Autumn Whitefield-Madrano
- Location
- New York, New York, USA
- Birthday
- May 27
- Company
- The Beheld
- Bio
- I write The Beheld (the-beheld.com), a blog examining our concepts of beauty, using interviews with women whose professions and passions lend them a keen insight into personal appearance; analysis of news, business, economics, and culture; beauty experiments; and personal essays.
MY RECENT POSTS
- Thoughts on a Word: Nappy
February 22, 2012 03:12AM - Best in Show: Prize Dogs and
the Women Who Love Them
February 21, 2012 03:05AM - Beauty Blogosphere 2.17.12
February 17, 2012 03:14AM - Sister Nancy Ruth,
Life-Professed Member of the
Order of St. Andrew, Hudson
Valley, New York
February 15, 2012 03:27AM - Breaking Down Beauty:
Physiognomy Revisited
February 14, 2012 03:13AM
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “This is a beautiful
account of an extraordinary
evening for
a
19-year-old--thank…”
February 18, 2012 10:21AM - “Rw005g, have you ever
read these ladyblogs? Do you
know what
they write about?
Ye…”
February 05, 2012 01:30PM - “Thanks, everyone! Except
Dr. Piggly, who I assume
is
parody?
Fernsy,
the ladyblogs…”
February 05, 2012 01:19PM - “Oh my gosh, Beth, I love
this. I have been the good
girl all
my life, and there
a…”
January 17, 2012 02:31PM - “Rodney, that must be
particularly difficult for a
child to
not have her
contract…”
January 10, 2012 02:57PM
Autumn Whitefield-Madrano's Links
With a tagline like “Not your average beauty
blog,†it’s hardly a surprise that
I’m a fan of re: thinking beauty.
Yassira L. Diggs’s experience as both a makeup
artist and writer ensures her work has a candid, sharp, informed
insight; in particular, her breadth of work on natural hair
has/… Read full post »
FEBRUARY 21, 2012 3:05AM
Best in Show: Prize Dogs and the Women Who Love Them
So it wasn’t the dogs that got me into the Westminster Dog Show… Read full post »
FEBRUARY 17, 2012 3:14AM
Beauty Blogosphere 2.17.12
What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and
everything in between.
From Head...
Headucation: African-American hair salons have a long history of being hotbeds of activism. That thrives today, but the Beauty Is It salon in Staten Island is making it official with a news exhibit called "Bl… Read full post »
From Head...
Headucation: African-American hair salons have a long history of being hotbeds of activism. That thrives today, but the Beauty Is It salon in Staten Island is making it official with a news exhibit called "Bl… Read full post »
Editor’s Pick
FEBRUARY 15, 2012 3:27AM
Sister Nancy Ruth, Life-Professed Member of the Order of St. Andrew, Hudson Valley, New York
Paul
Hoecker, Nonne
im Laubgang von Dachau, 1897
FEBRUARY 14, 2012 3:13AM
Breaking Down Beauty: Physiognomy Revisited
If you really want the magic
decoder ring,
scroll to page 61.
Just when you thought you’d read enough from me about physiognomy—the discredited pseudoscience of face-reading to determine character—for one month, here I come, wagging my charts with dimensions of bulbous foreheads and “lip/…
FEBRUARY 10, 2012 3:25AM
Beauty Blogosphere 2.10.12
What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and
everything in between.
From Head...
The extravaganza: Seems that we've always liked to mock vanity, and there's none better than Sissydude's hilarious collection of antique images satirizing elaborate hairstyles of yore. (via Final Fashion)
Cele… Read full post »
From Head...
The extravaganza: Seems that we've always liked to mock vanity, and there's none better than Sissydude's hilarious collection of antique images satirizing elaborate hairstyles of yore. (via Final Fashion)
Cele… Read full post »
FEBRUARY 9, 2012 3:08AM
Thoughts on a Word: Glamour (Part II)
I’ve had
my chance to expound on glamour (which, of course, I did
from my chaise longue with a Manhattan in hand while my
protégé took dictation), but the concept
of glamour is intriguing enough to warrant a
revisiting—not from me, but from four women who
each have their own distinct relat/… Read full post »
FEBRUARY 8, 2012 9:15AM
Thoughts on a Word: Glamour (Part I)
Glamour is an illusion, and an allusion too. Glamour is a performance, a creation, a recipe, but one with give. Glamour is elegance minus restraint, romance plus distance, sparkle sans naivete. Glamour is Grace Kelly, Harlow, Jean (picture of a beauty queen). Glamour is $3.99 on U.S. newsstands, $4.9/…
From
Physiognomy Illustrated; Or, Nature's Revelations of
Character, Joseph Simms,
pub. 1889, Crackpot Press
pub. 1889, Crackpot Press
FEBRUARY 3, 2012 3:41AM
Beauty Blogosphere 2.3.12
What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and
everything in between.
From Head...
Blown: The Brazilian blowout has been officially declared carcinogenic. Now the question is, to its devotees, will that matter?
...To Toe...
Footsie: I can't be the only one who has a terrible time finding…
From Head...
Blown: The Brazilian blowout has been officially declared carcinogenic. Now the question is, to its devotees, will that matter?
...To Toe...
Footsie: I can't be the only one who has a terrible time finding…
FEBRUARY 2, 2012 4:13PM
Announcement, Announcement!
