Fifty Shades of Pretty

Inspired by this photo spread from Seventeen magazine: 

1. Blistered Red: This look is really what we as an industry are all about: ensuring that, like sex, beauty involves as much suffering and humiliation as possible. Once you have a stranger rip hot wax off your legs, eyebrows, and elsewhere, you’ll never go back!

2. Lost Time Gray: To get the full effect on this one you’ll need to think about the days, weeks, hours you have dribbled away, minute by minute, on personal grooming and aesthetics; time you will never get back in your rapid and irreversible rush to the maggoty tomb.

3. Cashmoney Green: Go for a layered look: dollar after dollar of your sweet sweet cash spent on pretty. Don’t be afraid to keep piling it on—style is all about taking risks and expressing yourself!

4. Premature-Sexualization Saffron: This is one of the easiest looks to get—popular media and cultural narratives have made you a sex object since childhood!

5. Traumatic Puberty Puce: If you thought a magazine for teenagers selling beauty products with winky bondage porn references was great, wait till you see how grown men treat you when your lips and ass start coming in.

6. Memento Mori Black: Achieve this nighttime look by using expensive cosmetic and surgical procedures to stave off the nagging certainty that your lovely form is doomed to rot.

7. Broken Arches Blue: Ladies, nothing is more beautiful than a smile, especially when you’re smiling through agonizing stiletto-induced pain in your feet and calves.

8. LADIES Lilac: Simply read every prescriptive piece on female dress, grooming, and behavior that begins with the word, “Ladies” until your face turns a becoming shade of purple.

9. Racoon-Eye Noir: A daring shade you can only get from experimenting with liquid eyeliner moments before leaving for a party.

10. Fooling No One Orange: The byproduct of chasing the magical bronzer, lotion, or tanner that will fool the world into thinking your body has ever seen the sun.

11. Melanoma Bronze: For those who can shell out the money for tanning salons and midwinter vacations, this is the sweet spot between cooking your skin in oil and watching it erupt in malignant cancer.

12. Male Gaze Mauve: Are you attractive enough yet? Are you sure? Oh, of course, dear, of course it’s about making yourself feel good. Of course.

13. Bobbi-pin Blush: You can go a couple of different routes with this one: think about the money you’ve spent on bobbi-pins, the rapidity with which you lose them, the futile self-deceptions: “This time, I’ll break the cycle. This time, I’ll keep them in one place and put them back every time.” Alternatively, relive the exquisite agony of a pin buried too deep in your hair to find, pulling the wrong way at your sensitive scalp, for five hours while you make polite conversation at a party.

14. Spanx-Squeezed Sapphire: Pretty is all about natural, fun, and healthy, which is why we wear undergarments that literally throttle our internal organs.

15. Double Standards Daffodil: To put some shine in your cheeks, just think about the fact that men barely have to shave and put on a collared shirt to get the official Making an Effort seal of approval.

16. Cuticle Cutting Cerulean: Pretty is all about attention to details, so pull, scrape, and hack at your cuticles until you reveal the beautiful beneath all that useless skin.

17.Recently-Exfoliated Raw: Speaking of useless skin, make sure you remove your outer layer on a regular basis! Rubbing abrasive surfaces into your face will get rid of all those old cells in a jiffy. Ugh, old. Old is disgusting. Remember that.

18. Chemical Peel Peony: “But,” you ask, “isn’t there some more efficient method for removing skin than massaging our bodies with stones? Could we not, for example, bathe in battery acid?” Girlfriend, you’re in luck! While the medical community persists in frowning on battery acid applied directly to the epidermis, you can still anoint your face with corrosive agents at the nearest spa! That dry, stinging redness will clear up eventually, but know, that to us, it makes you even more beautiful. 

19. Professionalism Pink: There’s no reason you can’t look pretty and professional. For a woman, pretty is professional! That’s why you need a wardrobe that’s feminine yet not sexy, shoes that are sensible yet not frumpy, a roller-brush, curling iron, straightener, styling spray, moisturizer, foundation, concealer, bronzer, blush, highlighting crème, mascara, neutral eyeshadow, and a natural pink lip color. Ladies, it’s time to lean in.

20. Racialized Beauty Standards Beige: Speaking of professional, some hair just doesn’t quite make the cut—at least not without potentially pregnancy endangering chemical intervention.

21. White: Do you want to be considered pretty, delicate, vulnerable, lovely, desirable, high-class or feminine in this beauty economy? You can! White comes in many shades, and all of them are beautiful.

22. Condescending Body Empowerment Ecru: Do you consider yourself ugly? Good news, some of your fellow humans might consider you just this side of hideous! Feel bad about your body? Don’t worry, some man, somewhere, probably still desires your grotesque flesh-sack.

23. No Pockets Peach: To maximally flatter the female form, a woman’s clothes must contain a critical mass of ornamental buttons, zippers to no-where, awkwardly placed cutouts and, above all, a total absence of anything as useful or humane as pockets.

