Beauty

By the numbers it just doesn't seem right. Nearly 65% of American women are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, and of those, more than 35% are obese. Yet most designer collections end at size 10. And on hundreds of high-fashion runways at international fashion weeks this month and last, ultra-slim models were wearing trendsetting designs that will never be manufactured in sizes to fit most American women. In a time when retailers are struggling to turn a profit, the disconnect between fashion and reality is a puzzle.

Since Morgan Spurlock is known for fully immersing himself in his movies - famously subsisting onMcDonald's menu items for "Super Size Me" and pounding the pavement for every last product placement dollar in "The Greatest Story Ever Sold" - it seemed only appropriate to ask the man behind"Mansome" about his go-to grooming products and tools, most of which happen to come from boutique shaving brand the Art of Shaving, which signed on to sponsor the...

YOU MULTI-TASK all day -- text and drive, talk and type, drink water infused with vitamins. So why shouldn't your makeup do double-duty too? A new generation of foundations aims to do just that, promising more than an even skin tone and a dewy finish. Fortified with ingredients usually reserved for skin care products, these foundations say they can diminish fine lines and wrinkles, treat acne, firm the skin -- even help reverse aging. Some, including Peter Thomas Roth's new Un-Wrinkle Pressed Powder, contain a cocktail of active ingredients, including antioxidants and a synthetic version of snake venom that's actually called SNY-AKE (it claims a Botox-like effect, reducing wrinkles by inhibiting muscle movement)

Eat. Pray. Love. Spritz. Now inhale deeply and feel your life transform. It's only May, but 2012 is already shaping up as the year perfume wafted from the lively online blogs and into mainstream publishing in a big way. These days, new fragrance releases are greeted - and critiqued - with the intellectual sophistication formerly reserved for Paris fashion shows. Perfume is an art form and the "noses" who compose cutting-edge fragrances are rock stars. Writers, always hip to the zeitgeist, are avidly chronicling this renaissance and some books have even inspired their own perfumes.

Holiday travel is right around the corner, and you probably already dread some of the beauty pitfalls. Try to breeze through airport security with regular-size beauty products and you may find yourself pulled to the side of the line, in your stocking feet, subjected to a close, personal relationship with the TSA worker giving you a full-body scan with a security wand. Travel by ship, train or car, and loose makeup in your purse can cause a gooey, gunky mess. A lipstick top falls off, an eye shadow shatters and you are left not only with a soiled handbag but often with ruined cosmetics too. But organization can turn holiday travel from frenzied to fabulous.

It is a safe bet that few women ever wanted to mother Clint Eastwood. The steely, narrowed eyes. The rugged jawline. The thin-lipped sneer. This is the face of a man to save the homestead from marauding Indians, to stare down an outlaw in a saloon. But not to cuddle. Now, take Paul McCartney--he of the doe eyes, chipmunk cheeks and teddy bear chin. Ten thousand teeny-boppers can't be wrong. The man is adorable.

Morgan Spurlock, the clown prince of documentary filmmaking, has examined fast food ("Super Size Me") and product placement ("The Greatest Movie Ever Sold"). Now, in the just-released"Mansome," he turns his attention to the somewhat surprising topic of men's grooming, enlisting champion beard growers, hirsute celebrities and a grab bag of barbers, anthropologists and magazine editors to bring the discussion of men's looks and masculinity out of the closet and into the bright light of day. "My 'aha' moment was the realization that men are dealing with the insecurities women have literally been dealing with for decades," Spurlock says.

What should a man smell like? This is not an inquiry to be undertaken lightly - particularly at this time of the year when the gantlet of parties, events and mixers that stretches from Thanksgiving into the new year is destined to put the fragrance profiles of near strangers beneath our noses as surely as stockings dangle from the fireplace mantle. It's a timely question for other reasons. According to the NPD Group, a market research firm, one-quarter of all annual sales in the prestige fragrance category (defined as the scents sold at the department store level and higher)

Eat. Pray. Love. Spritz. Now inhale deeply and feel your life transform. It's only May, but 2012 is already shaping up as the year perfume wafted from the lively online blogs and into mainstream publishing in a big way. These days, new fragrance releases are greeted - and critiqued - with the intellectual sophistication formerly reserved for Paris fashion shows. Perfume is an art form and the "noses" who compose cutting-edge fragrances are rock stars. Writers, always hip to the zeitgeist, are avidly chronicling this renaissance and some books have even inspired their own perfumes.

For years, I walked untouched among the ranks of the surgically enhanced - all those nips and tucks, wondrously wider eyes, graceful noses and chiseled cheekbones. But all that changed when I moved to a cosmetic surgeon's dreamscape: South Korea. In that high-pressure society, where improved looks provide the edge in the elbows-out race for jobs, education and spouses, plastic surgery procedures are as common as haircuts. One reason is affordability. Doctors there charge a fraction of the rate of their American counterparts.

