Valeria Lukyanova Exercising + Makeup

Have you heard of Valeria Lukyanova?

She is the Ukrainian model with a body and face that strongly resembles the classic Barbie doll - and is billed as such in advertising work that she does.

But how did she get that insanely fit body and her face to look like Barbie?

Well the face is mostly makeup apparently. Although she has been accused of using plastic surgery, Valeria Lukyanova maintains her looks are completely the result of well executed makeup designed to make her look more like Barbie.

The name she prefers to use is "Amatue", which may sound great in her native Ukrainian, but in English looks and sounds like Amateur.

She has also been accused of having her photos photoshopped, which some of them might be, but if you watch videos of her you can see she clearly looks like that in real life. So if there is any photoshopping going on the changes are comparatively minor... things like trying to make her eyes look bigger so she looks more doll-like and un-human. And to be fair, she is already using makeup to make her eyes look bigger so photoshop seems like overkill.

See the video below to see how she manages her makeup.

The thing however is that Valeria Lukyanova claims to maintain her physique using nothing more than exercise - and judging by her workout videos (shown below) she is using low weights and high repetitions to accomplish this goal. According to a Certified Personal Trainer from Cardio Trek using low weights and a high reps workout would result in an ultra thin body, with very little muscle tone and very little fat.

Now you might think, well what about her breasts? If she is exercising that much, shouldn't she lose some of her breast size by working out so much?

Not necessarily. Some women are simply blessed with well-developed breasts, and breast size doesn't decrease dramatically unless they're either anorexic or taking steroids. Natural breasts will ultimately look natural. And looking at the photo above, they're not HUGE and they do appear to be proportional for the size of her chest. And certainly not abnormal when you consider the number of women I've seen at the beach with similar proportions (although they are usually teens or in their 20s if they look that perky).

What is more unnerving is how thin she looks, but without that bony look that anorexic women typically get. Again, this could be due to her exercise routine. So lets have a look at her exercise videos below and see what she is actually doing.

So yes, we can conclude that she is exercising to keep her body ultra thin, but maintaining just a small amount of muscle tone so she doesn't look anorexic. Chalk that down to a very specific exercise routine.

But lets imagine you want to look like Barbie too. Can you do it? Is it even possible?

Well with exercise, you could certainly try to get part of the way there, and you would look fabulous. But its doubtful that you have the right facial proportions and some impressive skills with makeup to do what Valeria Lukyanova does.

See also

10 Tips for maintaining a Beach Perfect Body

Weight Loss + Loose Skin

Snog Burning at Work

A lot of Canadian men out there have been growing beards lately, apparently unafraid of what women might say about the dreaded snog burn that comes from kissing a man with a beard. What is behind this trend?

Honestly from what I can tell the whole question as to whether to shave or go primal largely depends on several factors:

#1. Social acceptance at work and/or can I get a job with a beard? Because lets face it, people have in-person interviews so they can see what you look like.

#2. Whether the girlfriend or wife likes facial hair. This can be a big deciding factor for many men.

#3. Whether celebrities are doing it too. eg. We see George Clooney doing it and think we can too.

#4. Whether a particular person actually looks good with a beard. Because lets face it, we don't all look like George Clooney. Some of us look horrible with a beard.

I suppose it would not be so bad if we all lived in Muslim countries where beards were both socially accepted and even expected of men.

In contrast to a more moderate country like Iraq, where mustaches are more socially acceptable.

The whole trick with growing a beard - which I have done numerous times in the past - is that growing one changes how people view you.

Back in Summer 2002 I grew a beard for 3-4 months (and looked like Jesus) and discovered that people treated me differently. Rudely. I call it "anti-beardism".

Thus if so many people consider beards to be unattractive, why would some women consider beards attractive and enjoy "snog burning" (kissing a bearded man)?

Personal preference? Because it tickles / burns your face, sometimes even causing a rash?

I do not have an answer. Any women who read this, feel free to provide your answer in the comments below as to why you enjoy kissing a man with a beard because we really want to know.

Facial hair styles through the decades...

1920s to 1930s - Mustaches.

1940s - Sideburns.

1950s - Beatnik beards and mustaches.

1960s - Hippie beards.

1970s - P*rnstar mustaches.

1980s - Stubble.

1990s - Goatee.

2000s - Peace Patch / The Movember.

I would also point out that for men university and college is a big liberator for facial hair. Walk around an university campus and you see men who look like Grizzly Adams, cavemen, 1920s gangsters and James Bond villains.

Enter the business world and every man (almost all) are clean shaven. Can you name a CEO with a mustache or goatee? Probably not.

Same goes with lawyers. Ever seen a lawyer with a beard? I have not.

Politicians. Sometimes, but it is a rarity these days. Nobody wants to be compared to Hitler or Stalin.

George Clooney could probably pull off a pretty handsome Stalin if Hollywood ever wanted to make a biopic on him.

And then there is the Fu Manchu style mustache... popularized (not really) by people like Hulk Hogan, Samuel L. Jackson and a few others.

You are more likely to see that particular mustache on an American football player or redneck than anyone else.

Some men also grow beards during the winter.

Just, you know, to keep their faces warm.

Makes perfect sense.

But if they're applying for a job chances are likely they will shave it off just to look younger.

Or shave it off to increase their chances of attracting a woman.

