For the past five years, I've totally boycotted conditioner. I've never dyed my hair, I reason, so there's not much to repair—and anything creamy has always turned my hair oily, sad, and flat. All hairstylists disagree with me, strenuously.

At first the no-conditioner plan felt wonderfully liberating and harmlessly anti-establishment; at the time, I had an Amélie-inspired choppy bob that leaned distressingly toward Dorothy Hamill, and the shampoo-only routine (plus a large handful of Kusco-Murphy Beach Hair gave it the impression of waviness and, I hoped, Audrey Tautou. Then my hair grew to shoulder length, I got heavy, '70s-ish bangs, and my routine still felt like a pretty great idea—this time in a tousled, undone, pseudo-Charlotte Gainsbourg fashion.

However. In an almost-overnight transformation, my hair is suddenly, noticeably, extremely long—long enough that there have been several inquiries about where I've gotten my extensions done. The problem is that, though it's no thicker or more unruly than it used to be, the bottom third is starting to feel ratty: rough, a little plastic-y.  And if the air is at all dry (basically all indoor spaces, from November through February), the static situation is disastrous. So. Here's the challenge: How do I find a conditioner that simultaneously gets rid of static, adds a significant amount of body, transforms American Doll hair back into actual-person hair, and, ideally, smells like clean laundry? I'm definitely in the market, and welcome any and all suggestions.

—Cristina Mueller, senior beauty editor

My self-appointed-queen-of-laziness friend Amelia came down from Boston to visit last weekend. She exerted so much effort tossing a few sweaters in a duffel bag and getting on a bus, she was exhausted by the time she arrived. She would have been perfectly happy to order takeout and watch cable TV for two days in NYC.

I, however, had three birthday parties Saturday night and I wasn't about to leave Amelia on my couch in her pajamas. After an hour of Legally Blonde 2 and gentle prodding, she reluctantly changed out of her woolly cardigan and put on a festive, silky top.

"Let's try some mascara? Maybe blush and lip gloss, too?" I yelled from the bathroom.

"I'm fine; I only need five seconds," she responded without getting up.

I finished getting ready (the long routine: Benefit BADgal Blue mascara, Nars blush in Angelika, a little Laura Mercier mineral powder, etc.) and physically dragged Amelia to the door. On our way out, she pulled an Urban Decay eyeliner from her bag and, with a few devil-may-care swipes, transformed from I'm-not-wearing-makeup-and-I-don't-care to glamorously gorgeous. The copper pencil, it turns out, is named "Lucky," and it made her olive skin glow and the green flecks in her eyes sparkle.

At the end of the night (17 cab rides later), I tried to get Amelia to wash her face, enticing her with an organic scrub. No luck.

Yet, incredibly, when I dragged her out for brunch the next morning, the pencil was still in place—and she still looked amazing.

—Dawn Spinner, associate beauty editor

Honestly, there is no special formula, aside from finding a gorgeous model or actress who has your hair type and falling in love with it. My model-hair lady is Gisele. (I know, I wish, but it works for me.) If you have limp, straight hair, Kate Moss is a pretty fantastic example; the early Julia Roberts always makes me want to have super-curly hair; and Liya Kebede looks pretty amazing on the cover of Cookie this month. Anyway, I wish I had step-by-step how-to hints, but the key is believing—genuinely believing—that your particular hair type is exceptionally beautiful.

—Jean Godfrey-June, beauty director

My favorite new site is uptownliz.com, which was created by Ramona Russell when her sister, Liz, died of breast cancer at the age of 28. It's an amazing directory of beauty brands (as well as everything else from electronics to art) that donate proceeds to cancer charities. The search function is particularly fantastic: You can narrow down your results by charity or by product type. It's quite possibly the best cure to buyer's remorse and/or splurging guilt. 

