Autumn Whitefield-Madrano

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.

Autumn Whitefield-Madrano's Links

Salon.com
Editor’s Pick
FEBRUARY 22, 2012 3:12AM

Thoughts on a Word: Nappy

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 »

I don’t particularly like dogs, at least not as a species. Some of them are perfectly lovely creatures I’m happy to share space with on an as-needed basis; others are sources of anything ranging from annoyance to terror.

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 »

Paul Hoecker, Nonne im Laubgang von Dachau, 1897

Every time Sister Nancy Ruth turned on the television, a nun would be waiting. “Movies, TV shows—just something about nuns whenever I’d turn on the TV. Every time,†she says. She took it as a calling to become a nun, but her family responsi… Read full post »
 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/…

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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 »
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/…

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Editor’s Pick
FEBRUARY 6, 2012 3:03AM

Modeling as Modern-Day Physiognomy

From Physiognomy Illustrated; Or, Nature's Revelations of Character, Joseph Simms,
pub. 1889, Crackpot Press

I’ve had my palm read and my astrological chart done, but what I really want to find is a physiognomist. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your purpose, physiognomy—the art of deco/…

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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…

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FEBRUARY 2, 2012 4:13PM

Announcement, Announcement!



So I sort of yelled out “surprise!†a day early in my efforts at transparency, but here’s the scoop: Starting Monday, February 6, The Beheld will be syndicated on The New Inquiry (as well as continuing as usual on here, but I’ll get to that). If you’re a regular reader here,/…

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Editor’s Pick
FEBRUARY 1, 2012 3:59AM

On Ladyblogging and the Slumber Parties of the Internet

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/…

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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?

Pointy, round, or square?

...To Toe...
En pointe: Danielle at Final Fashion (which you should be reading…

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Editor’s Pick
JANUARY 26, 2012 3:03AM

The Privacy Settings of Pajamas

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/…

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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/…

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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…

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Editor’s Pick
JANUARY 19, 2012 3:26AM

For Janis Joplin, On Her Sixth-Ninth Birthday


The first time I heard Janis Joplin, it was by chance. I was at the home of an acquaintance, a bona fide Popular Girl who argued feminist positions along with me in our junior-year literature class, making her my favorite of the in-crowd. I’d been assigned a class project with her,/…

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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 »
Editor’s Pick
JANUARY 17, 2012 3:58AM

Say Cheese: On Smiling, Comfort, and Surrender

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…

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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…

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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…

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Editor’s Pick
JANUARY 9, 2012 3:19AM

Diversity Casting and Commercial vs. High-End Markets


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/…

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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…

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"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

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/…

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