(From The Huffington Post Canada   Karolina Weglarz First Posted: January 20, 2012 12:10 PM )

Magazine covers seem to be getting sexier. And while the models gracing the pages are seemingly showing more and more skin, they also seem to be getting younger. Kaia Gerber, daughter of supermodel Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber is the latest baby-face to land a modelling gig, becoming the new face of Young Versace — the Italian brand’s label for kids.

And though Crawford seems nothing but thrilled her little doppelganger is making her modelling debut at the tender age of 10, the whole thing has us wondering whether the modelling world should put an age restriction on how young is too young to model.

We’ve seen Thylane Blondeau pose seductively for French Vogue, Prada uses underage models in a 80-second promotional video and 17-year-old Dakota Fanning grace the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine (looking oddly airbrushed). Though Bonnie Fuller, former editor-in-chief of the girly magazine, is urging prudes to get their  ”knickers out of knots” others, are calling on the fashion industry to be cautious about what they expose children to.

Former fashion model Nicole Weider, has started a petition calling for fashion mags, specifically Cosmo, to be packaged in a non-transparent cover and to only be sold to girls over 18. According to The Daily Mail UK, Weider believes, “This magazine has the devil written all over it… and is just a vessel for that.”

Model Coco Rocha, who herself was discovered at age 14, believes young girls aren’t prepared to be treated as adults and are being instructed to act in a way they’re normally not used to.

Whether you think Weider or Rocha’s take is prudish, it’s becoming clear sexualized images and exploitation of young girls is not only having negative consequences on the children who pose for millionaire designers, but also for the children who see the ads.

So what do you think: Should magazines be banned to kids under 18 and should teen girls stop modelling for big-time designers? Or is it all a matter of parents setting firm boundaries on what their children view, buy or read?

When was the last time you took a good, long look at your everyday coat? Does it fit you properly? Does it fit over bulky clothing? Does it fit your lifestyle? For many women, the answer is “no.”

What does your coat say about you? That you mean business regardless of the weather? Or that outerwear is an afterthought?  If a new coat is on your wish list this Christmas, think only of three things: purpose, lifestyle, and budget.

PURPOSE

What will the coat be used for? Work? Taxiing kids in cold weather? Skiing? If you begin with the purpose in mind, you’ll have a lot better success in finding what you need.

Long wool coats work well over dresses and business attire, for example, but hip-length coats are better if you’re constantly in and out of the car. Ski coats need to be warm and waterproof while dirty work coats need to be easily washed. Think about what you’ll be doing to find the best coat for the job.

LIFESTYLE

How many coats do you need? It depends on your lifestyle. For most people, one dress coat and one casual coat fits most of their needs. But if you live in a climate with four distinct seasons or if you attend a lot of different activities (work, sporting events, and charity balls) your outerwear wardrobe increases.  Also, if you travel a lot, different climates call for different coat weights. Bottom line: build your outerwear wardrobe based on your lifestyle needs and you will always be appropriately dressed.

BUDGET

Coats can be expensive, and you may not be able to afford all the different coats you’d like to have to fill out your outerwear wardrobe. That’s okay. Look at your primary needs first, then set a goal to fill in as your budget allows.  What is the most versatile coat that offers the biggest bang for your money? A classic trench with a zip out liner. It can handle cold, rain, casual, or business with equal finesse, and it folds up nicely for compact storage. But remember! Buy your coat in the best quality you can possibly afford – it will last longer and look better!

From JeffBridges.com

“Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes:

The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes:

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:

A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children.. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly..

45 minutes:

The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour:

He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.

The questions raised:

*In a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?

*Do we stop to appreciate it?

*Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made.

How many other things are we missing?

It’s long been one of the furriest fashion centers in the world – but not anymore. The West Hollywood City Council is banning the sale of clothing made of animal fur; it’s believed to be the first such ban in the U.S.  CBS Los Angeles reports that the vote on Monday was the final step in prohibiting the sale of clothing made from the skins or pelts of animals with hair, fur, or wool, within city limits.

