Tween Glamour Revisited

So Bonne Bell is going out of business. Buh-bye lip smackers. Farewell streaky bronzer. It was fun knowing you. For a brief period of time in the early 80s – before sensitive skin and allergies took me into the land of Clinique, Bonne Bell was one of those brands that represented grown-up glamour (at least in my middle-school mind). The sad news of the company's demise had me wanting to rush out and seek a final few tubes of Dr. Pepper or watermelon-flavored lip gloss. Instead, I sat down and came up with a round-up of the must-have beauty products of an early-80s tween. Here’s what we put on every morning and discussed between classes. Play some Duran Duran or early Madonna and see if these bring back a few memories…

Village Lip Lickers. Bonne Bell was a favorite, but I always loved those little vintage-looking tins, and while my memory may be a little fuzzy, I think they tasted better. And they’re still available today (I sense an online order coming) Plus, you could get them at Spencer’s, and let’s face it, no store epitomized cool to an 8^th-grader more than Spencer’s.

Maybelline Kissing Potion. Yeah, kissing was a major concern back then. We all wanted to be prepared with the perfect shiny, great-tasting lips for anything that might (but probably wouldn’t) happen. What happened instead is that your first attempt at a sexy hair flip would send your hair into your mouth where it would get stuck in a layer of lip gloss that would make the cleanup crew for the BP spill nervous.

Speaking of your bouncy, shiny tresses, who didn’t love the new Studio Effects line from L’Oreal with the bottles that looked like a Mondrian painting?  At least until Aussie Sprunch Spray came out and our bangs could be taken to previously-unknown and grape-scented heights.

And how many of us were convinced that Halsa shampoo (the one that you bought to match the color of your hair) would actually give us highlights?

Of course if you were really serious about highlights, you probably went the Sun-In route, or if you were like me, combed lemon juice into your hair and sat out in the sun for hours.

Not that sitting out in the sun was a problem back then. In the south were I grew up, sunscreen was for wimps. Maybe, if you were really concerned about your skin (or your mom was overprotective) you used a SPF 4 or 6. But if you wanted to get that perfect shade of golden brown, hard-core tanners would skip the Panama Jack or Hawaiian Tropic and go straight for a bottle of baby oil with a few drops of iodine mixed in.

Your perfect tan was set off with purple glitter nail polish (it only took approximately 15 coats to get your nails to look like this), and once you got past your mom and into the girls bathroom at school, some shimmery purple eyeshadow to match too, right?

And speaking of nails, remember when the scoop was that gelatin would help make our nails grow stronger and longer?  I kind of misunderstood that one and mom came home one day to find me soaking my fingers in a bowl of unset lime jello. My nails didn’t grow but my fingers were an odd shade of green for a while.

But didn't we look (and smell) totally awesome, strolling through the halls enveloped in a cloud of Love’s Baby Soft or Impulse Body Spray?

        

What have I missed?  What were your favorite tween beauty products?

I'm a Georgia Voter!

OK, I’m going to rant for a little while here.  It’s my blog, and I’m allowed to vent when I want to.

One of the reasons I was happy to move back home to Georgia is that after two decades, I was, quite simply, tired of Washington. At first, it was a love affair.  I did the all-but-mandatory stint as a Hill intern and would come home and watch C-SPAN into the wee hours of the morning. Walking across the mall would send this little shiver down my spine. Of course I was a West Wing junkie.  But by the time House of Cards premiered last year, that show seemed like a pretty realistic portrayal of how Washington works these days.

It’s primary day in Georgia, and for a politically aware, moderate voter, it was pretty damn depressing. I made it a point to look at sample ballot in advance and do a little research on candidate positions and endorsements to decide who to vote for. In too many cases, it seemed like there wasn’t a whole lot of choice.  And the available choices weren’t that appealing. 

I’ve never stuck with one party or another.  I swing left on some issues, right on others.  I decide which primary to vote in by how the critical races are being decided.  Right now, I live in Cobb County, so a Republican ballot was a no-brainer – there aren’t any Democrats even running for a lot of the offices on the ballot.  But picking someone to represent me in Congress was like being offered a choice between syphilis, gonorrhea or herpes – I don’t want any of them, and is this really what I have to choose from?!?!

