often overlooked.   As somebody who’s been personally touched by the big C, I also gathered insight from career coach Rosalind Joffe, author of Women, Work and Autoimmune Disease: Keep Working Girlfriend!  I left that Friday afternoon refreshed knowing that so much is being done to help fellow ladies in the workplace feel secure, even during one of the darker periods of their lives.  In the words of Rosalind Joffe, to all the women at Cancer and Careers: keep working girlfriend!”

Living out in the Land of La means many things: an increased reliance on sunscreen, an inexplicable desire to pump my face full of collagen, the bizarre reality that Fabio is my gym buddy.  Sadly, it also means that I can’t attend most beauty events in New York City, since (wouldn’t you know it?) my private jet is broken.  Damn it all!  So, like a ray of sunshine, my New York City-dwelling, beauty-obsessing former roommate Deenie is stepping up to the plate, ready to report from the trenches.  She’ll be my gal Friday at New York desksides and events, passing along the honest, tell-it-like-it-is beauty scoop you’ve come to expect!

Direct from Deenie herself:  

“Hey Y’all!  There’s a new addition to the Jolie family…a big-grinning, beauty-loving, hair-dying addict–no, it’s not Nadine’s doppelganger.  It’s me, Deenie: Southern girl and beauty-lover extraordinaire!  I grew up with a mother who would stop me on my way out the door to make sure I had on my “lips” and “ears.”  (A Southern lady is always checking her assets from head to toe.)  To make matters worse (or better) my mother is Lebanese.  Maybe you don’t know any old Lebanese women…but my 80-year-old relatives look more like Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra than someone’s grandma!  At the tender age of 15, I was already well-versed in night creams, thick and luscious body butters, oils for post-shower and—of course—sunscreen for daytime.  Thus began my love of and obsession with true beauty. 

After living with Nadine in New York for a year, I had been properly schooled on all the “need to knows” of beauty.  The day before she left, she handed me a luminous, brimming trash bag of delectable, new-and-barely-used products (do the words “trash bag,” “delectable” and “barely used” belong in the same sentence?!)  But to me it was a plethora of golden freebies, there to transform me into a goddess.  As a former dancer, I’m accustomed to witnessing beauty from both up-close and far-away, inside and out…so, if you’re willing, please allow me to contribute my thoughts and opinions from the ever-evolving world of New York beauty!”  

Deenie!