If you missed this week’s episode of Real Housewives of New Jersey and the ever-growing dramatic scandals between the housewives and Danielle Staub, then you missed a great episode. The “hold onto your seat ending” where Teresa decides to be cordial toward Danielle after all this time did not go over so well (surprise), prepping us with police cars and the girls fleeing in next week’s episode.

But aside from all the sticks and stones being thrown, Caroline’s daughter, Lauren Manzo, celebrated an accomplishment of graduating from cosmetology school in New York. Make-Up Designory, the professional makeup artisan school, was featured in the week’s episode showing Lauren applying costume-like makeup in Jennifer Suarez’s Beauty Make-Up Artistry course. Cosmetology grad Manzo received an “A” in the class if you were wondering. Watching her put makeup on other students, I have to admit made me sit back and open up the jar of unfilled dreams. Getting a degree in cosmetology school and practicing makeup designs sounded marvelous. Afterall, there’s no place like New York for beginning a career in beauty. Note to self: Look at these makeup artist schools in New York!

When it comes to achieving beautiful skin, most of us are familiar with some of the old-school standbys. Facial masks, eye-cucumbers, and exfoliating body scrubs are all reliable techniques that make up a skilled skin care specialist’s training and esthetician’s arsenal.

But now it’s time for healthy skin enthusiasts to check out the wave of the future!

Inspired by some of the innovative equipment used in professional esthetics practices and esthetician schools, these gadgets are designed for in-home use. Do they stack up to your neighborhood esthetician? You’ll have to be the judge on that. But if you’re hankering to give any of these ultra-modern beauty machines a try, you just might have the calling for your very own career in esthetics!

1. Crystalift Resurfacing System

By combining crystal resurfacing with vacuum-lift therapy, this Crystalift doo-dad removes dead cells and polishes skin to help you achieve a healthy glow. It’s inspired by the microdermabrasion equipment used in dermatology practices. Price: $249

2. Tria Laser Hair Removal

Safer than razors, this laser device helps remove those unwanted hair follicles, wherever they may be hiding. With three intensity levels, even those with sensitive skin can use this machine. It’ll cost you a pretty penny, though. At $995, I think I’ll choose my trusted esthetician to take care of this job for me.

3. The Marvel Mini

Estheticians and dermatologists have long known about the power light. By harnessing different wavelengths and frequencies, light can help us address our skin concerns. Enter, the Marvel Mini. With varieties in red, green and blue, these miniature glowing devices can help address skin issues like fine lines, wrinkles, age spots and acne. Price: $225

Have you looked in the mirror lately and noticed a few more fine lines around your mouth or across your forehead?  We all do it. Don’t panic and run for the Botox. Avoid the costly cosmetic surgery with less expensive ways to turn back the clock.  Here are a few cheaper and more natural remedies than going to the extremes of cosmetic surgery. Plus, Some are even free!

1. Retinoids

A derivative of vitamin A, Retinoid-based skin creams are the only thing on the market that have FDA approval and proven evidence that they smooth lines and lessen wrinkles.  Prescription medications like Retin-A, Renova or Tazorac can help increase the skin’s production of collagen which promotes new skin growth.  Patients who use retinoid creams can see a dramatic improvement in a matter of weeks.

2. Stay out of the sun

Exposure to harsh UVA and UVB rays speed up our skin’s aging. While hats, sunglasses, and sunscreen are all great sun protection, doctors recommend broad-spectrum sunscreen with high SPF like 80 or 90 that can block long-wave UVA rays.  Wrinkles are largely caused from these intense rays which can be blocked by sunscreen ingredients such as Helioplex and Mexoryl.

3. Get your sleep

Getting your beauty rest isn’t just a joke; it should be an important part of your skincare routine! Researchers explain that when you’re tired your body produces more Cortisol, a stress hormone.  When your Cortisol levels are high it can breakdown your skin’s collagen production.  To get a good night’s rest, try going to bed 20-30 minutes earlier, shutting off your cell phone, turning off your TV and avoiding exercise right before bedtime.  You’ll wake up with rested, glowing skin!

