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Want to win S$2,000 cash, a one-year modelling contract with GLOW magazine and a S$300 product hamper? The Watsons You Awards is here again for the third year running!

This isn’t a beauty contest. It’s a celebration of the YOUnique in YOU, so, if you possess a unique or special look, you stand a high chance of winning. There will be eight winners for eight categories, which is even better!

With effort and dedication, I think everyone can enhance their best features and look great. You don’t have to invest in very expensive beauty products. Most of my beauty and skincare products are from Watsons. They’re affordable and effective and you can always find the latest, best-selling products on the shelves.

So, let’s look at the awards categories for this year and how to win them!

Healthy Hair Award

Wanted
Healthy, beautiful tresses that make people ooh and aah.

My Tips
I’ve been using Asience shampoo and conditioner for years and years. I’ve not found any other brands that make my hair feel smoother and silkier. I seldom use the treatment cos I’m happy enough without it, but I guess I could get even better results if I’m just a bit more diligent.

Other than finding the right product for your hair, remember also to sleep and eat well. Fruits and vegetables help much. And don’t wash your hair with too-hot water. Rinse with cold water for extra shine!

To get your hair looking best in photos, I recommend taking your photos in natural sunlight. That’s if you don’t have access to expensive studio lighting and cameras.

Take your photos on a nice, sunny day. The sun will bring out the shine and highlights in your hair naturally! Don’t take photos in dim places and use flash or your hair will look coarse.

Oh, and you don’t need to have long flowy hair to win this category. You can still win if you have a bob cut but your hair looks gorgeous and healthy on you!

Ageless Beauty Award

Wanted
A look that becomes more appealing as the years go by, gaining more serenity, self-assuredness and wisdom.

My Tips
Well, okay, I don’t know about the serenity and wisdom part. I’m too much of a playful rascal to be serene and wise. But what I know is that to age well, it helps to keep your skin in tiptop condition, cos the skin is probably the first thing people see that defines your age.

I started taking Meiji Amino Collagen one year ago, succumbing to the hype. And I must say I’m glad I did. The effect wasn’t immediate for me as it is for some people, apparently. It’s more a slow, gradual process. But I think my skin looks a lot better now than it did a year ago.

The area around my nose used to be quite rough and had to be covered with a lot of makeup. Now I don’t need so much makeup anymore!

With better skin now, I shall have more time to focus on the serenity and wisdom part. LOL.

Flawless Face Award

Wanted
A spotless complexion, clear and bright eyes, plump lips.

My Tips
Get a flawless look with clever use of makeup! I think makeup is very personal. You need to experiment a lot to find something that works for you. Makeup needs to enhance what’s nice on you and hide what isn’t, so a standard technique will not work for everyone.

I believe everyone, not just models and beauty queens, can look good with the right makeup techniques.

I mix and match many makeup brands that you can find in Watsons. Like ZA (foundation), Gransenbon Gran Brush (blusher), Silky Girl (eyeshadow), Fasio (mascara), Maybelline (lipstick), just to name a few. Basically, shopping at Watsons is always fun for me because I can always find the latest cool products!

Anyway, for the perfect look, experimenting is the key. Try makeup tips from magazines and YouTube videos. They will not all work for you. Keep trying till you find something that works best, and then continue experimenting because learning is a lifelong process!

If you’re going for a photo shoot, make sure you’re wearing liquid foundation. It will result in a more glowing complexion. Don’t use compact powders for shoots because these will make your face look pasty and white. If you need to powder your nose to reduce shine, dust loose powder over it very lightly with a large brush.

To bring out your flawless complexion, you want sparkly eyes. I was taking Meiji Cassis-i A50 Eye Assist pills for a while. It’s supposed to relieve tired eyes and reduce dark eye circles. I felt that it made my eyes look brighter and whiter. My eyes used to get reddish from lack of sleep. But I kinda got lazy about popping pills daily so I stopped. I think I should get back to it!

Take your photos under natural light. Face the sun. Your eyes will shine! The above photo was taken facing the sun, which reflects a lot of light onto the iris. No fashion contact lenses used to enhance the eyes! It’s all natural!

As for lips, best lip moisturiser I ever used: Nivea Hydro Care Lip Balm. It keeps the lips moist without greasiness. And you know how some lip balms make your lips feel even dryer after a while? This one doesn’t. I love it!

