Beach Bags

Recently I saw a picture of celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe out loking fabulous in her trademark faux fur coats and dripping with vintage jewelry. I know nothing out of place in this picture, as this is just a normal look for the Zoe, except that the mom-to-be is walking around in towering stilletos.

In her reality show, The Rachel Zoe Project she’s been quoted as saying that she doesn’t own any flats. And true enough in a photo shoot with superstar and sexy cougar Demi Moore for Harper’s Bazaar, she walked down the beach on her high-heeled shoes.

If you can see yourself in Rachel Zoe’s shoes (Pun intended. Get it? Shoes, high-heels, in her shoes? Okay nevermind.) and just couldn’t let go of those high heels even at the beach, then wedge flip flops maybe the next best thing for your puppies.

Wedge flip flops are less casual cousin of regular flip flops (check out a list of cheap flip flops on a previous post). It gives you that height that you have with your high heels or wedge sandals but also the comfort that you get when wearing flip flops. Because of these qualities, most brides who have a beach wedding usually wears wedge flip flops under their wedding gowns.

But even if you’re not a blushing beach bride, you can still wear wedge flip flops to the beach and pair it with your favorite summer outfits. Here are some wedge flip flops you can step in into this summer.

Encanto “Miami” Rhinestone Detail Snake Print Leather Wedge Thong Sandals. That’s a mouthful. But so are the wonderful things you can say about this pair of wedge flip flops starting from the snake skin print that runs along the side and the rhinestone details on the straps. Can anyone say, Pimp My Wedge Flip Flops?

Bridesmaid Flip Flops – Chloe. Like I mentioned a while ago wedge flip flops are a hit at beach weddings, and this is the perfect example of that. The turquoise bow on the strap is a great accent and will surely draw attention to your toes. You can also customize the colors to fit your wedding motif or add crystals for some bling.

Wedge Eva Knot Flip Flop. Available in white and black, these wedge flip flops incorporate knots in its straps, creating a very nautical feeling. Pair with a maxi dress and floppy hat or a white wife beater tank top plus floor length skirts for that bohemian look at the beach. Don’t forget the oversized sunnies too.

Women’s Juicy Couture Grenada Wedge Rubber Flip Flops – Dusted Blu. With a heel measuring 4.5 inches, I’m sure you won’t be missing your stilettos anytime soon. Made from rubber it is made more comfortable with Slip on Padded insoles. Height + comfort = perfect combo. This pair of wedge flip flops would surely make high heel loving Rachel Zoe very proud.

Manic Monday really is living up to its name. Today I find out I’ve run out of coffee, my favorite show in the morning has been canceled and to top it off I’m having a bad, let me rephrase that, a very bad hair day. Which is just something you don’t ever want to get on a Monday.

But instead of being something that rhymes with witch, I decided to turn all negative energies into something positive by writing this post about how to better take care of your hair. Especially if you frequent the beach a lot, in which case you should have all the more reason to take better care of your mane.

Your Hair and the Sea

So unless you’re the Little Mermaid your hair is not safe from the damage salt water can bring to it. See our hair is naturally made up of 10 percent moisture and with a little elementary science that moisture moves from a higher density liquid to a lower density liquid, which makes hair dry and brittle.

Here are some homemade remedies you can use to keep your tresses in tip top shape at the beach:

• Slather some olive oil on your hair concentrating especially at the roots where it’s more prone to dryness. Leave it on for about 10 minutes and then wash of with warm water before hitting the surf.
• Another household item you can use to combat the damaging effects of seawater on your hair is mayonnaise. It’s not just good for your sandwich it’s great for your hair too. What you do is take a wallop of mayo and put it in your hair and cover it with a shower cap. This is like an instant hot oil treatment right in your kitchen. Leave it on for about 20 -  30 minutes and rinse with shampoo, preferably organic shampoo.
• Aside from predicting that the world would end on 2012, the Mayans have also created an ancient formula to put an end to dry hair. Imagine that. Take some avocado and mash it to a pulp. Same thing with the mayonnaise formula, just put it on your hair and leave it there for about half an hour before rinsing with organic shampoo.

Will the Real Organic Shampoo Please Stand Up

On a previous post I talked about natural sunscreen, so this time around I’m going to talk about organic shampoo. But before rushing to the nearest supermarket for bottles of organic shampoo, first let’s talk about what makes the organic in organic shampoo.

Anything that has the USDA’s Organic Standards seal, which is the golden standard for anything organic, you can be sure is a good buy. Although there are also cosmetic brands that are just putting on the word “organic” in their products but are not actually complying to standards.

But thank goodness for groups like Organic Consumers who are vigilant in pushing for a stop to organic cosmetics fraud, urging proper labeling of all health and beauty products with the word “organic.” In one of their efforts, the group staged a picket in one of the largest natural and organic products expo, the Natural Products Expo West with oversized bottles of organic shampoo as props. These organic shampoos the group says are mislead consumers with the organic label.