4. Antioxidants

Antioxidants act as your skin’s personal body guard by attacking free radicals–particles that lead to wrinkles, sun damage and skin cancer.  Antioxidants also can protect against environmental factors that harm the skin like pollution and smoking. The best way to get antioxidants is from food and from applying antioxidant rich creams.

5. Exfoliate

Exfoliating helps scrub off the dead, flaky skin cells exposing fresh, more moisturized skin. Not only does this give you a more youthful appearance, it also boosts collagen production and allows retinoids and antioxidants to penetrate the skin easier.  So, exfoliating can give you an instantly younger look while aiding in long term effects as well.  Unless you have sensitive skin, regular exfoliating with face scrubs or at-home chemical peels is encouraged.

Live in or near New York City? Have unruly eyebrows? Taking the tweezers into your own hands can be a quick frugal fix, but if you live in the Big Apple, Ramy (aka the Willie Wonka of the beauty world) can set you straight. Eyebrow Intervention Day happening on June 17 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Ramy’s Brow Bars located in three Duane Reed stores around the city will be offering free brow shaping. If you miss this shot at free beauty treatment, you can still beautify your brows at Brow-nanza, the champagne and eyebrow sculpting affair every Thursday from 5 p.m. – 8 p.m at Ramy’s stores.

Who is Ramy (if you don’t already know)

Dropping out of law school to attend beauty school in Australia led Ramy toward the career path of becoming a professional makeup artist. Through his studies and traveling, the brow-master developed the knack to dramatically lift the eye with his gift for eyebrow shaping. Appearing on national television shows including The Oprah Winfrey Show, E! and Entertainment Tonight and being written up in just about every beauty magazine, Ramy rounded up quite the clientele base – Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, David Spade, Katherine Heigl, Matt Dillon, Cher, Barbara Walters and Regis Philbin (to name only a few!!!). His salons give you a chance to attain eyebrows treatments like the stars.

More Great Brow Possibilities

For us, non-New Yorkers who reside in California, Washington, Texas, Massachusetts or Illinois, amazing looking arches are still attainable from our favorite cosmetic company, Benefit! Their Brow Bar lets you drop in, unannounced. No appointment necessary! Benefit’s aestheticians have more than 30 years of experience shaping brows and offer additional services like waxing and mini makeovers at convenient prices. The newest Benefit Brow location has arrived in Indiana and is  looking for arch experts. Interested? Apply here.

Eyebrow Intervention Day Locations:

Duane Reade LOOK Boutique 51 West 51st Street at 6th Avenue, New York, NY 10116
Phone: 212-582-8525

Duane Reade LOOK Boutique 1350 Broadway at 35th Street, New York, New York 10018
Phone: 212-695-6346

Duane Reade LOOK Boutique 127-137 8th Ave between 16th & 17th Streets, New York, NY 10011

Besides being super low in saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium, plus a good source of Potassium and Vitamins A and C (us health junkies are loving this!), watermelon is also a pure and natural beauty enhancer. It’s true! Watermelons act as a natural beauty product. If only women knew about the skin secrets behind this juicy fruit, they’d be rubbing it on their faces just as much they eat it. Okay, maybe not quite like that, but watermelons can act as a natural moisturizer. Not to mention, it’s an effective skin toner and skin tightner! Try it for yourself! Here are some clever beauty uses to try at home using watermelon:

The Watermelon Face Pack

This is the perfect remedy after you’ve been outside all day in the blistering heat. Take roughly one cup of watermelon pulp, and apply it to the face and neck areas. Rinse after 15 minutes. This will invigorate the skin making it soft and supple, as well as giving it that cool and youthful shine.

Alleviating sunburn is another great use for a watermelon face pack. Watermelon pulp along with cucumber pulp can help heal sunburn and lighten skin complexion. Got a bad sunburn and don’t want to look like a lobster? Then apply about a half cup each of cucumber and watermelon pulp to the burnt region for 20 minutes and watch the pain and redness fade.

