Who isn’t a little bit obsessed with Beyonce and Jay-Z. They are pretty much the coolest couple ever. Before Kanye started dating Kim Kardashian, and he came up in famous bachelor lists, my girlfriends and I used to joke that we would even date HIM (the ultimate a-hole) just to get to hang out with the power duo.

And now the notoriously private star who dodges paparazzi and refused to comment on her marriage for years has opened up to the world with her own tumblr page, Beyonce I Am. It’s the place where she shares who she is, through her own eyes and is dedicated to her family, her life, and her love (or so says her information page).

It’s a side of Beyonce you’ve never seen before for sure, not Sasha Fierce, just her being silly, being with friends, and sharing it with you.

Everyone’s heard the most common prescriptions to clear up your skin. Magazines recommend products based on your skin type: oily, normal or combination. You can vary your face wash, your blemish cream, or your lotion to adjust to the season. You can avoid certain foods, and be extra vigilant at certain times of the month. I’ve read article upon article on how to achieve clear skin. New gadgets are constantly popping up from the Clarisonic cleanser to at-home light treatments. And yet, despite our careful precautions, we still break out. What gives?

Recently I read an article that revolutionized the way I thought about my skin. It’s not just something that’s there to apply makeup on, exfoliate, and lotion up every day. It’s a living, breathing organ that wraps your entire body, has miraculous healing powers when you scrape it up, and can be a reflection of your overall health.

We have all noticed the correlation between a poor diet, no sleep, and acne. Yet past overindulging in greasy food and beers on a holiday and the following break out, I never thought of my skin as a reflection of my overall health. The Chinese, however, have been in tune with the skin’s ability to relay health problems before they get serious, for years!

The first place an illness may manifest is the ever-so-sensitive skin of the face. A blemish on the face, may indicate a corresponding weakness in the matching part of the body. The Chinese facial map links each area of your face to a different area on your body. The list goes like this.

Forehead: Breakouts occur most often here when you are experiencing digestion, stomach or bladder trouble. A return to simple, natural foods like vegetables and lean protein can straighten things out.

Eyebrows: The space above the bridge of your nose and between your eyebrows is ruled by your liver. A line in between your eyebrows can signal that you’ve been over-indulging in the sauce, or eating too late at night. Food after 8pm stresses the liver.

Nose: Blemishes on the nose give away issues with the stomach, spleen and pancreas.

Cheeks and Neck: These areas are the most sensitive to stress. Spikes in stress reflect the most in these areas. Cheeks can also reflect issues in the lungs (on the right cheek), liver (on the left cheek), gums and teeth. Working out a half hour a day can cut out breakouts in these areas by minimizing the cortisol rush causing these blemishes.

Upper Lip: Breakouts in this area can reflect reproductive system malfunctions like polycystic ovaries

Chin: The sides of the chin are connected to the kidneys and ovaries. This area is most likely to breakout at a certain time each month. The center of the chin links to the small intestine, blemishes in this area may demonstrate an issue with digestion.

Every year I wait on pins and needles for the Vanity Fair Summer Guide, aka the most comprehensive guide to summer fun in NYC. Last year I was devastated, simply when I found out that the Book Report Summer Guide was replacing my manual for summer fun.

When former Vanity Fair Special Events Manager Jessica Latham has left VF for the greener pastures of Book Report last year, she took her glorious events handbook with her. She teamed up with fellow staffer Annabel Linquist to detail the best outdoor dining, drinking, and events (movies, festivals, concerts, polo matches) happening all over the city. This year, the Vanity Fair issue is back, and I couldn’t be happier!

There’s your best burger joints for when you’re craving bbq,  the 10 hottest places to see and be seen this summer, a summer playlist, and all the outdoor movies and concerts your little heart desires.

Overwhelmed by all the sheer awesomeness of it all? My recommendation is to print out a copy, highlight what you’re into, and then start up a special google calendar for all your summer events–you can invite friends to things you think they’d like and set up alerts so that you don’t miss a minute of the sandal wearing, fruity cocktail drinking, outdoor fun.

I have had so many conversations with men that have gotten down right confusing. Typically, we’re both trying to describe the same item, or they’ve walked in on a discussion with my girlfriends about clothing/fashion/shoes. The trouble is crossing the male/female color barrier, and people, this diagram makes it a lot more easy to understand why. The conversation usually goes something like this:

• Guy: Are you talking about that orange shirt that guy is wearing?
• Me: Yea, we’re talking about how coral is so in right now, but can’t decide if he’s pulling it off or not.
• Guy: Coral? Like the seashell? People are wearing that now?
• Me: Coral….the color…..
• Guy: You mean orange? We’re talking about that guy right…his shirt is orange.
• Me: No, it’s coral.

After this back and forth, usually the guy ends up claiming color blindness, which until seeing this picture made me feel a little bad for the poor soul that can’t see thee whole rainbow of colors in the world. Now, I understand that they may be capable of perceiving the visual difference in hues, but simply don’t grasp the need to give a different name to it. Coral is orange. Magenta and Fuschia, well, they’re both just pink.

