The queen of contouring, Kim Kardashian, has launched herself a website, complete with an app and beauty tutorials. One that is making news? The how-tos of strobing. Or, um, how to use highlighter.

Mrs. Kim Kardashian West has a brand new website and it is chock full of (what else) beauty advice. How could this just be happening now?

Anyway, it is here and you can “unlock” access to Kim’s “world” for free for the first seven days, if you so wish. After that it’s going to cost you $2.99 per month. The video tutorials on Kim’s site are getting a lot of attention. One particular crowd pleaser is her vid on strobing.

What the H-E-double hockey sticks is strobing?

You know how Kim K.W. is all about the contouring, right? It’s like she invented the look. Or at the very least, is its super public poster child-in-the-belly child. Well, strobing is a different makeup technique that also enhances and perfects the facial features, but with the use of highlighter instead of the heavier handed, dark makeup. It’s like contouring’s less-is-more bff.

So, if you’ve ever wanted to try the look of contouring but all of the makeup involved totally turns you off, strobing could be for you. All it takes is a decent highlighter and a few implementation tips.

The idea behind strobing is to illuminate the high points of the face to slim the nose, make eyes pop, and create a poutier pout. Those areas would be cheekbones, brow bones, bridge of nose, and bow of lips. Pat or brush either cream or powder highlighter onto these areas of face. Two sure to please natural picks are RMS Beauty Living Luminizer and Alima Pure Luminous Shimmer Powder. And that is pretty much all there is to successful strobing.

You may be wondering right about now, if strobing isn’t the same as highlighting. Pretty much, yes. Rose-Marie Swift, makeup artist and creator of RMS Beauty, has been touting the beauty benefits of highlighter for a while now. It can be used to not only enhance features, but brighten under eye circles, and even as a lip gloss.

What’s new to Kim may be old news to us green beauty gals. Nevertheless, highlighting (or strobing, if you’d rather) is a worthwhile trick to add to your look.

We’d love to know…what’s your favorite way of using highlighter?

*Disclaimer: Help support EcoSalon! Our site is dedicated to helping people live a conscious lifestyle. We’ve provided some affiliate links above in case you wish to purchase any of these products.

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Image of Kim Kardashian via Shutterstock

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In this edition of Link Love, we’ve got a look at the PETA ad too intense for Times Square, health challenges to take you to the next level, the humanity of Kim Kardashian’s rear, our own vegan face and the benefits of kindness.

The PETA ad you need to see. [via Ecouterre]

Are you ready to take your health to the next level? These challenges can help. [via Naturally Savvy]

Here’s everything you need to know about Kim Kardashian’s ass, courtesy of Mr. Brand. [via The Trews]

EcoSalon’s Senior Editor Jill Ettinger appears in Driftwood Magazine’s “Vegan Faces” profile. [via Driftwood Magazine]

It’s World Kindness Week. Can you be kinder? [via EatSleepBe]

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When did we all start trying to look like celebrities? Is the selfie to blame?

In a recent op-ed piece for the New York Times, actor James Franco defended his love of the selfie. Clearly, the Instagram-obsessed Franco is a self most of us won’t complain about looking at…but it’s more than just his hotness that makes his selfies meaningful. He writes, “Attention is power. And if you are someone people are interested in, then the selfie provides something very powerful, from the most privileged perspective possible.”

Franco’s right. Attention is power. It’s why little kids jump around the rooms like maniacs to get their parents’ attention. It ensures that the energy goes towards the person making the scene. For a little kid, that’s kind of important. They’re little. Somewhat helpless. They need attention. But it’s a security issue we outgrow, usually. At least, we used to.

“[T]he selfie provides something very powerful, from the most privileged perspective possible…” It’s a really bold presumption, but Franco does make the important distinction: “if you are someone people are interested in,” that is. Did he just put us in our place?  Are we not interesting unless we’re as beautiful as James Franco? Or Lady Gaga or Justin Beiber?

Whether James Franco or Kanye West (or James Franco as Kanye West) or boring old me, someone is going to see what we post on our preferred social networks. Franco’s legion of fans on Instagram certainly garners more of an audience than the rest of us, but the point is really that someone is “watching” us virtually all of the time. And when we’ve got an audience—be it only on Facebook or Instagram—we inevitably start to perform, to play a role, pay more attention to whether or not we’re having a bad hair day.

