Tag Archive | beauty

Get the Photoshop Outta Here! – Target’s Super Awesome Swimsuit Ad

Mar28
KamieCrawford

Source: Target

 

Target has made my entire life with their most recent bathing suit ads. Have you heard about the untouched ads? No Photoshop (you heard me) no airbrushing out the stretch marks or crow’s feet no adding sparkles to the eyes or trimming the thighs. The photos in this swimsuit campaign show a variety of the real humans that will be shopping for swimsuits this spring. Real skin, real shapes and sizes.

In a shoot for its new swim line, Target is my hero for taking a logical stance and not inundating me with size zero models splayed out on the beach in a drop-dead-gorgeous bathing suit that my upper half can’t fit and my lower half laughs at me for even thinking about trying. The photos, which debuted Thursday in a press release, are being lauded for featuring a wide range of ethnicities and body types — and above all else for boldly ditching Photoshop entirely.j8bzs5w

Can we take a pause and look at the range of suits? OMGEEEE a two-piece that doesn’t make me look like I’m a member of the YMCA synchronized swim team!! Plus-size (which just means you don’t wear an A cup) offerings that aren’t limited to that one-piece with triple thick straps; instead, intricate crisscrossed detailing, vivid bright colors, prints and cutouts are readily available.

DeniseBidot

Source: Target

This is a great move for Target, which has steadily been making its swimwear offerings more inclusive over the past several years. This is just another step in this inclusion. Back in 2015 Target launched a campaign called “Target Loves Every Body,” with the main goal being to “bring the fun” back to swimsuit shopping for women of all sizes. Bring back fun is great but there is also a business strategy here. When Aerie stopped photoshop-ping its ads, for example, sales spiked 20 percent. The other reason is less scientific – maybe just maybe people want to buy swimsuits that were genuinely designed with them in mind. We send you cheers of Thank You Target. What are your thoughts from Under Your Brim?UnderHerBrim_Blog

 

I’ll be My Own Number One

Aug23

There are days when you wake up and have to be like David and encourage yourself. Not3d89edafa9dd80de939756405b9cb9a9
because you don’t have an awesome other half that listens to you whine, encourages and holds you up when you are feeling down and deflated. No matter how you try to shake it you see evidence of the irritation(s) everywhere you look. Each sign making the tear in the irk fabric larger and larger until its a deep, dark, empty hole. Continue reading →

When Life Feels Empty

Jan8

Woman adjusting stack of colorful suitcases on top of car. Image shot 2008. Exact date unknown.“When I move, it will all be different,” I heard my friend say. Seeking to leave her hurt behind in Pennsylvania, she packed her bags for sunny Florida. But I knew even sunny Florida couldn’t solve all her problems. Continue reading →

Natural or Straight I’m still ME!

May18

Let it go people! Live and let live. To each his/her own.

I’m talking about the judgment. More specifically the hair judgment that is passed on those who choose to be themselves and rock whatever style they want. Afro puffsThere always seems to be a contingent that has an opinion based on their choice. The Permed Hair Crew vs. Protective Styles Camp and why one is better/worse than the other one. I am sooooo tired of it. Live and let live. Whatever your style, texture, process, products or length – keep your hair healthy and do you!  Celebrate the beauty in our differences and not tear one another down. Don’t waste your judgment on me because like India.Arie I know that there is more to me Under my Brim than my hair.


GFQ: Would You Marry YOU?

May1

As I drive along listening to the radio, the announcer shares her experience at a couples bride_mirrorretreat and then poses the question….Would YOU marry YOU?

Whether you are single, divorced, engaged or “it’s complicated” (thanks Facebook for a new ambiguous title to add to the relationship confusion) – the question itself is an excellent one for your personal assessment of YOU. Truth is, until you are comfortable with YOU and enjoy YOU….marriage should be the last thing on your mind. Continue reading →

Nappyheaded-Afrowearing-Angela Davis-Wannabe

Apr27

Nappyheaded-Afrowearing-Angela Davis-Wannabe!!!!!!

YUP!!! Had that insult loudly hurled at me out on the playground and since I thought he was oooooo soooo cute, it really cut me deep. I was so angry with my Momma for sending me out into the world looking like a Q-tip. Don’t judge me, 6th grade is rough!!! It Clicker 2didn’t get better as I went to high school and almost flunked gym because I did NOT want to get my hair wet and spend all of my lunch blow-drying it and trying to smooth it out with my butane curling iron (that would NEVER get hot enough). Oh stop looking like you didn’t have the butane clicker.

