30 Days to 10 years younger--10 minute tips. Tip 4: Curl your lashes

I know this sounds incredibly picky, but think about it.

Ages conspires to bring you down--both literally and figuratively. Think about what it's done to your figure. You still have everything you've ever had! Unfortunately, it's two inches lower down. And the same is true of your face. Just as your body seems to want to move south, your cheeks start to migrate towards your jawline.

OK, I'll stop before I get us all depressed. The thing is, you can counteract this effect by drawing the eye back up. This will de-emphasize your face's journey southwards.

This is why women used to cut their hair short as they got older--to draw the eye upwards. It's why bat wing eyeliner was invented. I suspect it's one reason we all love wearing sunglasses. And for all I know, it's why women used to wear hats all the time.

So do me a favor and at least give it a try. Curl your lashes, and see if it brightens your face--and your outlook.

What kind of eyelash curler should you use? Genuine hard-core fashionistas swear by Shu Uemera's model


which is available at Ulta for $19.00

But I get perfectly respectable results with a Revlon curler, also available at Ulta for $4.29.


How to curl your lashes

1. Start with clean, dry lashes, and curl them before you apply your mascara. If you curl your lashes when you're wearing mascara, you're likely to leave a few lashes behind on the curler. Ouch.
2. Position the curler so that it's just ahead of the roots of your lash line. Close the curler and squeeze firmly for a slow count of five.
3. If you have large eyes, you might want to curl your lashes more than once, aiming the curler towards one corner, then holding it in the middle, then doing the other corner of each eye.
4. Some people achieve a more natural-looking curl by curling their lashes in stages. They curl once at the roots, then "walk" the curler further out along the lash and curl again.
5. If you have stubbornly straight lashes, try heating your eyelash curler first with a hair dryer. (Just don't let it get crazy hot, OK?)
6. If your lashes are simply impossible--the equivalent of a sullen teenager--there are also heated lash curlers. (Which, to continue the metaphor, must be boot camp for eyelashes.) This Japonesque one is available at Ulta for $17.39.

I hope I've convinced you to at least give this a try. Honestly, on days where I'm really rushed, there are times I curl my lashes and skip mascara. The bright-eyed effect of curling my lashes has become more important than the lengthening/thickening/darkening effect of wearing mascara. I know--gasp!--but it's true.


Enough information to make your eyelashes curl:

Seventeen magazine has a short video that illustrates the process--to watch it, click here.

Makeupalley is one-stop shopping for product reviews. If you haven't joined, please do--it's an invaluable resource. Then check here to see reviews of eyelash curlers.

30 Days to 10 years younger--10 minute tips. Tip 3: Triage

OK, the whole thing started because I was working on a video about eyebrows. Yes, like Badger, I was thinking about dipping a toe into the growing field of vlogging.

So I was in the bathroom applying eyebrow powder and talking to myself in the mirror. You know, practicing. Suddenly I realized that I needed to drop off my daughter's lunch at school. And that the lunch bell was going to ring at 12:05. And that it was 11:55. And while my eyebrows were looking particularly fetching, the rest of me was still in my pajamas.

My daughter's school is a five minute walk away. Which gave me one minute to get dressed, two minutes to fix lunch, and two minutes to clean up my act.

The two minutes to fix lunch was easy. I put together a PB&J sandwich, a snack-sized bag of Doritos, a container of chocolate pudding, and an orange.

Then I spent the same amount of time cleaning up my act in case a teacher or another mom snagged me after I dropped off lunch. And I realized that I was just as fast and efficient at getting ready as I was at making lunches. It's because I had the cosmetics equivalent of snack-sized bags of Doritos ready to go.


My first step was to wipe my face with my son's Stridex Daily Care Maximum pads. Despite their tough anti-acne talk, they're actually just little wipes soaked in a gentle salicylic acid solution. There's no Benzoyl Peroxide or alcohol or anything harsh like that. They're a step more thorough than a cotton ball with toner--perfect for a quick clean up.

Then I applied a pea-sized blob of Garnier Nutritioniste Daily Moisture Lotion SPF 28 all over my face

and finished with a fast slick of my beloved Revlon ColorStay Lipglaze in Infinite Rose.
Then I disguised the rest of me with some clothes, my favorite black puffy jacket, black and gray fingerless gloves, a gray wool beanie over my disheveled locks, and a pair of sunglasses.

And shot out the door at the speed of light.

The lesson? We all need to figure out the one or two products that will make us look at least halfway presentable time we're incredibly time-crunched. (I'm aware that the phrase "time-crunched" usually does not denote a housewife talking to herself in the bathroom--but bear with me.) At our age, looking good takes planning. There are products out there that can make us look 100 percent better--and in almost no time at all. For me, the crucial thing is lip color. I'm deeply unhappy when I'm caught without it, so I try to always have something handy, even if it's just Cherry Chap-Stick.

I don't sweat my eye makeup nearly as much, probably because I always have glasses on. Everybody's different. Your first priority might be concealer, mascara, or eyebrow color.

Do you know your first priorities? Have you figured out a three minute system? If not, you should figure it out. Because I'm here to tell you, a combination of fuzzy PJs and impeccably filled brows doesn't cut it.

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.

Keeping your look fresh: How to cull

The ideal closet holds clothes you wear regularly, with enough space around your pieces so they don't get crushed or wrinkled. If your closet is very far from this ideal, you need to go through your clothes and get rid of anything that isn't working for you.

Empty your closet Take all your hanging clothes out of the closet. (I stack mine up on my bed.) Then go through the stacks and evaluate each item. If you wear a piece regularly, hang it back up in the closet.

