Beauty Pains.
A Beauty Pains category

Makeup

What to use, how much of it, and which steps are doing the heavy lifting. Spoiler: fewer than the routine videos suggest.

Split-face portrait of a woman: one half bare skin, the other half wearing foundation
Makeup

Why Your Foundation Looks Worse Than Your Skin

It's usually not the foundation. Here's the real culprit, and the two-minute fix.

A woman with copper hair applies mascara at a bathroom mirror, phone lying on the counter
Fix This

The Five-Minute Face for People Who Overslept

A routine you can repeat in bad lighting and worse moods.

An unbranded tube of primer standing beside a clear swatch of the gel
Worth It?

Do You Actually Need Primer?

What primer really does, when it earns its step, and what to try before buying one.

A woman softens bright blush on her cheek with a makeup sponge
Fix This

How to Fix Too Much Blush, Bronzer, or Foundation

Whatever you've overdone can be softened, lifted, or blended down in under two minutes.

Two mascara wands with different brush shapes on either side of a black swatch
Worth It?

What Expensive Mascara Does Better, and What It Does Not

The wand is often better design. The formula usually isn't. Where the extra twenty dollars goes.

A woman with copper hair holds a small jar of moisturizer at a clean bathroom counter with three simple products on it
Skin

The Minimum Viable Beauty Routine

Three steps at night, three in the morning, and permission to ignore the other nine.

One useful email a week.
No twelve-step routines. We promise.