The doppelganger game may have peaked on Facebook a few years ago, but it’s morphed into less of a game and more of a homework assignment these days. If you kind of look like Kim Kardashian, you might as well do what you can to look even more like her at all times. “Now, while the celebrity selfie is most powerful as a pseudo-personal moment, the noncelebrity selfie is a chance for subjects to glam it up, to show off a special side of themselves — dressing up for a special occasion, or not dressing, which is a kind of preening that says, ‘There is something important about me that clothes hide, and I don’t want to hide’,” writes Franco. At least we have our options then. Glam it up or scale it way down. Either way, we’ve got an audience waiting for our noncelebrity selfies. But what fun is being a noncelebrity? We want A-list audiences and Beiber-esque fanclubs, too. We want cyberstalkers. But since we can’t have those, at least we’ve got companies eager to capitalize on our selfie-obsession. “The quantified self movement can be, and has been, exploited for profit. Once the quantified self became marketable, smart marketers and developers sprang into the vacuum, coming up with more ways to monitor more behaviors. Our quantified selves get us hooked on the products, platforms, and services that promise to make us better versions of ourselves,” writes Sarita Bhatt in FastCoexist. They love us. They really love us! Thank the lord.

Society has always been capable of handling a few self-obsessed narcissists. But the tide is shifting and the condition has spread deep and wide. “[A]s a culture, we seem to believe that it is vital to not only track, but post our personal actions on every possible social network,” writes Bhatt, “The world must know how many miles we ran, the scenic views that accompanied the run, and what we did afterwards to celebrate the run.” So, while we may be forced into the nonceleb class, we can live a pseudo-celeb life for our followers. They think we’re beautiful, right?

Of course, this epidemic “self movement” also leads the way for issues like body dysmorphic disorder, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, anxiety and depression, not to mention the substance abuse and other ways we attempt to soothe ourselves from the stress our public personae put on us. Just like the celebrities we’re trying to emulate, we’re starting to suffer from the same disorders that often afflict people subject to high levels of adoration.

Franco defends the accusations that the selfie is an indicator of self-involvement, “in a visual culture, the selfie quickly and easily shows, not tells, how you’re feeling, where you are, what you’re doing,” he writes. But isn’t that also kind of making another equally important point? Why do we need to “quickly” or “easily” show how we’re feeling, where we are or what we’re doing? Can’t some of our lives be private? (Don’t answer that, NSA.)

Our sense of self-worth, the Mister Rogers kind of beauty that we’ve been taught matters most of all, has  taken a backseat to how pouty our lips look in the bathroom mirror selfie we just took. We’re in competition with everyone else online. If we can’t be as important as James Franco, at least we can make other people in our feed seem less important than us. But the selfie is a “tool of communication” more than vanity, according to Franco. It’s what we use to give the world “a sense of who we are.” And on that, I couldn’t agree with him more. But with a few caveats: Who are we, really? Do we know? Do we want to? And can we be beautiful without an audience?

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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Image: ivana vasilj

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A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers. 

Manners are important—in life, in the bedroom, and in the boardroom. This week’s Sex By Numbers highlights some lapses in etiquette, including one we never thought we’d have to correct: answering the phone during sex.

A few weeks: Now that the much talked about pregnancy of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is over, everyone can commence criticizing the length of her relatively short maternity leave before she returns to work. We say: it may not work for everyone, but let mom make her own decision.

50 Years: Rachel Carson’s seminal environmental work Silent Spring was published 50 years ago. At the time, no one could quite believe a woman wrote the piece, leaving some readers to “assume from the author’s knowledge that he must be a man.” Decades later, the representation of women in science is still low.

1 million: One more reason to be jealous of the super cool and witty “it girl” Lena Dunham: an advice book based on anecdotes from her life is being shopped around to publishers with a price tag of $1,000,000.

33%: Percentage of 2000 polled Brits who think it’s socially acceptable to pick up a phone call during sex. Um, no.

50%: A study widely criticized for being an oversimplification (and a “slap in the face for gender equality”) found that the divorce rate for couples that shared housework was 50% higher than couples where the woman does the majority of the work.

Double take: It’s never a good thing for a celebrity when an old sex tape gets released. For Kanye West, it’s proved particularly bad, considering his on camera co-star is a dead ringer for his current real-life girlfriend, Kim Kardashian. One can only hope she won’t notice.

