#49: November Eco Beauty + Lifestyle + Media FAVORITES
Episode 49: November Eco Beauty + Lifestyle + Media FAVORITES
Hearkening back to the very first episode of this podcast (Ep. 1: Let’s Get Started By Discussing Some Recent Favorite Eco/Organic Beauty Products), let’s get into a monthly favorites today! This is the traditional structure my monthly favorites videos on YouTube used to follow (and will follow again! Someday! When parenting is less intensive!). Please see the list and all associated links for products discussed below, and full extended show notes and transcript on lamouretlamusique.com.
Episode Notes:
Thank you to today’s episode partner, Loupiote. You can shop Loupiote’s enchanting collection of hand-poured in California candles here.
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Products discussed –
Beauty:
Earthwise Yasuni (LAMOUR for 10% off) https://bit.ly/3mhLz9n
Earthwise Ferns + Moss (LAMOUR for 10% off) https://bit.ly/33s1Q3D
5YINA Divine Biocellulose Masks https://bit.ly/37lHgne
Mukti Deep Cleanse Antioxidant Mask* https://bit.ly/2JlFk66
Free + True Mama Pacha* https://bit.ly/3ljyGu8
Inlight Under Eye Revive* https://bit.ly/39pZ3fW
Meant Do-All Wash https://bit.ly/3oaeNrv
Kjaer Weis Invisible Touch Liquid Foundation https://bit.ly/36m1TAJ
Fitglow Correct+ https://bit.ly/3loPZKE
Cupid & Psyche lip cremes* https://bit.ly/33t24Ii
Hope Gillerman Jaw Clenching Remedy https://bit.ly/3mjMSov
PNW Essences Aura Shield https://bit.ly/33sKFjb
Vered Botanicals Sacred Love* https://bit.ly/2Jm2edq
Lifestyle:
Bombas https://bombas.com
Bobux https://www.bobux.com
Cuyana Cotton Cashmere Rib Top https://bit.ly/3lmi454
Chocolita https://chocolita.com
Media:
Feminist Current https://www.feministcurrent.com
Dumbing Us Down https://amzn.to/3lhgQbe
Other products/brands mentioned –
Sahajan Nourish Face Cream https://bit.ly/2JpzJeM
Dr. Hauschka Light Reflecting Concealer https://bit.ly/3fSW6Wo
Kjaer Weis Abundance https://bit.ly/39poyxG
See Kai Run https://seekairun.com
To listen –
Ep. 48: All the New Skincare I’m Testing
Ep. 47: Clearing Out My Makeup Bags
Ep. 38: Lin Chen, Pink Moon
To watch –
Playlist of Past Monthly Beauty Favorites Videos
Review of Earthwise Beauty Oils/Oilserums
Beauty Heroes Box feat. Free and True (March 2020)
A Night for Green Beauty 2019 Award Winners Reviewed
M Shops feat. Pink Moon
To read –
In Fiore skincare layering https://bit.ly/2VbpHAz
Anya’s Reviews https://anyasreviews.com
Find Mercedes:
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OVERVIEW
00:08 – Introduction (Jump to section)
04:45 – Loupiote Candles (episode sponsor) (Jump to section)
05:33 – Earthwise Beauty – Yasuni & Ferns + Moss (Jump to section)
11:04 – 5Yina Divine Biocellulose Sheet Mask (Jump to section)
13:53 – Mukti Deep Cleanse Antioxidant Mask (Jump to section)
15:45 – Free + True Mama Pacha (Jump to section)
18:42 – Inlight Under Eye Revive (Jump to section)
20:59 – Meant Do-All Wash (Jump to section)
25:14 – Kjaer Weis Invisible Touch Liquid Foundation (Jump to section)
29:44 – Fitglow Correct+ Peach Corrector (Jump to section)
32:00 – Cupid & Psyche Lipsticks (Jump to section)
35:14 – Aromatherapy, Flower Essences, & Perfume (Jump to section)
42:11 – Bombas Socks & Bobux Shoes (Jump to section)
51:00 – Cuyana Top (Jump to section)
52:28 – Chocolita (Jump to section)
54:47 – Media Favorites (podcast & book) (Jump to section)
01:04:56 – Upcoming Content & Closing Thoughts (Jump to section)
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
(music)
00:08
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Your Purpose Is Beauty. Hopefully you survived Thanksgiving, if you are American. I’m sure things looked a little different this year. But the day that you’re hearing this episode, I feel like the majority of the shopping overwhelm, the marketing overwhelm is ceasing. I think today is Cyber Monday. Isn’t that something that they do after Thanksgiving? I try and honestly tune out a lot of the noise around this time of year. So it’s Episode 49. So bananas. How are we almost at Episode 50? I mean, I guess we’re almost at Episode 50. Because I do an episode a week and I’ve been doing this podcast for almost a year. So here we are. I’m super happy to be back on a regular schedule after the beginning of November. Our wedding concluded. I – actually took me quite a bit of time to reground, recalibrate, get my bearings. I needed a number of nights not working once we got back. Normally, I am working for three to four hours most nights of the week on L’Amour – either podcast, video, some kind of editing, emails… you know, you name it. And I just – I really just kind of needed to be a vegetable on the couch. (chuckles) But I’m back at it.
And I thought today here on the podcast, we could do a throwback to the early days of YouTube, just do a favorites. I used to call these “Eco Beauty and Lifestyle Favorites.” And there was a point in time some years ago when I did a monthly favorites video every single month. Never missed a month. And now here we are. I can’t even tell you the last time I did a favorites video on YouTube. (laughs) It’s been quite a long time. But I’m going to revive it as a podcast. It’s the end of the month. And it was either this or “What’s In My Cup.” And I just kind of felt like continuing on the product chat train after last week’s episode, which was all focused on the new skincare that I’ve been testing over, I guess, the last month or so. And the episode before that, which was the patron-exclusive episode for November, published on the first Monday of November, was a product clear-out. And it turns out that that was somewhat premature because I now have more things that I’m clearing out, like my Fitglow Beauty eyeshadow palette, which I love but has gone off after… I don’t know, maybe I’ve had it two years? So there’s more to be cleared out and we’ll see where that gets tackled. I’ll include a playlist in the show notes of all of the past favorites videos I’ve done. I think this is the first favorites podcast episode I’ve done, but typically, I mean, it’s – I guess it’s pretty self-explanatory what this is. These are videos on YouTube that would generally be done by a creator at the end of a month where they share with their audience the products that they were loving during the course of that month. They happen at the end of every month and they’re a real crowd pleaser. People seem to really enjoy favorites videos. For me, they always got a lot of views compared to other stuff that I would do, so hopefully you enjoy this as a podcast episode. I can’t think of any other announcements right now, but it could just be because it’s in the evening. So when I typically record podcast episodes, I had a little bit of red wine with dinner, which I ate before sitting down to record this, so I’m hoping that it will prevent me from plummeting and kind of like going kind of off the deep end as I sit here and record for probably the next hour.