Morgan Spurlock, the clown prince of documentary filmmaking, has examined fast food ("Super Size Me") and product placement ("The Greatest Movie Ever Sold"). Now, in the just-released"Mansome," he turns his attention to the somewhat surprising topic of men's grooming, enlisting champion beard growers, hirsute celebrities and a grab bag of barbers, anthropologists and magazine editors to bring the discussion of men's looks and masculinity out of the closet and into the bright light of day. "My 'aha' moment was the realization that men are dealing with the insecurities women have literally been dealing with for decades," Spurlock says.

Deep inside my writerly brain, down where my earliest memories reside, there is a voice. It speaks to me in Spanish. I write in the language of Shakespeare and Steinbeck. That's the language I was educated in, here in L.A. The language of the British Empire, of American Manifest Destiny, of California and the West. But Spanish gave me my first words: mamá, agua . And it was the language on the covers of the first works of grown-up literature I held in my hands, the Guatemalan novels my immigrant father brought into our Hollywood home.

The line for a free breakfast snaked around Glide United Memorial Methodist Church. Police busted two men in a restaurant doorway. Panhandlers provided a neighborhood soundtrack. It was Sunday morning in the Tenderloin, and Mark Ellinger had pictures to take. Clutching a camera in his meaty right hand, cigarette poking out between his fingers, the photographer marveled at the carved stone lintel of the Marathon Hotel. He gestured toward the building that once housed famed madam Tessie Wall's last "parlor house.

A shooting rampage that left eight people dead at a Seal Beach beauty salon last year was so emotionally wrenching to residents in the small beach town that prosecutors say they'll use that as part of their argument that the accused killer deserves the death penalty. In court papers filed this week, prosecutors said that if former tugboat crewman Scott Dekraai is convicted in the slayings, they will present victim impact evidence on behalf of the entire city to show that the midday shooting had a lasting effect on the tight-knit community.

If you're one of those people who says, "There should be an app for that!" every time you're confronted with one of life's little quandaries (recent entrepreneurial brainstorms in my household include What's the Dog Thinking? and some form of gaydar), you've probably already imagined this: an app that will tell you how ugly you are. Too late. The Ugly Meter has been around for more than a year, but thanks to a recent mention by Howard Stern on his satellite radio show, it's suddenly become a sensation, with upward of 5 million purchases.

Jon Fitzgerald's documentary "The Highest Pass" ventures from Rishikesh in northern India up and up into the Himalayas to track six men and one woman - all Westerners - as they follow a 27-year-old yogi in a motorcycle caravan to the highest drivable road in the world. For the team, one of whom (narrator-writer Adam Schomer) has just learned how to ride a motorcycle in the weeks prior, the excursion seems a little more daring than usual since Anand Mehrotra, their handsome guide, has never made the pilgrimage himself.

Swan Poems and Prose Poems Mary Oliver Beacon Press: 96 pp., $23 "What can I say that I have not said before?" the poet Mary Oliver wonders on page 1 of this, her 20th collection. "So I'll say it again./The leaf has a song in it. " She is a little weary, at 75. She is still in mourning after the death of her beloved, photographer Molly Cook. And she is not melting fast enough into the ease of animals. Try as she might to be alone, to be "motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned," she is called back into the world.

Since Morgan Spurlock is known for fully immersing himself in his movies - famously subsisting onMcDonald's menu items for "Super Size Me" and pounding the pavement for every last product placement dollar in "The Greatest Story Ever Sold" - it seemed only appropriate to ask the man behind"Mansome" about his go-to grooming products and tools, most of which happen to come from boutique shaving brand the Art of Shaving, which signed on to sponsor the...

Motherhood looks good on you, Beyonce! Especially in the eyes of People magazine, which named the entertainment dynamo its world's most beautiful woman for 2012. "I feel more beautiful than I've ever felt because I've given birth," she told the mag . "I have never felt so connected, never felt like I had such a purpose on this earth, never so proud of myself. " Blue Ivy Carter, her baby girl with hubby Jay-Z, was born Jan. 7. Part of that purpose? Changing diapers, which apparently is also quite beautiful at Casa de Carter -- enough that Beyonce expressed "love" for the task.

HANA, Hawaii - I came to play in a jungle, dance under a waterfall and swim with giant turtles in a tranquil sea. But at the end of the long, winding road to Hana, the thing that pleased me most was staring at the star-filled sky. Not to imply that Maui's road to Hana (pronounced HAH-na) isn't impressive. The treacherous 52-mile highway, which Sunset magazine calls "the most beautiful road in the world," wins accolades from many who make the journey. Verdant rain forests hug the sides of the mountainous road, waterfalls tumble into crystal-clear pools, beaches of black onyx meet a cobalt-blue sea. And for those searching for thrills, Hana Highway (Hawaii 360)