Welcome to the first installment of Natural Selection.  At the end of each month we’ll list our favorite posts of the month, as well as any site news worth chatting about.  The end of the month is a time to celebrate – thirty more days of fashion, trends and personal beauty – and we’d like to celebrate with you.

Here are our favorite posts for July, 2009:

• The Demoiselles sans makeup: On July 1st, we came through on the bargain we made with Eyeliah of Style Symmetry (interviewed her here!) and posted photos of ourselves completely free of makeup. This post started a chain reaction heard ’round the blogosphere, and several other beautiful women submited their own makeupless photos to our Flickr pool.
• Beauty in all shapes: We kicked off our weekly “guest blogger” posts with “My Long Nose” by Freya.  It’s one of the most moving stories of personal acceptance we’ve seen, and it set the stage for future stories about overcoming negative body image.
• Modesty is sexy: Elle gave us a lesson on wearing cute summer tops while staying cool and looking classy in her Modesty in Summertime post, which was a big hit with both busty and small-framed girls.
• What does fat mean to you?: Debate sparked and fizzled over Jen’s post entitled “I Had a Fat Day.” Written off the cuff, it inspired more introspection and conversation than either of us thought it would.  What do you think?

NEWS

You may have noticed some changes occurring on TD in the last week or so – some advertising units on each side of the page, as well as a few strange-looking links to click on – and we wanted to fill you in.  The Demoiselles has started using a limited number of advertisements and affiliates to support some of the expenses of running the site.

• The first of these expenses is Project Wonderful, a pay-per-day (not pay per click) advertising source that lets independent sellers, designers and entrepreneurs choose where they want to advertise…and allows websites to review and approve (or remove) any ads that aren’t up to their standards.  That means that we can make sure that the sites that advertise here – the ones you have to see – are worth it.
• We also decided to add affiliates to The Demoiselles.  They’re all listed at the “Our Affiliates” page, which gives you a link to the company’s site, tells you what they sell and explains why we’re affiliated with them.

Both of these changes serve an important purpose: creating ad revenue – based on clothiers we approve and sites we can control, of course – allows us some funding to continue to purchase and review the trends you want to see on the site.

We want you to know that anything we earn from these affiliates and ads will go right back into the site.  Currently, all of our costs, from hosting the website to buying items to review, comes out of our pockets (and baby, lint ain’t worth much in this economy) and we’re hoping that these less obtrusive advertising options will pad the monetary pain a bit.