One Amazing Women & Science Collab

As celebrity fashion and makeup collaborations grow increasingly absurd and profit-centric, this news will bring tears to your mascara-crusted eyes: L'Oréal recently collaborated, so to speak, with a number of prominent women, but the result wasn't yet another themed nail polish collection. At the cosmetics company's 10th annual Fellowships for Women in Science award ceremony, they awarded five amazing female scientists with up to $60,000 each, designed to support the scientists' research.

How encouraging is that? Here we are, desperate for positive female role models and women who build each other up rather than tear each other down. We may love makeup, but we're wary of its effects in a culture obsessed with the superficial. So to see a makeup company openly supporting female intellect and scientific progress without any blush- or foundation-caked strings attached — well, we're practically sniffling over here.

Why does L'Oréal care so much about the sciences, you ask? Makeup may be skin-deep, but the process of constructing makeup — or eye cream, or anti-wrinkle serum — is serious science. Though it may be in L'Oréal's best interests to support the sciences, none of the fellowships were awarded to beauty-related research. The winners, who are all at the beginning of their scientific careers, are researching everything from biofuels to bird eggs to beneficial bacteria in the intestines. Not that we'd complain if they happened to develop a serum for preventing hormonal breakouts or a magic pill that keeps our teeth white forever, but we're also crazy about alternative sources of energy.

Jessica Rosenworcel, a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission and the lady who began the ceremony proceedings, told WWD, "There are just too few women in technology and science and engineering. The fellowship recipients tonight are the new faces of science ... if [science] is the kind of career that young girls want to pursue, I think they put a new face on it." We'll raise a chipping manicure to that.

Image: Wikimedia Commons