An early editorial meeting at Beheld
HQ.
As a feminist who started my career at Ms. and wound my way through Glamour and Playboy before winding up at CosmoGIRL!—the exclamation point was part of the name—finding Jezebel shortly after its 2007 launch was delicious. I enjoyed it as a reader, and I/…
JANUARY 30, 2012 8:06AM
Fictional Beauties: The Heads of Princess Langwidere
A bit
of personal trivia: I adore Wizard of Oz. The movie, yes, of
course, but specifically the books, all 16 of them, though the only
ones I recall in detail are the first four. L.
Frank Baum lived for a while in the town I grew up
in—Aberdeen,
South Dakota—and/… Read full post »
JANUARY 27, 2012 3:02AM
Beauty Blogosphere 1.27.12
What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and
everything in between.
From Head...
Also, Gorilla Snot: The five weirdest things we put in our hair. Beer, yeah, yeah, tried it. But Monistat?
...To Toe...
En pointe: Danielle at Final Fashion (which you should be reading…
From Head...
Also, Gorilla Snot: The five weirdest things we put in our hair. Beer, yeah, yeah, tried it. But Monistat?
Pointy, round, or square?
...To Toe...
En pointe: Danielle at Final Fashion (which you should be reading…
What, your mustard chinoiserie pajamas
didn't come with a purple poodle?
I wore pajamas to class my freshman year of college. Well, specifically, I wore my pajama pants one time to one class my freshman year of college. I’d read in some YA book when I was, like, 12 that you/…
JANUARY 24, 2012 3:33AM
Privately Speaking: My Love of Slips
I'd like to be able to neatly delineate beauty tasks I do because I "have" to from beauty tasks I do simply because they delight me. The obvious way to determine whether any particular bit of beauty work is done because it fulfills societal norms is to look at whether it's/…
JANUARY 20, 2012 3:03AM
Beauty Blogosphere 1.20.12
What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and
everything in between.
From Head...
Theodent: the chocoholic equivalent of using bourbon as mouthwash
Theodent and forget it: Startup dental care company Theodent replaces fluoride with chocolate, which apparently has antimicrobial properties? It…
From Head...
Theodent: the chocoholic equivalent of using bourbon as mouthwash
Theodent and forget it: Startup dental care company Theodent replaces fluoride with chocolate, which apparently has antimicrobial properties? It…
JANUARY 18, 2012 3:21AM
Pricing Beauty (Not That Other Book)
I have a comparative review of Catherine
Hakim’s Erotic Capital and Ashley
Mears’s Pricing Beauty up
at The New Inquiry. (Image possibly unsafe for work; I didn't
choose it.)
Last time I piped up here about the concept of erotic capital,
I was trying to find a way to value it./… Read full post »
In the summer of 1986, a small item ran in the biweekly newspaper
of Guymon, Oklahoma, that I am guessing went unremembered by all
but one of the town’s 15,000 residents. The
item in question was a column about how to look good in
photographs, and I will paraphrase the part…
JANUARY 13, 2012 3:13AM
Beauty Blogosphere 1.13.12
What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and
everything in between.
From Head...
New year's resolution: Could you go a year without buying new makeup? (Actually, I have so much stockpiled I could, easily, even if it means some weird blush colors down the line. I will be…
From Head...
New year's resolution: Could you go a year without buying new makeup? (Actually, I have so much stockpiled I could, easily, even if it means some weird blush colors down the line. I will be…
JANUARY 11, 2012 3:06AM
Mirror Mirror or Your Wall
I’ve written a bit before on here about how I
tend to prefer videos of myself to photos, and this TV segment on
self-esteem follows that pattern, so I’m
particularly pleased to share it with readers. Broadcast
journalists Debra Pangestu and
Malgorzata
Wojtunik, graduate students from CUNY’s cha…
Jezebel asked us last week, "What happens when a kid with Down syndrome models for Target?" The answer seems to be, "You get a Target ad with some cute kids." There’s much you could say about the Target ad (which I’m focusing on instead a Nordstrom catalog from last year that/…
JANUARY 6, 2012 7:32AM
Beauty Blogosphere 1.6.12
What's going on in beauty this week, from head to toe and
everything in between.
From Head...
Yeasties: Wrapping up this week's
look at
nutricosmetics is one of the more bizarre but intriguing beauty
nutrition tips:
drinking yeast for hair growth. (Also, does
applying cholesterol to your face count as…
JANUARY 4, 2012 3:28AM
Nutricosmetics, Part II: Morality, Capitalism, and Selling Us Ourselves
"Apples' soluble fiber helps your body
eliminate nasty toxins that could show up on your skin.
It's nature's beauty bar!" —Cranach the Elder, subtextually
It's nature's beauty bar!" —Cranach the Elder, subtextually
When I first learned about Renaissance beauty ideals in high school—or rather, the idea that physical beauty was then widely understood as an i/…
Autumn Whitefield-Madrano's Favorites
Updates
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Happy Birthday Marlene!!!
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An Open piece goes viral; a Salon scoop's backstory
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NEWT GINGRICH WILL…
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That was the Best Funeral Ever!
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How to find your celebrity double via Google
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“Someone” by National Book Award Winner Alice McDermott in The New Yorker
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Hijab: A Love Story
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Introducing the new Masturphone™















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