But don’t panic, even with all these organic shampoo debacle I’ll make it easier for you to choose an organic shampoo that you can always take with you in your beach bags with this USDA Certified organic shampoo list. I’m sure you’ll find the perfect organic shampoo for you here, so get shopping.

Yet if a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got? If she never takes off her high-heeled shoes, how will she ever know how far she could walk or how fast she could run?

Germaine Greer

I hate to be going from one quote to another, but when I read this I was reminded of what X Files star David Duchovny thought of high heels and tight clothes as a “subtle form of bondage” limiting a woman’s movement and utimately her freedom. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a shoe lover through and through, but what Germaine Greer and David Duchovny are saying rings true.

Putting on a shoe is like putting on a character. Slip on a pair of black pumps and you’re that chic office worker; put on thigh-high lace up boots and you’re Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman looking for her Richard Gere, to put it mildly; put on cowboy boots and you’re the unassuming Southern Belle; or put on 12-inch Alexander McQueen armadillo shoes and you’re crazy shoe lady.

I guess this is also why when we go home, when it’s time to be ourselves again (either that or you’re cramping all over from walking in 12-inch crazy shoes) we slip on a pair of flip flops. It’s the great leveler when it comes to footwear – literally and figuratively. Not everyone can wear a Jimmy Choo but everyone, and I mean everyone, wears flip flops. And since we’re on the topic of Jimmy Choo’s, not everyone can afford that either, so a piece of advice ladies, check out these selection of cheap flip flops and set your wallet and feet free.

Old Navy Women’s Classic Flip Flops. The name says it all, classic. Recently it was given a face lift by making the straps slimmer to achieve that sleek silhouette as well as made softer for a comfortable walk, that you wouldn’t even say they’re cheap flip flops. Available in fancy named colors like Twilight Tide (Blue), Laserbeam Pink (Pink), Fresh Bloom (A different shade of pink), and Bean Sprout (Green) which you can collect because these cheap flip flops are priced only at $3.50.

Havaianas Top. Okay, for $18.00 a pair that’s roughly four pairs of Old Navy Women’s Classic Flip Flops, but for flip flops that have been included in celebrities’ awards night swag bags like the MTV Movie Awards and the Academy Awards, the Havaianas Top are pretty cheap flip flops. My personal fave is Havaianas Top in Grey Atmosphere which would totally go with metallic-colored beach bags.

Ipanema Premium Celebration Striped Ladies Flip Flop. Endorsed by supermodel Gisele, who could resists these cute little charmers of cheap flip flops? Priced at 16.00 these Premium Celebration Striped Ladies Flip Flop by Ipanema has a unique translucent T-bar strap that not all flip flops have. Plus it’s anatomically designed sole (whatever that means) used 3D printing technology. Pretty fancy for cheap flip flops eh?

So today, slip out of those high heels and slip into carefree cheap flip flops and roam the beach like the free spirit that you are. So free your soul and sole.

In many cases, the popular saying ‘Ignorance is Bliss’ is best exercised in situations like your favorite chicken joint could be serving rats, that your newly bought lingerie may have bedbugs in them, that Snooki has come out with a novel, or that Santa isn’t real, but the 411 on sunscreen is not one of them.

Since the invention of swimsuits, sunscreen has long been regarded as the number one skin protection against the sun’s harmful rays by all sun worshipers and beach bums out there. On previous posts I’ve mentioned it as a quintessential among beach accessories even number one on The Beach Bum Manifesto. But now, new studies conducted and gathered by the Environmental Working Group has put a big question mark whether sunscreens are still a reliable ally against skin damage.

According to the Environmental Working Group, only 39 out of the 500 beach and sports sunscreens they have tested passed their rigid standards.The reasons are quite alarming, ranging from big bad businessmen exaggerating their SPF claims trying to make more money despite outright social neglect to startling scientific discoveries – ingredients in most sunscreen can actually speed up skin aging and double skin cancer risks – that could discredit the efficacy of sunscreen altogether. You can read the complete report here as posted in the Environmental Working Group’s site along with Sunscreens Exposed: 9 Surprising Truths.

If the EWG’s findings make you want to shun away from all sunscreens and switch to natural sunscreen instead, know that not all the EWG’s findings are all bad news. We’re not all doomed to spend the rest of our lives in fear of the sun because of a few sons of beaches. There are still sunscreens that passed the group’s tests in flying colors and you’d want to carry inside your beach bags at all times. Here’s the list of 21 of the 39 sunscreens that got the EWG’s seal of approval as compiled by The Daily Green.

And since we’re already on the topic of going green, how about giving natural sunscreen a chance? You won’t find any Oxybenzone or Retinyl Palmitate in any natural sunscreen, let me tell you that.