But abstinence isn’t an option when it comes to voting for me.  So what’s a girl to do but suck it up and try to pick the one who seemed the LEAST batshit crazy…

It occurred to me that this election season has been remarkably quiet to me.  Other than a few yard signs (not very many), it seemed almost invisible. Yet I read in the AJC that the Senate candidates have already spent $9 million on television ads, with outside interest groups adding even more to the pot. But here’s the thing… I usually watch stuff on Apple TV or Netflix, so I haven’t seen a single candidate’s television ads. When we moved down here in November, we didn’t bother with a land line, so I haven’t gotten any robocalls either. I get my news online, and I try to stick to less obviously biased sites, I haven’t even gotten many popup ads.

I don’t think I’m all that unusual in how I get my news and entertainment. I’m heading into middle age, and I think anyone under age 40 or so is probably even less connected to the mediums used by traditional political advertising.

What I have noticed is that much of the political “news” I see shared via email and facebook comes from sites that might as well be called “libruls-r-stoopid.com” or “die-evil-conservative-nazis.org.”  More and more, our news and information comes to us in an echo chamber where we hear only the perspectives that we THINK we agree with, or via “news” sites that put the political analysis somewhere in between lolcats, celebrity plastic surgery disasters and quizzes about which flavor of bubblegum best represents our inner being.

The scary thing is that our elected officials seem to be getting their information from the same sources too. Democracy is great, but it only works when the people making the policies have genuine and knowledgeable discussions and a willingness to at least hear each others’ points of view. And it only works when the people who elect those policymakers do the same.

Sadly, I don’t have any magic bullets or suggestions, but I’d love some thoughts on how to reach younger, more digital and more compartmentalized voters – and how we can all work to make ourselves more educated and effective participants in this crazy system.

But for now, I think I’m going to fix a drink and go watch a few episodes of President Bartlett and the gang…

Love and Pound Cake

A little while back, my father gave me an old set of pyrex mixing bowls that belonged to my mother. Sturdy, serviceable bowls that I saw millions of times throughout my childhood.  

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and I missed my mom terribly. As I was fixing dinner last night, I thought about how many meals took shape in those bowls.   Biscuits on Saturday mornings.  Cornbread for weeknight suppers. The dressing every Thanksgiving.  Birthday cakes, cookies, brownies for treats. I close my eyes and I see Mom standing at the kitchen counter, with me watching.  Learning.

I learned to cook from watching my mother. What I didn’t realize – and she probably didn’t either – is that she was also teaching me about love. So often, we express our love in what we do for others. When I cook for family and friends, it’s a big, messy, delicious “I love you” to the people in my life. And I think my mom would like that.

And I think that’s a good way to start sharing some of my favorite recipes here… so first up is my current favorite variation on the first thing I cooked for myself – a pound cake. I made my first pound cake when I was 16 from the Southern Living Cookbook, which is still my go-to bible for southern cooking. When I moved out on my own, I unashamedly stole that cookbook from Mom’s shelf – how else was I going to survive on my own? To my credit, I gave her a new copy for the next Mother’s Day.

Since then I’ve probably made hundreds of pound cakes. They remain one of my favorite things to cook.  This particular version came in a later copy of Southern Living. I love the tart freshness of the lime, and I think it’s an ideal cake to enjoy on the patio with friends and family as the weather gets warmer.

Key Lime Pound Cake

From Southern Living via allrecipes.com

What You Need:

1 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup shortening

3 cups sugar

6 large eggs $

3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup milk $

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon lime zest

1/4 cup fresh Key lime juice

For the Glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar

2 tablespoons fresh Key lime juice

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

How to Make It:

1. Preheat oven to 325°. Beat butter and shortening at medium speed with a heavy-duty electric stand mixer until creamy. Gradually add sugar, beating at medium speed until light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating just until blended after each addition.

2. Stir together flour, baking powder, and salt. Add to butter mixture alternately with milk, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat at low speed just until blended after each addition. Stir in vanilla, lime zest, and lime juice. Pour batter into a greased and floured 10-inch (12-cup) tube pan.

3. Bake at 325° for 1 hour and 15 minutes to 1 hour and 20 minutes or until a long wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan on a wire rack 10 to 15 minutes; remove from pan to wire rack.

4. Whisk glaze ingredients in a small bowl and immediately brush over top and sides of cake. Cool completely (about 1 hour).