People don't buy cars to get them from point A to point B. People buy cars for a feeling, dammit! And this car ad inspires some serious feelings: existential torment, lost love, special moments, sheer beauty. It's one of most visually evocative ads we've seen in a long time; a powerful composition. But then you see it's for Ford Fusion, and you're like, "WTF? Isn't that car a piece of crap?" Then you see the tagline at the end and you're like, "Ha, I don't think so." Then you're like, "SO WHAT DID HE SAY TO THE GIRL, YOU BASTARDS?" So, yes, very evocative. The full ad [via Adrants] after the jump.

The ad above is from Dove beauty products, or more properly, the (chuckle) "Dove Self-Esteem Fund," which is all about teaching girls real beauty, not this highly overproduced, airbrushed and Photoshopped version you see in other ads, such as those for Axe body spray (which shares a corporate parent with Dove). Nevertheless, it's typical though still startling transformation, especially when the almighty Photoshop lasso begins on-the-fly cosmetic surgery.

Uh, to whom exactly is this a shock? Does anybody doubt that Alex Kuczynski would eat live babies if she thought it would keep her looking young?

New York's dueling tabloids love ladies in distress, and Jennifer Panicali, the 22-years-young woman injured by the Upper East Side explodey townhouse is certainly going through a lot. We wish her nothing but the best as she recovers from having shrapnel removed from 100+ parts of her body. But isn't it odd that both the New York Daily News and New York Post keep obsessing on her looks? Consider "Blast beauty kin thank city" (NYDN) and the typically tasteful "Beauty's Blown Away" (NYP). Since Panicali was a former NYDN intern, they can perhaps be excused a little paternal pride — she's a "beautiful aspiring journalist," and they at least try to mix the physical and the intellectual by twice referring to her as a "brainy beauty." Perhaps she's just naturally smokin', and she must know it, as both papers reported that among her first post-blast words were, "Oh, my God, am I going to be disfigured?". The lesson in soliciting public sympathy for your tragedy is clear: (1) Be attractive. (2) Don't be unattractive.

Today's Thursday Styles profiles Lucky beauty director Jean Godfrey-June, whose memoir, Free Gift With Purchase: My Improbable Career in Magazines and Makeup, comes out next week. To which we can only ask, free gifts? Indeed:

Oh, happy news for all you narcissists out there. (And how are you different from our other readers? We have no idea.) New York's famous Bliss spa is having a huge pre-Thanksgiving Day sale, up to 75 percent off all sorts of beautifying products, running only until noon on Wednesday. It's the perfect chance for you to spruce yourself up before Thursday's horrors — turkey, family — break you down again. And the best part is that's really something perfect on sale for every sort of New York woman.

We were slowly reading New York mag's lengthy loveletter to Times columnist Maureen Dowd, but we got stuck on one item in particular, regarding her new book:

Pantene's PR people recently sent a survey to top beauty editors around town, enquiring as to how they like to receive communications about new products. It examines important questions, like how much lead time the editors need, what experts are most helpful to talk to, and what sort of follow-ups they prefer:

Nadine Haobsh, aka the writer behind blog Jolie in NYC — who, after much speculation, was outed as a beauty editor from Ladies Home Journal — dropped us a line yesterday. As we mentioned before, we had simply emailed Haobsh months ago asking where she worked and, when she said LHJ, we shrugged (plus, she said she couldn't get us any Creme de la Mer). She writes:

Formerly anonymous beauty-mag blogger JolieinNYC, whose identity had been the subject of much speculation over at FishbowlNY, was inadvertently outed on Monday by, natch, a beauty publicist.