Polished Perfection Award

Wanted
A look that says confident, smart and positive.

My Tips
Makeup can help to achieve a polished look but wouldn’t it be better to have a natural polished look via good skin?

To get good skin, it’s very important to find the right skincare product. For me, I like to switch brands every year or so because new brands seem to refresh my skin.

I used Avène for quite a while when I was plagued with pimples and sensitive skin that often broke in rashes. Avène, being suitable for sensitive and acne-prone skin, helped keep my problems under control.

Last year, all those problems suddenly went away (maybe it was Meiji collagen that helped?) and I found that I needed a new brand to correct other problems (like uneven skin tone).

So I tried an expensive brand from one of those shopping mall cosmetic counters and little bumps started growing on my skin, which was very worrying.

Then, one day, I was shopping at Watsons and chanced upon the L’Oréal White Perfect range. There was a promotion and the display attracted me so I decided to give it a try. And, holy macaroni, it worked so well I couldn’t believe it.

Within a week, all the bumps cleared out and my skin suddenly became smoother and more radiant. My cheeks started glowing. And the dull patches that made me look like a zombie evened out. The eye gel in the same range also managed to reduce my dark eye circles even better than the $200 eye cream I was using before. It was quite amazing.

Sporty Physique Award

Wanted
A taut and toned body. Muscles, maybe?

My tips
The only thing I can say about this category is EXERCISE. It’s a no-brainer, really? Go running or swimming. Go to the gym. Pick up a sport. There are many ways to get a sporty physique so you can choose something you’ll enjoy doing.

If starting a routine is the problem, find a friend and set a date. It’ll be harder to beg laziness and pull out at the last minute when you have a friend expecting you to show up. Unless you have no conscience, in which case you’re a worm.

When submitting a photo for this category, maybe try striking a sporty pose rather than stand there like a wooden pole, know what I mean?

Of course, this is all subjective. The best advice I can give is take lots of photos and get a bunch of friends to help you choose the one that best brings out the sportiness in you!

V-Face Award

Wanted
A face with a pleasing, symmetrical V aspect.

My tips
There’s this product range called the Bio-essence V Face Skincare Series which is supposed to help women achieve a firmer jawline and perkier chin. I haven’t tried it myself so I don’t know how it works.

What I know about V faces is that when you smile, your chin becomes sharper. LOL. And if you tilt your face a certain angle, the V becomes more pronounced. So, if you want to submit for this category, try taking photos with all kinds of angles and smiles, and see which one gives you the best V!

Sunny Smiles Award

Wanted
A contagious smile

My tips
People with straight and white teeth have the best smiles! Well, braces help, but it’s a pretty dramatic, long-term treatment. I don’t have very straight teeth but I can’t be bothered to wear braces. Yet. Maybe one day I will.

In the meantime, easier to care for teeth daily with the right toothpaste and toothbrush!

I like using Colgate and changing “flavours” all the time so there’s variety in my brushing routine. And I use an electric toothbrush, which I feel cleans teeth more effectively without harming the enamel (cos people tend to brush too hard with regular toothbrushes). Watsons has affordable Oral B electric toothbrushes that are good to use!

Oh, and floss daily, too. Besides keeping teeth healthy, it also helps with bad breath. Really! I love Oral B Satin Floss. It glides between teeth very smoothly!

Friendly Face (Male) Award

Wanted
A face that warms the room, a smile that breaks the ice with a twinkle in the eye.

My tips
When I think of male friendly faces, I always think of Brad Pitt first because he’s got the friendliest smile, ever. But you don’t have to be Brad Pitt to win this category.

I think what the organisers are looking for is a well-groomed face that shows care in appearance. Then, after that, a nice, warm smile that reaches the eyes. This can be achieved by practising the look in front of a mirror until you find the perfect friendly look!

Try thinking of things or people that make you happy. Your face will light up in a smile naturally and that’s when the photo should be snapped!

Remember to groom. Shave or trim your facial hair and slap on some styling products to neaten the, um, hair on your head. If you’re not a model/actor and don’t use makeup, at least blot your face so you don’t look like an oil rig disaster.

I actually use Gatsby Oil Clear Sheet myself. It’s supposedly made for men but I like it cos it’s very absorbant and doesn’t feel oily in the hand after using.

Well, I think this contest is pretty cool. Anyone has a chance to win if they know how to accentuate specific features that stand out in them. It’s all about individuality and expression, really.

