I am not one to think of fashion magazines as a secular version of a Bible, laden with must-haves for the season. In or out, I mean really, who cares? On the other hand, I’m critical. Not just of cosmetic products, but I always notice how a person is put together. One of my favorite sections of any magazine in the world is one found in Glamour. I don’t read this magazine for their articles on orgasms and the nitty-gritty details of how to get there, but for their often-hilarious their Do’s and Don’t section. You know, the section at the back of the magazine with pictures showing what clothing looks bad on a woman and what looks good.

Skirts and T-shirts that are so short or skimpy skin is popping out all over, and often rolls of skin hanging out.

High heels that are little more then stilts with the wearers barely able to stand up more or less walk.

And then they show the women who look put together. Clothing that matches, blouses and pants that fit, and accessories that don’t look out of place. Stuff like that. I love it.

While the clothing analysis is always great, what I wish they would include are makeup critiques. I would like to see that. I always wonder why women leave the house with their makeup looking as if they applied it without looking in the mirror even once. Don’t women notice that their mascara and liner is smeared all over the place, their eyebrows are etched on like a stripe of grease or a press-on decal resembling anything but brow hair, their foundation is so thick and mottled they look like they spackled on their makeup, or that their lipstick is so greasy it has traveled deep into the lines around their mouth. And then there’s the one we’ve all seen before: the dark lip line around the lips with a lighter color painted inside the line. Does anyone (including men) think that lip look is remotely attractive? Apparently, yes—I still see this today, in cities large and small.

Okay, I know I’m critical and perhaps my thinking a bit schizophrenic: on one hand I know none of this matters in the scheme of things, but I really do notice, and given how much time most of us spend getting dressed day in and day out, shouldn’t we be vested in getting it done right? Actually, I’d settle for presentable if “right” is too hard to achieve on some mornings!

Can a friend tell a friend she doesn’t like her hair?  makeup?  shoes? outfit?  Some might say, “Who are we to judge?”  My response, “We’re women, and we all have an opinion about how other women look!”

After reading hundreds of fashion magazines and watching countless celebrities walk down the red carpet, we judge other women’s appearance all the time. Who wear’s this dress better?  Brittany, Nicole, Kate?  We comment and critique appearance all the time, but it seems to be okay only if it’s a stranger or a celebrity or someone we’re “gossiping” about, not someone we care about.

As a psychologist, what I find most fascinating is that I can tell my friends something I don’t like about their husbands, their jobs, their kids, or the way they handle splitting a restaurant bill, but I can’t tell those same women to lose the black hair dye, stop over-bleaching their hair because it looks like straw, or change foundations because the one they use makes them look like they’re wearing spackle.

How do I tell a dear friend that her bulky unplucked eyebrows look like a forehead moustache, or tell another friend that her thick gray mane that she thinks makes her look like a feminist, actually makes her look like she’s ready to go out Trick or Treating.

So, what’s a beauty critic to do? Just ask my sister, which is why she reviews products and not the way women look?

My recommendation is to be open to feedback. Talk to your friends whose beauty sense and compassion you trust and ask them “What do you really think?”  Then listen openly, undefensively.  You don’t have to take anyone’s advice.  You can do whatever you want.  But, most importantly, know that if a friend doesn’t like something about the way you look, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you.  Quite the contrary, I believe loving friends tell each other what they think.  And always remember, that whatever you might do, hair grows back, roots grow out and makeup washes away.

I just finished an interview with a reporter from Glamour magazine. While I do hundreds of media interviews a year (including Oprah and The View) fashion magazines never call so I’m always a bit surprised when they do. I’ve sold more then 2 million books on skin care and beauty issues, which fashion magazines routinely ignore.

The Glamour reporter was very young and very polite and very honest. She kept saying, “Well I know they won’t let me print that” or, “maybe we can frame it a way that won’t upset our advertisers.” Her honesty was appreciated, but frustrating and maddening at the same time. It’s not that I haven’t heard it before. I’ve met dozens of fashion reporters who all echo the same sentiment: they can’t print what I write about despite the published research I have documenting the facts. It’s just so close to the New Year, I was hoping for something, well, new.