Let’s take a very quick break so I can share with you a few words on a company who is supporting the podcast for today and over the next couple of episodes, products and a company I think you’ll be quite interested in, and then we’ll get into all of the favorites across skincare, I have body care products and makeup. I have some – I don’t know what to call them. It’s like flower essences, perfume, aromatherapy type of stuff. And then I have some lifestyle things, including some toddler essentials that I’ve discovered, some chocolate, and then we’ll end with some media favorites.
(music)
04:45
Evoking the joy and tenderness of childhood through storytelling scent, Loupiote candles offer delightful olfactive compositions that are hand-poured in California. Born as an homage to the inherent creativity and playfulness present in the childlike mind. Loupiote, or “tiny lamp” in French, is also used as a term of endearment for young children. Each of the artisanal scent stories are inspired by the founders’ memories of growing up in France. An ideal gift for the holidays, a baby shower, parents-to-be, or anyone looking to connect with their inner child. Discover the enchanting universe of Loupiote by visiting Loupiote.shop.com.
(music)
05:33
November favorites. November 2020 favorites. What a month this has been, an epic month. I feel like it’s gone extremely quickly. But I did some reflecting as I sat down at my laptop with my little Word document open, drafting the notes for this episode, and we’ll kick it off with skincare. My favorite thing to talk about, I think, probably. I think it’s probably most people’s favorite segment to hear – to hear about. So I’m going to tell you the best combination I’ve been using all month. My skin has been pretty balanced most of the month. I actually had done quite a bit of unintentional prep for the wedding, which was in early November, but I had done a month-long kansa wand and gua sha project in September, and then during October, I was working on a freelance project for a brand where I was exclusively testing a serum and that yielded really nice results. So I – my skin has been kind of in check, and normally this time of year, it would be quite surface dehydrated because we’re getting into quite cold weather. We’re definitely firmly into autumn weather and we’ll be getting into much more bitter cold winter temperatures here in Chicago before too long. But when I feel that things are getting dry, if I wake up and my skin feels parched, or if after I cleanse my skin in the evening things are looking like they need some TLC, the best combination I have used this year – really not just this month but this year – is Earthwise Yasuni and Earthwise Ferns + Moss. So this is a balm and oil combination. Over the summer, if I needed deep hydration, I would go for one or the other. Alone, they’re wonderful. Wonderfully, wonderfully hydrating. But if you need that extra level and you want to do more layering in these colder temperatures depending on where you are, this combination is exceptional. Ferns + Moss is the most nourishing oil in Earthwise’s range. I did a whole video extensively reviewing the five oil/oil-serums in Earthwise Beauty’s range. I’ll include the link for you in the show notes. It’s on YouTube. And I sang the praises of Ferns + Moss there. It’s really rich and deep and gingerbread-y. It’s like a bitter gingerbread cookie mixed with a forest. It’s really an outstanding product.
Earthwise Yasuni is an essential oil-free, gently exfoliating balm. So it’s this really interesting product. I actually was not the biggest fan of it the first couple of times I used it. It seemed like it was quite stiff. I wasn’t really sure what it was doing for me. I didn’t know how I felt about the texture. I was kind of like, “What is this?” I was a bit confused. But the deeper I explored the brand, the more I read about the formulation. And when I kind of dove in and tried to start really working with the product, which entailed working with it alone with nothing else on my skin, using an ample amount, really warming it up on my hands, massaging it into skin first thing, and then adding toner on top to really work the product into the skin. I just feel like I got such amazing results using it just alone with a toner or an essence over top over the summer. So now in the wintertime, you can play around with how you would want to layer these two products. Some people might like to do the traditional toner-serum-oil-balm. I personally really like to still do Yasuni first on the face and then work it in with a few drops of the Ferns + Moss oil and then do a toner on top of that. Now that is a totally revolutionary way to, you know, kind of tweak traditional skin layering advice or instructions that I feel were typically given with products. But yes, if you do the balm first and then top it with an oil and then top it with a toner, you get this insane plumpness to the skin. So I believe that this is because our skin is oil-loving, so putting an oil directly on the skin and using a balm that has not a lot of waxes, is a more oily balm, our skin recognizes that and doing a toner over top also helps with maintaining the hydration levels in the skin. But I feel that we’re always told to apply toner first to prep the skin to then receive oil. But if you’re interested in this more alternative approach to layering products, In Fiore is really where I learned this. They have some articles on this way of layering skincare on their blog. So if you were to just go to, I think it’s InFiore.net and you search on the website for “layering,” you’ll see a couple of posts come up about it. Anyway, I’m getting a little bit off-track from Earthwise Yasuni and Ferns + Moss, but that’s such a winning combination. And you can always use the code “LAMOUR” – L-A-M-O-U-R – for 10% off if you happen to miss their holiday shopping deals or you’re listening to this in the future, when there are no deals in sight. I always have that 10% off code.
11:04
A couple of masks that have been favorites, really not just this month, but I feel especially this month. The first is a mask that never ever lets me down. And in fact, I brought one of these with me to do before the wedding. So we were traveling. It was an out-of-state wedding. And the night before the wedding, Kav was out with a couple of his friends and I was in the hotel room with the baby, took my makeup off from the small rehearsal dinner that we had had that night, and I put one of the 5Yina Divine Biocellulose Sheet Masks on my face, and I laid in the luxurious king bed and just watched YouTube videos on my phone and I left the mask on for half an hour and it is just such – oh my gosh, just everyone needs to have a couple of these in their backup stash. I’m not a sheet mask person. I actually think that they’re very wasteful. I’ve tried, you know, some. I certainly wouldn’t say that I’ve extensively tried sheet masks but I’ve tried the Orgaid. I’ve tried this other one, Whamisa, I think it’s called, that Credo carries. I’ve tried others kind of here and there. Nothing has ever come close to the 5Yina masks. They are expensive. They’re $20 per mask but I feel like you’re really getting an intense treatment, and it’s just – I think that they’re a really nice indulgence and they just deliver really wonderful results.
I pulled up the website for these. They’re actually sold out. I was going to stock up on them while 5Yina was having their big holiday shopping deal. I think they had 20 or 25% off and I’m like, “How are you going to be out of one of your best products during the sale?” Like, why – why. (chuckles) This is like probably their – it has to be their best-selling product. I think it was one of the first products they came out with. So this has schizandra berries, goji berries, peony root, Job’s tears as kind of the herbal supports but it also has some peptides in it. Yeah, the ingredient list is just really interesting. For anyone that doesn’t know, 5Yina is a TCM, traditional Chinese medicine, infused brand. So they really approach skin from a Chinese medicine perspective. They say, “Inspired by the ancient wisdom of Chinese medicine and created with modern alchemy, this mask delivers a spa quality facial with holistic herbs and skin plumping peptides to help protect, brighten, and firm your skin in 30 minutes.” It works, y’all. I mean, it’s really a great product. I’ve sung the praises for a long, long time but I had to mention it this month because I used one right before the wedding and it did exactly what I needed it to.