You can submit your photos at the Watsons You Awards website now. No purchase necessary!

If you don’t feel ready yet, there’s still a month to go for you to prepare yourself. The closing date is June 20, 2010. So, get to working! $2,000 and a modelling contract and product hamper are at stake!

Let’s all see how YOUnique you can be, eh?

I’ve always resented the inventions that supposedly make women “prettier”. How much pain, time and money have they cost women throughout the ages?

I’ve always wished people could be happy to leave well enough alone, and that makeup, cosmetic surgery and beauty treatments never existed. I resent having to put in so much effort to look good.

And yet, because all these inventions and implements are in place and have become the norm, I must conform to standards or be overlooked.

To give you a visual image of what I mean, let’s talk about bound feet in ancient China. It was considered beautiful for women to have ridiculously small feet. Females had to endure the pain of having their feet broken and mangled through their lives.

Imagine yourself living in that era. As a girl, you would want to have tiny, mangled feet so you can look as “beautiful” as other girls, to be an object of envy and admiration rather than to be discriminated against or overlooked.

But wouldn’t you wish that the practice never existed in the first place so your feet can grow normally without you feeling the pressure to conform?

But, the way it was, you could have happy feet and be ugly or tortured feet and be admired. Either way, it sucks.

Unfortunately, we still have what I consider barbaric practices today to mould people into societal standards of beauty. Plastic surgery, tattooing, waxing. They are all barbaric because they cause pain.

Sure, everyone has a choice whether to do it or not. But when everyone is doing it and you don’t, you lose out. You’ll find it harder to get jobs and find partners or just fit in. Your self-esteem will plunge and life will be more miserable.

And when your naked photos accidentally get leaked a la Cecilia Cheung, you get criticised by the whole world for not having put yourself under the torture of waxing your privates.

There are all these people who self-righteously claim that inner beauty triumphs over everything and that painful beauty procedures are dumb. I’m sure even they cringed at those photos.

These people go around criticising celebrities who go for plastic surgery and yet expect women to magically have hairless privates and flawless physical beauty.

There’s no such thing as natural beauty.

Cosmetic surgery existed long before anaesthesia was invented. (I suppose we can count ourselves lucky that those days are past.)

Besides the ancient Chinese binding their feet, the Maori carved up their faces with sharpened bones and applied dye on the wounds to create elaborate patterns. Burmese tribal women collapsed their collar bones to create long necks.

I think the long neck thing is still happening today. The tattooing too, with less painful methods.

In the past, painful beauty practices reflected the status of those who were able to do them. Being able to mutilate yourself was an enviable luxury. It’s still the same way today, seeing as how plastic surgery costs the skies.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD? Who the devil invented these practices in the first place? I wish people would just leave things alone and stop coming up with bizarre ideas for making humans look “better”.

Aren’t we good enough as we are?

Unfortunately, we all have to conform to all these crazy standards in order to ease into society better.

Everyone conforms to some standard or other to varying degrees. Some are easier to follow (like makeup and hair cuts) while others are tougher (like big boobs).

But everyone must conform to at least something, which is the whole problem. It’s not easy being the person who gets stared at and pointed at just because you refuse to get a Brazillian wax.

You must suffer, either now or later.

I will state for the record that I opt for beauty. I just wish the option didn’t exist. That’s all.

Finally got rid of my disastrous gel nails after more than a month.

The feeling is akin to, say, running a full marathon with 10kg sandbags attached to your legs, and then finally taking them off.

The sense of relief is incredible. My fingers are useful again!

The process was very tedious, at times painful, and took 90 minutes. I swear, people think up the most dastardly procedures to torture women (and vain men)!

For example, waxing, IPL, nail extensions, leg extensions (!!! x 1 million), veneers, tattoos, etc. etc. etc.

Anyway, back to my nails.

Because the gel is too thick, it’s not possible to cut off the tips right away so a nail drill is used to file the nail down a bit.

Also called electric nail file.

When the nails are thin enough, the tips are snipped off at the point where my natural nails have grown to.

The nail clipper looks like a cross between a cigar cutter and a bottle cap opener. LOL.

Another kind pf clipper (which looks like pliers) is used to pry and clip off the other end of the nail where it might have come loose from my natural nail.

After drilling, clipping and prying as much as possible:

It got to a point when drilling started to hurt (from the heat caused by friction). Susan, my nail therapist, said that it’s because that China therapist had filed my nail too thin.