—Dawn Spinner, associate beauty editor

I unwrap the beauty department packages all day, so I smell practically every scent on earth. Yet I can't stop combing the CB I Hate Perfume website after going to the company's Gallery, a tiny boutique hidden away on a barren street in industrial Williamsburg and lined with rows of Alice in Wonderland-type vials of intriguing fragrance. In one visit, I was hooked. The scents are eclectic, original,and often—the best—brilliantly literal: The primary note in At the Beach is Coppertone sunscreen, circa 1967; In the Summer Kitchen smells like fresh garden vegetables and wooden rafters; In the Library recreates the smell of leather book bindings and worn cloth. In lieu of taking the train to Brooklyn in the middle of my workday, I browse longingly online for a new, weirdly beautiful (Burning Leaves? Who knew?!) scent to call my own.

—Cat Marnell, beauty assistant

You know that old saying about women getting married and just letting themselves go? Since I got engaged in November, I haven't done a thing. No manicure. No pedicure. Certainly no facial. My eyebrows are overgrown. My split ends, as I've mentioned are horrendous.
But last Sunday Brandon (a.k.a. the distracting fiancé) was out of town on business,and I was finally motivated to make it all—I mean all—happen: At the fantastic,  homey TriBeCa Beauty Spa, I got a manicure and pedicure from Lily (who was so meticulous, she could easily get a job retouching Seurats at the Met) and a truly rejuvenating facial from Nadia, the owner. (My skin went from dull—with sad, fading freckles—to bright and glowy in an I-wish-it-were-Saturday-night sort of way.) I sat in the sauna with deep conditioner in my hair. I listened to Bach. And I relaxed in the lounge, snacking on organic bananas.
When the caring-yet-generally-oblivious Brandon got back,he looked at me inquisitively and said, "You're extra sparkly; what'd you do?" And isn't that the true test?

—Dawn Spinner, associate beauty editor

I imagine Matt Lauer finds a deep, abiding joy being in front of a TV camera, awash in the unswerving joviality of The Today Show. Right? Whenever I go on television, I try my hardest to channel him—but sadly, no go: Somewhere between the time I played Mrs. Proctor in the eighth grade production of The Crucible and now, I developed a robust, irrational terror of public speaking. The first time I did a segment (Find the Best Sunscreen for your Skin Type!), I felt, very literally, like I was going to die—a feeling that (thank God) didn't translate to my face while I expounded on broad-spectrum SPFs. Before a skincare segment last week, as I was applying the requisite 17 pounds of stage makeup, everything suddenly reached a fever pitch—my skin looks terrible! Clock is ticking!—and next thing I knew I'd swiped this Clé de Peau concealer stick in desperate, beige swaths over my cheeks, forehead—everywhere.

Fortunately, the Clé de Peau concealer is one of the best concealers of all time (seriously, Google it and marvel at the number of people who adore it)—which meant that after some hasty patting, it actually looked... amazing: excellent coverage, but somehow not heavy at all. My skin was almost as good as Matt Lauer's.

—Cristina Mueller, senior beauty editor

Celebrities are not only chased mercilessly by paparazzi; now new studies show that they are genetically predisposed to this horrible—but thankfully treatable—nasal condition. The more famous you are, the more direct the correlation. "I can finally breathe!" starlet X, Y, or Z rejoices publicly once the medically critical surgery is finally complete.

I like to imagine the starlets pre-surgery, struggling to breathe. Especially at night, driving the poor starlet boyfriends from their beds: "I finally told her, look, your nose is perfect, honey, but I can't take the snoring anymore!"

If you, unlike top celebs, are frightened of knives and needles, here is my beauty-editor prescription for the all-too-common breathing problems caused by a deviated septum:

A) Lauren Hutton taught me this trick: Make a big stripe of concealer right down the center of your nose and blend assiduously. This seems like it would highlight the area in question, but it does the opposite.
B) A major smoky eye or very dramatic dark lip accomplishes a similar, nose-shrinking effect.
C) Or you can quit smoking.