13:53
13:53
Okay, the other mask to quickly mention is the Mukti Deep Cleanse Antioxidant Mask, I think it’s called. This, for me, was a real sleeper hit type of product and what I mean by that is sometimes products will cross my testing desk where I don’t – it’s not that I don’t have high expectations, it’s just that I try a lot of stuff and sometimes I have a preconceived idea of what will work on my skin. And when I hear “deep cleanse,” when I – I mean, I don’t even know why I thought this wouldn’t – wouldn’t work for me. I mean, comparable products to it have dried my skin out in the past. But this mask is wonderful if I’m looking for something more clarifying, if I’m – my skin is looking dull, lackluster. Um, I don’t leave it on that long. I would say 10 to 15 minutes max and I feel like I get kind of like a mini skin reset of sorts, and of course, I have a number of products in addition to this that I might reach for if my skin were in a similar condition, but this is really what I reach for if I feel like I want – if I’m looking dull, but maybe also like somewhat congested, like dull but congested, if that makes sense, and I – and I kind of just want like a deep clean to my skin, which truthfully doesn’t happen that often. Um, but I would say I use this mask at least a couple of times a month. It’s very cooling. It’s just a real pleasure to have on. And so it’s kind of more than just a November favorite, but I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you about it. It’s available at Beauty Heroes. I discovered it around the time that they, Beauty Heroes, did their Mukti box. I think that was in the springtime. They featured a hyaluronic serum that they do, as well as – I’m blanking on what else they included. Maybe the Marigold Hydrating Cream.
15:45
Okay, moving on. I want to tell you about the Free + True Mama Pacha, which I think you’ve probably heard me talk about before. I’m nearing the end of this bottle of face cream. It was featured in a Beauty Heroes box from, I believe, March. They featured the Free + True Body Prophet, which is a body serum, and Mama Pacha, which is a face cream. It’s a November favorite, but it’s really a Best of Beauty 2020 favorite for me, but I use it all the time and I’m nearing the end of it. I’m probably going to use it up before the end of this month or early December. I do like to seal things in with a face cream, now more than ever, in the evenings. I never really saw the merit of an expertly formulated, effective face cream. I’ve always kind of poo-pooed them, to be honest, or they’ve just always seemed somewhat extraneous for me, as someone that likes oils and balms.
But it was actually really this year, maybe the last couple years, like my postpartum time, when I needed to get quite creative about how I was going to rehabilitate my skin from pregnancy and postpartum, which for me, just looked like a lot of sensitivity and quite a bit of dehydration, as well. And I really discovered how powerful and essential a water-based cream can be. Now there’s only a handful that have made the cut for me. You know, it’s a ubiquitous – it’s a ubiquitous product. Every brand makes a face cream. A lot are “take it or leave it,” but Free + True Mama Pacha is such a good fall and I would even say winter face cream without being rich. So it’s not as rich as something like Ayuna Cream II. It’s certainly not as rich as something like Ayuna Terra. It’s not as rich as something like the Votary Superseed Cream, which came in a past Boxwalla box. It’s like a step below that but it’s also more nourishing than something like the Sahajan Nourish Face Cream, which I love, reviewed in my A Night for Green Beauty 2019 award winners review on YouTube. I published that a couple months ago. I will of course link it in the show notes. That’s a wonderful spring and summer cream. I do still reach for it a bit here and there in the fall; depends on what my skin is doing. But more and more, I’ve just been exclusively reaching for my Mama Pacha. I also just love the scent. If you listen to last week’s episode, I talked a bit about the Free + True Freedom Fighter face oil, which was sadly – I mean, not really a miss, it just – I’m not nearly as enthusiastic about it as I am some other Free + True products. But yeah, Mama Pacha. I would recommend it to anybody who wants a nourishing wintertime face cream. It’s a pleasure to use. I will repurchase it. Kaveh, my husband, loves it for winter especially, and he’s more of like an oily combination skin type.
18:42
Last thing to mention in skincare is the Inlight eye balm. It’s actually called the Under Eye Revive and Beauty Heroes is newly stocking this product. So sometime, I think in the fall, Beauty Heroes added four new Inlight products to the range of things that they’re carrying from the brand. And I got to try this and at first – I mean, I was trying it, I think, when the weather was still a bit too warm. So this is an extremely emollient, nourishing eye balm. Um, so this is really for people that are very dry under and around the eyes that want some intense, intense hydration, that are, you know, perhaps worried about fine lines and wrinkles. It’s described as “a decongesting, concentrated eye balm that targets the delicate under eye area to minimize puffiness and brighten the look of dark circles.” It has camu camu, gotu kola, green tea, and green coffee, and it says that it’s for all skin types, including the most sensitive. So this was what I started reaching for. Well, I reach for it on and off all the time, but I really focused on using it when we got back from our travels and the wedding and I was quite puffy, especially under my right eye. I actually didn’t have symmetrical puffiness, but that’s kind of very common, especially if you’ve been on an airplane. Um, you’re gonna have some fluid retention issues. So you know, I did a little bit of jade rolling while using this product and within, you know, I – it sort of started depuffing right away. But after a couple nights of doing that, I just felt like, very revived. I felt that I was kind of recovered from the trip and reacclimated. So intensely moisturizing. It comes in a little pot. A little goes such a long way. If you’re looking for an eye product that’s just deeply nourishing, regenerative… It’s just going to provide this cocoon of care and moisture for the undereyes. I highly recommend, especially as we’re moving into much cooler temps.
20:59
Before we get into makeup, I want to quickly give a shout-out to a new body care product that I have been using over the last couple of months, and it’s the Meant Do-All Wash, M-E-A-N-T. I discovered this brand through an order I placed on Pink Moon. Pink Moon is an online eco beauty boutique founded and run by Lin Chen. She was here, a guest here on the podcast. I want to say she’s Episode 48. But don’t quote me, I’m gonna have to put it in the show notes. She’s a wonderful human. She has a very philanthropic focus with her company and I am one of their Collaborators for Change, I think it’s called, so if you use the code “Lamour” – L-A-M-O-U-R – at checkout, you can have 10% of your order sent to the partner organization that I chose, which is the Lyson Center, focused on regenerative agriculture and creating sustainable and healthy food systems. It’s named in honor of my late father who was a professor of rural sociology at Cornell and had done a lot of really groundbreaking work developing this concept of civic agriculture. I also did a whole YouTube video on Pink Moon and quite a bit more about the Lyson Center, if you’re interested.