So she turned off the drill and started to manually file the gel off. She went through three brand new nail files to get everything off!

Even manual nail filing hurt at some point (same thing, heat/friction), so she had to keep moving from nail to nail and file slower to avoid heat buildup.

While one hand is being worked on, the other hand is soaked in acetone to soften the nails, after which Susan would keep trying to pry/clip the other end off. Sometimes bits would come off, something nothing.

In this way, we kept switching hands and slowly wearing the gel down.

Susan was a model of patience, and fearful of hurting me so tried her best to be gentle.

She was very motherly, haha. She would cluck in sympathy when I yelled in pain and would keep reminding me to alert her immediately the moment I felt like it was going to hurt so she could stop and move to another nail.

Finally, an hour and a half later, it was done!

Another 30 minutes were spent masking and manicuring my natural nails.

ALL DONE!!

Unfortunately, my nails are now so thin and soft it’s scary. I can bend them almost 90 degrees!

The photo was taken on Saturday. By Monday, some tips started chipping and cracking so I just trimmed off everything right to my fingertips.

Now my nails are more like nubs! I’ll have to wait for a few more months and hopefully the regrowth will be back to original thickness.

In the meantime, no more gel nails for me! Grrr.

But they’re so pretty, so I might still get them in the future. Susan said getting gels isn’t supposed to hurt. To prevent pain when baking the gel, she said you should leave your hand just outside the “oven” for two seconds before putting it inside.

Maybe I’ll get the nerve to try again cos I don’t want to do nail art on natural nails and have it wear off in two days.

If you’re looking for an experienced gel nail artist, Susan is a freelance nail therapist who operates from home. Her shop is called Precious Nail Services. I found her through Google! =P

One of her works which I like very much, among many.

This is not an ad. I’m plugging her cos I think she’s really nice, plus she’s talented and creative and she charges very reasonable rates.

In fact, I felt that she undercharged me cos my nails were so tough to remove, so I tried to tip her but she refused to accept, lol. My removal and manicure only cost $24 total!

Now that I’ve gotten the use of my hands back, I shall try to blog more. =P It was really hard to type with those chunky gels before!

Heehee!

I don’t think I have time to find a salon to fix my nails before Chinese New Year, so I undertook an emergency fix myself.

Painted pearl diamond colour over everything, especially covering the red tips.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

It’s a bit clumpy but still looks okay from far and I don’t think many people will go close to scrutinise my nails. If they do, I’ll wallop them when they get near.

Just kidding.

By the way, it’s DAMN hard to paint over gel nails. It won’t adhere!! And if I paint thinly like normal, it won’t cover the red! That’s why I had to pile it on rather thick and it’s taking forever to dry. ARgh.

Please tell me it looks better now. At least a bit??

Lesson of the day: Cheap doesn’t mean good!!

I got 3D gel nails in China for, like, S$34 and am now severely regretting it.

We didn’t even know we were getting gel nails. I don’t usually do manicures and I’ve never done nail art or nail extensions, so I know next to nothing about nails.

Minou had done acrylic nails before but only a couple of times, I think.

We walked into this salon in Zhangmutou, a small town in Dongguan, China. I hear that the town is nicknamed Little Hong Kong. It’s where Hong Kong men keep their mistresses cos it’s near enough to Hong Kong and the rent is a lot cheaper there. Haha.

Anyway, we walked into this salon and said we wanted to do nail art.

They showed us books of pretty nail designs, we pointed at what we liked, and we fixed a price.

Then, instead of doing our nails in this bright and airy place, they brought us to a dingy secluded shop in a corner of the mall which featured a row of ratty, old seats.

That was still fine. Things tend to be old and ratty in China (at least in the parts I visited). It’s kinda usual and expected.

First, we got a regular manicure treatment. Trimming, filing, soaking, cuticle cutting.

And then the scary thing happened.

Wait, let me introduce you to Sacha (pronounced Sasha) first.

Because I’ll be using her hands to illustrate the next few steps (for the benefit of readers who don’t know how nail extensions work). And you’ll be seeing more of her in my coming posts on my China trip.

Sacha is our new friend whom we don’t see much of because she’s the girlfriend of an old friend whom we don’t see much of because he’s always travelling.

Back to nails!