20 Weeks: UK Women’s Minister has said that it’s “common sense” for the legal abortion limit to be lowered to 20 weeks.

50: Think single ladies over 50 have lost their spark. Don’t be so rude. An Australian study found that these women “are more likely to have a one night stand than their Gen X or Gen Y daughters.”

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They chow down the same foods we healthy middle-aged women eat: Quinoa, lean proteins, fresh organic produce, water from chic reusable Sigg bottles. They drive hybrids and raise funds for good causes, shun the direct sun, and sometimes even wear secondhand fashion (couture, of course).

But tinsel town celebrities my age, like Demi Moore, who is featured on the cover of W Magazine this month, are not like me or any of my healthy, naturally beautiful women friends. No, unlike the mere mortal soccer moms I rub shoulders with at book club gatherings and parties, Demi shows no signs of age or wear and tear. Where is the emerging turkey neck Nora Ephron wrote about? Where are the sagging eyes? Where are the cottage cheese thighs?

“Her body of work has been notable in no small part because of her notable body,” writes Moore cover story author, Kevin West, adding that, “hers is an undeniably striking version of midlife.” He assures us the striking former brat packer has changed at 47, evidenced by tiny lines when she smiles, but she has not gone under the knife.

“It’s their job to look amazing,” observes my astute 13-year-old daughter, Sydney. She tells me if it were her full time job, she would be flawless, too. Methinks my teenager looks pretty flawless now, but she would be happier with perfect hair and no blemishes, stuff that completes you when you are 13.

It comes down to the perception of perfection, and in achieving it, stars are spoonfed support from trainers and personal chefs. Most turn to plastic surgery, even prematurely, like America’s sweetheart Meg Ryan and highly respected eco goddess Daryl Hannah. In both cases, the surgery changed the lovely features we knew, while their bodies maintain the taut physiques of teens. In all cases, the goal is achieved. Defy age. Look young.

One looming exception is Meryl, but even the consummate thespian had to shape up to play a mature hippie in Mama Mia and Alec Baldwin’s ex and Steve Martin’s lover in It’s Complicated.

Still, Streep, now in her 60’s, is probably aging more naturally than any other major star. She doesn’t succumb to surgery and I haven’t noticed her photographs being altered through Photoshop, the favorite weapon in the arsenal of Hollywood anti-aging defenses. Streep doesn’t maintain a public persona outside of her appearances, stays out of the sun and avoids alcohol. Those are pretty good defenses, too. Bon Apetit, Meryl!

While I’m certain Demi stays gaunt for her industry, the W cover shot is not the body of a 47-year-old mother unaltered. My 47-year-old friends look amazing, but none of them have bodies like that. It’s the body of her daughter Rumer, perhaps.

The cover was as surprising as the Self Magazine issue featuring American Idol Kelly Clarkson, who didn’t actually slim down the way the magazine suggests on the cover, but erased those pounds thorough digital post-production. And how ’bout that ad featuring Ralph Lauren model Filippa Hamilton, who was deemed too fat at 5’10” and 120 pounds and had to be drastically Shopped to cut the mustard?

While the option of doing digital makeovers is the choice of each publication, the star still pays a price in terms of credibility.

I feel compassion when I realize society demands its idols be, well, objects to idolize. Air brushing and retouching are just a few of the finishing tools employed in the land of make believe, the land the media fully endorse because we fully buy into it. But at the end of the day, it just makes us feel sad. We can’t possibly live up to these images of perfection, and frankly, neither can the stars.

The alternative: finding a way to accept ourselves as natural beauties who do the best we can to stay healthy and fit and happy and productive – and admire how we are able to thrive in a world with so much adversity, sickness, hunger and negativity.

The Demoiselles website did a recent feature profiling celebs moving in the direction of self-acceptance, even unlikely candidates such as Kim Karshashian, who posed for the cover of Life & Style Weekly completely unretouched.

When asked by the magazine why she is so open about her body (i.e. showing herself receiving a cellulite treatment on her reality show), Kardashian said she was tired of people pretending they’re perfect and covering up things when in reality we are who we are.

“You can try to improve that, but the reality is, nobody’s perfect.” she declared.

But maybe we are perfect, Kim. Maybe we are perfectly flawed.

This is the latest installment in Luanne’s column, Life in the Green Lane.

Images: W Magazine, Plastic Sergeant, Sony pictures, ABC News, Life & Style Magazine, Luanne Bradley

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