So the Meant Do-All Wash. One of the favorite things that I just picked up on a whim. I am kind of always looking for new body washes. There are so many beautiful soaps in eco beauty. There’s a lot of artisan soap makers out there. And I – you know, I love that soaps are very low-waste. The packaging tends to always be really quite sustainable with a lot of these brands. But sometimes you just want to reach for a really beautiful shower gel and that honestly is quite difficult to find in eco beauty. For a number of years, I loved the Ila – I-L-A; it’s a British brand – they had a body wash in a yellow bottle that I really liked, but once I got pregnant, I had developed a deep aversion to that product and I’m – I’m sure that it would be fine if I were to use it again now but I just have never, never gotten back to it. Perhaps permanently ruined for me. And you know, I try others here and there. Like I’ve tried the Basd – B-A-S-D – that Credo carries. I was very unimpressed, honestly. The scents smelled kind of synthetic. T
he Meant Do-All Wash I’m quite obsessed with. First of all, I love the packaging. Kind of just reminds me of – it’s just like a design that I feel someone that appreciates products would like, kind of reminds you of something that you would find at like Sephora, like Nordstrom beauty section. It’s just really nicely designed and the product itself is really, really pleasant. It has – to me, It smells a bit like Coca Cola, which might sound kind of weird but it’s kind of a grapefruit-bergamot type of scent. The sudsing is really lovely. I think if you’re someone that takes showers in the morning, you would really love it for its – it does have quite an invigorating scent. I mean, I use it in the evening. I’m an exclusive nighttime showerer or bath-taker. I cannot even tell you the last time I took a shower in the morning. Probably actually when – when Baby L’Amour was a little, little baby, like a newborn. I would take a shower whenever I possibly could. So I think that that’s probably, you know, two years ago is probably the last time I took a shower in the morning. Anyway, totally unnecessary detail. It’s a great product. If you’re in the market for a new body gel, body wash, I can recommend it. I wish that they would maybe do, I don’t know, I think that they could do a really good kind of PM calming type of scent, but don’t make it lavender. I feel like every PM calming product is lavender and there just have to be other ways to do a PM bath product, right?
(music)
25:14
Alright, surprisingly – at least surprisingly for me – I have a couple of makeup things to share with you and these are – at least two of them are exclusively November favorites. One of them I’ve been using a little bit longer than November but have gotten quite a bit of use this month. So two new face or base products. The Kjaer Weis foundation, the new liquid foundation, it’s just called their liquid foundation. They also do the very, very commonly recognized cream foundation in the compact. That’s a very – I mean, I guess I would call it a cult product. I have it, and I know a lot of eco beauty enthusiasts have it, and I think it’s a wonderful product. Okay, so it’s called the Invisible Touch Liquid Foundation. It’s meant to even skin tone, helps skin stay hydrated, nourished, and smooth. They have quite a nice color range. It’s certified organic, vegan, gluten-free. The finish is said to be natural and slightly luminous. I picked this up when Credo was doing their friends & family sale. It was a 20% off sale. I am about to use up my Ilia True Skin Serum Foundation, which I’ve been using for the last two years. Really, really like it. It does have some silicones in it. I reviewed this, actually, without – very embarrassingly – realizing that it did have some silicones in it, which is fine, you know, for a lot of people. It’s not a make-or-break thing. Silicones are something that I personally would prefer to not use if I don’t have to just because I don’t think I necessarily need them in my skincare, but the Ilia True Skin Serum Foundation I have loved and it’s a beautiful product. It’s stayed good for two years. I’m pretty much done with the bottle so I’m happy that I haven’t wasted a lot of that product, and the undertones of Ilia are very good for my skin. If you have any olive undertones, which is what – I’m kind of a light, I’m an NC 15 to 20 light olive with also quite a bit of pink undertones in my skin. They’re very good for that. Whereas other brands – um, I’m trying to think. Like Kosas is very yellow undertoned, in my experience – which is not as good of a match for me. Their colors tend to just be warm yellow undertoned and their bronzers are orangey, like that that kind of thing, which I’m sure is a great match for certain skin tones.
Kjaer Weis, I think it has very refined undertones. I think that they’ve expanded the shade range so much since the brand started. I have the cream foundation in “Paper Thin” and I went ahead and ordered the Invisible Touch Liquid Foundation in the same color. They have like a color matching – you basically can go to the website and if you’re, you know what your shade is in the cream foundation, you can very easily figure out what you would be in the liquid foundation. I think they do samples but I just went with the shade that the website told me and it’s a very, very good match for me. I do overall really like this product. I have some quibbles with the dropper, which I’ve heard other people say. Like it just doesn’t really pick up and dispense a lot of product. I would say that the coverage of this product is very light, but it’s not really like a tinted moisturizer because it feels extremely weightless on the skin, so it’s almost like an invisible skin evener with like a very light tint. It’s – for a foundation, it’s the only product of its type that I really would not have to use a beauty blender if I didn’t want to. You could just blend this in with your fingers and it just melds so perfectly into the skin. It’s really quite interesting and phenomenal for a completely eco formulation. I have heard from someone actually that I talked to on the live streams that I do on Patreon every week, she also was trying it and she had tried several shades and she said that some of the shades have quite a strong scent to them. In the shade that I have, the scent is not noticeable at all and that is definitely something that I would notice. So just be forewarned that some of the shades do have a stronger fragrance than others, but I can’t really speak to that because the one I have doesn’t really have that. So overall, really like this product. Really happy I got it at 20% off but I will use it and love it.
29:44
The other product I’m newly using this month is the Fitglow Correct+ Peach Corrector, I think it’s called. I got this in the Beauty Heroes Blue Friday sale, which was another 20% off sale. I have been needing major, major help in the under eye concealing/correcting game. I am a mother to a two-year-old. I stay up late almost every night to work on L’Amour, work on Your Purpose Is Beauty. And I just really am not sleeping as much as I really ought to be or as much as I used to and it has definitely taken a toll in my undereye area. I just have more persistent dark circles than I ever used to. So instead of continuing to try and look for a heavier concealer, I got the advice to go back to a corrector and I was like, “Yeah, why didn’t I think of that?” I used to use the Tarte CC Corrector, which I thought was actually a great product. It came in a kind of a mini compact. I’ve also tried Becca’s peach corrector and I didn’t like the texture of it at all; it was like very tacky, and yeah, it was just weird. I didn’t – I had high hopes and I didn’t like it.