After trimming our nails short and filing away a thin layer of our surface nails, they paste thick stickers around our nails to act as moulds.

They then apply a thick layer of gel all over our nails, extending out onto the sticker to create desired lengths.

(After going home and doing some research, I discovered that gel is supposed to be applied very thinly and not thickly!)

The little gel pots:

When one finger has been gelled, we have to stuff that hand into a little oven that has little tubes of UV lights, for “baking”.

The nail technician will then work on the other hand. In this way, both hands are being worked on alternately, one in the oven, one being gelled.

This looks very scary but looks are the least of my worries. The baking HURTS like a bitch.

After a few seconds in the “oven”, the gel will melt and seep into the nail bed, causing a pain like the dripping of a large drop of hot wax onto your skin, but more severe because the pain lasts longer, about 10-20 seconds, until the gel hardens.

Since each finger is gelled and baked individually, we had to endure the pain 10 times.

Strangely, only Sacha and I had to go through that ordeal. Minou only felt pain on one finger. The rest were nothing to her.

After the first round is done and the nails harden, another round of gel is applied. This is quite tedious and I hate the endless applying and baking. I would have gone crazy with boredom if I hadn’t been with friends.

Since both hands are always occupied, you can’t read or play games the whole time!

After two rounds, the gel nails look like this:

These are my fingers now.

The nails were originally longer. A LOT longer. I made my nail technician file them down because I think too-long nails are scary.

He was quite reluctant and kept filing little by little, until he stopped at this length and refused to shorten them anymore!

Once the length is right, the sides and surface are filed to even them out.

And then the nail art.

This was what I chose:

I was deliberating between this and something bling-sparkly, but finally chose this cos it’s cute and the red would be nice for the coming Chinese New Year.

So, the disaster started when my nail technician made the red tips with red gel.

I don’t even have to explain. THIS IS JUST TOTALLY WRONG IS IT NOT?

He did one red heart and it looked so horrible, with the tips being wrong and the white hearts being wrong and all, I stopped him from making the rest of the red hearts.

The hearts are made on the spot using these jars of powder.

A thin stick is dipped in water, then dipped into the powder to form a tiny ball of paste. This ball is transferred to the nail and then pressed and shaped by the stick into a desired shape.

Another layer of gel is coated over the hearts. Another round of baking (zzzz).

I ended up with clear nails with translucent red tips, which was totally wrong.

I said, the base nail should be pearl white, like in the picture, and the tip should be layered and opaque and not so fat.

He said he couldn’t do anything more about the tips and they’re meant to be like that, and as for the base, he layered on even more clear gel while adding sparkly dust to the gel to create a pearl effect.

More baking.

I said I wanted crystals. Partly for bling effect and partly to distract from the unsightly red tips, which he refused to get rid of.

For a start, I told him to add two crystals on the side of each heart. I wanted smaller crystals but this was the smallest he had.

I should have stopped here, but the red tips really bothered me. They looked so ching chong obiang I wanted to rip them off there and then but I had had enough pain for a day.

I dictated the design for my fourth finger, the one with crystals surrounding half the heart. And then he took it into his mind to design a stupid flower for my middle finger.

I said, “Um.. okay, but I prefer my design.”

So he did the same for my index finger. And then he tried to give me a different stupid design for each other finger.

I was quite weary and despairing by this time and only thought about how I just wanted him to get it over and done with so that I could go home to Singapore to have it all removed.

I let him design the rest of the nails but making him tweak the crystals here and there to make it less ugly.

Right hand:

See how his hearts aren’t even facing the same way for both hands! And both ways are wrong, anyway, if you compare with the original design I wanted.

The last to go was my right thumb. I designed this and was quite pleased with it because it covered the red tip quite a bit.

A final layer of gel over everything and more baking.

By the time it was all done, my nails were as thick as phone books.

So damn ridiculous lah!!

Compare what I wanted with what I got.

Uber major epic fail!!!!!!!!!

Now I need to find an experienced gel nail specialist to remove these because I read that improper removal will cause damage to the nail bed.

And gel nails have to be filed down instead of soaked off like acrylic nails, so I’m scared!

My fingers also hurt occasionally now. It’s very mild though, but annoying. Feels like the kind of pain you get when you have a tooth/gum ache, like tingly and itchy and sore at the same time.

All this, and I didn’t even want nail extensions in the first place cos my nails were already long enough for me.

Sigh.