We hate to be bearers of bad news, but it’s August — meaning the glory days of sippin’ summer cocktails and rapidly developing skin cancer at any locale offering a mid- to large-sized body of water are, unfortunately, coming to an end. We know it’s hard to snap out of the beach-bum mindset, which is why we’ve got you covered with a checklist of things to do before full-time academia is back in swing.

Beautify. Nothing like cruising into a new semester of classes feeling like hot sh*t. Book your appointments early for those caterpillar eyebrows, exposed roots, and crusty feet.

Prepare for potential hanky-panky. (Yep, I did just call it hanky-panky.) Visit to the gyno? Check. Birth control stockpile? Check. Brazilian wax? Check. Stop trying to salvage period-stained panties — as my motto goes, new school year, new lacy underthings.

Buy new dorm / apartment / house décor! Draw some inspiration from Apartment Therapy and go to town. May we suggest wall decals, some choice picture frames and scented candles?

Pick up a new planner. Steal one from freshman orientation if you have to, and then neatly pencil in important dates (your boyfriend’s grandmother’s birthday, any club meeting with free food, the three-year anniversary to the day you got your v-card swiped, etc.) There’s nothing quite like touching a spankin’ new notebook — devoid of uncompleted to-do lists — for the very first time. Read More »

For most of us, bikini waxing is a summertime requirement, along the lines of flip flops and SPF 15. You can’t go to the beach with a fur skirt, right? But did you know that how you landscape says a lot about who you are? It’s true – guys can read your vajay like a book. I asked a couple of dudes what they think when they come face to…er….vajeen.

What kind of story is your bikini line telling?

Goin’ Natural:
If a guy can get some booty, he usually doesn’t care what’s happening south of the border, but that doesn’t mean he’s not paying attention. A woman who lets her forest grow wild is either totally inexperienced in the bedroom or super hippie-dippie-trippie and lets that stuff grow everywhere. “I’m afraid to see what her armpits look like,” says dude #1.

The Traditional Clean Up:
So, you take care of anything that might poke out of the bikini bottoms and do some basic trimming everywhere else. What does this say? “She’s considerate, but probably not going to let me flip her around in bed.” Read More »

So I’m single. And not only am I single – I am a single lady who is not looking for someone to put a ring on it anytime soon. If my grandma reads that she will probably have a heart attack, but I stand by my word (although I do promise to come visit her at the hospital).

You see, I am not your typical girl who is always on the man-hunt. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that I don’t want to meet someone, or enjoy flirting at the bar and the like – it’s just that there are things I L.O.V.E about being a single lady. Things that I’m not so keen on giving up. Things I want to enjoy for as long as possible now before I get married to some dude who thinks a fun weeknight involves South Park and Dutch Oven-ing me.

So here is this weeks Love List: Why all my single ladies love being single.

1) My legs keep me a lot warmer in the winter than my taken friends. I live in Chicago and it is COLD. Actually cold doesn’t even describe it – it’s like an arctic tundra (do those words even go together?). And being single makes that not-s0-bad. How? I love that I don’t have to shave my legs in the winter if I don’t want to. Is it a little embarrassing in yoga when my teacher happens to see that my ankle hair could be braided and beaded like I just spent a week in Jamaica? Sure, but at least my legs keep me warmer than those soft Jergened up legs of yours. Read More »

Whew! What a year, right? We saw it all: Britney’s bald head, governors getting it on with prostitutes, a new Facebook, the collapse of Wall Street, the rise and fall of Sarah Palin, a horrifying plane crash that killed some and spared others, the election of our first black president (!!), lots of young mommies, and a whole lot more that I drank too much to remember.

Things were busy over here, too. We discovered the guys not worth holding onto, and the perfect vibrator that is. We began to understand why crazy sex positions are totally worth it, and why sex on the beach is a must-do for 2009.

We found a totally hot new band that will change the way you think about music, learned the 14 truths about men, and laughed with the funniest ladies out there.

We found out that guys get Brazilians (?), argued the merit of leggings, and filled our entire closet with new clothes….for free!

We took our first trip to the gyno, learned a ton of new euphemisms for sex, and sought out some not-so-obvious places to meet a man. We looked back at our favorite things from middle school.

We hated/loved Facebook.