I’ve noticed the same thing goes for shoes. Wedges, stilettos, platforms: those are all heels. As for the rest, if you can put it on your foot and walk around it in, it’s a shoe. I think it all stems from the limiting fashion choices for men. Shortsleeves or long (think about it- have you ever seen cap sleeves or ¾ length tops for men??), buttons or no buttons (no frills, peplums, or attached belts to worry about here), dress pants or jeans. There are even more clothing items to choose from for women, dresses, skirts, slips, undergarments, while men are mostly confined to jacket, top and bottom.

Their sizes are even easier to understand, only reflecting their straight measurements rather than some arbitrary number from 0-14. As women, we have developed a complex vocabulary to understand the vast array of fashion choices presented to us.  Our ability to understand the nuances of colors is only one example of a world of small distinctions we make in day to day life. And guys? They just don’t get it.

ViaMe.org helps you identify your top 5 traits so you can figure out the parts of your personality that are particularly strong. Through a 240 question survey, VIA ranks adults 24 character strengths. Self magazine suggested taking one character strength each week and trying to use it in a novel way to improve your life for a month of innovation. The claim is that using your inherent personality traits as assets allows you to feel more engaged and fulfilled in life.

Curious? Here’s the output of my quiz. Check it out, even it it just for the fun personality test.

Your Top Character Strength: Humor

Your Second Character Strength: Honesty

Your Third Character Strength: Perspective

Your Fourth Character Strength: Gratitude

Your Fifth Character Strength: Social intelligence

Because how could you not love this?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/abrams/hipster-disney-princesses

Hey, remember how everyone is always telling you that you’re going to turn into your mother? Well, it’s true. You might as well just relax and let it happen. I know I’ve been one to complain that I always inherit the worst traits from my wonderful family members. Propensity to sunburn, and then turn instantly back to white? Thanks Mom! A bunion? Gee whiz Mema, just what I always wanted! Persistent heartburn, to make me feel like a middle aged man? Gramps and Dad taught me a glass full of dissolved baking soda will fix that. I can’t count the times my doctors have asked me to relay my family medical history. And if you tick off all the aunts and uncles in my large extended family who have something wrong with them, well, I’m pretty much doomed.

Until now. Recent studies have countered the impact of common genetic predispositions to actually impact your likelihood of coming down with a disease. New research has discovered the existence of a little thing called the epigenome. The March issue of Women’s Health magazine calls it a snug sweater that clings to your DNA, with the ability to switch certain genes on and off depending on, you guessed it, your lifestyle habits. So, while you may carry DNA to make you genetically predisposed to heart disease, depression, melanoma, or breast cancer (with the exception of the BRCA gene) the way you choose to live your life signals to your epigenome to keep cool and hug that DNA  switch closed, or get all hot an bothered and switch on the alert.

Here’s what you can do if certain diseases run in your family tree:

• Depression:
  • Drink 2 or more cups of coffee a day
  • Eat a mediterranean diet high in omega 3’s
  • Exercise for 30 minutes five times a week
• Heart Disease
  • Leave work on time to reduce your stress and leave time to work out
  • Listen to music for 30 minutes uninterrupted a day
  • Smile and laugh, optimism lowers risk for heart disease
• Melanoma
  • Eat dessert
  • Wear broad spectrum sunscreen
  • Remember, car windows don’t block UVA rays
• Breast Cancer
  • Drink 3 or less alcoholic beverages a week
  • Eat 2 oz of walnuts a day
  • Make sure you’re getting enough vitamin D

While you still may pick up your mother’s habits of interrupting, cleaning obsessively before company arrives, and talking a little too loud, you don’t have to inherit her health outcomes.

My friends and I have joked around for a while about how it would be really nice if you could read reviews of people you’re going out on a date with. People could give you a friendly heads up if the guy in question tends to drink exclusively jaeger bombs, or still lives with his momma, or is prone to mysteriously dropping off the face of the earth after weeks of dating (not that any of these things have every happened to me or anything). It would save us all a lot of trouble to know if the strangers we’re about to go out with are totally crazy-pants or bad people masquerading as nice men/women. Right?

Well, now it actually exists, and instead of seeming so useful, it just seems a little creepy. As Thrillist so aptly put it, “it’s like yelp, but for people.” Mirror.net is a free service that anyone can join and post reviews of relationships or friendships. I was curious, so I moseyed on over and checked it out.

You can share stories about friends or lovers, and rate your experiences as awesome, and not so awesome on different scales based on the type of relationship you’re reviewing. Mirror also provides the capability to search by name/email/phone number, to see what people are saying about your blind date, or new coworker.

Is anyone else panicking yet?

Mirror claims to have an algorithim and human reviewer formula to check out each review for truthfulness before it goes live as a posting. It allows uploading photos of people you review and champions truthful reviews based on real relationships.

But let’s be serious here, when you take the time to write a review on yelp, it’s either because of a really positive or really negative experience, and I’d feel pretty comfortable saying it’s probably the negative experiences that make the most impact. So my question is, is this new forum designed to show the other side of those with less than truthful online profiles for themselves going to turn into a forum where annoyed people vent their grievances? And have we reached a point of being too invasive into people’s privacy?

I mean after all, we’re not all businesses offering a service, competing for patrons. We’re just flawed human beings trying to live our lives. Do we really want a forum where anyone can document that date you went on when you were having an off day? And will it be like yelp, where people have their friends pad their reviews with positive praise? The whole situation makes me a little uncomfortable. You?