Heidi Klum knows what's up.

Have you ever suspected that the clothes you wear affect how other people see you (obvious), but also how you see yourself? Have you ever felt like when you were dressed like a slob, it made you feel like a slob, and when you dressed like a professional it made you feel competent? Turns out, that's not a figment of your imagination. Enclothed cognition, a clever play on the name of the emergent field of embodied cognition, is the object of a new study, published online by the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and reported by New York times columnist Sandra Blakeslee. The clothes we wear really do make a difference not just to how we are perceived, but to how we are.

In this study, scientists found that each subject's attention to detail and cognitive ability increased when they put on a white doctor's coat, suggesting that their wardrobe had a real cognitive effect on their abilities. It's not the coat itself, of course, that make people smarter; it's the cultural associations we have with it. This was demonstrated by the fact that when subjects wore the same coat, but were told it was a painter's coat instead of a doctor's, they experienced no boost in cognitive ability.

Still, the revelation that the clothes we wear make a difference to our cognitive function (even if that difference is culturally dependent) is surprising, and inspiring. It gives new meaning to the old adage telling us to dress one level up from where we are. It might just give us a boost! So, in light of this new evidence, I suggest we all start dressing to fit who we want to be, even if it's not quite who we are, at least when we have things we need to do. So the next time you need to take a final exam, give a presentation, or write a paper, feel sharp by dressing sharp. For extra credit, leave your contacts at home and wear your glasses to class!

Cap Sleeve Peplum Blazer, forever21.com, $22.80

Worthington Baily Pointy-Toe Patent Pumps in Green, jcpenney.com, $35

Good luck on finals, everyone!

I bet Ms. Childs made a mean face scrub.
Courtesy: WomeninEuropeanhistory.org

I recently did some reading about natural skin care products, because I was interested in taking better care of my skin without putting weird chemicals on it or paying for strange promises at a drug store. I happened upon a wealth of information online, with recipes for cleansers to toners to make-up remover and masks, all made out of kitchen ingredients! I had to try them out (for the completely selfless research purposes of course), and now I'd like to share with you my favorites of the bunch. So without further ado, here's my top five cheap, natural, totally edible, DIY skin care products!

Make-up Remover:

This one absolutely blew my mind. Here I've been spending 7 dollars on a bottle of make up remover which smells weird and whose manufacture involves a lot of synthetic processing, while I could have just turned to my pantry the whole time! Dip a q-tip in a drop of olive oil, and you have a very effective, very cheap, and very natural make up remover. Plus, the oil moisturizes that delicate skin around your eyes. I'm never going back!

Acne spot treatment:

Mix a little cinnamon with some organic, non-pasteurized honey to make a natural antiseptic which will help diminish pimples with daily application. Use just enough of each ingredient to make a smooth, thick paste, and apply it gently on your pimples, without rubbing it in. Let it sit for 30 minutes or so, and then rinse it off with cold water. Make sure to rinse your face first, as this will keep the honey from being too sticky.

Shine-eliminator:

Ok this one is sort of weird, but it totally works. In order to keep your face shine-free, take a potato, cut it in half, and rub the cut side of the tuber onto your face. You will look stupid while doing it, yes, but you will look matte for the rest of the day! At first it's wet, but it dries quickly, and the traces of starches which are left on your skin control shine extremely effectively.

Face Scrub:

The best ones are those that use ingredients which would otherwise be thrown away. To make a strong face scrub (it was recommended to me that I not use it while breaking out, it's so aggressive. For me, though, it didn't seem that harsh. Probably depends on your skin's sensitivity, so be cautious with this one), just mix fresh coffee grounds (extra points if they're still warm) with some more good ol' olive oil. This will create a paste which will simultaneously exfoliate away your dead skin, and moisturize the fresh skin underneath, leaving you with fresh, baby soft skin.

Beard is not required for treatment.
Courtesy: appliancesonlineblog.com.au

Hydrating Mask:

This mask sounds like a fresh, summer salad, and just like a salad, it will leave you healthier, hydrated, and fresh! Combine a peeled, crushed tomato, some grated cucumber, and a couple table spoons plain yogurt. To add some more skin-nourishing power, spoon in a few lumps of oatmeal (famous for making skin glow) and mix it all together into a thick paste. Spread this paste on you face and leave it for 15 minutes, then rise with cool water. Talk about a healthy meal for your skin!

A few weeks ago was Reading Week (Hong Kong’s equivalent of spring break in The States), which some friends and I happily spend backpacking through Thailand. Being the sucker for tropical, bohemian styles that I am, I packed nearly zero clothing and planned instead to shop my way through the absurdly inexpensive, islandly markets which dot the cities of northern Thailand. And I have to say, I was not disappointed. Here’s my story of (and, in effect, guide to) the super touristy markets of Thailand.