And I’ve tried other correctors here and there but I was recommended the Fitglow Correct+, picked it up, I really like it. It’s in a doe foot applicator. You need kind of like two small little dots and that’ll cover your whole undereye area. This morning, I actually used the Fitglow Correct+ and then I didn’t even need concealer over top. I just did a bit of the Dr. Hauschka translucent highlighting pen, which I’ve had for maybe a year and a half and I’m still really quite liking it. So that was a winning combination for me today and I’m – I can’t really use the highlighting pen. It’s like a Touche Eclat type of product and often why – People are like, “Oh, Touche Eclat, like it doesn’t do anything to cover my circles.” Well yeah, like it’s not meant to, it’s meant to bring like some luminosity and highlighting, it’s not meant to color correct or cover dark circles. So having a corrector and then topping it with more of a highlighting undereye type of product is very nice, at least on me.
32:00
32:00
And then the third makeup favorite for the month are the Cupid & Psyche lipsticks and I’m happy to be mentioning them here because I’m not sure that I’ve talked too much about them anywhere else. I have been testing them over the last couple months. This is another brand discovery through Pink Moon. They carry a handful of the shades; they don’t carry the full range. I am trying “Ione,” which is like a fuchsia. “Brigid,” I think, is the other one, which is a cherry red. And then “Artemis” is a shimmery mauve, which I don’t wear on my lips but I love it on my cheeks. It’s actually quite similar to Kjaer Weis “Abundance,” which is a greigey, purpley, taupey cream blush. It looks so weird in the pan. It wins the award for me of the makeup product that looks so off-putting in the pan but is just totally transformational on the face. It’s like a “my cheeks but better.” It goes with everything. It is a – and you know, I discovered Kjaer Weis “Abundance” on a quest to find a truly kind of plummy mauve cheek color, which is very, very difficult for people that have cool or multiethnic skin undertones because everything that looks plummy will – the warmth will come out. However the undertones of most plum cheek products are formulated – like whatever purple pigment they’re using tends to have a lot of red to it. So they would always shift on me, or what’s the word that we always used to use? When I say “we,” I mean every beauty blogger ever and the word is oxidized. “Oh, this oxidized on me.” “This oxidized in the packaging.” “This oxidized on my face.” Basically means that when a product, any kind of face product – or I guess it could be an eye product, too – any makeup product once it hits your face, or interacts with the air or interacts with the oils on your skin, it changes color, basically either immediately or over the course of the day. It’s a very common issue, actually, with foundations. But I would often have oxidation issues with face color, like cheek color. It would kind of look one way going on and then, I don’t know, it would just change and it would turn warm on me, so I was desperately looking for a cheek color that didn’t do that, and Kjaer Weis “Abundance” was the solution.
I’m happy to report that Cupid & Psyche “Artemis” is – I mean, I don’t even know if I would call it a dupe. It’s just an equivalent, really. Um, very, very similar color. It’s going to be a taupey, kind of purpley plum on the cheeks, beautiful for wintertime. I mean, it’s just really, really great and the lipsticks can go on very sheer or you can build them up to be pretty opaque. They’re very comfortable. I am planning to have the formulator of Cupid & Psyche come on the podcast. I’d love to talk with her and learn more about her inspiration for the brand and formulation because they’re a really, really nice formula and they’re housed in all cardboard packaging and they have this like really beautiful graphic of wings on them, which I just feel very drawn to, and yeah, they’re – they’re really, really gorgeous products.
35:14
Let’s round out the beauty portion of today’s favorites episode with, I don’t know, this is kind of like an aromatherapy section, I guess we could say. Hope Gillerman Jaw Clenching Remedy, definitely a favorite this month. In fact, I think I’m going to use a little bit right now. I have gotten into the habit of every week – So I do these live Get Ready With Me’s every Friday morning. Mostly they’re on Friday morning. Sometimes I have to do them on the weekends, depending on my childcare situation, if Kav can take a break and watch the baby for me, but Friday mornings, typically I’m getting ready to do an hour of live streaming Get Ready With Me on Patreon and I’ve taken to – liking to – I don’t know what to call it other than like, set the space or ground – kind of ground myself and ease into the livestream. So instead of just sitting down and starting to immediately talk about products or start slapping makeup on my face, I like to take a couple minutes while people are trickling in and saying hi and we’re kind of testing the sound and audio. I have been doing a little bit of Dien Chan facial reflexology. I have a detector and I just kind of sit there and work out some of the tension on my face, which is really nice. And another thing I really like to do is take the Hope Gillerman Jaw Clenching Remedy, which is in a rollerball. I roll it onto that, the – it’s like where your wrist and your palm meet. So I roll it there, press my palms together, and then I press that part of my wrist and palm onto my jaw line and I kind of do a little bit of massage.
And then this is another favorite on my list: the Pacific Northwest Essences Aura Shield, which came in a limited edition Beauty Heroes discovery. I have had the Pacific Northwest Essences mists and essences in my life for most of this year. But Aura Shield is pretty new to me and I’ve been using it a lot this month, especially around, during, and after the wedding. I didn’t take this with me to Texas. I actually should have. But I felt like I really needed it coming back because, well, I’m going to get into that in next week’s podcast episode on the Patreon-exclusive feed. I’m going to be doing a breakdown of the wedding, basically – the day itself but also some of the issues that arose around the wedding, with people involved in the wedding. And there was definitely some, I guess you could say – well, there was literal backlash to having a wedding. But there was also kind of some weird energetic backlash, which again, I’ll get into more on next week’s episode. But I have been using these two products: Hope Gillerman and Aura Shield every week on my live stream. I mean, and if I make my way up to my office, if the baby wants to come up here and spend some time in the afternoon, I’ll come over to my desk, which is where I keep these products, and just do kind of like a mini midday refresh, reset myself, kind of reground into the body. And they’re just such nice products and I think that they have such a wonderful effect on the mind and I’m a true believer in aromatherapy, and I really do you think that these Pacific Northwest Essences mists change the feeling of the space that you’re in. They’re really, really quite powerful.
So the other product in this category is a perfume, and it is one of the Vered Botanicals perfumes. If you don’t know Vered, she has been around since the early days of eco beauty, so I would say at least a decade, and she’s a master herbalist, has her own skincare line, and she’s a perfume maker. I had a facial once in New York. I want to say this was 2016. It was the year I went to the Indie Beauty Expo in New York. But I went to Great Jones Spa, which is in New York. I forget where it is. I think it’s in NoHo. Isn’t that a neighborhood in New York? (chuckles) Yeah, North of Houston. I was such a dork. I just looked up NoHo. “NoHo is a trendy neighborhood where creative meets chic. Architectural features range from 19th century behemoths like the Great Hall of Copper Union to sleek modern high-rises once home to artists like Andy Warhol and the legendary CBGB music club. The area stays true to its heritage with trendy galleries and live performances at Joe’s Pub. Well-heeled locals mingle in upscale bars and stylish restaurants.” That’s what Google has to say about NoHo. So um, Great Jones Spa is in this neighborhood. And I went there after kind of connecting with Vered on Instagram, you know, five years ago, I guess, at this point. And she – I actually contacted her because I wanted to book a facial with her and she was like, “Well, I don’t give them any more but I trained people at Great Jones Spa and they use all of my products and they do a gua sha facial.” So I think I probably have a YouTube video recapping that that experience.