• On a previous post I’ve mentioned a recipe about a homemade natural sunscreen, now here’s another homemade natural sunscreen recipe you may want to try courtesy of scoochmaroo from Instructibles. You can find the detailed instructions with photos here. But for good measure, I’ll advise you check with your doctor or dermatologist first before trying out your homemade natural sunscreen on our skin.
• Not all natural sunscreen comes in a bottle. Sometimes natural sunscreen comes in the form of fashionable beach accessories like beach hats and cover ups. These two could be the most under appreciated of all beach accessories, not just in fashion value but as well as skin protection. Wearing beach hats are among The Skin Cancer Foundation’s recommended natural sunscreen along with slathering on those that actually do come in bottles (or tubes, or sprays, or tin cans for that matter). While there are clothing companies like Solartex, Solar Eclipse and Coolibar that offer sun protective clothing, which would probably be the fashionistas idea of a natural sunscreen.
• Another natural sunscreen is as unlikely as it is ingenious. Just stay out of the sun during the hours of 10 AM to 4PM when the sun is at its strongest. Consider going to the beach during the mornings to put this natural sunscreen to the test.

So now that you know more about natural sunscreen, it’s time to hit the beach, put on your natural sunscreen, dig your toes in the sand and forget forever that ‘Ignorance is Bliss’.

A manifesto simply put is your personality in writing. Think about it as your Facebook profile in actual paragraphs with proper grammar and punctuations. It’s a declaration of who you are and what you are about. To better explain this, let’s take a look at some of the more interesting manifestos floating in the World Wide Web that won’t bring you into a snooze fest.

There’s the Cluetrain Manifesto which basically states in many pages that multi-million dollar companies shouldn’t dare pull a fast one on consumers, because one angry 140-character Tweet about your service or product can shut you down. But not all businesses are bad people, there are some like The Peanut Butter Manifesto by Yahoo! Who wants to make their company better to serve their customers better. And I saved the best for last, the motherload of all manifestos, Lady Gaga‘s Manifesto of Little Monsters as found in Gagapedia.

So in saying all that, I’ve been inspired to write a manifesto for fellow sun worshipers which I will dub as The Beach Bum Manifesto.

I will never be too cool for sunscreen. Because for one Will Ferrell isn’t and being burned to a crisp is just plain uncool. There are a lot of sunscreens you can choose from in the market but make sure to get SPF 15+ or higher as recommended by the Skin Cancer Foundation to include in your essential beach accessories. And for new age girls who like their sunscreen straight from Mother Nature, you can read about a simple homemade sunscreen recipe here with most of the stuff you already have in your home, well, okay maybe except for titanium oxide powder.

I will have a passion for hydration. And I just don’t mean plunging into the ocean like you’re Aquaman or trying out every imaginable water sports out there. What I also mean is to keep at least one or two reusable water bottles filled with H20 in your beach bags when you hit the beach. A good rule of thumb is to drink the recommended eight glasses of water a day when you’re just being a vegetable in a swimsuit and more if you’re going to do sports activities. Remember that it’s better to be sun stoked than it is to have a sunstroke.

I will dress impeccable even with the little to nothing I have on. This is not an overreaction. You may just be going to the beach to pig out on beach grub but no law says you can’t pig out on beach grub in style right? Start with a good, nay, great swimsuit as a blank canvas for your beach accessories. Choose one that complements your body’s shape. Also take into consideration what you’re actually going to do at the beach when picking out a swimsuit. Because you don’t want to be wearing no bandeau top when you’re going to go surfing honey. It’s just a Janet Jackson Superbowl incident waiting to happen.

Next are beach accessories to complete your look. There are of course jewelry, which doesn’t necessarily have to be made of Puca shells or coconut husks. For example instead of going bare feet, put on a pair of barefoot sandals made from Swarovski crystals or other beach accessories which you can read about in a previous post. And since we’re on the topic of beach accessories, let me just add that hats are one of the best beach accessories anyone could have even though hats are the most underrated of beach accessories.

Lastly, the fun doesn’t stop at the beach and so does your fabulous self. Include beach cover ups in your beach accessories to make sure that when it’s time to take the party on land you’re still runway-ready. Most popular are tie-dyed wraps but there are a lot of options now which you can check out here.

I will be a vigilant beach bum. You’re a sun worshiper and the beach is your place of worship. So don’t just sit on your bum, pun intended, and do nothing. Simple things like reusing water bottles instead of writing love letters and throwing it into the ocean because you saw it in a movie and think it’s romantic. Let me tell you there is nothing romantic about dolphins or sea turtles choking on plastic bottles. Or cleaning up after your pet (read up on Beach Accessories for Your Dogs here) can do a lot to keep the beach a sacred place for you and other beach bums.

I will always be a happy beach bum. So put your favorite beach music on, sling on your fashionable beach bags, put on your beach accessories and let the beach bummage begin.