SavvySugar

More Than Just a Pretty Face and a Curvaceous Bod

FitSugar — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:48:37 -0800

A lot of attention has been paid to Christina Hendricks since she burst onto the scene as secretary Joan Holloway in the hit television drama, Mad Men. Mention her name and the conversation inevitably leads to her silhouette. Christina is often described as a throwback to the days of Marilyn Monroe, and it's easy to see why. Her body type is more Botticelli than waif: it's as if the term "hourglass figure" was conceived just for her. In an industry of skinny, svelte, and sometimes too-thin actresses, people find Christina's look refreshing, real, and downright sexy.

On the cover of this week's New York magazine, the Botticelli comparison gets perpetuated even further. With red hair cascading past her hips, the actress appears semi-nude in a set of pale vintage lingerie. If you were to put a scallop shell behind her, you'd have The Birth of Venus in living color. Despite that legions of fans and many in the media celebrating (though sometimes criticizing) her body, Christina was not feeling the love, and for good reason.

“It kind of hurt my feelings at first,” she admits. “Anytime someone talks about your figure constantly, you get nervous, you get really self-conscious. I was working my butt off on the show, and then all anyone was talking about was my body!”

It's a more than fair reaction from Christina, as any actress ultimately wants her body of work praised, not just her body. What she might not understand is that she has become a symbol of sorts. For the record, she is by no means a big girl. Perhaps we wouldn't have to celebrate (and scrutinize) women like Christina so much if there were more variety among Hollywood starlets.

So let's put the hourglass aside and focus on what's really important - the girl can act, and Christina's portrayal of Joan is heartbreaking, empowering, and infuriating all at once. Besides, when it comes to her body, her weight, her curves, and all the rest, you're not going to get much more from Christina - she is so over discussing it: "It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth."

Challenge 16 - Cover model New York Magazine Spring 2009

CCee — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:44:25 -0800

Hi ladies,

I've been doing some research on the picture Eu challenged me with.

I found out that the model is Anna Selezneva. The picture was taken backstage at the Gucci fashionshow.

The magazine is New York Look bi-annual Magazine! The Spring 2009 Fashion issue came out in November 2008. This magazine really goes in-depth into the fashion and beauty in this issue bringing pages filled with back stage info and pictures, fresh faces, trends, what editors said, wore and how they behavied.

I'm sad to say I haven't been able to get my hands on the magazine or flip though it. No scans online either, butttt I did find these backstage pictures of Anna at the Gucci Fashion Show:
And a runway picture:
If you compare these pictures to the cover:

you see that there's been some manipulation in the intensity of the colours. The blues are darker and more intense and the highlight colour under the brow seems different too.

That's the research part of the look, I'll work on the actual look probably tomorrow.
Have a great day everyone!
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Hi girls,

I can upload pictures again!!!
So here is the final eye, I don't have time right now to tell you what I used and how I achieved it, but I did want to show you as soon as I could what I did.

________________________________________________________________________________________
Hey ladies,

Before I go on with the new challenges I want to finish this one, because it's been soo long I can't actually remember all I've done .
But I do remember using the Urban Decay Peace colour from the Deluxe palette and a Smashbox goldeny colour under my brows.
I found this AMAZING!!!! video tutorial that shows almost exactly what I did, and I thought that would finish this look much better then I could do now.

I'll be back to posting and blogging new looks very soon, after the whole unable to upload pictures thing, some family stuff happened that's very sad and that's been taking up most of my time. I won't go into it any more, I think you guys know me well enough by now to know that family always comes first to me.

I do really miss you though!!

Big

K-STEW EXCLUSIVE! Kristen’s Being Photographed for an Upcoming ‘Rolling Stone’ Mag!

huntedvampire — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:05:08 -0700

The photos are sure to be hot - we can’t wait to see them!

