ColumnNeed to look good on Facebook? Ask an editor.

Presenting yourself as the envy of everyone’s Facebook wall comes down to editing (that we’d want to do this is a foregone conclusion). As a colleague said recently, “Editing is the skill of the century.” Your digital life, unedited? So MySpace. This is Facebook, where the savvy Eye of social discernment is a requisite. You’ve got walls. Subscriptions. Integrated tweets. Photo albums. Friends tagging god-knows-what (probably your arm from the fat side). It’s a borg on there, and you’ll need to practice some serious curation of your life to be perceived like-ably. You want the highs to be high, the lows to be slightly less high, and the ex to know your arms are still skinny. As every good editor knows, the product is all in the packaging. Present your life from the most pleasing angle, and don’t forget the witty caption! Here’s how.

ColumnThe precious practice.

As a girl, I once read a book where the main character would frown with great purpose every time she saw a smiley face sign. I can’t recall the book, but you know the sign: those cheery yellow faces that blithely instruct you with just one word. Smile! “How do they know I’m not already smiling?” the girl character fumed. Yes, yes, yes! My eleven-year-old self shouted in her loudest inside voice. Finally, someone who gets it! In a good mood already, as a matter of fact, and you have ruined it, smiley. Where’s the humility, you piece of paper? What do you even know? Nothing.

The shoppy ones? Check, please.

As if to match the excess of cakes and cookies and champagne of the holidays, the run up to the new year has been a media glut of roundups, predictions, trend pieces, and years-in-review – and not just at EcoSalon. Today is the first day of 2012, and while our managing editor has reminded me it’s better late than never for my own take on all the things, I’m not sure it’s better on the whole, on account of what I’ve learned in the process of …

ColumnResolutions: Just like to-do lists, only impossible!

The season of cocktail parties and last-minute dinners with friends before we all trek back to our respective homesteads (or wing like hell in the opposite direction) is upon us. Inevitably, someone will ask what your New Year’s resolutions are. You will have already thought about how you are going to perfect your life ever further in the coming year, perfect it compassionately and positively and joyously, in explicit detail in both your new moleskine purchased for just this purpose (drunken scrawls), as …

ColumnWhat defines the new chic? Grit and glimmer in conscious measure.

Over dinner recently, a colleague and I abandoned a hot and heavy discussion about the political zeitgeist for something decidedly more dessert-appropriate: women. The End of Men, the death of the the Death of Marriage myth, Lady Gaga, gay marriage, the endless debates about women getting funded in Silicon Valley – XX as cultural object is too hot to handle right now, but it’s less What Women Want and more What Women Are (and …

ColumnDo jeggings make the list? Read on to find out.

You say judgment, I say intuition, or, in the words of one of our editors: “It’s just marketing!”

Few things feel as gratifying as judgment. If, like me, you are saddened by the lack of respect judgment gets these days, is this post ever for you. Getting away with being judgmental anymore is really just a matter of finding the right things to be judgmental about.

Just look at what we are giving away this week because we love you.

“What are you, some kind of trustafarian?” your friend demands. But no. You just read EcoSalon.

This week and this week only, at least until we do this again, we’re giving away gorgeous green gear to you, Susty Spice. Five one-of-a-kind designs, one for each day, five lucky winners.

ColumnWhen trolls invade real life.

Last week, I answered my cell phone while pulling up to a stop sign in my car. I will be the second or third to admit using your cell phone while driving is irresponsible; that’s why I don’t do it. I use a hands-free set. But I hadn’t even had the chance to reach for my set when two cyclists pulled in front of my car and began berating me. It took me a moment to realize this was what was happening, because one was taking a photograph of me with his camera. Flash-blinded, I slowly registered that the other cyclist was actually yelling with a level of smug approaching orgasmic: “What you are doing is ILLEGAL and DISTRACTING! You are BREAKING THE LAW! Do you understand how dangerous this is?” I appreciated the careful enunciation, but it was that last dollop of condescension I found the most delicious. It’s just one more reason to date a cyclist! So I can run him over.