The first day we were there, we went to the Bangkok weekend market, also known as Chatuckak Market, which was an absolute madhouse. As the name implies, it happens every weekend, and literally thousands of Thai people and hundreds of foreigners like ourselves gather to squeeze through the myriad alleyways and channels of the 35-acre shopping grid, lined with a total of 8,000 market stalls selling everything from teacups to bikinis to sandals to chicken on a stick. We took the MRT (the subway) to exit No. 1, Chatuckak Park Staton, in order to get there, but its central location makes it really easy to find by a variety of means.

Haggling is the norm in this part of Thailand, although some vendors will be offended if you offer too low a price. All in all, even if you don’t haggle it’s very cheap by American standards. I got a pair of sunglasses for 40 bhat (1.30 USD) and my favorite item, fisherman pants, for 120 bhat, or 4 USD.

Fisherman Pants. C'mon, you know they look rad.
Courtesy: Thankyouforyourthyme.wordpress.com

Fisherman pants, by the way, are awesome. Their construction is incredibly simple, allowing for a one-size-fits-all quality that makes them perfect to buy at outdoor markets, where trying things on is impossible (or at least very embarrassing). Basically, they’re a big square with a wide waist, which you fold over and tie down to fit, and then secure with a fold-over boarder that gives them their islandly look. And even though I’m now back in Hong Kong for school (where people don’t exactly wear these things on the street) I am perfectly happy to become known as "fishergirl" (I can only hope for such a nickname, actually) for wearing them all over this urban metropolis.

But while Chatuckak Market was quite an experience, it doesn’t compare to the lovely, cool, colorful markets of Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is the laid back, cultural center of Thailand, located a 14 hour train ride north of Bangkok in the much more temperate and much less crowded northern region. After checking out some beautiful Thai temples and having other typical tourist adventures, we hit the very famous, very pretty Chiang Mai Walking Street Market just as the sun was going down.

Chiang Mai's Walking Street Night Market
Courtesy: ThailandTravelHound.com

This was by far my favorite shopping spot in Thailand. Because it was a night market (running from 4 pm to 12 am), the streets were lined with super cheap, super yummy Thai food (we got fresh pad thai for the equivalent of 1 USD), along with even cheaper fashions than the Bangkok market had. Having already found my fisherman pants (at regrettably slightly higher prices in Bangkok), I shopped for bracelets, boho bags, rope belts, and colorful tops to further cement my reputation back in Hong Kong as a hippie. To that end, I spent a rather modest 20 USD to assemble an airy wardrobe that would last me the rest of the trip, and serve me well in the summer.

Even if you don’t enjoy the bohemian styles as much as I do, there’s reason to hit these markets. Shops selling western style clothing also dotted the landscape (though they tended to be a tad more expensive), alongside stands with shoes, lamps, souvenirs, books, and myriad other products. If you ever find yourself in Thailand, no matter who you are, I seriously recommend checking out Chiang Mai. And while you’re there, you will not regret a trip to the Walking Street Night Market, if only to look around, watch the commerce, and eat wonderful, cheap Thai food as the sun sets over the gilded temples of the city.

I was browsing Smashion Babble here the other day, when I came across an article by a fellow babbler, called "Thinspiration." It was a post exalting the accomplishment of a girl who lost a bunch of weight, showing before and after photos and linking to the girl's tumblr. Now, I couldn't be more happy for this girl, who obviously made a great choice for herself and her health and whose hard work and dedication should be admired. But I couldn't not respond the title of the post.

I assume it's use in this case was unintentional, but the term "thinspiration" is extremely loaded, and since it appears that its history is not universally known, I'd like to take this opportunity to talk about it.

Courtesy: thinspiration-pictures.blogspot.com

Thinspiration is more than a clever portmanteau. It refers to videos, quotes, stories, but especially pictures designed to inspire viewers to lose weight. The term is used nearly exclusively by the "pro-ana" community of the internet, which consists of blogs (especially tumblrs) and other social media platforms committed to supporting, encouraging, and normalizing the eating disorder, anorexia nervosa.

Pro-ana sites brand themselves as "safe places" for people who choose the anorexic "lifestyle". They provide tips on various topics, including hiding eating habits from parents, doctors, and friends, explaining eating habits to strangers (often involving pretending have severe food allergies or be vegans), and ways to lose weight (exercise tips, low-calorie recipes, etc.) Most of all, however, they function as hubs for people to encourage, console, and inspire each other to lose more and more weight, reaching for the beauty ideal represented in thinspirational images.

ly controversial. Members generally claim they provide emotional support for sufferers of anorexia, but the sites themselves are not serving to help in the recovery process, but to perpetrate and normalize the disorder. They do not recognize anorexia nervosa as a mental illness, instead insisting that it is a lifestyle choice entitled to respect and encouragement. Medical professionals take a generally negative view of the community, as it often makes the conditions of their patients more severe and less amiable to outside influence. Pro-ana sites encourage deceit and isolation of their members from their friends and family, and surround them with thinspirational photos which remind them constantly what they should aspire to become. This leads patrons of these sites to have an even more skewed standard of beauty than the rest of us nearly-healthy young women do, and that's saying a lot.