NBC LA reports the council, in a 3-1 vote, adopted the law that goes into effect in Sept. 2013.

Shannon Keith, animal rights attorney and co-organizer of Fur Free West Hollywood, told a local radio station that it’s the right move.

“Animals suffer immensely for the use of fur,” she said. “Animals are skinned alive, they’re beaten, they’re stomped on, they’re gassed…it’s a horrible thing all in the name of vanity.”

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), praised West Hollywood, calling it “just the latest compassionate action for the city.”

Councilman John D’Amico first introduced the ban in May, and afterwards the Fur Information Council of America released a study showing that out of 209 clothing stores in the city, 91 of them carried clothing or accessories made with animal fur.

The board of the “Avenues: Art, Fashion and Design District” claims the ban will limit the city’s reputation for creative expression in high fashion. The West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce opposed the ban as well.  (CBS Los Angeles)

What do YOU think?

Have been wanting to share this “food for thought” with you for some time … try this at home!

From The Telegraph on-line

By Daniel H. Pink (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/daniel-h-pink/)

8:00AM BST 17 Jul 2011

“If you ever want to understand your boss, corner him (or her) at the next office party and see if he’ll play a little game. Tell him (or her) you need only 30 seconds. Then ask your boss to extend his (or her) right forefinger.

Give your boss the ‘E’ on the forehead test.

“Go ahead,” you might need to assure him, “this won’t hurt” Then ask him to take that extended finger and draw a capital E on his forehead.

Does he draw the letter so that it faces him – that is, backward to a person looking at him? Or does he draw the letter so that the viewer can read it? Neither way is right or wrong. But the direction of that letter might tell you something about the disposition of that leader.

This seemingly innocent parlour trick is actually a method social scientists have used for more than a decade to measure perspective-taking – the ability to step outside one’s own experience and see the world from someone else’s viewpoint.

People who write the E so that it’s backward to themselves but legible to their partner have taken the other’s perspective. Those who draw the E so that it’s readable to themselves but backward to others haven’t bothered to consider the other person’s point of view.

In an intriguing set of experiments a few years ago, a group of American social scientists led by Adam Galinsky at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management used the E test and some other techniques to investigate the connection between power and empathy. They found that while most people seem naturally inclined to take the other’s perspective, providing people a dose of power correlated with their being less likely to draw the E in the perspective-taking way. In other words, a surplus of power seemed to be connected, and perhaps even led, to a deficit of empathy.

As the researchers wrote: “Across these studies, power was associated with a reduced tendency to comprehend how others see, think, and feel.”

This finding might reveal what’s gone wrong with leadership at every level. On the altar of action orientation and tough-mindedness, we’ve sacrificed the fundamentally human quality of empathy.

To be sure, empathy shouldn’t be the only quality of leaders. If an executive is too worried that a decision might hurt Caroline’s feelings or make Rajiv sad, he’ll never get anything done. Thinking strategically and acting vigorously are essential.

But action orientation without sufficient empathy has at least two flaws. First, people resist going along with proposed actions, which can impede progress. It’s a sturdy principle of organisational life that people quit bosses, not companies. Second, if people do go along, they do so reluctantly, leading to an atmosphere of compliance rather than engagement.

The key is to strike a delicate balance between action-orientation and perspective-taking. It’s not a matter of deciding between hitting your numbers or drawing the E. It’s a matter of hitting your numbers by drawing the E.

What’s more, unlike many technical skills, empathy is extremely difficult to shift to low-cost providers and nearly impossible to reduce to lines of code in a computer program – which makes it a scarce, and therefore more valuable, commodity.

That’s why empathy is racing into many other business functions. For instance, medical schools, especially in the US, are using questionnaires to measure empathy levels of young physicians because scores on this empathy index correlate with patient outcomes in ways that traditional metrics do not.

Designers are donning thick glasses to distort their vision, sticking cotton in their ears to reduce their hearing, and slipping on garden gloves to limit their dexterity – all in an effort to design better products and services for the elderly by empathising with what it’s really like to be old.