But grow it again later, once they feel like expressing their individuality, after they feel secure in their job and love life.

Men using Make-Up in South Korea

South Korean men spent $495.5 million on skincare last year, accounting for nearly 21% of global sales, according to global market research firm Euromonitor International. South Korea is the male makeup capital of the world.

That is a mind-boggling number from a socially conservative country with mandatory two-year military conscription for men. It is a very male dominated country where women live in fear of not marrying before the age of 30 and becoming known as an ajumma (grandmother).

Young Korean men are making meticulous efforts to paint the perfect face in an effort to land the perfect job. Their goal is to make their skin look flawless and lighter and highlighting eyebrows until they're thicker, bolder.

The end goal is to look sophisticated and more Western. (Koreans sometimes have darker skin and the standard of beauty in Korea is to have very pale white skin.)

Estimates are that total sales of men's cosmetics in South Korea this year will be more than $885 million, despite there being only 19 million adult men in South Korea. That means the average Korean is now spending $46.58 on cosmetics... and you have to figure the older generation isn't doing it quite so much and its mostly younger men.

It really comes down to fierce competition for jobs, advancement and even romance. South Korean women now have a growing expectation that men will take the time and effort to pamper their skin.
And it is being encouraged by companies too. Korean Air holds once-a-year makeup classes for male flight attendants and other companies are also giving lessons.

In South Korea effeminate male beauty has become "a marker of social success", meaning if you are successful, you wear make-up. So people who want to be successful are choosing to wear make-up in an effort to further that goal.

And its being pushed in the popular media which says that flawless skin is a crucial part of any plan to get ahead at work and romance.

It wasn't always this way. The ideal South Korean man used to be rough and tough. A lot has changed since the 1990s, allowing in more Japanese products and exposing South Koreans to different ideas on male beauty, including popular Japanese manga comics featuring pretty, effeminate men.

James Turnbull, a writer and lecturer on Korean feminism, sexuality and popular culture, said the economic crisis that hit South Korea in 1997 and 1998 also played a role in shifting thinking. Struggling companies often fired their female employees first, angering women who had already seen their push for equal rights take a backseat to protest movements against Japanese colonizers and the autocratic governments that followed. As such South Korea never really had much of a feminist movement.

So instead now Korea is having a shift in the other direction: A Male Effeminate Movement.

It isn't just make-up either. Many South Korean young men are adopting metro-sexual lifestyles in an effort to fit in and get ahead socially.

In 2002, a hero of South Korea's World Cup soccer team, Ahn Jung-hwan, who became a leading member of the "flower men" — a group of exceptionally good-looking, smooth-skinned, fashionable sports stars and celebrities who found great success selling male cosmetics. Men everywhere began striving to look like them, with the encouragement of the women around them, and the new trend was started.

Ten years later, ads featuring handsome, heavily made-up male celebrities are now unavoidable / part of the Korean scenery and young men using makeup is now commonplace.

So will this happen in North America? Difficult to say. With the Emo movement and fops like Justin Bieber you have to wonder...

Her Diary Vs His Diary

Sometimes you just need to avoid over-thinking things.

Cooking (Italian) for Men

Pasta is one of the easiest foods you can make.

Seriously, it must have been invented by a lazy man who wanted to be able to just pop it in hot water, boil it, stir it, add some veggies and voila... dinner is served!

Of course to reach that point you first need to have the dry pasta.

HOW TO MAKE DRY PASTA

Ingredients: 5 large Eggs, 1 lb fine Flour, Salt

1 Whisk eggs into flour until thoroughly mixed, or blend with a food processor.

2 Dump mixture onto a clean, floured work-surface.

3 Form a large mound of dough.

4 Knead the dough until it feels smooth and seamless in your hands. This will keep your noodles springy and al dente after cooking.

5 Roll out long, thin sheets of pasta with a rolling pin on a floured work surface from small handfuls of dough. Alternately, use a pasta machine. Be careful to have a long, clear work surface available for this step. Keep rolling the pasta down until it's the thickness you need, for example stuffed pasta should be thinner than noodles like spaghetti or fettucine.

6 Cut and shape your pasta immediately as fresh pasta dries quickly.

DRYING YOUR PASTA

7 Spread out pasta on floured baking sheets or baking paper in a dry environment.

8 Let dry until stiff to the touch. This could be up to five days.

9 Hang long pasta, like spaghetti and fettuicine to dry on a sterilized rack or a pasta drying rack, ideally something designed specifically for this purpose but you can find other ways to hang and dry it as long as it is clean.

10 Put pasta away in glass jars, tupperware, or plastic bags when completely dry and stiff to the touch.

CONCLUSIONS

Okay, so technically there is more work required to first make the dry pasta... but its a relatively simple process, easy to mass produce and you can store pasta up for years. Handy if you ever decide to get Italian cooking lessons in Toronto so you can "up your game" in the kitchen.

And let us be serious about this for a moment, many men out there are not that good at anything in the kitchen. It really is only during the last 100 years that men have begun to take being a chef seriously and even though the word chef now makes people think automatically of a man, men in general aren't particular good at cooking. Getting private cooking lessons thus makes abundant sense if you are planning to up your game. It doesn't have to be Italian either. You could get cooking lessons in Toronto for a variety of different topics.