Yes, you CAN look your best after 50!
INTRODUCING OUR BRILLIANT NEW BEAUTY COLUMNIST
WHEN I greeted my half-century at the end of March, I finally realised what people meant by ‘facing 50’. All of a sudden, things looked different, and my usual make-up — stylised, all flicked liner and power brows — made me look ten, if not 20, years older.
Sprucing myself up, once an enjoyable diversion, had become akin to painting the Forth Bridge: the moment one dilapidated area was fixed, another started to fall into the sea.
Still, I refuse to resent ageing: my mother died at 69 and would have welcomed the opportunity to age more.
So I tweaked and I softened, lessened and layered, adjusting myself to a new cosmetic reality in which less is more.
This new me is less ‘Alright, Mr DeMille, I’m ready for my closeup’, more deftly accentuated.
My thing will always be too much blush and scent. However, my 50-year-old face requires less blocky brows, smudged rather than winged eyeliner, thickening rather than lengthening mascara, more sparing foundation, a little light contouring and a (very) subtly over-lined pout. A swipe of lipstick to add some much-needed colour and I’m done.
All in, it is a make-up lover’s take on no make-up make-up, availing itself of the best in texture and trompe l’oeil.
Looks-wise, I don’t feel invisible, but I do feel quieter, not so obvious, less defined by my ability to attract.
Frankly, this is something of a relief, even as someone who was not that much of a looker. If sexual power has given way to something like actual power, I’ll take it.
OCCASIONAL hair envy arises when I behold a teenage girl, telling her to enjoy her lustrous locks while she can in the manner of some peri-menopausal Ancient Mariner. I don’t exercise, which needs addressing; my teeth are looking rather ropey; I appear to be going not grey, but ginger; and I have more chins than I know what to do with.
On the other hand, I’ve protected my skin fairly well from sun damage (SPF being the only proven anti-ageing strategy).
Age — with a bit of help from needle-wielding genius Dr Prager — has whittled out some bone structure in a face that used to resemble an amorphous cloud. The black pits under my eyes disappeared when I gave up the mother’s ruin seven years ago. I’m old enough to feel charmed rather than terrorised by the odd spot (youth!).
And, if I do wake up with crone face, then I know how to decrone it. (More on this in future, but I basically cleanse; wake up my face with ice or a £20 frozen massage ball from Amazon; apply face oil; get some circulation going with one of those cheap, reverberating massage tools; then slap on some pearly primer.)
By 50, you know who you are, benefiting from being less self-conscious and more skilled. You care less — in a good way — and are more comfortable, and confident, in your own skin. If Julianne Moore was lovely at 30, she is staggeringly beautiful at 60. At the same time, should one wish to age in a way that appears ageless, one must keep things moving and pick up new tricks.
With her slicked-back crop and edgily-lined eyes, pink hair and radiant rouge, Helen Mirren is fabulously rut-resistant at aboutto-turn 76.
As she once explained to me: ‘I think we get stuck with a look, particularly when we get older.
We forget you can experiment. It’s not the end of the world — you can always wipe it off again.’
Like Helen, I pick up tips avidly: from beauty experts Lisa Eldridge and Trinny Woodall, even 22-year-old social media starlets with their 72-step faces. And my teenage niece is a font of wisdom .
Even where cosmetics feel more necessary at 50, they should remain a source of joy. Joan Collins, a hard-to-believe 88, once told me that painting her face is her morning meditation, and I couldn’t agree more. Feminist to my core, I refuse to be shamed by my love of slap.
As a depressive, I crave cosmetics’ daily theatre to drag myself from week to week. These last few troubled months, we’ve all realised how much we need what millennials term ‘self-care’ — our pleasures outnumbered by our pains.
As we now put a fully-vaccinated foot tentatively forward, let’s make damn sure it’s pedicured. We’re back and we’re better than ever. Older, but better.