It Isn't Easy Keeping Up With The Platinum: Just Ask Gwen

Platinum hair and scarlet lips.

That certainly reminds us of the late and great movie star Marilyn Monroe. It also brings to mind another great beauty---Gwen Stefani. And at age 42, and a mom to 2 active little boys, Gwen looks gorg.

But it isn't easy,  'Keeping up with the platinum!'.

The September 2012 Harper's Bazaar cover girl doesn't let her roots show through that mass of blondeness, ever!

We LOVE that look on Gwen Stefani, but the platnium blonde upkeep is crazy-loco.  That's why celebrities invest in super stylists to maintain the image, right down to those dark roots that pop up like tell-tale signs.

If you're blonde and have to work at it,  then it becomes a key part of your beauty routine.

Gwen is blonde-inspired by the original 50's bombshell Marilyn, and tells Harper's Bazaar that she keeps those pesky roots away, by using a beauty trick the movie goddess lived by:

 "Do you think Marilyn Monroe had to talk about this?" she asks, smiling. "Well, I heard she did hers with a Q-tip every 10 days, so I try to follow Marilyn's rule." I mention that she's never been photographed with dark roots, and she points to the houndstooth fedora she is wearing. "And you'll never see me with roots either."

We love what this girly-girl says about discovering the beauty of bleach and those sexy red lips:

Gwen recalls how she felt when, at the age of 25, she spent eight hours in a hair salon in Long Beach getting her coveted white-blonde locks. "It was like I'd unlocked the key. I remember feeling like, 'I have arrived. This is me. Finally.'" The red lip came when her grandmother gave her a crimson lipstick when she was in high school. "I remember sitting in my ghetto, beat-up Honda Prelude and putting on that lipstick in the rearview mirror and being like, 'Uh-huh, I like that. That's the shit right there.' I never stopped after that."

Gotta love Gwen Stefani! Her fave L'Oreal lipstick is Infallible  Le Rouge, Ravishing Red ($9.99, at drugstores).