The Watermelon Scrub

Grate a watermelon, extracting all of its juice. Then mix with a pinch of gram flour (flour made from ground chickpeas) and wah-lah – you’ve got an authentic beauty scrub! Apply the paste to the face, leaving it on for 15 minutes before rinsing. The end result is an excellent scrub that will leave your skin radiant.

So, this summer when you get ready to chow down on some delicious watermelon at your next BBQ, remember to snag some leftovers for your cosmetics collection.

Susanne S. Warfield is the leading expert on the business, legal and liability issues that affect physician and esthetician relationships working in a medical or spa setting. Warfield is a 27-year Licensed Esthetician and is NCEA Certified. Her career started as an Esthetics Instructor at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, where she taught the 2nd year of a two-year degree Esthetics Program. When she moved to the United States, her advanced training was put into use and she spent almost 14 years working with a dermatologist in New York City. See Susanne S. Warfield’s profile on the My Social Beauty.

Embarking on a new career can be frightening at first because the distance between where you are when you get out of one of the many esthetician schools and gaining the experience prospective employers want can seem so vast. The first step on any journey into the unknown is always the most difficult, and the good news is that once you pass your state boards, you’re actually already on your way.

The next step is to define what is a successful career for an esthetician? You’d be amazed at how many people never bother to plan their careers. They plan just about everything else about their lives – vacations, weddings, even grocery shopping – but when it comes to what they spend most of their working lives doing, they just drift. Most people never actually examine where they want to go; they simply follow the crowd and do the obvious. But even if you get offered the greatest job, it won’t really be your choice unless you actively, consciously make it. I certainly don’t think working in a medical setting is the right choice for every esthetician, nor do I think that every esthetician working in a spa should do it to the exclusion of other esthetic work. I know that working in a dermatology practice was the right choice for me because I made it only after spending a great deal of time thinking about what I like, what I’m good at, and what my options are, given my predilections and my training.

And that’s really the key for any important career decision. It’s a cliche, but it’s true, if you fail to plan–you plan to fail. But really knowing what you like is not so easy as it might seem. Many of us took aptitude tests in high school to find out what we were best suited for. Those tests, among other things, were really subtle explorations of what we enjoyed doing. I’m sure your local library can recommend some reference books if you haven’t explored your skills. Even if you don’t have much faith in the specific techniques these books employ, doing the exercises at least forces you to give some conscious thought to the direction you’d like to take, as opposed to what you think you ought to be doing with your life. Whatever exercises you use, they should have one thing in common: they should help you free your mind from the strictures we usually place on it when we think about work. In other words, when you think about what you’d like to be doing with your esthetics career, you shouldn’t be limited to what you traditionally think of as work. The whole point of these exercises, in fact, is to broaden your usual definitions of work. Think of the things you actually choose to do when you’re completely free to spend your time as you like. That includes what you do for entertainment, volunteer activities, hobbies, anything, even cleaning the garage if that gives you pleasure. In fact, it’s those things you wouldn’t think of under ordinary circumstances that can be the most revealing. For example, if you like cleaning out the garage, it may mean you enjoy bringing order out of chaos – you’re a good organizer.

There are other exercises that are useful for helping define what shape you’d like your career to take. Priority lists, where you list the pros and cons of a decision on each side of a piece of paper and give numerical weights to each entry to see which side comes out ahead, decision trees, or any of a host of methods used to clarify decisions can be used. Make lists of goals for your next position – wealth, challenge, interaction with interesting people, creativity, a pleasant environment, adventure, fame, power, leadership opportunities, long lunch hours, anything you want – and try to imagine the ideal position. Pay attention to what turns you on and to what turns you off.

Remember, these exercises are just for you. Be as free as you can because their only purpose is to help you think creatively about your strengths and to become conscious of the forces that help you succeed or prevent you from doing as well as you can.

Above all, the most important thing to take from these exercises, is that the reasons for choosing to work as an esthetician in a medical or spa setting, be conscious reasons, not vague, undefined impulses. Now get to work planning your future!

Learning vital career skills doesn’t mean you have to wait for college – at least that’s what two Salem, Oregon high schools are doing. Students of Sabin-Schellenberg Technical Center of the North Clackamas School District and Robert Ferrell High School at Hillcrest Youth Correctional Facility are learning cosmetology skills before they graduate from high school.

