Beauty changes -- or at least our conception of beauty has changed over the past 500 years. That, in and of itself, can be a refreshing thought when everything in our culture tells you that what is beautiful is x (x being Angelina Jolie, Jessica Biel, Halle Berry, Kate Moss), and if you don't look like those women, you couldn't possibly beautiful.

You only have to look at history to see that standards of physical beauty are highly relative. To prove this point, I found a video that traces the changing face of Western beauty from the Renaissance to the 20th-century. And while the images of beauty in this video are all white (a big problem, I admit), I hope it still proves that beauty can be found in all sorts of sizes and shapes.

Do you think you have what it takes to be a celebrity style maker? If you do, join the club because over the last five years, "styling" has exploded into a full-scale professional career track.

Starting in September, Solent University in Southampton, UK will start its very first vocational degree program geared towards fashion styling. Students will focus on catwalk production, costuming for film and advertising imagery. Suzie Norris, who heads the design program says, "a unique feature of the course will be its emphasis on cutting-edge styling for media publications and events plus live and filmed productions. Graduates will not merely follow established trends but will set new ones."

As exciting as this program sounds, I have a sneaking suspicion that the "design school" track will not replace the traditional channels for succeeding as a stylist. In essence, if you want to be a successful stylist you better resign yourself to years of thankless grunt work in the hopes that someone, some day will appreciate your efforts.

In what could possibly be the raciest public service announcement in history, the Danish Road Safety Council has produced a video in which topless women are shown holding speed limit signs. Since its release on the internet in November, over 7.5 million people, including 500,000 Danes have viewed the film.

The Road Safety Council claims that a full third of the targeted audience -- males between the ages of 18 and 40 -- was more aware of speed limits after having viewed the video. In the Council's opinion, this indicates an educational success because of the increased awareness of road safety standard.

As you might imagine, not everyone in Denmark is on board with this unconventional tactic. Randi Theil Nielsen, a representative from the Women's Council in Denmark has publicly denounced the video as exploitative and ineffective. She told the regional newspaper Jyskevestkysten, "Young naked women are used today to market all sorts of things. Now the message is also speed limits. But honestly, I have a hard time seeing what naked breasts have to do with how fast we drive."

For the past three decades, the denim star has continued to rise. But has the denim revolution reached its peak?

According to fashion writer Hadley Freeman, denim is done. Of course, jeans will always be a wardrobe staple, but Freeman believes that they "won't generate anywhere near the excitement that they have for the past half decade." In her explanation of the denim demise, Freeman points to consumer fatigue, overexposure, and a lack of ingenuity on the design end as the principle reasons that jeans have had their day in the sun.

In place of jeans, Freeman also predicts that tights and leggings will continue to grow as an alternative to denim.

The style-haters over at Radar Magazine recently announced a list of the top five most pretentious looks of 2006. Because I have such a soft spot for mocking bad fashion (the StyleFoul category was my brainchild), I wanted to make sure that Styledash readers knew about Radar's picks.

Here are the top five most pretentious looks of 2006:

1. Fingerless gloves
2. Oversized headphones
3. Cardigans worn over the shoulder
4. Sunglasses worn inside
5. House of Holland t-shirts

While many of these trends haven't quite reached the mid-Atlantic, I certainly agree with Radar's assessment of the fingerless gloves and the oversized headphones.

I do take issue with the sunglasses inside point -- wearing shades inside doesn't necessarily imply pretentious airs. After all, people do get their eyes dilated every so often. And my mother -- who happens to be a chronic sunglasses inside violator -- claims that she simply forgets that she is wearing shades in the first place. Radar should really have taken into account medical necessity and personal flakiness when they dubbed sunglasses inside as pretentious.

What do you think is the most pretentious style of 2006?

Five years ago, the hottest baby names were places (Dakota, Madison, Cody) and descriptive nouns (Cadence, Bliss, Truancy). Nowadays in this post-Beckham procreation period, baby names have taken a decidedly retro turn.

