Hello! I’m blogging from my hotel room in Cebu, where I am spending the Sinulog Festival weekend with my mom and sister. It feels really great to be back here after all these years and with so many new things to experience! First, a quick outfit post to commemorate what must be the first time you’ll see me wearing sneakers in this blog.
You’d think that at 25 I’d be too old to have zits, but they still keep coming around the chin area, especially before my period. While a little tea tree oil helps them go away in two days, there’s still the glaring red bump to contend with in the meantime and the stubborn acne scar to deal with after. I’ve been looking for good concealer for this reason, preferably one with green tint so I can hide the redness. Unfortunately, every concealer palette I find is either too expensive and/or has too many shades of brown that I probably won’t use.
The perfect palette fell into my lap when Carmen of CarmenClaire Cosmetics sent me an email introducing her Multiply store and a little about herself. Carmen started her brand CarmenClaire because of her passion for makeup as a way to “lovingly minimize” flaws. Her line of cosmetics feature everyday makeup suited for this purpose, such as blush, concealer, lipstick, and lashes, as well as skin care, makeup brushes, and fragrance. One thing you are never going to find in her store are whitening products. Like me, Carmen doesn’t believe in using skin whitening anything, which is awesome and rare in a society that still believes that white skin is beautiful, while our natural morena skin color is not. For these reasons, I happily agreed to review a product from her makeup line.
It took me all of two seconds to decide that I wanted to try out the Cover Operations concealer palette in Neutralize.
I spent the last day of 2011 with my family and Marco, learning how to drive to Tagaytay Highlands. I haven’t been to Highlands since I was in high school and was pleasantly surprised to see that it’s still just as picturesque and fairly well-maintained as ever, with a couple of new additions like cottages to rent, a horseback riding area, and a spa. Just don’t make the mistake of going there after lunch on a holiday like we did. Aside from stuff ourselves with food, there wasn’t much else we could do because everyone else had the foresight to make reservations early. It was still a pretty drive regardless, and I had a lot of fun rediscovering the country club until it got dark.
2011 has been very eventful, and to cap off the year I thought I’d compile a list of the best I Am Bourgeois blog posts. So in case you feel like you missed anything, feel free to browse through the articles below. Happy new year everyone! Here’s to the amazing year that was, and the crazy adventures that await in 2012.
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Tampons 101: Myths and Facts Uncovered by my Teenage Self
I was around 11 when I first discovered what a tampon was. A magazine I borrowed from a classmate had an advice question from a girl whose tampon string got broken. “How do I get it out?” she asked. My classmate noticed me reading the article and remarked, “That’s why I don’t want to use tampons. I don’t want to have to fish for it down there.”
A tampon, I soon learned, is a small yet highly absorbent roll of cotton designed to absorb menstrual blood internally. Though tampons weren’t widely available in the Philippines then, our teachers discouraged us from using them with horror stories just the same. “Tampons will take your virginity!” declared my religion teacher. “Inserting a tampon will break your hymen, and then guess what? No man will want to marry you.”
Hearing these warnings never stopped me from giving tampons a try a few years later. I’m glad I chose to give it a chance, because tampons weren’t as bad as people made it out to be. Inserting it was a piece of cake, especially with the plastic applicator and idiot-proof instructions on the box. And once it was finally in place, it felt like I wasn’t having my period at all (except for the occasional menstrual cramp).Unlike wearing pads, tampons allowed me to go swimming even on my heaviest days. Tampons also allowed me to wear fitted bottoms and dresses without the awkward pad lump. And I could move around without worrying about my pad shifting away from its place and blood leaking onto my clothes.
Of course, I didn’t try out tampons without being informed about the risks. I did some research before buying my first pack, and I learned that there are very few safety issues to giving up pads for tampons.Here are some common facts about tampons that disprove popular myths:
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