Pro-ana sites and the use of thinspiration are understandabIf you google "pro-ana" or "thinspiration", you'll find out just how widespread this phenomenon is.

I want to make clear I have nothing but applause for any healthy weightless journey, and I'm sure the use of the title "thinsipration" in the Babble post was nothing but an unfortunate coincidence. I just wanted to educate people on what it really refers to, and remind everyone out there to be healthy, self-accepting, and wary of the psychological dangers the internet holds.

Further reading here, here, and here.

Good evening! It's Armature Psychology hour here at the blogosphere house of pseudo-scientific analysis! I'll be your host tonight, as we explore the mysteries of human behavior as perceived through the very limited point of view of a 20 year old college student. So, are you ready to dive in?

Today's question regards the ever-enduring topic of weight loss, in particular the inexplicable popularity of crash and fad diets, despite their well-known reputations for not working long-term. The Atkins Diet, the Raw Food diet, the Juice diet... why do we do these things to ourselves?

The explanation, I think, lies in our nature-made propensity for following rules.

As a species, we really like rules. We strive to find rules in the sciences -- from the laws of physics to the many "laws" of economics, like the law of decreasing marginal utility and the universal law of the conversion of energy. We love finding rules to explain our complex experiences, but we like formulating rules to guide our lives even more. Consider the Golden Rule ("do unto others...") for morality, the rule of Sunk Cost for decision making (look it up) or the very simple rule to weight loss: eat fewer calories than you burn. I'll call this the Big Fat Rule of Weight Loss, and even though it is reductive, it gets closest to the truth of any other rule of weight management.

But some rules are harder to follow than others. In any given second, you cannot look at a particular eating decision in terms of whether or not it will break the Big Fat Rule. You could eat the chocolate cake, and then go for a run later, and not have broken it. Or you could not eat the cake, and sit on your butt for the rest of the day, and still have broken it. It's indeterminate, in other words, at the time of the decision, whether or not eating the cake will be breaking the Big Fat Rule. How are you supposed to let a rule like that guide your action, if you can't even tell whether doing a certain action will be breaking it?

Enter fad diets. The one thing that all these crazy ideas have in common is that they all state an extremely explicit, easy to apply guideline for what to eat. It's always clear, furthermore, whether or not you're breaking the rule. Is it juice? You're good! Not juice? Don't eat it! Is it cooked? Against the rules! Raw? Gnaw on as much as you want and you're still ok! It's just so easy to follow these rules. They don't take any planning, calculation, or thinking. They're so much simpler than the Big Fat Rule.

This explains why it's so hard to eat healthy generally. There's simply no one rule for it which applies in every case. It's not like quitting smoking, which you can do cold turkey. If losing weight just required stopping doing some particular thing (or doing some other particular thing), it'd be a whole lot easier. Instead you have to eat differently, and each time you sit down to a meal you are faced with decisions and judgments about whether or not eating this meal, this bite, fits into that scheme of healthy style eating that you're trying to achieve.

So when consumers are presented with a diet plan which is as simple as "don't eat cooked food", our ruleaphilia convinces us that it has a lot of potential. And in a way, it does. People on crash diets do lose weight, at least at first. But what happens when you've slimmed down? Are you supposed to never have a piece of bread again, for the rest of your life? Not only would that be bad for your long term health, it'd be depriving yourself of a normal, healthy relationship with food, not to mention the pure pleasure of taste and the luxury of not weirding out your dinner dates! Inevitably people want to wean themselves off these extreme diets, but when you take away the hard and fast rule in an attempt to do so, you take away the only reason the diet worked at all. How are you supposed to know, all of a sudden, how to stay healthy when your rule no longer applies?

So while the simple, rule-based diets that characterize our fad diet age do have a psychological appeal, they just don't work in the long run. Unfortunately, there's no rule for living healthily. It's such a complicated procedure that can only be navigated by forming habits which point you in the right direction. That's why it's so hard. Of course, incorporating simple, easy to apply rules like "don't eat at least two hours before bed" and "eat slowly" can have a place in a healthy lifestyle, but they will never be the whole shebang. And because of that, our rule-loving natures will always feel just a little bit deprived of guidance in this department. It's really no wonder that the fad diet industry has found a way to capitalize on that.