An online ad featuring Ashton Kutcher as an Indian man has been withdrawn from Facebook and YouTube after viewers complained it was racist.

Lip balm does not usually register high on the beauty thrill scale. For tweens not yet of an age for class-A cosmetics, its permutations in flavour are engrossing stuff. But once you've experienced the hit of proper lipstick and the instant transformation of full-on colour, barely there balms get relegated to non-make-up status – a functional bit of kit, but hardly pulse-quickening.

The hair/make up

As unemployment and ticket prices both rise, will young adults continue to be able to afford trips to the movies? Geoffrey Macnab reports

Taking off one's make-up inspires varying emotions. On the one hand, there's relief in that it usually signals impending sleep. On the other, a wearying sense of the Sisyphean cycle of painting on and scrubbing off.

Unwitting participants in a scientific study were egged on to inflict pain on contestants in a fake TV show

Avon Products, the cosmetics company, has turned its nose up at a $10bn (£6.24bn) takeover offer from the perfume maker Coty.

In 1932, the company launched the very first red nail varnish. Since then, its products have become staples on dressing tables around the world. Rebecca Gonsalves charts its rise

Four decades of photo shoots with royalty and film stars, musicians and, well, everyday people left Patrick Lichfield with a wealth of stories as well as a pile of Polaroids. Visitors to Nunnington Hall in North Yorkshire can now catch a glimpse of those shoots with the first exhibition of the behind-the-scenes shots that formed part of his personal collection. It records every major shoot the celebrated photographer worked on from the early 1970s to 2004.

Nick Clegg is well placed to act as an honest broker and to bang heads together

A leading union today attacked the jobs "carnage" in the public sector after official figures showed a 381,000 reduction in the number of workers since the general election.

The nation's love affair with booze is centre stage in a slew of dramas that examine our problematic relationship with alcohol

The hair/make-up

Blue eyeshadow has cut a friendless figure in the make-up world for some time; after outrageous popularity in the Abigail's Party years, it slipped into disdain for many. The logic of this contempt is fuzzy. Some women will tell you it is horrible because it looks "unnatural". Of course, the same could be said – though rarely is – of flicky black eyeliner or scarlet lips. The difference, then, lies in a belief that make-up should mimic and exaggerate, even to an absurd degree, some existing facial trait or tone.