Continue reading →

GFQ: Are you More Beautiful Than You Think?

Apr24

ImagesLooking over my life and the lives of family, friends and others I’ve worked with in PLM (now My Tattered Brim) low self-esteem is a an ugly, choking common thread that is in the root of many unwise decisions. Who am I kidding flat out bad decisions and bad choices. Continue reading →

A Lesson from Dirty Dancing

Oct18

I close my eyes  and  I can clearly hear Bill Medly’s sultry voice as the song begins singing “Now I’ve had the time of my life and I’ve never felt this way before’…..I LOVE this movie! Now you have the song stuck in your head too so don’t act like you don’t know  Dirty Dancing is an awesome movie!  For me it holds fond memories and it showed so many things.

This random outburst of my love for a movie (that may reveal my age) came from a fond memory.  When I was a kid (no son, I didn’t use an abacus) Friday Night was movie night! We soooo look forward to at the end of the week! My Dad come home from work and after his shower, reading his papers (the Norristown Times Herald AND the Philadelphia Inquirer) and getting something to eat, he would take us out to get  all of our favorite snacks (to share). Me = Dunkin’ Donuts, Lee = Pepperoni and Steph = a jar of olives. We would stop at the video store on Marshall Street where the owner knew our names (long before Blockbuster) and picked out our weekend entertainment. I see us getting our ‘floor blankets’ stretching them out on the living room floor with the VCR remote plugged in (nope, it wasn’t wireless yet), our snacks and our pillows. HEAVEN!!! I look back and think how simple life was but how much we appreciated what may seem like a small thing. Continue reading →

NATURAL HAIR IN THE BUSINESS WORLD- “SO ARE YOU REALLY GOING TO WEAR YOUR HAIR LIKE THAT?”

Sep18

NATURAL HAIR IN THE BUSINESS WORLD –

“SO ARE YOU REALLY GOING TO WEAR YOUR HAIR LIKE THAT?”

Sharing an article with you that  I read here: SOURCE: http://www.curlynikki.com/2013/10/natural-hair-in-business-world-so-are.html

 

photo-5

Dr. Kimberly Nettles writes:
I will never forget my first time preparing for a pharmacy job interview. “So are you really going to wear your hair like that?”, my fellow colleague asked peering into my Afro as if it were a foreign object. I had never given a second thought to the idea if my hair would be “acceptable” to wear to a job fair. I always put more emphasis into making sure my makeup didn’t look too bright, my business suit wasn’t too tight, or that my heels weren’t too high. Professionalism was something I always took pride in, but the concept of how I would style my hair was never a concern.


Continue reading →

Black Women Find a Growing Business Opportunity: Care for Their Hair

Sep13
By SEPT. 8, 2014
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/nyregion/black-women-find-a-growing-business-opportunity-care-for-their-hair.html?_r=0

 Kadeian Brown, left, and Judian Brown own Black Girls Divine Beauty Supply and Salon, off Church Avenue in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

Posters of African-American women with long, sleek hair fill the window. Round jars of shea butter belly up to slender boxes of hair dye on the shelves. Wigs perch on mannequin heads.

What makes Black Girls Divine Beauty Supply and Salon’s visitors do a double-take is the skin color of the proprietors. “I go, ‘Look at all the faces on the boxes,’ ” said Judian Brown, recalling other shopkeepers’ and customers’ surprise when they realize she is not an employee, but the owner. “Who should be owning these stores?”

The Brown sisters’ is one small shop in a multibillion-dollar industry, centered on something that is both a point of pride and a political flash point for black women: their hair. But the Browns are among only a few hundred black owners of the roughly 10,000 stores that sell hair products like relaxers, curl creams, wigs and hair weaves to black women, not just in New York but across the country. The vast majority have Korean-American owners, a phenomenon dating back to the 1970’s that has stoked tensions between black consumers and Korean business people over what some black people see as one ethnic group profiting from, yet shutting out, another.

 The Hair Shop is one of many beauty stores on Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn.Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

A growing awareness of this imbalance has spurred more black people to hang out their own shingles. The people producing the products have changed, too: As “going natural” — abandoning artificially smoothed hair in favor of naturally textured curls and braids — has become more popular and the Internet has expanded, black entrepreneurs, most of them women, are claiming a bigger share of the shelves in women’s medicine cabinets. Continue reading →