Anyway, I love Vered. I respect her. She’s like, kind of one of my idols in green beauty. I think her products are magnificent and I have some of her perfumes. She had sent me some when she launched some of these new ones a couple of years ago. And the one I wanted to tell you about is her Sacred Love oil. It’s in a rollerball and it’s just – it’s beautiful. It smells like kind of like a chocolatey – it’s somewhat gourmand, a bit – and I’m not typically into gourmand scents, but it’s kind of like a chocolatey, herbal, somewhat floral, um – I don’t know, now I’m looking at the ingredients. So it has fennel, English lavender, clary sage, rose otto, cardamom, davana, ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, pink peppercorn, ylang ylang, coffee bean… Um, I don’t know. It’s, it’s beautiful. It’s impossible to describe. But yeah, it’s a beautiful product. I’m – I think I’m probably going to mention this again. I mean, I’ve had this rollerball in my life for a couple years now, and it hasn’t turned or gone bad or anything. This would be a beautiful Valentine’s Day beauty gift to yourself or to a partner or whoever. Yeah, I could keep talking about Vered’s perfumes, but I’m gonna leave it there for now.
(music)
42:11
Now let’s talk about some lifestyle products. I’m going to start with two toddler favorites, socks and shoes, which might sound kind of random. But if you’re a parent, you will know, or if you’re not yet and you want to be or are going to be, you might find that discoveries like this are very revolutionary and like little things like this really can make a huge difference. So the first thing I’m going to mention are Bombas socks. These are toddler and child and I think they even do adult socks, but they’re – they’re just socks with little grippies on them. So we have hardwood floors in our home. Baby L’Amour – I don’t even like to say was a late walker – but on the kind of normal bell curve of when babies walk, walked on the later end of that bell curve, which I always knew everything was fine. We went to the chiropractor, there were no structural issues whatsoever. It was, you know, some babies just totally do things at their own pace, and I really had to fend off certain family members who were like, trying to project their anxiety onto us. It’s very annoying when people do that, although it’s largely unconscious on their part, I’m sure. Okay, I’m rambling. Bombas toddler socks. I think this company was on Shark Tank. In fact, when I – I just Googled, I think, like “toddler socks with grips or grippies.” I don’t even remember what I searched for, Bombas came up right away and I recognized them from Shark Tank. But the socks are quite well made. They’re somewhat expensive. I think a four pack is between $20 and $25, maybe. But they make such a big difference, especially if you have a baby who’s just learning to walk. And again, I think every baby is different. Some have – some babies, like one day to the next, they’re just kind of, they’ve got it. They’re not stumbling, whatever. But I think more, that’s more the exception than the rule. I think for a lot of babies, that’s not a completely linear process, and they’re learning to walk but they’re also falling down all the time and slipping and stuff.
So if you have hardwood floors, you need socks with grippies. Also because I am a nut about being barefoot on the floor for myself. That’s just a Chinese medicine thing. You never, ever have bare feet on a cold hardwood floor, no matter what season, and this is one of the things I cannot get Kaveh to stop doing. He also is like a very hot-blooded type of person. He runs really warm. He’s barefoot all the time. He wants iced beverages all the time. This is anathema to me, you guys. Anathema for the last 10 years, ever since I found acupuncture, I have been focused on stoking and preserving my digestive fire, my digestive warmth, the warmth of my body. I mean, this is a huge deal, especially this time of year. So I am always in socks, I’m always in slippers. I’m never barefoot on the floor. And so of course, I’m making sure my baby is, as much as possible, not barefoot on the floor either. But I can’t do anything about Kav.
Okay, the next thing is a shoe company. Many of you who are parents may already know it, but it’s called Bobux. B-O-B-U-X. Bobux, I think. I heard about this, this company – They are quite well-known, I would say, in the barefoot shoes community, especially if you’re looking for like a nicer or a dressier shoe for kids. Now, please know that – I’m just pulling up the site on my laptop – shopping for shoes for a baby, a toddler, a kid… my least – one of my least favorite parenting tasks. And you know, like, I’m sure many of you can probably relate. I feel like the labor of always making sure that your kid has clothes that fit, shoes that fit, all that stuff, like it tends to mostly fall on mothers, on women. And it can be a lot of work. I mean, it’s more work, I guess, if you don’t just want to go to Walmart or Target and get, you know, like a cheap disposable pair of something, which has its place. You know, we – we have had to do that, too. And I guess you could argue that even buying a nicer pair of kids’ shoes – like they outgrow things so quickly. But I am learning as I go about how much to size up, especially in a pair of shoes. It’s a bit more of an investment, but I ended up getting a pair of Bobux. They’re kind of like Chelsea boots. So I’m pretty minimalist with wardrobe and especially with footwear. Baby L’Amour – I guess I should say Toddler L’Amour, or Jess from Stark Skincare said that I should now say L’Enfant L’Amour, which means “L’Amour kid” – We have a pair of sneakers, which are, you know, great, but when it’s colder, I wanted something a little warmer, but not as warm as like snow boots.
So I ended up getting a pair of snow boots from the brand See Kai Run, K-A-I, which – I got most of my footwear, kid footwear recommendations from Anya’s Reviews. I’ll include her handle in the show notes. One of my followers on Instagram actually told me about her after I was mentioning Luna sandals over the summer and Katy Bowman and “Move Your DNA” and ancestral movement. And I am slowly, for myself, also exploring barefoot shoes and, and that whole world. That’s actually one of my goals for 2021. I want to get a pair of Correct Toes, which are these toe separators, and one or two pairs of barefoot shoes. The problem is most barefoot shoes are heinous. Like they have a wide toe box so that you – they just are not – I’m just I’m used to, you know, a more traditional-looking shoe that doesn’t kind of look like a duck foot, right? And it just takes a lot of work, I think, to sift through everything and find something that you find aesthetically matches you and that also will be healthy for your feet and your physiology.