Kristen Stewart has been featured in countless magazines in the past year, and she’ll be adding another one to her list very soon - Rolling Stone! Inside sources tell hollywood life that Kristen attended a photo shoot in New York on March 17, which could be for the cover of an upcoming issue.
Kristen would be the second Twilight star to grace the cover of Rolling Stone, the first being His Royal Hotness Taylor Lautner. Remember those steamy wet t-shirt photos of Taylor? Let’s hope we get something just as great from K-Stew!
We contacted the magazine, but haven’t heard back yet.

The Future Of Vogue May Be Straight Out of the Past

juicybabe527 — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:35:47 -0700

Vogue is looking to switch things up- maybe a good thing, since ad pages are down 36% this September, but we will have to wait to see how this is actually executed. A glimpse into the past, though make people think that the future of Vogue could be hidden in the newly-found editorials Anna Wintour worked on while she was at New York magazine from 1981-1983. One of the biggest factors that make people think these types of images would be re-worked for Vogue is the fact that a few of them show models at a grocery store- a concept we saw in Vogue just a few months back. I hope (for Vogue's sake) that this is jsut a coincidence, because Vogue can be so much more creative than this.

NEW YORK FASHION WEEK- new haircut

la gata lista — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 12:14:19 -0800

http://fabricmag.com/fabric-magazine-models/tao-okamato/
LOVE THE HAIRCUT?

New York Fashion Week is on Day 2 and already we see editors switching to flats (no more town cars ladies) and models galavanting around with their mile-long legs and antelope stride. Which is why with all the fashion and beauty going on, it’s hard to stand out in the crowd. Take a tip from model Tao Okamato (Supreme) with her new Joan of Arc haircut. Her tomboy allure has been rocking the runways from Yigal Azrouel to United Bamboo. Way to jumpstart a career. CONTINUE (MORE PHOTOS) http://fabricmag.com/fabric-magazine-models/tao-okamato/ ...

Blackwater Took Hundreds of Guns From U.S. Military, Afghan Police

liliblu — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:20:54 -0800

Senate Inquiry Shows Contractor Signed for Rifles Using 'South Park' Alias
By Spencer Ackerman 2/23/10 9:00 PM
Employees of the CIA-connected private security corporation Blackwater diverted hundreds of weapons, including more than 500 AK-47 assault rifles, from a U.S. weapons bunker in Afghanistan intended to equip Afghan policemen, according to an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee. On at least one occasion, an individual claiming to work for the company evidently signed for a weapons shipment using the name of a “South Park” cartoon character. And Blackwater has yet to return hundreds of the guns to the military.
A Blackwater subsidiary known as Paravant that until recently operated in Afghanistan acquired the weapons for its employees’ “personal use,” according to committee staffers, as did other non-Paravant employees of Blackwater. Yet contractors in Afghanistan are not permitted to operate weapons without explicit permission from U.S. Central Command, something Blackwater never obtained. A November 2008 email from a Paravant vice president named Brian McCracken, obtained by the committee, nevertheless reads: “We have not received formal permission from the Army to carry weapons yet but I will take my chances.”
As a result of Blackwater’s disregard for U.S. military restrictions on contractor firearms, four employees of Paravant - which held a subcontract from defense giant Raytheon to train Afghan soldiers - under the influence of alcohol opened fire on a car carrying four Afghan civilians on May 5, 2009, wounding two. That incident, occurring less than two years after Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, prompted the committee’s investigation.