Maybe a fashion magazine would risk pissing off their advertisers to give women real objective information on beauty and skin care. Sigh. It isn’t going to happen, any more than fashion magazines are going to inform us about garment industry-run sweat shops or how high heels are killing women’s feet and knees. It isn’t going to happen, no how, no way. Fiction and fantasy is far more fashionable then facts.

A few months back headlines in the British news mentioned that an ad for mascara in a popular fashion magazine wasn’t a picture of the model wearing the advertised mascara but, horrors of horrors, she was really wearing false eyelashes. When a U.S. reporter called to ask for my opinion about this revelation my immediate reaction was, you’ve got to be kidding. I thought this can’t be the first time anyone noticed this! In the 30 years I’ve been part of the cosmetics industry I’m fairly certain I have never seen an ad for mascara where the model wasn’t wearing false eyelashes (at least individual false lashes, meticulously placed).

What I found jaw-dropping is that these reporters and editors thought this was newsworthy. How can this possibly be considered news of any kind? Have these reporters (all women) never really looked at an ad for a cosmetic that closely before? Are we so easily fooled by something this obvious? Talk about missing the elephant in the room! Next thing you know the news will be reporting on the revelation that pictures in magazines are extensively retouched via sophisticated computer programs or that the makeup on the model is rarely, if ever, the product or products being advertised. And any model over age 35 without a trace of visible wrinkles? Give me a break!

Respectfully, I know that on some level we know these ads are phony, but the desire to believe otherwise, to want the fantasy that a mere purchase of a mascara, foundation, or anti-wrinkle cream can truly alter our everyday appearance to the sublime is overwhelming for most women. That’s where our hope turns us into gullible, susceptible innocents at the mercy of the cosmetics industry. We’re ready to believe whatever they tell or show us. And don’t think you aren’t influenced, because you are. Those ads generate humongous sales or companies wouldn’t endlessly spend millions of dollars every month on myriad ads in major fashion magazines and on television to get your attention.

If you want to avoid getting sucked in the next time you pick up a fashion magazine or see an ad on television, here are the basics to remember:

1. Models and celebrities in fashion advertising are already gorgeous, with perfect skin and features. They can be enhanced but they started out with the bar already set above us mere mortals. Every model has been further transformed by talented makeup artists, hairstylists, stylists, and lighting experts.
2. Even after all the coifing, styling, makeup, posing, and the thousands of pictures taken so the best one can be selected, the picture is still extensively touched up to remove or drastically soften any flaws. I’ll never forget the time a model told me that she doesn’t look as good in real life as she does in pictures.
3. The women in hair dye ads do not get that color from the dye being advertised. Those highlights and flowing tresses took experts a great deal of time to achieve. The look was accomplished in a salon after hours of processing and styling, not in the model’s bathroom!
4. The women in the ads for shampoos and conditioners did not get their hair to look that way because of any shampoo or conditioner. It took lots of highlights, blow drying, flat ironing, curlers, styling products, and on and on to achieve the look that finally gets photographed for the ad.
5. Regardless of the claims asserted and the claims about what studies show, if it sounds too good to be true, it isn’t true. All cosmetic companies hire labs to create studies that prove their claims. My favorite example is ProActiv. Their results are stilted and embellished. The research on acne treatment does not support what they claim is true for their products (even Jessica Simpson on her own reality show said Accutane is what cured her acne!).
6. Wrinkle creams don’t replace plastic surgery, Botox, dermal injections, lasers, or light treatments, regardless of the name brand or who is selling the product (and it’s often a doctor who performs the real deal procedures, which is incredibly disingenuous).

There are many products out there that can make a noticeable difference in your appearance. But trying to live up to the images used to sell these products—expecting your results will be the same—is the stuff dreams are made of!