—Jean Godfrey-June, beauty director

My crunchy town is home to many secret movers and shakers. The sweet graphic-designer couple with the adorable baby who moved in last year, for instance, is already moving to a far more glamorous house up the road. They always had bottles of this soda company they'd founded lying around; we'd nod our heads favorably and think' how nice they've got that little side soda idea going. The soda turned out to be Fuze, which turns out to be a national obsession—it supposedly helps you lose weight somehow. Well. Coca-Cola bought that little side idea for something on the order of way over many millions of dollars.

To add insult to injury (I haven't been technically injured, but I do wish I would have a gadjillion-dollar side project every once in awhile), there are now Fuze-themed lip glosses from Too Faced sitting on my desk. Gorgeous clear colors in fizzy, fruity flavors. Adorable. They too claim to slenderize—I think the theory is you put on the lip gloss instead of eating the doughnut.

—Jean Godfrey-June, beauty director

At this refresh-and-renew moment of the year, people look in the mirror and they vow to change. Then they call me up and say, "Okay. How do I get rid of wrinkles?" When I tell them to go to a dermatologist and get a prescription for some form of Retin-A (I myself am an aficionada of the nuclear-strength Tazorac), most sigh dramatically: "But I'm not going to go to a dermatologist." While I don't understand—if you want money, do you refuse to go to the bank?—I do have a backup plan in place.

Help Me from Philosophy, is the closest nonprescription thing to Retin-A. It's as nuclear-strength as over-the-counter gets. And—because I attribute much of the disinclination toward dermatologists to plain laziness—the fact that you can click on Amazon or Sephora and have it several days later at your door is no small thing.

—Jean Godfrey-June, beauty director

I got a ginsu knife for Christmas and sliced open my finger three days later.

Cristina got a gorgeous agate ring and scratched her face with it while gesticulating about a new concealer.

Dr. Hauschka Mercurialis Wound Rescue, it turns out, is sort of mercurialis: It healed both wounds in record time—better, we feel, than the usual antibiotic ointment. Plus, there's the fascinatingly wizardish name.

—Dawn Spinner, associate beauty editor

The beauty department obsession has spread to the fashion department—and senior associate fashion editor Heather Summerville is now single-handedly introducing it, in person, across the globe. In a heroic two-week blitz of photo shoots and holiday traveling, she and her gray Rescue Beauty Lounge manicure went from L.A. to Atlanta to Austin, Texas, to Miami to El Salvador. No matter where she went, the reaction was the same: "There was always a brief pause—and then, 'Hey, what is that? That's actually kind of...cool,'" says Heather. "In Atlanta, a shopgirl at Urban Outfitters said she loved it because it looked like fresh cement." (An astute observation: The much-asked-after color is called " Concrete Jungle.")

—Cristina Mueller, senior beauty editor

When will I learn that it's never a good idea to cut my own hair? The answer, it seems, is never: Last week, I massacred my bangs in my bathroom mirror. I was going for Brigitte Bardot (aren't we all?) and wound up somewhere between Tonya Harding and Dakota Fanning.

How did it happen, you ask—particularly to a beauty assistant with access to the world's most glamorous, expensive, and sulky hairstylists? I blame my powerful and astoundingly misguided inner monologue: "This will make me look better," I thought for the 9,000,000th time, fishing a pair of kitchen scissors from a drawer full of dive-bar matchbooks and duck sauce, entering the same masochistic trance that causes my tragic overplucked eyebrows.

Now the thing is to let them grow—and style them to death to disguise what I've done. I'm going for the slicked-back pompadour ponytail thing, rocked admirably by such notables as Hilary Duff, George Washington, and a slew of celebrity babies. To achieve this, I love Bumble and bumble Classic Hairspray and tons of mini bobby pins. It's sort of painful but it works.

—Cat Marnell, beauty assistant

If you went to a makeup counter and said, "I very much want a red lipstick," and the beauty advisor agreed and sold you—for a lot of money—a lipstick called, say, "Pure Red," you'd be justifiably irate if you returned home to find that the lipstick was, in fact, a pale beige. You would probably demand an exchange or a refund; you might very well never buy lipstick at that counter again.

