New Wikio Blog Ranking: Because Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Searchbot

Some readers may have spotted the newest addition to this site, a red badge from Wikio, the information portal, listing me as No 44 in their Beauty Blog rankings. I decided to display it not because 44 is a particularly impressive ranking - but rather because it is any ranking at all in a category with which I perceive myself as having a very tenuous affinity. The only post I can remember writing about cosmetics, Mouldy Old Kohl And Broken Bits Of Blusher, didn't exactly present my make up bag in an optimum light...

Now I think about it some more, I also wrote a couple of posts about an Avon face cream, and one about a Chanel nail polish - or about wanting to have it rather than the actual item itself. And along the way there has definitely been something on a Mitchum anti-perspirant and Label M's hair souffle, but that is about the extent of it as far as I can recall, out of nearly 200 posts now. And the latter two aren't really about beauty so much as avoiding the twin personal grooming crimes of unsanitariness and untitivated hair. So I am quietly fascinated by this whole web crawling business, with its armies of industrious software spiders, scurrying in all directions to forage for billions of cyber titbits.

Now it should be remembered that these searchbots are by definition a bit robotic: just for fun I googled "Wikio badge", and got a site called "Behind the Badge". Ah, I thought, a whole blog devoted to decoding the algorithm behind Wikio categories and rankings. But no...it was a blog that offers its readers "General rambling from the perspective of your friendly neighborhood former policeman".

So, bearing in mind the vagaries of web crawling, I couldn't resist taking a peek at my listing under Beauty on Wikio and found that I do in fact cover the following topics:

LIFESTYLE FASHION LINGERIE AGENT PROVOCATEUR FRAGRANCES WOMEN'S FRAGRANCES FASHION DESIGNERS

Why, this is is a revelation to me! I didn't know that I wrote about "Lifestyle" particularly. Well, maybe my own lifestyle, which - when I am not burning rubber on foreign freeways - mostly consists of sitting about in my pyjamas a lot. Could that in fact be what they mean by the third heading, "lingerie"? Thinking of the fleecy M & S pair I am sporting at the moment, that might be a bit of a stretch. And I don't believe I wrote about actual underwear lately. Hmm, might there have been a teeny reference to a satin teddy in a post about Natori? Or was it Stella Nude? Just checked...it was Natori, silk, and the simile in question was not necessarily my own - says she, quickly trying to shimmy off all suggestion of responsibility for louche lingerie allusions.

Hold on, though - these headings are in fact hyperlinks to the selection of posts containing material on each topic. So the lingerie one is based on my recent post about L'Air de Rien (okay, I did utter the words "carnal filth", but no lingerie per se was mentioned. More a scenario where lingerie could have been worn, at least initially).

Then the next post was this one about my nightly ritual of wearing Agent Provocateur to bed. Which does involve pyjamas at least! But again, not lingerie in the sense I understand it. And my regular application of Agent Provocateur was prompted by a desire to quantify the number of wearings in a 4ml mini rather than an attempt to create a boudoir ambience.

And finally, the third post mentioned concerned an Estee Lauder mini of Pure White Linen that went bad during the heatwave last June. I used the word "Impure" in the title, but didn't mean to connote any kind of lewdness or conduct involving scanty clothing. What is slightly concerning is that I wrote that post ages ago, yet it is one of the most popular posts from the past 30 days, suggesting a lot of people might have read it, unless they were shocked by the title and clicked away sharpish!

Hmm, I may have spoken too soon...I just clicked on LIFESTYLE to see what exactly Wikio was classifying there, and on Page 2 up popped titles including the phrases "embrace your inner nymph(o)," "sultry sweetness" and "the dirty half dozen". No wonder they think lingerie is mixed up in all this! On the basis of those saucy spoils from the searchbots, my back catalogue sounds like pure, unadulterated smut - or do I mean impure, adulterated smut?

But at least I am living up to my categories. If you think a Lingerie-Wearing Lifestyle one belongs in Beauty in the first place, that is. Well, the nicer stuff might do. Not those grey and forgiving big pants (known euphemistically as "full briefs") which you hang on to just in case you ever need to wear a very poor quality of pants one day for some reason (though the particular circumstances in which this need might arise are never made clear). So yes, there is a chance that visitors may find Bonkers too lingerie-focused, too racy altogether, which is a possibility I had never entertained.

I bet some of you are wondering why I didn't register my blog under the Perfume section instead of Beauty, because there clearly is one - I know a few highly ranked bloggers with badges to that effect. Well, I actually registered Bonkers under "General" blogs, as I couldn't spot a category for Perfume in the drop down menu at the time I joined - or not on the UK Wikio site, or whichever one it was. Maybe I should have clicked on "No Specialisation" and then typed "Perfume" into the comments box below, the way you do with those "Unlisted Brand" and "2Grrls" options in Makeupalley. And where on earth did they get "2Grrls" from, anyway? But as things stand on Wikio, I don't believe you can "port" your blog across to another category.

Now in General blogs I am currently 3396! Out of how many, goodness knows. That level of ranking is considerably less to write home about than on the Beauty side of things, but at least I can confidently describe myself as "general". I don't think you need to have a broad spread of topics to qualify, but if you do, I obviously have a foot in several thematic camps already. My own belief is that General is entirely made up of lost speciality blogs like me. So I probably fit right in.

So the only question left is which of the remaining categories Bonkers about Perfume might fetch up in next. I think I could make a case for Cars motoring (sic), Knitting, and Wine and beer, but Parenting seems like a long shot, ditto Law, Economy, and Religion and Belief. I don't see a category for Humour, come to think of it, so if the bots get to read this and are not amused, there is always a chance they might boot me and my Beauty badge off the site altogether...