24. Lily Pulitzer Lavender: Nothing creates beauty in a woman like abject subjection to even the ugliest fashions—no, especially the ugliest fashions. It’s a paradox, but we’re big fans of G. K. Chesterton around here.

25. Fashion Whiplash Firebrick: Can’t tell whether skirts are getting higher or lower, lipstick is vampy or nude, jeans are skinny or ironically high-waisted? Try to keep up anyway. We like it. We think you’re cute when you dance for us.

26. Punishment Platinum: Even better than watching you try is watching you fail. Sloppy, tacky, trashy, frumpy, awkward, slutty, whorish, boring, hideous—the possibilities are truly endless. A punished woman is a work of art, and we’re here to make sure you live up to your full aesthetic potential.

27. Formeldahyde Flourescent: Cancer is the new sexy, especially when it’s low wage workers.

28. Cosmetiphagy Cadmium: All that lipstick you ingest is sure to give you a lovely color. Beauty is on the inside! 

29. Optimal Timing Ochre: A minimally difficult look: buy pantyhose, wear it, watch it run just as you arrive at the party.

30. Mismatch Maroon: Try finding clothes that fit both your shoulders and your chest, or your torso and your hips. It’ll be fun!

31. Ethereal Eggshell: Applied properly, this creates the absolutely vital impression that you do not sweat, menstruate, consume, or digest food.

32. Invisibility Indigo: Have you given birth to a child while not being a duchess? Are you over thirty in a town that is not New York or Los Angeles? Hush, you are a ghost. Ghosts are pretty when they are invisible.

33. Unanswered Questions Quartz: Why can they put peplum on literally everything but not linings under pencil skirts? We know, but we’re not telling. A woman’s charm is mystery, specifically the ones she can’t solve.

34. Panopticon Plum: The special glow a girl gets from knowing that her body and appearance are always laid open for commentary and judgment from random men.

35. Self-Censorship Salmon: The even more special glow a girl gets when she finally internalizes the pressure to accommodate male preferences in every possible detail. 

36. You Should Have Known Yellow: The most special glow of all that a girl gets only when she’s violated and people write that of course it was inevitable because she was beautiful in public.

37. Cat-call Cerise: You’d be so much prettier if you smiled more when ordered to.

38. Injectables Iris: Remember how old is disgusting? Well, you get old by having too much skin, but also by not having enough! The surest path to pretty is leaving your skin-taking-away-and-putting-back in the hands of a trained professional.

39. Downward Dog Dandelion: While all forms of exercise are important for health, self-esteem, and creating the impression that you are an extremely fertile thirteen year old, some are prettier than others. Yoga is the prettiest, but only if you have the fancy outfits.

40. Swimming in it Silver: Whether it’s the access to regular exercise, healthful food, regular medical and dental care, or just the tiny sartorial and grooming norms that denote an elite background, a silver spoon will always be a girl’s most flattering accessory.

41. Ineffectual Dieting Diamante: You probably won’t keep the weight off, and you’ll feel terrible about your weight, your failure to lose weight, and your desire to do so in the first place; there’s no body type this look doesn’t flatter.

42. Shame Scarlet: One of our favorite DIY looks! You can assemble it out of almost anything: fat deposits, acne scars, stretch marks, skin irregularities, makeup purchases, food preferences, and, our personal recommendation, failure to meet expectations compounded by the fact that you weren’t supposed to try.

43. Naked Lies Nude: There is no “Fuss-Free Under Five Minute Polished Hairstyle To Try At Home.” There never was. We know this. You know this. And yet we keep printing and you keep buying, and to us, that’s beautiful.

44. Immobility Ivory: You’ll know you’re ready for a glam night on the town when you can’t move feet, knees, or shoulders more than an inch without fear of tearing or exposure.

45. Cheap Stitch Chartreuse No matter how much you’re willing to drop on fancy threads, there’s no guarantee that the material will last, the skirt be lined, the threads stay raveled, or the seams line up in a discernible order. That’s what makes fashion so fun and spontaneous!

46. Bikini Body Body Buff: According to science, when bodies poured into bikinis fail to congeal in the proper shape, they are seven-hundred times more likely to be eaten by swarming piranhas and also be totally gross. A gym membership is one option, but carefully consider the risks and benefits of auto-amputation as well. Your body, your choice.

47. Feminine Fuschia: Pretty is all about how a girl carries herself; so step out in style with a smile and a flirty comeback. You’ll meet tons of cute guys, and if you ever meet a violent one we’ll all discuss the risky man-crazy behavior that got you raped. Everybody wins!

48. Bloodshot Burgundy: Stab yourself in the eye again with your mascara. We like that.

49. Natural Beauty Navy: Remember, men like makeup on a girl, but they hate girls who wear makeup! Luckily, our advertisers work hard manufacturing autheniticity at unbeatable prices.

50. Pain: Pain is beauty, beauty is pain, pain is beauty, beauty is pain. Pain is beauty is pain is 

Clare Coffey wears makeup most days of the week.