Some days it’s a little harder to get it together. You know those days…your skin won’t behave, your hair just isn’t happening, you wish you were someone else (someone like Gisele Bundchen). To top it off, the outfit you’d workshopped in your head last night hasn’t worked in reality – and you only realise this standing at the bus stop.

I once found myself deep in a discussion about the intricacies of childbirth with a 65-year old woman I had only just met. When delivering her son she’d had what she described as the biggest orgasm of her life. (Never did I think I’d hear the words “son” and “orgasm” in the same sentence.)

In my High Maintenance column this week, I damn our politicians for continuing to uphold the GST on tampons, nine years after an exemption was first tabled in Parliament. Despite Labor Party protests in 2000, the Rudd government haven’t reviewed the tax. [Why their wives/daughters/mistresses haven’t managed to convince them to drop it, I just don’t understand.] But no matter, Coles have come to the rescue! The retailer has reduced prices on all feminine hygiene products by 10 per cent to offset the GST.

Could this sleek and slimline palette really be under $15? Sure is. Treat yourself to a Diet Coke with the change. Then check out all the bargainous beauty we love but couldn’t quite squeeze into the mag this week…

News from NY: Thierry Mugler, the designer behind shoulder pads we adore and fragrances we wear even more, is the backer behind Green Aria, the olfactory opera opening at the Guggenheim any day now. Orchestrating music with scentual sequences that stream out from “scent speakers” fixed to the audience’s chairs, we’re not just talking posh smellovision. Green Aria is all about the olfactory. The musical score was carefully composed to tell the story of scents like Magma, Green and Crunchy Green, which were designed by French parfumer Christophe Laudamiel.

So you’ve read our Strike A Pose feature in this week’s Grazia and you’re about to master the celebrity moves.

It’s a topsy turvy time. Established companies are crashing...Thousands seem to lose their jobs somewhere in the world each week...And then there was the Yves Saint Laurent auction at the Grand Palais in Paris last week. The late designer’s art collection – amassed with his long-time partner, Pierre Berge – raised an enormous $746 million, shattering all estimates. Among the Picassos, Mondrians and Matisse artworks was a little perfume bottle with a very big price tag.

In the spirit of neither confirming nor denying that we have any bad beauty habits, the Grazia beauty desk is ditching beauty resolutions this year. Instead we’ve workshopped a wishlist of 2009 inventions and innovations that would make the world a more beautiful place for all womankind. Thank us later.