Photo of make up from inetgiant.co.uk, photo of police badge from Wikimedia Commons, photo of pyjamas from letsbuyit.co.uk, photo of searchbot from seoyourblog.com

Calvin Klein Beauty: Because Blandness Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

The other week the friend to whom I introduced Roja Dove Scandal was on holiday in New York. One day she popped into Saks, randomly sprayed Calvin Klein's latest release, Beauty, and instantly decided that I would like it. When she told me this I was chuffed that my budding perfume protégée had thought fit to divert some valuable sightseeing time away from the Empire State Building, Staten Island Ferry and Ground Zero to perfume testing in a department store, especially with a friend in tow who was not "of the faith".

Beauty was already on my radar, although I hadn't tried it at that point, and my friend's recommendation spurred me on to acquire a couple of samples on Ebay. I had read the rather sparse note description on Osmoz, which only lists ambrette seed, jasmine and cedar, but I like those well enough. According to the press release, the overall effect is meant to be that of a "neo-Calla lily", and I like lilies well enough too, real or illusory.

The problem with the CK scents I have tried to date is that they are either harshly synthetic citrus, or overly gourmand OR spicy OR fruity (respectively CKIN2U, Euphoria, Obsession and Escape).

So the sketchy notes for Beauty looked encouraging. And the positioning of the fragrance to women over 40 also appealed to me. This is another reason why I have passed over CK fragrances until now - they all seem to be targeted at attractive, 20-something "his and her" clones, who are invariably pictured semi-naked and entwined in one another's arms. Some of them could even pass for twins, but you prefer to think they just met on set that day.

Which is not to say that I can relate to the specific sort of over-40s beauty which Diane Kruger represents in the adverts - even if she weren't only 34, haha! Yes, actual age aside, Diane's hair is way too blonde, her skin too fresh and luminous, and her white evening gown much too elegant for me to feel anything other than a stunted, grubby troll in her shadow. This is an impeccably groomed "ice queen" style of beauty, as typified by Betty in Mad Men, and is one to which it would be frankly hopeless for me to aspire. I would have to start exfoliating and stop biting my nails before I even got off the starting blocks, and to achieve that exact shade of "Light Natural Blonde" would take at least a dozen packets of Garnier Nutrisse, and a ton of Pre-Lightener Creme, and I still might end up looking like Courtney Love after a night on the tiles. Well, not the lips, obviously.

But none of this reality check stopped me from wanting to try Beauty, and I have worn it now about four times. It is much as I imagined, and just as Octavian describes it on 1000 Fragrances:

"Beauty is uncomplicated, easy to understand and universally known."

Yes, Beauty is familiar and relentlessly pleasant, and in my view none the worse for that. I get a lemony burst in the opening, then the only flower I can pick out is jasmine in that rather indistinct floral accord typical of so many modern scents, before it mutes down to a woody musky base, in which I think I may also detect vanilla. This fragrance strikes me a little bit like a mainstream take on Promesse de L'Aube, and given the shocking price of the Parfums MDCI range, even the palest of imitations are to be welcomed.

Beauty also reminds me of Chance (not the hyacinth note, but the musk and the amorphous structure), J'Adore L'Eau Cologne Florale (the lemony aspect and the magnolia notes, though J'Adore is fruitier and more watery, where Beauty is more musky), and Acqua di Parma Magnolia Nobile (like J'Adore, but more soapy and a tad plasticky). But if you merged the profiles of all those scents in one big olfactory computer e-fit, you would be in roughly the right territory. Beauty is a "luminous, lemony, woody musky floral" and if it turned up in my Christmas stocking, I wouldn't be sorry. I wouldn't have a clue where to put it, but I wouldn't be sorry.

Robin of Now Smell This, who - out of all the "proper reviewers" - has the most congruent taste with my own, sums up Beauty as follows:

"There is nothing really distinctive or interesting about it: it’s just adequately pretty and wearable, and my sentiments are firmly with the reviewer on MakeupAlley who noted that 'elegant and sophisticated shouldn’t mean dull'”.

They are right of course - ideally, elegance shouldn't be boring. CK Beauty is "pretty and wearable", and more sophisticated than any other scent in the line - and a bit bland. But why I am so taken with this new release - and why I chose to write about it even though there are better noses and brains on the case already - is precisely because, RELATIVELY SPEAKING, for Beauty to be understated and elegant is pretty good going for a Calvin Klein scent and worthy of comment. Put another way, it is easy for Beauty to shine versus the other fragrances in the line. Not unlike the old adage about banging your head against a brick wall - it is so nice when you stop.

Added to that is the fact that out of all the perfume bloggers I know, I am the one most likely to be satisfied with a scent that is merely "pretty and wearable". On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is a preference for accessible, inoffensive scents and 10 is a liking for scents that are rampantly weird, my taste probably sits at around a 4. Some days even a 3. If Beauty was a perfect representation of leaves falling on reindeer fur that has been rubbing against lichen, bark and petrol-doused tyres, frankly, you wouldn't endear it to me any more.

CK Beauty isn't really a beauty, but it is certainly "personable". Or as my mother used to observe (somewhat cryptically): "Handsome is as handsome does." And Beauty comes in a simple, sleekly stylish bottle. Who knows, it could even turn out to be a "go to" scent. And I never thought the day would come when I would ever be IN2 A CK...


Photos of CK Beauty and Diane Kruger from moodiereport.com, photo of Calla lily from Wikimedia Commons, photo of Promesse de L'Aube from Luckyscent, photo of J'Adore L'Eau Cologne Florale from ideal.az