Godfrey-June, Jean 1964–

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Godfrey-June, Jean 1964–

PERSONAL:

Born July 22, 1964; married; children: two.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Upper Grandview, NY.

CAREER:

Beauty editor and writer. Elle, former beauty and fitness director, beginning 1993; beauty scene.com, former editor-in-chief; Lucky, current beauty editor.

WRITINGS:

Free Gift with Purchase: My Improbable Career in Magazines and Makeup, Harmony Books (New York, NY), 2006.

Author of articles for magazines including Vogue, Conde Nast Traveler, Worth, New York, Mademoiselle, Glamour, and Seventeen.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jean Godfrey-June has worked as a beauty editor for years for both print and online publications. In her current role as beauty editor at the magazine Lucky, she writes a monthly beauty column and is known as "not just a beauty expert, but someone readers turn to for a highly individual, irreverent approach to deciphering the ever-expanding maze of products available to color, highlight, firm, and enhance," according to Rachel Kramer Bussel who interviewed Godfrey-June for Gothamist.

The author used her experience and credibility in the beauty field to write Free Gift with Purchase: My Improbable Career in Magazines and Makeup. In her book, Godfrey-June delves into how she ended up on her career path as a beauty editor. The author "portrays herself as an unlikely candidate for a stiletto-wearing beauty editor. Growing up in an academic household—her father is a biologist who studies butterflies—in northern California, she describes an ‘ugly duckling’ childhood in which she was deprived of sugar cereals and prime-time television while compelled by her mother to wear an androgynous bobbed haircut she loathed," as Natasha Singer put it in her review of the book for the New York Times Book Review. In addition, Godfrey-June takes readers behind the scenes at both Elle and Lucky, shedding light on what it is like to be a beauty editor for a major magazine. She also shares her favorite products, makeup tips, and shortcuts throughout the book. "Jean offers little hints and tips and writes about things like acne, bad hair days, cellulite, her love of self tanner and getting her hair cut by the world famous Sally Hirschberger. This is a completely enjoyable and fun book that you will zip through quickly and revel in your insider information brought to you by Jean," noted Cindy Bokma in an interview with the author for the Web site Conversations w/ Famous Writers. Booklist's Barbara Jacobs described the book as a "feel-good, tell-the-truth, behind-the-scenes look at the fashion business."

In her interview with Bussell, Godfrey-June talks about what led her to write Free Gift with Purchase: "The book is very much in the same voice as my column at Lucky for six years and at Elle for six years before that. Ever since I started doing the column people would say, you should write a book. That voice is easy to read. It just didn't seem possible for whatever reason to me. About a year and a half ago, my friend Hilton Als, who's written for The New Yorker, said ‘You should write a book.’ He gave me a list of agents. Somebody giving me that extra push made me feel like it was a possible thing to do."