But yeah, barefoot shoes and body alignment, that’s all like a 2021 goal for me. And yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ll be doing a 2021 goals episode somewhere at some point because I have other things to talk about in that department. So I have had a pair of snow boots already picked out. I had these sneakers but I really wanted something in between, and I decided to – Let me see if I can pull up the exact ones. I went for this pair of navy blue Chelsea boots, they have a zipper on the side. I do think that they are leather. I’m going to double check. And of course, with most sites, if you sign up for their newsletter you can get like I think a 15% discount. So zip and elastic, gusset, um, materials… Yeah, so they have a leather upper and gum I-Walk TPR soles. So the nice thing about Bobux is I think that there are what’s called zero drop, which means that they’re like – they don’t have a very high arch and they’re just very healthy footwear for a baby that’s learning to walk. They’re very flexible. And these are a little bit hard to get on the feet, but we’ve kind of gotten, gotten into the groove with them. You want to put them on when a baby or toddler is standing up so that their weight and their heel can go in. I do also put these on with the Bombas socks, which are quite thick because I went a size up, basically. I didn’t want the baby to grow out of these right away. And the best way to size with this is you have to trace the kids foot. And I mean it’s, it’s a pain in the butt. Especially like virtually shopping for kids’ shoes is a pain in the butt. I had to – like over the summer, I bought some Natives, which are waterproof shoes, and I had to like do a return. Okay, we can stop talking about kids’ footwear now because it’s quite annoying. But yeah, Bobux. If you haven’t heard of them, they make some very stylish and yeah, like kind of – kind of heirloom or heritage-looking types of things. If you are planning to have multiple kids, could be a nice investment. If you’re having your first kid and thinking about more and having hand-me-downs, I think this stuff, at least from what I’ve experienced so far, using these with Baby L’Amour, the stuff is very well-made and seems like a very good investment.
51:00
Okay, now we can talk about my stuff again (laughs) and transition away from baby. So some of you noticed on Instagram that I was sporting a new top, which – It’s funny, you know that you don’t shop for clothes enough when people really notice when you’re wearing something new. I got one of these, I think it’s a cotton cashmere or I forget exactly what it is, but it’s from the brand Cuyana, C-U-Y-A-N-A, and they’re kind of like a much more elevated, luxury, minimal, curated version of Everlane. Kind of, but like maybe I guess not really. Like it’s just basics, like kind of capsule, very high-quality, beautiful material basics. Definitely some of the pieces are more of an investment, but some of them I think are pretty reasonable for how well-made the stuff is. And I just went for a ribbed, kind of lightweight, black V-neck button-down, but it’s like quite form-fitting and I really like it. I kind of want to wear it every day. It’s not quite warm enough. I would have to pair it with like a big scarf now, because it does kind of expose the chest area. But yeah, it’s really flattering. I’ve worn it in some past videos. I’ve been messaged from people that say they went and bought it after they saw it. So I think that’s a testament to it looking like kind of just a really nice capsule staple piece. So I’ve been loving that.
52:28
I discovered a new chocolate thanks to Melissa, who’s one of my really, really wonderful, super-supportive, warm-hearted Patrons. She sent me a little box of sample products to try. Actually, she’s a huge beauty green beauty enthusiast and has tried so much stuff, and just put a little package of things in the mail for me that she thought I would enjoy testing, which was extremely, extremely kind of her and much appreciated. It actually came to me at a time when, I don’t know, I just kind of needed a bit of a boost. I don’t know where I’m going to talk about this more, maybe in the wedding recap I do, but – well, maybe when I talk about 2021 goals or like what 2020 was like, because I’ve had some long-term relationships in my life fall away this year. I’m sure I’m probably not the only one. But yeah, I just have – I’ve had some, some really redefined friendships. So some of that has been hard and, and painful. And it was just a really sweet gesture that Melissa thought of me that way. So Melissa, if you’re listening, really, really appreciate you doing that. And she surprised me with these little bars of Chocolita chocolate. She sent me the lavender dream time bar. I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s like the sleepy time chocolate bar.
So Chocolita is – I believe they’re based in Arizona, if I’m not mistaken, and they’re an herb-infused chocolate company and they do a number of herbal-infused chocolates. They do sipping chocolates. I think they do some other products, but I was hooked after just trying this lavender chocolate. And I went on to stock up on like boxes of their stuff. I’ve tried almost all the bars they do at this point. The lemon and pine pollen bar is a white chocolate bar and it is so good. Oh my gosh, it’s outstanding. Just earlier today, I was having some of the goji berry and schizandra bar, also a white chocolate bar. I don’t know, this stuff is just really high-quality and the ingredients are wonderful. So just wanted to tip you off to a new chocolate company if you’re in the market.
54:47
Let’s end with two quick media favorites. So the first, if you are watching L’Amour et la Musique on YouTube, I’ve mentioned it there. Definitely have been mentioning it on Patreon. I discovered the Feminist Current podcast, maybe a couple of months – It’s been a couple of months. As you know, I lose track of time, but I have to mention it as a November favorite. It’s like probably a 2020 favorite. I found Feminist Current through Emilee Saldaya of the Free Birth Society, and I found the Free Birth Society through Amber Magnolia Hill’s Medicine Stories podcast. So it’s kind of like three degrees of separation or two degrees of separation, I guess.
Feminist Current is a podcast run by a Canadian feminist, Meghan Murphy. She’s based in Vancouver, I believe. She also has a YouTube channel and she does a weekly live stream called The Same Drugs. And she has a, I guess, a co-host, Laura McNally, who’s New Zealand – I think she lives in New Zealand and I believe she is from New Zealand and not Australia, but I could be mistaken. She’s a psychologist, I believe, and not a psychiatrist, but I’m kind of, I’m new to their work and still feeling them out. This is a whole kettle of worms that I obviously can’t get into in this episode, because we’re almost at an hour. But as I continue reevaluating, rethinking, redefining what feminism means to me, in this time of aggressive, aggressive identity politics, I would like to eventually share my evolution with feminist thought, how I kind of identified as a feminist in the past, and how that approach is evolving, how I’m thinking about things. I just – It’s a difficult thing to talk about, because her work is pretty controversial, especially if you’re very steeped in woke identity politics; she’s very critical of a lot of that. The transgender issue is extremely inflammatory to many, many people. But Emilee Saldaya is also a huge advocate of women and women’s-only spaces and having healthy critiques of the dominant transgender ideology.
So it’s really unfortunate that these conversations are often labeled as being transphobic. And they – I mean, these women are just incredibly smart and articulate and really trying to have just conversations about these issues and what’s at stake. And, um, yeah, it’s – it’s complicated. And I have just been exploring a lot of this for myself and it’s a process, but I have really appreciated Meghan’s podcast. Some of the guests that she has had on are extremely illuminating. And I’m just kind of learning as I go. And The Same Drugs with – the live stream on YouTube – is my favorite thing to listen to while I’m taking a therapeutic bath and unwinding at the end of a long day. So be prepared for a bit of controversy. It could be triggering. But I think these are really important conversations to have. Meghan Murphy was actually banned from Twitter in 2019, I think, and so there’s been an overwhelming amount of censorship towards people who question some of these dominant gender narratives or that have become really dominant over the last decade. So as with everything, there’s just deeper conversations to be had, and yeah.
