Free Gift with Purchase: My Improbable Career in Magazines and Makeup [Hardcover]

Jean Godfrey-June (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 18, 2006

Everybody loves beauty products. Even if you think you know nothing about them, or even if you think you hate them, you actually know plenty about them and, in fact, have several of them that you love. You have major opinions that lie barely beneath the surface. Women whomodestly/moralistically claim to “never use all that beauty stuff” are big Clinique ladies, usually with a healthy helping of Neutrogena. —Free Gift with Purchase

From the beloved beauty editor of Lucky magazine comes a dishy, charming, and insightful memoir of an unlikely career. Combining the personal stories of a quirky tomboy who found herself in the inner circle of the beauty world with priceless makeup tips (Is there really a perfect red lipstick out there for everyone? Which miracle skin potion actually works?), Jean Godfrey-June takes us behind the scenes to a world of glamour, fashion, and celebrity.

Godfrey-June’s funny, smart, outsider perspective on beauty has set her apart since she first started writing her popular “Godfrey’s Guide” column for Elle magazine. In Free Gift with Purchase, she invites us into the absurd excess of the offices, closets, and medicine cabinets of beauty editors. From shelves upon shelves of face lotion, conditioner, lipstick, eye cream, wrinkle reducers, and perfume to thoroughly disturbing “acne breakfasts” and “cellulite lunches”; from the lows (a makeover from hell, getting pedicure tips from porn stars) to the highs (the glamour of the fashion shows in Paris, lounging in bed with Tom Ford, a flight on Donald Trump’s private jet, and landing her dream job at Lucky magazine), we see it all.

Like a friend sharing the details of her incredibly cool job, Jean lets us in on the lessons she’s learned along the way, about the eternal search for the right haircut and the perfect lip gloss, of course—but more important, about what her job has meant to her and why she loves what she does, blemishes and all.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The beauty editor of Lucky magazine, Godfrey-June endears herself to readers with her admission that even she—a woman who receives "between fifty and two hundred products a day"—has the occasional bad hair day, the kind that "takes over and infects your entire being, moving quickly from your hair to your skin to your expression to your entire demeanor." Her memoir is fun, instructive and dishy (she used to work at Elle and recounts all manner of office brouhahas involving such personalities as the French creative director she calls "The Playboy," and the American editor-in-chief, dubbed "Above the Fray"). Certain readers will be enthralled by a clued-in woman demystifying what is for many an impervious world: this is what really works, and this is what's bunkum. But other snippets—Godfrey-June's thoughts on Chanel (buy one piece at full price and that's it, forever) and the Victoria's Secret fashion show (akin to a Siegfried and Roy performance), for instance—are less compelling. What saves the memoir from devolving into a series of pointless anecdotes is her constant awareness that her job is "impossible to take seriously." Some people devote their lives to finding a cure for cancer, but "Me, I ponder lipstick." (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The book is full of insider jokes (which Godfrey-June shares) and multiple mentions of fashion celebrities such as Marc Jacobs and Tom Ford. It is also loaded with almost--every-page sidebars that reveal the truth about big-night makeup, positive spa outcomes, and best haircuts, among a passel of beauty tips and hints. Through it all, our faithful guide, beauty editor of Lucky^Bmagazine, dispenses humorous information about her career, the fashion business, pregnancy, magazines' fashion closets, and the always-present battle against encroaching age. Much of her captivating prose is laugh-out-loud funny (the Fifi Awards story, for one) as well as eminently practical (think about bestowing a basket of beauty products on health-care caregivers). Who could argue against the statement that perfume is "the beauty equivalent of mystery meat"? Or that models are simply genetic freaks? A feel-good, tell-the-truth, behind-the-scenes look at the fashion business. Barbara Jacobs
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harmony (April 18, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307237486
• ISBN-13: 978-0307237484
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #905,947 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jean Godfrey-June is the real deal, April 24, 2006

By 

Meg C. Halverson (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Free Gift with Purchase: My Improbable Career in Magazines and Makeup (Hardcover)

Jean Godfrey-June offers beauty advice that real women (even, gasp, working moms) can benefit from. Her monthly column in Lucky magazine is something I flip to first, with much anticipation, and she manages to cut through the hoo-ha of beauty marketing with both grace and humor. Equally admirable in my book, she makes trenchant observations about the crossover products -- those products one buys for your children or other members of your family that can be re-used for yourself. In this way, her guidance marries the best of the women's magazine ilk (do it cheaper or more efficiently) with the heady fashion forward tone of Lucky. I love going to Target with her column in hand, and buying 60% of what appears in any given month. And when she does reccomend a pricier item, I have full confidence that it will not disappoint. I think it's entirely possible that she is beauty's fairy godmother for every woman (and baby, teen, and man, to boot).

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A non-fiction Devil Wears Prada, October 21, 2006

By 

Bookaholic "Bookaholic" (Bookville, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Free Gift with Purchase: My Improbable Career in Magazines and Makeup (Hardcover)

If you liked "The Devil Wears Prada," the book or the movie, you will love this book. It's like a non-fiction version of the same story -- nice girl works at huge, fancy magazine with stuck-up, crazy people. NOTE, the author is mostly writing about her time at Elle Magazine. I was truly pleased with the level of dish. It almost made me want to dig around the internet for the real identities of these wacky magazine people. I also like how the author, Jean, gave us in the inside story on being a beauty editor -- lots of fancy, but boring, lunches with lots of free products, a whole closet of beauty products at her disposal. But, and she is the first to admit, most of these are hyped-up, useless, French-scientist-touted jars of goop. It's refreshing to have Jean tell the truth but admit to being taken in by the glamour. The other thing I liked is that it sounds like her new employer, Lucky Magazine, is a swell place to work -- which is great since I personally love the magazine and am glad to know that the people behind it are as good as the product. If you are interested in makeup, magazine publishing, then you should read this book. I will just warn you that it starts slowly -- Jean spends a few chapters discussing her youth, and this may not be your cup of tea or resound with you. It'll sound much better in the novel I hope Jean writes!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable and well written, July 7, 2006

By 

E. Griffin (Wilton, CT, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Free Gift with Purchase: My Improbable Career in Magazines and Makeup (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed Free Gift with Purchase. Athough it might be hard to tell from looking at my wardrobe or make-up, I am a big fan of beauty and fashion magazines, and read almost all of them each month, plus some from Europe. Godfrey-June provides an inside perspective of working for two famous beauty magazines, and of the products and companies that they feature. As you would expect from a established writer, the book is very well written, and although there is some insider gossip, none of it is uber-mean.

Godfrey-Jean intersperses some personal anecdotes along with her work stories, including a hilarious story about how June's mother made June and her sister get pixie cuts when they were young. I thought my mom was the only one!

Free Gift with Purchase is an engaging afternoon read, both for the subject matter and the adept handling by the author.