Eye shadow as contour: the theory

I'm probably getting really repetitive on the subject of neutral eyeshadow, but Sephora keeps filling my mailbox with catalogs showing models wearing truly outlandish colors--glittery turquoise stripes were featured in the latest--so it doesn't look as though I'll be shutting up any time soon.

So I'll say it again: neutral eye shadows are fantastic on women of a certain age. They do what eye shadow is supposed to do; shadow and sculpt the eyes to make them look bigger, brighter, and more expressive.

They do this by contouring the eye area. Now, it took me a long time to accept the fact that I was going to talk about using eye makeup to contour the eye area, because the old school notions of contouring seem hopelessly out of date.

You know what I mean when I talk about contouring the face with makeup, right? It's a makeup technique where you apply lighter makeup where you want a feature to appear higher or more prominent, and darker makeup where you want a feature to appear deeper or less prominent.

It's frequently used to make noses appear straighter and narrower, or make cheekbones look more prominent. But here's the thing about contouring: it's hard to make it look natural. It was first used in stage makeup, where the audience is very far away from the actors. Then it was used in black and white movies and stills, where you have dramatic lighting and a general aura of glamorous artificiality. But even then, makeup artists had to know what they were doing. Back then--and right now--when you shade and highlight an area, it's all about blending and soft, subtle shades.

As an example of what I'm talking about, take Marlene Dietrich. Her entire face was nothing but makeup and lighting. Here's a photograph of her standing next to Josef von Sternberg, the director who made her a star.

Notice the fairly flat planes of her face. Now look at her with von Sternberg's trademark lighting and a full face of contoured makeup:

I'm not a makeup artist, and I don't know how to do stage or film makeup, but it's pretty clear that Dietrich is wearing way more makeup than even the average Hollywood star of the 1930s--and they wore plenty.

Check out the contouring. I'm no expert, but I can see that a lighter shade of foundation is blended down the middle of her nose, with a darker shade along the side. In the first picture, it looks like she's wearing highlighter under her eyes, and in the second, it's obvious that the artist used rouge to contour her cheekbones (a trick that works very well in black and white photography, but is much less successful in color photographs or real life.)

Take at Dietrich's eye makeup. Her eyebrows are the stuff of legend, so we won't discuss them, except to warn you not to emulate her. Although tweezing her eyebrows off and drawing them on again much higher up did give Dietrich a much larger area in which to apply eyeshadow.

And what eyeshadow! She's wearing a medium shade from the lash line all the way up to the brows, with a lighter shade on the eyelid and a highlighting shade in the inner corner and in a narrow line under the eye. Her crease is shaded much darker. Her eyes are very wide set, and that, added to the increased height of her brow area, means the makeup artist could apply a ton of dark shadow in the U-shaped crease to the back wedge. Her eyes were big to begin with, but the eyeshadow makes them incredible.

And Dietrich was doing this before eyeshadow was commercially available. Instead, she or her makeup artist used soot mixed with baby oil or petroleum jelly.

There, now. Aren't you ashamed that you're not taking full advantage of the lovely, hygienic ready-made shades now available in stores?

Next on The Beauty Boomer: What I Do, or, I know Poppy Buxom, and she's no Marlene Dietrich.


Elsewhere on the web:

For more on makeup in films, see the article on makeup in Film Reference


For how to look more like Marlene Dietrich, go this article in Suite 101

30 Days to 10 years younger--10 minute tips. Tip 10: Lighten up, Francis

When you get to be our age, everyone has one piece of advice about makeup: wear less.

Well, I disagree. I wear much more makeup now than I did in my 20s, 30s, and 40s. For one thing, I wear foundation pretty much every day--I never bothered before. I wear concealer, eye shadow, eyeliner, and eyebrow color pretty frequently, too. But it's not obvious, because I 1) pick the right shades and 2) blend like crazy. I also retouch, check for shine, and fix smears.

These ladies don't. Here's Maggie Gyllenhaal in need of some foundation, but with too much smeary black eyeliner, a startling amount of very pink blusher placed too low on her cheeks, and very bright lipstick.


She looks better here. Her eye makeup is great, and her skin looks beautiful. There's still way too much blusher, though. And it should stop at the bottom of her nose, not go all the way down to her lips.


This is Catherine Zeta-Jones promoting Elizabeth Arden's new Red Door Red lipstick. Where do I start? Too much eyeliner, too much blusher, and basically too harsh a look. Let's just call her Cruella de Lipstick and move on, shall we?

To a different picture of Catherine Zeta-Jones, this time demonstrating that when it comes to bronzers, a little dab'll do you.

Would it be over the top to call her Cruella de Oompa Loompa?

In conclusion, wear as much makeup as you want. But please, emphasize either your eyes or your lips. Limit your blush to a healthy flush. That goes for bronzer, too. And for heaven's sake, keep the eye shadow above the eye.

This advice is for everyone, of course. A 23-year-old needs to guard against a tendency to ladle on the spackle. Makeup is fun, after all. Whee! But you get older, you really need to be careful. Constant vigilance.


Be Joan. Not Bette.

30 Days to 10 years younger--10 minute tips. Tip 2: Update your eyebrows

Nothing updates and refreshes your face quicker and more thoroughly than a good eyebrow reshaping. Unfortunately, eyebrows are an area where Boomers are sometimes a bit clueless. After all, many of us came to age during a dark age for eyebrows. (Literally. Scroll down and check out the pictures.)

Women who came of age in the 1990s and 2000s have a sort of automatic eyebrow savvy that leaves me feeling envious. I mean, they get to be a lot younger and they're all hip to the waxing, tweezing, brow color, brow gel thing? It hardly seems fair.

But here's the crucial point. Women in their 20s and 30s wouldn't dream of letting their eyebrows go au naturel. And that means we shouldn't either.

Show me an eyebrow, and I'll tell you which decade it was from. Do you want the wrong decade waggling over your eyes? Of course not. Scroll down for a brief history of the female eyebrow, from the 1920s to the present:




And just as we come full circle with the penciled-on Dietrich brow, the pendulum swings and thicker, more dramatic brows come back into style.


What decade are your brows? (Please don't say the 1970s. Or 1980s.) Remember, if Joan Crawford could update her eyebrows,


and she did


You can, too!

Joan? Groucho Marx called. He wants his eyebrows back.

For complete instructions on how to pluck your eyebrows, see About.com's article here.

For more on current brow shapes and what not to do, check out Brow Magic by my latest blog discovery, The Underfunded Heiress.