Go to most hospitals in America and say you're interested in a natural birth—not everyone is, though I personally cannot rave enough about how great and worth-the-effort they are—and they will say yes, you can have a natural birth here. Most will accept your carefully thought-out birth plan. But your chances of receiving what you're asking for—and paying lots of money for it—are actually extremely, unbelievably low. Worse, you'll be led to believe that the change in plan was both inevitable and your fault.

Because I had an amazing doctor (child No. 1, in a hospital) and an amazing midwife (No. 2, at home), I managed to escape this experience.

It's the season of rushing to see 70 million Oscar contenders, but everyone—everyone—should see The Business of Being Born, which, it may surprise you, is fun to watch, uplifting, not terribly gory, and not one-sided or at all anti-doctor. It's so good that my friend, the glamorous Wende Zomnir (president of Hard Candy and Urban Decay, with two adorable children, both born at home), flew all the way across the country for the premiere. It's so good and not-alterna that my friends at Johnson & Johnson (Neutrogena, Aveeno, etc.) sponsored several screenings. See, tell your friends, and wear the waterproof mascara, because birth is as profound as death (something Hollywood has caught onto in recent months, what with Knocked Up, Juno et al.), but the tears are the happy kind instead.

—Jean Godfrey-June, beauty director

I avoid foundation—I don't like to hide my freckles—but I'm even more wary of tinted moisturizer. The word "moisturizer" makes me think of ingredients sinking into my skin, and why would I want pore-clogging color particles in my skin?

But the glamour factor of La Mer SPF18 Fluid Tint won me over, and I tried it. The results have been nothing short of miraculous: My skin looks glowy all day, and I've actually been less prone to breakouts (even though I've napped and worked out while wearing it). It feels silky, is sheer enough that my freckles show, and gives me some bonus SPF, which is always a good thing.

—Dawn Spinner, associate beauty editor

Jivamukti Yoga will kick your ass, which is one of the many reasons I go there. They are also full of ideas, some of which I adopt, and one of which I think the general population should give a whirl: You wash your hands in a restroom and reflexively grab paper napkins to dry them. Tens of thousands of trees die to provide these paper napkins, and really, your hands are going to dry in the next two seconds anyway, particularly if you give them a good shake.

While I'm on the enticing subject of public restrooms, all even-vaguely-pleasant establishments need to trade up on the grainy pink gas-station (hello, Britney!) hand wash. Jivamukti of course has Dr. Bronner's, which I adore; here are some other equally glamorous alternatives:

Platinum: LCDP Savon de Marseille Liquid Hand Soap
Gold: L'Occitane en Provence Shea Butter Liquid Soap in Sweet Almond
ATM: Burt's Bees Citrus & Ginger Root Hand Soap

—Jean Godfrey-June, beauty director

Every time I go into Starbucks, I take 20 napkins. It's not exactly stealing (I do buy the coffee). But I feel like I'm doing something wrong. I shove them in my bag, briskly beeline for the door, and avoid eye contact with the green-aproned baristas.

I shouldn't, but I must: The napkins are the best oil blotters. Even the smallest amount of gleam on my forehead drives me crazy, so by early afternoon every day, I need at least one, if not 20.

While I have actual blotters I love, from Boscia, which are oversize (a single one mattifies your whole face) and infused with green tea to calm your skin, they're so good that I hoard them for special occasions. For everyday, I'm sorry to report, I can't yet kick the Starbucks habit.

—Dawn Spinner, associate beauty editor

In her book, beauty director Jean Godfrey-June writes of awakening, Kafka-like, with hair reminiscent of Bill Clinton or Naomi Wolf. While my hair is intriguingly consistent (the natural, air-dried look is long, blonde, quasi-ratty, Use Your Illusion II–era Axl Rose; when I blow-dry, it's glam, sleek-haired marrying-Stephanie-Seymour-in-the-"November-Rain"-video Axl Rose), my skin is hypersensitive, capricious, and inclined towards all types of dermatological helter-skelter.