And we dipped our toes in the Cougar pool.

2008 was a good year. Here’s hoping 2009 can be as much fun (both in the bedroom and out of it).

Listen up fellas!! It is National Men Make Dinner Day…so get your cute butts to cookin’.

The Brazilian wax never goes out of style.

Sarah Silverman’s boy toy, Jimmy, exposes Sarah’s past.

Buckle down the hatches…A storm is coming!

The election is now over (thank goodness)…so here is a 50% sale on Obama goodies!

There is nothing like running freely through Central Park with it all hanging out. Thanks Steve Guttenberg for the visual.

Is the person sitting next to you on the airplane driving you crazy? Well, just duct tape her down, duh!

Dying to play the new Left 4 Dead game? The demo will be out tomorrow. Game on!

Photo courtesy of photobucket.com

My roomie once said, in a conversation that I very much regret missing, “You know, I could see why you would trim your bush if it got a little out of hand…but I don’t know why the hell you would cut the whole thing down. It just makes your lawn look funny!” And, no, we were not talking about horticulture.

Au naturale doesn’t really seem to be the method of style in female nether regions. It supposedly looks neater when it’s taken care of. I know a lot of girls who keep themselves trimmed, and quite a few who wax. It’s easier than shaving, I’ve heard said. You don’t get the obnoxious bumps that you normally get when you shave that inevitably leads to impromptu itchy dances. Not to mention it’s a lot neater and it takes longer to grow back. I never really supported it; it didn’t even seem like it was worth the effort to me, not to mention I’m not sure how I feel about men who want their women’s parts to look prepubescent. Still, I’d heard so much… Read More »

Like Nair, I’ve always been a little freaked out by my hair.

Being Italian, I’m blessed with lots of the stuff. It’s nice on my head, but anywhere else…a little less so. At least according to society.

The first time I realized nobody liked a hairy girl was in 6th grade. I was sitting in class in a t-shirt, trying to deal with early June heat and a new sensation I now know as “bra sweat”.

A kid, who I’m pretty sure was (and probably still is) named David, turned around and stared at me while the teaching wasn’t looking. “Yo, look at your arms!” he said as loudly as only a 12-year-old boy can, “who invited Harry and the Hendersons over?”

Harry and the Hendersons was a show based around Bigfoot.

That stinging comment has (obviously) stayed with me for years, and since then I have shaved everything—at least everything I could reach.

I often wish I could just chuck the razor in the drawer and never deal with balancing precariously in my shower again, but 6th grade David is always around, along with completely hairless movie stars, magazine models, and guys who continually obsess over girls being clean shaven “down there”.

This girl, on the other hand, is no slave to the razor. At least, she hasn’t been for a year. Read More »

A painless bikini wax?! Please oh please, say it’s true!

Lycon Wax, a high quality hair removable wax available at both salons and drugstores, is supposedly “practically pain free”. Because of the wax’s self-hardening properties, it doesn’t pull on the skin while ripping out hair, and leaves little to no redness in its wake.

I’ve gotten my eyebrows done with Lycon, and I have to say I agree with the “practically painless part”.

I mean, you’re still very aware someone is ripping part of your eyebrow off, but the pain is minimal when compared to traditional wax-and-strip methods. The redness factor is also nominal, even on psychotically sensitive skin like mine.

I have yet to get a bikini wax with the stuff, and am way too much of a chicken to try it at home, but I assume the ouch factor down there is probably less as well—although I doubt yanking fuzz from a vajayjay is ever going to be completely comfortable. Read More »

In the past couple of years, I have gone through numerous Shu Uemura eyelash curlers since they are always listed as MVP beauty products by magazines such as Allure.

Even though these particular curlers are rated as “the best,” my eyelashes are still flat and wilted after a full day of activity.

Thanks to a recent beauty trend, I can now get a semi-permanent eyelash “perm.” I know, it sounds really weird, but after looking more into it, I have decided it is something I actually might consider (if I had unlimited funds to spend on something vain like this).

The original hint about the procedure came to me via my Daily Candy newsletter delivered to my inbox every morning.

Supposedly it is safe and works on all lashes, no matter what length you have. The total process only takes 30-45 minutes and is done in two steps: first, eyelashes are curled over rubber rollers, then two different solutions are applied. Read More »