My first thoughts on viewing Hormones-Beauty-Health was that a) it was not a blog and b) it wanted to sell me something. I guessed it wanted to sell me one of many things sold via the internet that most people would never set out intending to buy, which makes a website necessary to advertise, sell, and cleverly cross-reference the product with other sites. My first impression turned out to be too cynical and flighty with its love of flitting from first glance to conclusion. Hormones-Beauty-Health does have a blog and it wants to sell you something, but the site offers a lot of free information, recipes, and tips.
The main site design, riddled with Yahoo ads as well as links to what appears to be every page on the site, tastes a tad like spam. The pictures and text seem like they were dashed down quickly, to get the site up as fast as possible, though the pink and white colors are nice. Getting to the blog requires some link-hunting (hint: instead of scrolling down the page, just search out “blog†in the menu at the top). It’s a WordPress blog and is much more attractive than its companion site, mostly due to the aesthetics of the WordPress template, the customized banner balancing lily with beautiful woman, and the backgrounds in subtle shades of linen.
Here, all the ads are confined to the sidebar. Surprisingly, there is an assortment of goodies in the blogroll, including the artsy boygirlparty.livejournal.com and refreshing creative writing on bluishorange.com. I found a few new favorites in the blogroll, though its contents were strangely juxtaposed to the content of this particular blog. It piqued my curiosity about the blogger, but unfortunately, the “About†section only displayed the default WordPress message. Some of the blogs listed were weirdly popular and/or mainstream, such as the Blog of a Bookslut and Cute Overload, not to mention Google’s Blog. My cynicism began fluttering again, as I wondered if linking to an assortment of popular, though unrelated blogs was a marketing strategy to increase traffic to Hormones-Beauty-Health. I liked many of the blogs listed, but in a specialized blog like this, it would be more beneficial both for the blog and the reader if the blogroll contained more relevant sites.
The blog posts contained a luscious assortment of homemade recipes for all-natural beauty regiments as well as vegetarian dishes. They offer a lot of health tips, tricks, and information, many of which I’d never heard before and might try in the future. The tip about brushing cornstarch into oily hair made me cringe, but my hair is unreasonably oily, and I’ll try anything, especially if it is as innocuous and inexpensive as cornstarch.
A lot of people will find this blog useful and surprising. If you are health-conscious, vegan, and care about your appearance, this blog consistently offers sweet soy tidbits for your taste buds. Naturally, if you like their free advice, they hope you’ll buy some of their products, so they regularly plug posts with offers from their sponsor, an independent consultant for Arbonne International, a line of beauty products. There are plenty of archives to research, which is always a plus. The first entry, made in December of 2005, is titled “Introduction†and with some punching up, could be the “About†section this blog needs. It starts off, “This Blog is designed to keep you informed on Women’s Health and Beauty Issues.†Nice.
I wish there was a category for “Health†or “Product,†because “Personal†doesn’t seem to fit. Though it’s a few sizes too big, it’s the only one that comes close to fitting, so there it is.
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