“In the fight against the Taliban, the perception that the Afghans have of us is critical,” Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the committee, told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “It’s clear to me that if we’re going to win that struggle, we need to know that contractor personnel are adequately screened, they’re adequately supervised and they’re adequately held accountable.” Levin will hold a hearing on Blackwater’s Afghanistan contracts Wednesday morning.
The committee’s investigation points to the contrary. Blackwater personnel appear to have gone to exceptional lengths to obtain weapons from U.S. military weapons storehouses intended for use by the Afghan police. According to the committee, at the behest of the company’s Afghanistan country manager, Ricky Chambers, Blackwater on at least two occasions acquired hundreds of rifles and pistols from a U.S. military facility near Kabul called 22 Bunkers by the military and Pol-e Charki by the Afghans. Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of all U.S. military forces in the Middle East and South Asia, wrote to the committee to explain that “there is no current or past written policy, order, directive, or instruction that allows U.S. Military contractors or subcontractors in Afghanistan to use weapons stored at 22 Bunkers.”
On one of those occasions, in September 2008, Chief Warrant Officer Greg Sailer, who worked at 22 Bunkers and is a friend of a Blackwater officer working in Afghanistan, signed over more than 200 AK-47s to an individual identified as “Eric Cartman” or possibly “Carjman” from Blackwater’s Counter Narcotics Training Unit. A Blackwater lawyer told committee staff that no one by those names has ever been employed by the company. Eric Cartman is the name of an obnoxious character from Comedy Central’s popular “South Park” cartoon.
Blackwater personnel invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination when approached by the committee to explain the weapons acquisitions from 22 Bunkers, according to committee staff. Sailer, who is still deployed to Afghanistan, told the committee that he thought Blackwater was signing for the weapons to train Afghan police, a task it has never conducted.
Not all of the guns received from Blackwater have been returned to the Afghan government - and, according to committee staff, many only began to be returned after staff approached the company for an explanation. “It was represented to us that all the weapons had been returned” to 22 Bunkers, Levin said. “That is not true. Hundreds of them were not returned.” Asked if that meant Blackwater lied to Congress, Levin replied, “They misrepresented the facts, and I’d like to leave it at that.”
Raytheon did not renew Paravant’s contract for training the Afghan army, which expired in September. Blackwater still holds a contract with the State Department worth millions of dollars to protect diplomats in Afghanistan. While that contract expires this year, Politico reported on Tuesday that Blackwater, now renamed Xe Services, might acquire a new multimillion-dollar contract from the Defense Department to train Afghan police - the same police force that Blackwater’s weapons diversions from 22 Bunkers deprived of hundreds of pistols and rifles.
This is not the first time Blackwater has faced allegations of diverted weapons. In 2007, company employees came under federal investigation for improperly shipping hundreds of weapons to Iraq, some of which are believed to have been sold on the black market and acquired by a Kurdish terrorist group. A Blackwater statement at the time said allegations that the company was “in any way associated or complicit in unlawful arms activities are baseless.” The New York Times reported in November that the company is negotiating with regulators over “hundreds of millions of dollars in fines” associated with the illicit weapons shipments.
In January, Blackwater’s founder, Erik Prince, confirmed to Vanity Fair that his 12-year-old company - which has earned more than a billion dollars through government contracts in the past decade - was involved in a nascent terrorist assassination program run by the CIA, among other CIA activities. “I’m paying for all sorts of intelligence activities to support American national security, out of my own pocket,” Prince told the magazine. Additionally, The Nation recently reported that Blackwater assists the Joint Special Operations Command with the terrorist manhunt in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including with the operations of JSOC’s armed unmanned drones.
Levin said his inquiry had uncovered “inadequate oversight by the Army over this contract.” The Florida-based Army office supposedly overseeing the contract did not even have a contracting officer representative in Afghanistan when the Paravant employees shot at Afghan civilians on May 5, 2009. Yet as early as December 2008, concerned Raytheon personnel informed that Army office that Paravant personnel were carrying unapproved weapons. An officer in Afghanistan responsible for training Afghan soldiers told the committee, “We should have had better control.”
Additionally, Blackwater personnel in Afghanistan, including those involved in both the May shooting and an earlier improper weapons discharge from December 2008, have been cited for, among other infractions, drug and alcohol abuse and, in one case, an “extensive criminal history.”
Wednesday’s hearing is expected to receive testimony from current and former Blackwater/Paravant officers, including Brian C. McCracken, the former Paravant vice president who now serves as Raytheon’s chief Afghanistan program officer; Fred Roitz, a Blackwater vice president; and John Walker, a former Paravant program officer.
http://washingtonindependent.com/77476/blackwater-the-senate-and-south-park