And when so many consumer transactions can be executed online, learning how to see the world from the perspective of customers and prospects has become integral to customer service and sales.

Yet somehow in the higher reaches of business, even in our supposedly more enlightened era, empathy, when it’s discussed at all, is often dismissed as frivolous or, worse, “soft.”

A few months ago, I was talking to the dean of an American business school. He told me that when alumni return to campus to guest lecture, the current students invariably ask them a version of this question: As you think back on what you learned in B-school, what do you wish you had paid more attention to or had studied more?

And invariably the answer is the same.

“I’m glad I studied finance and accounting and the quantitative subjects,” the graduates say. “But I wish I had taken all that soft stuff more seriously.”

After they left the orderly farm of a case study for the roaring jungle of a real business, it turned out that what seemed superficially soft – organisational behaviour, psychology, people smarts, communication and, yes, empathy – were crucial. Spreadsheets are easy. Spreadsheets never get bored, call in sick, or lose their motivation.

But influencing people requires more than simply putting the correct number in the proper cell and applying the right formula. And since most corporate managers have reasonably sound technical skills, as well as access to the same information and tools, mastery of these nominally soft aptitudes is creating a fault line that’s separating who moves up and who stays put.

So if you’re a boss, especially a new one, sprinkle a few seasonings on your newly acquired bowl of power. Talk less, listen more. Treat everybody with respect. And if one of your employees asks you to draw a vowel on your forehead, you know what to do.”

!Daniel H Pink writes about the world of work. His most recent book is Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2011

Unless you live somewhere sunny and warm, November equates rain! Here are some tips on how to wear those stylish rain boots….

• Avoid wearing your rain boots on a non-rainy day.
• If you plan to meet friends for lunch and hit the shops, gumboots are not the thing to be wearing (unless, of course, you trudged through a forest amidst a torrential downpour).
• If you’re headed for a walk along the beach with a latte in hand, please, wear the rain boots!
• Rubber boots are meant to keep your feet dry while appearing fashionably put together.
• Don’t choose  the ‘boots with bare legs’ look – it never looks right.
• Don’t wear your rubber boots at the office! Please!
• Jeans or thick leggings (paired with a long, roomy top!) are the best combination to wear with your rubber boots.
• Make the distinction between function and fashion. While we often let fashion win over function, the rain boot requires that you be fashionably functional.
• Choose a red or colourfully printed pair, have fun and stay dry!

10 Iconic Leaders Offer Hard-Knock Lessons 

We’ve been spending quite a bit of time with young people lately as they transition from the world of academics to the world of work and beyond. This seemed like some timely advice to share courtesy of Forbes.

Be True To Your Vision

“Listen to other people whose opinions you respect, but in the end, it has to come from you,” said Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour. “You can’t really worry too much by looking to the left or to the right about what the competition might be doing or what other people in your field might be doing. It has to be a true vision.”

Stay Interested

“Learn who you really are to become a whole person,” said Oscar-winning actress Jane Fonda. “It takes a lot of courage because all of the culture is telling us we’re supposed to be this way or that way. Try to be authentic; try to discover it. And stay interested. That’s much more important than being interesting.”

Get Clarity

“I see every challenge as an opportunity….My experience is a network, yours is whatever is calling you right now,” said media mogul Oprah Winfrey on Facebook, soon after appointing herself CEO of her cable network. “Get clarity. Don’t allow yourself to be overwhelmed. Don’t be defeated by mistakes. Learn from them. We have a new motto… ‘The next right decision’…What is it?”

Be Bold

“When you’re young, you just don’t know what you don’t know,” said KeyCorp’s Beth Mooney, the first female CEO of top-20 U.S. bank, on demanding her first banker job. “I never thought twice about the fact that if I could get in the door, they would let me in. I’m a person who sees the world in terms of possibilities and opportunities. I dive right in; get it done. Always be part of the solution.”