The other thing I wanted to mention was a book that I listened to, an audio book through the Chicago Public Library. And I would assume, you know, your local public library – They almost all, I think, now have a digital option where you can download an app on your phone. Ours is called Hoopla, but I’m sure that it’s different in different parts of the country. But yeah, it’s basically like Audible but free. I mean, they don’t have the best selection. Like I’m sure Audible has many, many more things to listen to. But I listened to a book on recommendation of a friend called Dumbing Us Down by John Gatto. The subtitle of the book will tell you everything to know, which is “The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling.” So Wikipedia says that, “This book proposes that radical changes are needed to the American educational system to turn around the negative socialization that children receive.” This was published in 1992. John Gatto was a – I believe he is now a retired – Hang on, I want to see… Okay, so he actually passed away in 2018. He was 82 years old. Oh my gosh, and he went to Cornell. I had no idea. Sorry, I’m like learning this as I’m looking this up talking about this to you. So John Gatto was a New York City public school teacher for many, many years, and he wrote this book talking about all of the negative consequences that can and do ensue through institutionalized education. And he really presents a more radical, community-based – I mean, almost kind of like a, I don’t know, I don’t know if I would call it like a free market approach, um, to school choice. So this is a debate that I am sure that I will learn more about in the years to come, as I have a child that will become school age. This is a question I’ve gotten asked before, too, on past Q&A’s that I’ve done, whether I will send my kid to public school, private school, you know, what we’re going to do. And I’ll try and link the episode where I answered that question, because I talked about my own background with schooling. I went to a very, very small village elementary school, then I went on to a larger elementary school and middle school and high school, but all public. I did go to Catholic preschool in kindergarten but don’t really remember much at all, and I will not be sending my child to parochial school, I don’t think.
So according to this Wikipedia entry, it details some of the main theses that are presented in “Dumbing Us Down.” “Gatto asserts the following regarding what school does to children: it confuses the students. It presents an incoherent ensemble of information that the child needs to memorize to stay in school. Apart from the tests and trials, this programming is similar to the television. It feels almost all the “free time” of children one season hears something only to forget it again. It teaches them to accept their class affiliation. It makes them indifferent. It makes them emotionally dependent. It makes them intellectually dependent. It teaches them a kind of self-confidence that requires constant confirmation by experts, which is known as provisional self-esteem. And it makes it clear to them that they cannot hide because they are always supervised.” Yeah, he talks a lot about how, how important this idea of privacy is for kids who are yeah, like coming of age and growing up and how we actually don’t give kids really any privacy. So I think that that’s actually a pretty good summation of what’s in the book. But I think it’s worth a read or listen. I actually would like to get a copy for myself so that I can start marking it up and maybe do a more in-depth review of it.
I mean, what kind of the natural conclusion you would come to after listening to or reading this book is like, “Oh, well, now I have to homeschool my kids.” This is not something that I’ve ever thought would be an option for me. And, you know, I have some years still to figure out what we’re going to do. But I think this is an important read, whether you agree with him or not, whether you agree with his solutions or not. I mean, I know a lot of people don’t, that, you know, privatizing and letting a free market decide where kids go to school obviously has the most detrimental impacts on people that don’t have as much choice. So when you have – and that’s the sociological perspective, right? You know, if you have an unequal society with high levels of social stratification, then the free market stuff really breaks down because people don’t have equal choice. People don’t have equal resources to make equal choices. So that’s something I would like to probe deeper. But he makes a lot of great points in the book. At least, it made me really reflect on my own education and the taken-for-granted ways that we are socialized through the institution of schooling. I mean, I think even in private schooling, they do have more discretion and they’re not as beholden to certain things that public schools are, but at the end of the day, it is still an institution and the role of institutions is to govern individuals, if we were to look at it in a Foucauldian sense – to govern people, to control people, to create, you know, relational power structures, all of that’s very interesting to me. I mean, sociologists, I think, are inherently interested in these questions of individual versus the collective, structure versus agency, community versus individual, you know, all of that kind of stuff. So I want to dive into this book more. Just listening to it, I thought it was really compelling. I want to take a deeper look and maybe do some further analysis around it somewhere, probably on Patreon because I’m not sure people would be – people would be like, “Um, can you just talk about products and not talk about about, you know, weird educational musings and ramblings?”
01:04:56
Alright, my friends, that was it. I’m feeling quite energized, actually. It’s past 8 PM and I probably have more announcements to tell you. But if you’ve listened this far, I’m not going to bore you with more, except to say that I will be having the first issue of my newsletter, L’Amour Reveries, coming out in mid-December. So if you’re interested in receiving that, you can go to lamouretlamusique.com. There’s a newsletter tab at the top of the menu bar. You just click on that, you can put your email, and read a little bit about what’s going to be in the newsletter, why am I doing a newsletter, all of that. Basically, I just want to have a way to keep in touch that’s not on social media, because I’m sick of social media, and I think so many people are. And I just want to have a deeper depth of communicative experience with people that are interested in communicating about L’Amour. Basically, that’s the point.
Okay, I am off for the night. I will not see you here on the public feed next week. That will be the wedding recap episode on Patreon. That’s a $3 a month level and you have access to all the past podcast episodes I’ve done especially for Patreon. I’m doing a holiday gift guide video on Patreon. It is going to be up post-Black Friday shopping deals, but you know, all of these brands continue to run one-off deals throughout December, so I’m hoping that it will give just some, you know, ideas for people as they continue whatever shopping they’re doing into December. And it’s going to have a focus on smaller brands, artisan brands, that kind of thing.
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That’s all I can think of for now. I will see you guys here on the public feed in two weeks, actually. It’s going to be an interview. I can tell you that I recorded the interview yesterday. I think you’re going to love it. It’s such a good time of year to be releasing it. It’s incredibly just inspiring, heart-centered conversation. Definitely some energy talk, along with beautiful products. And this is from a brand founder who is a good friend of mine who I knew in person when I lived on the east coast, and she and I just would connect really regularly. So maybe if you’ve been following me for a while, that may be some clues as to who’s coming up. And I can’t wait to bring that to you. I’ll be working hard over the next couple of weeks putting the finishing touches on that. There’ll be some special deals to accompany it.
Thank you so much for listening. Please feel free to rate and review the podcast if you’re enjoying it. Share it with your friends, increase the audience so that more people can have some beauty therapy in their lives because we just need not divisiveness right now. I’m so tired of the polarization and divisiveness. Let’s – we can do better, I think. Love you guys. Talk to you soon. Take care. Have a great week. Bye!
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