The thing not to do with such skin is go to a tanning salon in New Jersey with an always-bronzed frenemy who tells you that you're too pale and convinces you to broil for eight minutes in a greasy light box of death. Which is precisely what I did—two days in a row. I looked cute and golden for about a week. Then, one morning, I woke up weathered, jowly, still vaguely orange, with a little extra discoloration around the mouth: Dina Lohan.

Immediately I thought of my sister—a reformed tanorexic who in many family photos appears to be a Cypriot exchange student—who swears that Kinerase products saved her from a life of spottiness and leatherface. The brand is all about repairing and protecting sun-damaged skin—the star ingredient is kinetin, an ultra-healing plant-based extract.

She recommended, specifically, Kinerase Lotion with SPF 30 and C6 Peptide Intensive Treatment—and she was right. I rarely call skincare products miraculous (consistency in regimen counts most), but these were hugely reparative and worked fast: Two weeks in, my face is restored: remarkably smoother, softer, and more even-toned. The products are pricey* but seriously worth it.

*Alternatively, not tanning is totally free and a wonderful way to avoid cancer. I'll never, ever go tanning again, and you shouldn't, either.

—Cat Marnell, beauty assistant

A drunken banker is a singularly unappealing sight. A restaurant full of them—all vying to unsubtly demonstrate the vastness of their respective bonuses, bellowing daring obscenities in the manner of a group of 10-year-olds testing the limits of a new babysitter, haranguing the sommelier with ever-more-novel fine-wine knowledge—is an experience that only an very determined gold digger could love.

Why a drunken, obscenity-spewing Ozzy Osbourne or Pete Doherty is less repellent to me, I cannot say.

Why I thought a high-end steak house in midtown would be a place where I might enjoy dinner—again, who can say?

But here is what I learned:

1. If you are newly rich but miss the TGIFridays aspect of lower-echelon living, go to a pricey midtown steak house.

2. Wagyu steak tastes like—steak.

3. Large portion = large bonus = large __. This may provide a clue in the continuing mystery of our national obesity crisis.

4. Female bankers, drunken or not, do not appear to frequent steak houses. The only two women besides me in the entire restaurant looked un-banker-ish (no suits), and both suffered terribly from hair damage—brittle broken ends, that orange-peach shade that occurs only when both your hair and your colorist have completely thrown in the towel, flyaways in all directions like fireworks. I had to sit on my hands to keep from extracting the tube of Frizz-Ease Secret Weapon from John Frieda from my makeup bag.

Studio 54–ish, the restroom featured several perfumes, a canister of hairspray, and some hand lotion lined up by the sink. The sad truth about my control issues: I hid the hairspray behind the trash basket, and I shoved the Frizz-Ease Secret Weapon into the lineup and left it—my gift to the poor women stuck with a bunch of Gordon Gekko wannabes for dinner companions.

—Jean Godfrey-June, beauty director

My Northern Californian mother came to see New York for the first time since 2003 last weekend—and then proceeded to ignore the city entirely. Emboldened by her pink-slipper success, she busied herself doing all the rather adorable parenting things that can't be done remotely: darning the pockets of my winter coats, raking soggy leaves off my stoop, buying me wheat germ ("toasted, not raw") from the bulk bins at the natural foods store, and even bleaching my porcelain kitchen sink ("You see the pink stains around the drain? That's salmonella, sweetie").

By the time she left on Monday, she'd missed every museum, but had thoroughly transformed my kitchen/bathroom/overstuffed closet. I am so grateful—and am so making her come back in the spring (perhaps she can actually visit the Met/Central Park/Museum of Natural History). Along with all her other services, she left me with important winter style and beauty tips that I will now share with you:

1) Carmex lip balm is less than two dollars, works better than anything else—and doubles as a cuticle healer. She feels that the version in the squeeze tube, though less cute than the tiny glass pot, is superior, because it stays closed in your bag.
2) No newsboy caps. I was amazed at her vehemence on this topic.
3) In the winter, keep at least three blister packs of Sudafed in your makeup bag; there's bound to be a sick person around you who will be grateful you've got them.

—Cristina Mueller, senior beauty editor