FROM THE ARCHIVES | Summer beauty 2009

WHAT were we doing a year ago? Um, to be exact, I'm pretty sure I was eating toast and marmalade in a campervan at Tawharanui bird sanctuary (one of only 2 cars camping there that winter night) in Matakana, New Zealand (Rodney District). What a difference a year makes... here's what we had on our mind at the time:

1. The reliability of beauty reviews
2. Yes we Cannes Cannes: Beauty on the riviera
3. Find the best duty-free booty: Shop Magazine
4. LA beauty brand nettiscrub
5. To yoga in India?

Favourite memories from Tawharanui and Matakana... Anchor Bay, Ransom winery, the honour system by which farms would leave out heaps of winter persimmons for sale at their roadside stands, wine grape marmalade, the landscape, the movie theatre in Matakana, our 1991 Toyota camper van, Brick Bay winery, New Zealand architecture, dill crisps, hot springs, that it was unseasonably cold for winter at 60 F during the day...

• Tawharanui Open Sanctuary
• Matakana
• Brick Bay
• Ransom Winery

TRAVEL TALES | Agua fresca de sandia

That's right, mis amiguitos... it's that time of year again. When pick-up trucks spilleth over with the pink-fleshed fruit from that siesta-loving land of the Aztecs, Agave and rodents of unusual size. Qué? you say? It's summer! And with it comes one of my favourite things in the entire world - aguas frescas.

I once spent a summer alone in Mexico City on a fellowship to study pre-Columbian fertility goddesses (true story). Previous to those fated weeks, I had a passing relationship with the street cuisine of our kissing primos down south. After all, I grew up in a city where, not a block from my neighbourhood, the street signs, billboards, store names and voices floating in the air morphed from English to Spanglish to Mexican Spanish at an astonishing speed. I often squirreled away enough cash for a champurrado and tamale in the morning, a paleta in the afternoon and maybe some elotes if I was feeling particularly fiscally wanton with my meager savings. Lord was it tasty.

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BEAUTY OP-ED | Forget the beach body, embrace sanity

PERSONALLY, I say buck the trend, save the money and instead use it to pay for that beach holiday you otherwise might not have the money to take. Forget about getting tan, getting slim, getting ‘glowy’, getting blemish free, getting sun-kissed highlights in the wee morning hours before work and the few precious free ones you have after. In fact, if there’s anything I’ve learned from my seaside sojourns over the years, it’s that you achieve that look more readily going to the beach, not getting to it. And your sun-kissed highlights from swimming in the sea are free.

So are the honed thighs.

TOP TEN REASONS WHY GETTING BEACH-BODY READY IS NONSENSE:

1. Because you already have a body. And it’s ready for the beach NOW.
2. Who the hell wants to spend the summer swathed in radioactive orange tan (at least among the white-skinned folks out there)?
3. You’ll waste bucket loads of money you could otherwise spend on taking an actual beach holiday.
4. It’s as good as yo-yo dieting for your body. Meaning, it’s bad.
5. Even if you religiously follow the magazine’s instructions on how to get beach-body ready, you won’t look like the lady on the cover.
6. Because 90 year-old ladies in Croatia hit the beach every day – in bikinis – without spending months obsessing over how they’re going to look. If they can do it, so can you.
7. If all you can think about is how people think you look in a bikini, you’ll be miserable.
8. Highlights and salt water do not mix. Same goes with fake tan, makeup (even waterproof mascara) and body cosmetics (hey, even I wear a bit of leg makeup when I’m wearing tiny shorts).
9. At the end of the day, all that matters when you’re on the beach is that you’re not at work.
10. Cellulite is genetic (despite what some misguided beauty journalists will say). Sorry. If it bothers you, wear a cover-up. Nothing (no product, no treatment... no matter what the marketeers say) you do in the lead up to summer will ‘banish’ it from your body, so to speak.

Read the full article on LOOKING GOOD NO MATTER WHAT...