‘Mad Men’ Star Christina Hendricks On Body Scrutiny: ‘It Kind of Hurt My Feelings’

kty — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:55:28 -0800

Judging from her lingerie-clad appearance on the cover New York magazine’s Spring Fashion issue, you might not guess that Mad Men star Christina Hendricks would be self-conscious about her voluptuous figure. But after her curves started attracting more attention than her acting, culminating in last month’s flap over her Golden Globes appearance, the 34-year-old actress says she couldn’t help but feel embarrassed by the scrutiny. “It kind of hurt my feelings at first,” she admits. “Anytime someone talks about your figure constantly, you get nervous, you get really self-conscious. I was working my butt off on the show, and then all anyone was talking about was my body!” And despite her old-Hollywood looks, the actress, who will reprise her role as Joan Holloway on next season’s Mad Men, says fans are always surprised when they spot her in real-life - without her retro-fitting garb. “The way we dress on Mad Men is so associated with old photographs, with people’s parents and grandparents,” she says. “In person, I wear jeans and flip-flops and people are so shocked. They tell me I look so much younger than they expected.” But as for her weight and other body-related questions, Hendricks says she’s so over talking about it. “It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth,” she says. For more on Christina Hendricks, visit nymag.com.–David Yi

Oral Sex, a Knife Fight and Then Sperm Still Impregnated Girl

bluesarahlou — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:56:23 -0800

So I saw this story on Tres the other day and it made me want to read the full story, not a wierdly written synopsis. Kind of long, but pretty interesting!

A strange tale of oral sex, a knife fight and the most unlikely of pregnancies recently brought to light by the blogosphere has doctors touting the triumphant persistence of sperm.

In 1988, a 15-year-old girl living in the small southern African nation of Lesotho came to local doctors with all the symptoms of a woman in labor. But the doctors were quickly puzzled because, upon examination, she didn't have a vagina.

"Inspection of the vulva showed no vagina, only a shallow skin dimple," so doctors delivered a healthy baby boy via Caesarean, the authors wrote in a case report published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

Her birth defect -- called Mullerian agenesis or Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome -- didn't necessarily surprise doctors, but her pregnancy did. Even the 15-year-old girl could not believe she was pregnant.

Yet by looking at her records the hospital staff realized the young woman was in the hospital 278 days earlier with a knife wound to her stomach. The average pregnancy lasts 280 days. After interviews, they gathered that "Just before she was stabbed in the abdomen she had practiced fellatio with her new boyfriend and was caught in the act by her former lover. The fight with knives ensued."

The girl arrived at the hospital with an empty stomach -- and therefore with little stomach acid around -- and doctors found two holes from a stab wound that opened her stomach up to her abdominal cavity. The case report said doctors washed her stomach out with a salt solution and stitched her up.

"A plausible explanation for this pregnancy is that spermatozoa gained access to the reproductive organs via the injured gastrointestinal tract," the authors wrote.

Infertility experts note the story, which resurfaced on a Discovery magazine blog, is not only a testament to Murphy's Law but one to arguably nature's most impressive swimmers: sperm.

How Could Sperm Survive Those Conditions?

"Here's an unbelievable set of coincidences," said Dr. Richard Paulson, head of the University of Southern California Fertility Program in Los Angeles. "But it's totally plausible."

Although doctors know that sperm needs a low acid (high pH) environment to survive, and would likely die eventually in the low pH of stomach acid, doctors also said that sperm comes in a protective fluid: ejaculate, a nourishing medium meant to protect the sperm.