If New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson could give her younger self advice it would be: “You can take it. You can take on a lot of responsibility. Twenty-five years ago I had two very small children under the age of three, and that seemed overwhelming at times. I didn’t know whether I was up to it. [But] my kids turned out to be the most delightful people [although] I found it daunting.”

Stay Open To Possibilities

“Follow your beliefs. Be open to learn. Never give up,” said Michelle Bachelet, the executive director of UN Women and former president of Chile. “I’ve always been passionate, and I’ve always been involved in all kinds of initiatives. But [as a young girl] I never thought about being a president.”

Keep Believing

“Know this: Everything you dream of, that you care enough to not give up on, the deepest passions in you, the things you really want, will come true,” said Co-Anchor of NBC’s Today Ann Curry. “The things that I once thought were impossible, I now know were probable. In fact, for me, they’ve come true. There are so many things when you’re young, you think, ‘Could this ever happen?’ But if you don’t give up, if you love it enough, and if you work really hard, you will have it. It will happen. I know.”

Harness Your Unique Perspective

Saudi Arabian Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel, the 28-year-old businesswoman, philanthropist and wife of billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud, said on the youth advantage: “The people in a room with me may have more expertise, but nobody knows what I went through more than me. Nobody knows my community, my circle of friends and my generation more than me. Because I’m young and connected, I can connect with younger people and understand.”

Ask Questions, Then Listen

“The smartest thing you can ever do is to constantly ask questions, especially when you’re trying something new,” said Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks and president of Disney/ABC Television group. “Find the people inside your team–who work for you, alongside you, and above you. Ask questions that matter. Listen. And constantly, constantly engage your team in communication. One of the things that I’ve seen kill careers is isolation.”

Overcome Internal Fears

“What is important is to first understand if you are able to overcome your internal limitations, you will be able to conquer any kind of goals you want to,” said Laura Chinchilla, the current and first female President of Costa Rica.

Wearing makeup has a significant impact on how people perceive women, making women seem more attractive, competent, likable and trustworthy, according to new research published early this month.

According to ABC News, Researchers at Procter & Gamble, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston University and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute showed study participants photos of women either wearing no make-up or wearing one of three different cosmetic looks – natural, professional or glamorous.

In the first study, subjects were first shown images of women, who were of different ages and ethnicities, for 250 milliseconds. In a second study, a different set of study subjects looked at the same photos for an unlimited amount of time so they could carefully inspect each face.

Study participants then rated the women in terms of competence, likability, attractiveness and trustworthiness.

“We found that when faces were shown very quickly, all ratings went up with cosmetics in all different looks,” said Nancy Etcoff, lead author and associate researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital. “The women were judged as more competent, likable, attractive and trustworthy.”

But when subjects had the chance to examine photos for a longer period of time, the same perceptions didn’t carry over.

“When they got to the more dramatic makeup looks, people saw them as equally likable and much more attractive and competent, but less trustworthy,” Etcoff said. “Dramatic makeup was no longer an advantage compared to when people saw the photos very quickly.”

Etcoff said the study findings should serve as a message to women that cosmetics could have an impact on how people perceive them in ways beyond physical attractiveness.

“In situations where a perceiver is under a high cognitive load or under time pressure, he or she is more likely to rely on such automatic judgments for decision-making,” the authors wrote. “Facial images appear on ballots, job applications, web sites and dating sites.”

According to ABC News Radio, a Proctor & Gamble chemist and co-author on the study, Dr. Sarah Vickery, said the research could have an impact on the cosmetic industry.”We’re really seeing for the first time how that impacts how others perceive us so that could lead to new color palates, new finishes or it could impact how we organize our color collections for women,” she said.

This study shows that cosmetics enhance how others perceive your beauty, but there are other ways to feel beautiful,” said Ann Kearney-Cooke, director of the Cincinnati Psychotherapy Institute. “Your warmth, confidence and energy attract others to you. There’s nothing more attractive than a confident woman with a voice of her own, with her own style that comfortable in her own skin.”

(Excerpts from ABC News Article by Kim Carollo)