According to Namebrain, an online tool used to track name popularity over the past 100 years, 2006's most popular names strikingly resemble the most popular names from 1906.

At the top of the list are the names Jack and Olivia, followed by Martha, Arthur, Henry and Alfie. Lily and Edie are also quite trendy, no doubt the result of high-profile namesakes like model Lily Cole and Warholian-muse Edie Sedgwick.

There are certainly a few anomalies in this list. Take for instance Nevaeh (Heaven spelled backwards) and Lola (a name that naturally brings to mind burlesque dancers and trannies), which seem to have absolutely no root in history or in reason for that matter.

All of this is to say that when it comes to names, what goes around comes around, unless it doesn't. So choose your baby name carefully because your kid will have to have it for life.

We all know that city life and city people are very different from country life and country people. But would you believe that birds are also affected by the urban/suburban divide?

Dutch researchers have recently discovered that urban birds have a different song pattern than their rural counterparts. Cities birds tend to have short fast songs, versus the slower, longer melodies of their country cousins. Study leaders said urban birds had developed shorter, more varied, higher-pitched sounds so that they can be heard above trains, airplanes and road traffic. Country birds, on the other hand, have little environmental noise to compete with so their songs tend to softer and more melodic.

Pretty cool isn't it?

[via bbc.co.uk]

The best part of Project Runway isn't the catty backbiting or the under-pressure designs. In my humble opinion, the true star of Project Runway is Tim Gunn. Silver-haired and dashing, Parsons fashion design professor Tim Gunn gives the otherwise free-for-all reality show a truly professional feel.

According to PEOPLE magazine, Tim Gunn might not be returning for season four of Project Runway. Until now, the filming of the show took place after the end of the semester, when Gunn's academic commitments were minimal. But this time around, Gunn has insisted that he will not be available for filming during the academic year. So far, Bravo has not locked in a filming schedule, so there is still a chance that they can find a way to include Gunn.

Even if it is disappointing, I admire Tim Gunn for being so committed to teaching. However, from a purely selfish point of view, if Tim Gunn isn't back next season, I'm really going to miss him!

So please, Tim, just make it work!

Chicago center Ben Wallace's recent decision to wear a headband during a game against the Knicks has created a small crisis in the world of basketball. Part of Wallace's contract states that players are not allowed to wear headbands, but wore one anyway. Once the slightly oblivious coaches noticed the headband, the center was immediately pulled off the court, where he pouted for ten minutes before agreeing to take off the headband.

According to those close to Wallace, his behavior has nothing to do with the headbands per se. Rather, wearing a headband his way of venting frustration with the disappointing season (i.e. he can't blast his pre-game music, the Bulls aren't winning, he isn't playing well).

Call me crazy, but my take is that if you have a $60 million contract, you really ought to follow the team's uniform rules without complaining. Being a professional athlete is a job, after all. Jobs by their very nature entail things that are unpleasant, so Wallace should stop being a baby and get over it.

Despite Hillary Clinton's significant lead in the New York Senate Race, her opponent John Spencer has launched a last minute campaign blitzkrieg. Among Spencer's tactics was making one particularly biting remark about Clinton's looks. Spencer suggested that Clinton had transformed herself from an ugly duckling to a presentable 59-year-old with the help of "millions of dollars" of "work."

Ouch!

Sure, it's campaign season and this has been a particularly ugly election cycle. But still, am I the only one who thinks it's a little unfair for a candidate to accuse his or her opponent of being ugly? Moreover, in an era of Botox counters and lunch hour face-lifts, is it really such a shameful thing for our politicians to want to have the same medical fountain of youth that the rest of us enjoy? I'm not promoting plastic surgery by any means, but I do think there's an unfair double standard at play. Besides, since when does being ugly make unqualified for public office? Need I mention Abraham Lincoln?