Besides, "out of hundreds of millions of sperm if you knock out 90 percent of them, you're still going to have tens of millions of sperm," said Dr. Peter Schlegel, chairman of urology at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York.

Paulson agreed.

"Sperm are pretty hardy," said Paulson, who pointed out that sperm must make it out of the acidic environment of the vagina before reaching more friendly territory at the cervix and in the uterus. Once in the abdominal wall, Paulson estimated that the sperm could survive for days.

"It's a long way from the stomach into the lower abdomen, it's a heck of a trip, but they made it," said Paulson. "You just need sperm somewhere in the area of an egg."

Paulson said in the early days of fertility treatments in the 1980s, doctors injected sperm in the lower abdomen hoping for the coincidental encounter with an egg. The procedure, called DIPI or direct intraperitoneal insemination, has largely been replaced by more effective methods.

The Lengths Sperm Can Travel

Schlegel pointed out that although fertilization typically takes place in the fallopian tubes, doctors know that sperm can normally swim up and out of the reproductive organs into the abdominal cavity.

"The sperm are naturally there at times, and eggs are naturally there," said Schlegel. "Eggs are released from the ovary, and they sort of dance around before they get taken up by the fallopian tube."

Sperm Can Swim Far in the Female Body

So it seems, Schlegel concluded, that the sperm could also be taken up by the fallopian tube, as could a fertilized egg.

But some doctors are still suspicious of, or at least bewildered by the tale. The girl's birth defect is well known and by age 15, doctors say most girls would have been doubling over in pain with an abdomen filled with menstrual fluid that cannot escape.

The menstrual fluid of several periods would make it even more unlikely for a pregnancy to occur.

"She'd have pain all the time and would have a stomach full of blood all the time, and would have to be operated on, or she would eventually die," said Dr. Sherman J. Silber, director of the infertility center of Saint Louis at St. Luke's Hospital in Missouri.

Dr. Howard A. Zacur, a reproductive endocrinologist at Johns Hopkins, also had doubts. "The case report here suffers from the fact that an individual with a completely obstructed vaginal outlet would have been expected to have blood accumulation in the vagina, and/or uterus," he wrote in an e-mail.

The authors of the report guessed a pregnancy could only be possible if the girl had ovulated once or at most twice before her pregnancy.

Whatever the true story of the woman, and her now grown son, Silber said it could send a message to ordinary couples planning pregnancy.

Why Doubt the Longevity of Sperm?

"This story is a crazy story, and there's no way to make sense of it," said Silber. "But the data on sperm is that normally it's quite good in an alkaline environment for two or three days -- that's why the average couple wastes a lot of energy when they're trying to get pregnant."

Silber said he sees many couples who buy into the idea that they should time sex to coincide with the woman's ovulation. But Silber said the remarkable survivability of sperm means most couples don't have to change their normal sex lives at all.

"The average American married couple tends to have sex two or three days a week," said Silber, author of "How to Get Pregnant."

If sperm can survive for two or three days, that means the average sex life of an American married couple results in living sperm swimming around the woman's body every single day of the week.

"The practice to check when you ovulate and not to have sex until you're ovulating is stupid," Silber said.

Silber said because ovulation calendars and methods to detect ovulation are somewhat inaccurate, couples could miss ovulation and have sex too late.

"Twelve hours after ovulation, the eggs aren't good any more. You want to have the sperm there ready and waiting for when you ovulated," said Silber. "It's absolutely true that sperm can last a long time."

Source

Top 10 Celebrities I'd Like to Have a Conversation With

Jay Beezy — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:35:15 -0800

This is my own personal list. You are free to agree or disagree. I'm not sure how approachable some of these ones are, but I feel like they are all conversable. The ones near the bottom I had to think about a bit more. The guys are all funny guys and the girls are all beautiful, sweet, and funny. And half the people here are on The Office or were on it at some point.