These technical schools also offer high school students other career training options in addition to cosmetology. The cosmetology curriculum is the latest installment that offers new career options to students.

These beauty and cosmetology classes cover many of the same topics they will encounter in a full beauty school course. Students are exposed to:

• Sanitation practices
• Hair techniques
• Microbiology
• Anatomy
• Business skills

Upon completion, these high school students should have the knowledge and skill set to take their state cosmetology licensing examinations. There are some technical schools nationwide that are taking the same route as these Oregon high schools. If interested, check with your local cosmetology board to see if any high schools in your area offer cosmetology training programs at the high school level.

Western beauty ideals have undeniably influenced Japanese culture, and as a result the Japanese beauty industry has turned out some strange contraptions.  Big eye contacts promise to enlarge your pupils for the appearance of wider eyes, collagen marshmallows are a tasty alternative to painful injections, and “F Cup Cookies” claim to significantly increase a woman’s bust.

Although these products may seem a little wacky, Japanese beauty trends have begun to make an appearance in Western society.  Here are a few innovations to watch for:

Fish Pedicure: If the thought of fish nibbling on your toes gives you the creeps, this spa procedure may not be for you.  In many of their beauty treatments, the Japanese look to nature to cure and treat the body.  In this case, dunking your feet in a pool of Gama Rufa (more commonly known as “doctor fish”) results in smooth skin.  But don’t worry.  Those who have braved the experience claim that the procedure is painless and the results are unparalleled.

Nightingale Dropping Face Cream: The idea of rubbing bird feces on one’s face doesn’t appeal to most, but consider the resulting “brightened skin” promised by the product “Uguisno No Fun”.  While Western society seems to prefer peels and rubs to remove skin, the Japanese aim to protect this top layer of skin through application of this product.  While you may not want to go as far as using bird poop in place of your nightly crème, this concept of protection is something to consider.

Sun Chlorella Supplements: Sun Chlorella is a superfood consisting of dried algae packed with vitamins, minerals and proteins.  It has been used for years and supposedly encourages cell renewal for healthy, beautiful skin, hair, and nails.  Considering how many Japanese women don’t seem to age, there may be something to be said about the power of algae.

The influence of Japanese beauty products will inevitably push our own Western culture to grow and innovate.  Now is the time to begin creating!

Ok, remember our “How Your Hair Can Save the World” article from about a year ago? Now is your chance to be a superhero and do your part to save the world.

Eliot Kamenitz / The Times-Picayune

Surely most of you have heard about the massive BP Gulf Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico near Louisiana. Thanks to this massive blunder, state and federal authorities are all taking huge steps to protect the sensitive ecosystems and wildlife in the Gulf from the millions of gallons of crude oil spilling from a sunken rig.

There are several leaks in the sunken rig, and the cleanup efforts have encountered numerous setbacks. Oil could be gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for many more days, or even at worst-case scenario, for many more months. But there is one huge way you can help.

If your beauty school or beauty salon offers haircut services, or you or someone you know works for a dog groomer, SAVE THOSE HAIR CLIPPINGS! The hair clippings can be stuffed into the booms to absorb oil, or woven into hair absorption mats to help soak up the gushing crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

It is fast, cheap and easy to donate hair clippings to the clean up the Gulf Oil Spill – so your hair and your clients’ hair can save the world. Hairstylists, cosmetologists and beauty school students alike can band together to help clean up the BP Gulf Oil Spill now!

In an attempt to compete with retailers like Sephora and Ulta, Macy’s is debuting a new self-serve beauty department in select stores around the country. These new beauty outposts have been named “Impulse Beauty”, and are designed to let customers peruse their favorite brands at their leisure.

I, for one, am glad to see this kind of presentation. I prefer to test out a product on my own, rather than have a sales person try it on me. What remains to be seen is whether or not customers feel less pressured by commissioned sales people to make a purchase.

What are your thoughts? Would you like to make your department store beauty purchases in an area like “Impulse Beauty”, or do you prefer traditional beauty counters? Share!