1. Adam Sandler - I've been a fan of his for over a decade, since before I hit puberty. I've read on numerous ocasions that he's one of the nicest guys working in Hollywood. I am pretty sure I actually walked by him in Boston since he was around the area at the time filming Grown Ups. It would have been cool if I actually got to talk to him though.

Premiere Of Columbia Pictures' "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" - Arrivals

2. Jennifer Aniston - I've liked her since Friends and I always thought she was beautiful. I mean how could you not considering her recent attire for the Golden Globes? She's always seemed so sweet, funny, and down to earth and I, like a lot of people, get a warm feeling from her whenever I see her on screen. All this tabloid BS about her is annoying and unwarranted considering the fact they keep repeating the same BS stories over and over again.

67th Annual Golden Globe Awards - Press Room

3. Jenna Fischer - I've liked her since I started watching the Office. I like her for the same reasons I like Aniston. She makes the time to reach out to fans via her MySpace page. And if you've seen her photoshoot for Shape Magazine, you already know how amazing her body looks (I'm talking about the video of her shoot, not the magazine photos). She doesn't have as much recognition as Aniston, but she does have the luxury of not being harrassed by the tabloids.

Premiere Of Warner Bros. "He's Just Not That Into You" - Arrivals

4. Seth Rogen - He was hilarious in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and I've followed him since. I feel like he's the Adam Sandler of his generation.

Premiere Of Universal Pictures' "Funny People" - Arrivals

5. Paul Rudd - One phrase says it all for me: "Slappin' da' bass, mon."

Premiere Of Dreamworks' "I Love You, Man" - Arrivals

6. John Krasinski - I love him on The Office and he gives the best interviews, especially on Conan where the two of them do human marionettes. And as someone who is not gay, I actually think he's kinda cute.

"Away We Go" Special New York Screening

7. Steve Carell - He's another reason I love The Office. He practically made it what it is. His exit interview to Conan was hilarious.

60th Primetime Emmy Awards - Arrivals

8. Amy Adams - She seems like another sweet girl who is also funny and quirky. I've read that she's got quite a perverted sense of humor. Oh yeah, she's pretty, too.

Special Screening Of Columbia Pictures' "Julie & Julia" - Arrivals

9. Rashida Jones - She's hot and seemingly ballsy, like a girl that can hang with the guys. It kinda sucked they put her in a position on The Office where we were supposed to not like her, but after I Love You, Man and Parks & Recreation, we can like her now.

Premiere Of Universal Pictures' "Funny People" - Arrivals

10. Ed Helms - Here's yet another person who's on The Office. The fact that he's on The Office led to me going to see The Hangover. And now he's on fire on The Office more than ever.

Academy Of Television Arts & Sciences' "Inside The Office"

Bonus Celebrity:
Conan O'Brien - He's been a thrill to watch his last week on the Tonight Show and I just want to give him a hug.

60th Primetime Emmy Awards - Arrivals

Oprah Winfrey Presents Fans a Golden Opportunity

kty — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 05:53:44 -0800

By Blane Bachelor
For Oprah Winfrey fans, it's a Gold Ticket of a lifetime: an expenses-paid weekend extravaganza in New York City to commemorate the 10th anniversary of O, The Oprah Magazine and to meet Oprah. The February issue of O features a "golden ticket" sweepstakes for the "Live Your Best Life Weekend" from May 7-9 in New York. Each magazine includes a pull-out ticket driving readers to log on to Oprah.com to see if the ticket is one of 10 winners who, along with a guest, will be provided airfare, accommodations and tickets for the weekend's events. The extravaganza includes seminars with popular Oprah contributors, including financial guru Suze Orman, stylist Nate Berkus and self-help coach Martha Beck, as well as an evening with Winfrey herself at Radio City Music Hall. Tickets go on sale in mid-March. The "Live Your Best Life Weekend" marks the 10-year anniversary of Winfrey's acclaimed magazine, which is known for its positive, empowering message to "Live Your Best Life."