Right away, this should give you a pretty good idea of where you stand. Don't be surprised if the stack of clothes you rarely or never wear is five times bigger than the stack you put back in the closet. It happens.

Clothes that don't fit Make a stack of clothes that you're not wearing because they don't fit. Are they too small? Unless you're within 10 pounds of their fitting again, I'd say get rid of them.

Remember--we're recovering frumpaholics. The lure of the past is very strong. Resist it. If you have to lose 30 pounds before a pair of jeans will zip again, shouldn't they be jeans from this year, and not jeans from 2004?

I understand the desire to zip up your old skinny jeans. Keep a pair if you must. One pair. And don't wear them in public. I don't want you to look like you've been doing the Time Warp.

If the clothes are too large, good for you! Now get rid of them. OK, you can save one pair of fat jeans to wear when you pose the cover of your weight-loss memoir. But larger size clothing is pure gold for thrift shops.

Clothes that are dated This is where women of a certain age run into problems. We seem to lose our sense of what's current and blithely go on wearing clothes that are five years out of date. So evaluate each piece based on what you see in stores and catalogs right now. Trust me, you're not seeing ankle-duster coats, tapered pants, witchy-toed shoes, embroidered jeans, hooded sweaters, or mid-calf-length skirts in stores these days, so you shouldn't see them in your closet.

Timeless basics What about classics? Aye, there's the rub. You might not be wearing them right now, but good wool, cashmere, camel's hair, and silk are expensive. If they're in a classic style, you won't want to get rid of them. OK, we'll deal with them later. For now, you can keep them.

Upkeep issues If you haven't been wearing a piece because it requires expensive dry cleaning, hand-washing, or fussy ironing, think about it. Not wearing your loveliest clothes and sticking to wash-and-wear t-shirts and jeans every single day is like packing away your good china and crystal and eating off paper plates. Clothes are meant to be worn. If you're not wearing them because the upkeep is too time-consuming or expensive, maybe these pieces shouldn't be in your closet. Let them go.

If a piece needs needs repairs/tailoring, take care of it. Then enjoy.

Mistakes Then there are the pieces you bought in some kind of clearance sale feeding frenzy. Some of them still have the tags on them. Keeping those clothes is false economy. It won't get you your money back. If it's a mistake--wrong color, something's off about the fit, it turns out you don't have a garden party to attend--what's it doing in your closet? It's a squatter. Get rid of it.

Seasonal/Special Occasion clothes Are a lot of your clothes out of season? I live in Chicago and have to buy clothes for freezing cold winters and hot, sticky summers. I have tiny, old-fashioned closets, so twice a year, I go through the ritual of packing away out-of-season clothes. You might not have to do this, but at least set aside a section of your closet for rarely- or seasonally-worn clothes. It will cut down on the visual clutter.

The next step OK, now. The clothes you actually wear are back in the closet. There's a pile of stuff to clean/mend/repair. What to do with the rejects? You can hold a clothing swap with your friends; bring your too-big clothes to a Weight Watchers meeting; sell the clothes on eBay; or bring them to a consignment store.

You can also donate them to non-profit. My church holds a huge rummage sale every year. Prices on sale day are so low that people come from miles around to shop the sale. The proceeds benefit various local agencies, including shelters for homeless women. I pack my rejects off to the rummage sale drop-off knowing that every piece I donate will find a good home. Which makes me feel not just lucky, but smug. I love that.

Final thoughts Clearing out your closets is hard work. You'll find yourself playing the blame game--beating yourself up for having gained weight or wasted money. But think about it--by getting rid of the evidence, you'll have a fresh start. You won't have dozens of pieces of clothing hanging in your closet making you feel bad every time you try to put together an outfit. Doing a major clear out is like ripping off a bandaid in one go, rather than teasing it off in tiny little tugs.

Trust me. The sight of your closets filled with wearable, comfortable clothes that suit the life you're living now will fill you with nothing but joy.

(Oh, and before you get rid of everything, please blog about it. With pictures. Like my friend Badger did here.)

This is Part 2 of a two-part post. Part 1 is here.

30 Days to 10 years younger--10 minute tips. Tip 1: Find a MLBB lippie

Welcome to my month-long series on easy ways to freshen up your look! My first tip is to start wearing a "my-lips-but-better" shade of lipstick (or lipgloss.) And to wear it every day.

See, age has some subtle and not-so-subtle ways of affecting the way we look. We all notice when our hair starts to turn gray, but we don't always notice the sneakier changes.

As we get older, our complexions get a little darker. And our lips lose both volume and pigment. The good news is that this combination of changes can be disguised with the right shade of lipstick.

For years I thought of myself as a lighter shade of pale. I had fair, freckly, burns-don't-tan skin. I always bought the lightest shade of foundation available.

And then it occurred to me that my skin was no longer the Snow White-iest of Snow White. It had gotten a bit darker. And unfortunately, a bit sallower. And unfortunately, so had my teeth.

And my lips? Had sort of disappeared. Not in size--they're still evident. But they're paler than they used to be.

We hear about the loss of lip volume all the time--and we see the regrettable attempts some celebrities make to regain it.


But very few people talk about a loss of lip pigments. Well, it happens. Trust me, the pale lip look, while fashionable, is not flattering at our age. It accentuates what's already happening. The smoky-eye/pale combination that is all over the fashion magazines? Unless you have flawless, pearly teeth, plump lips, and incredibly beautiful eyes, don't go there.


Instead, find a wearable, between pink-and-brown shade that the makeup mavens on MakeupAlley call "My Lips but Better." It'll be a shade you can swipe on and go--with no fussy blending, layering, pencilling, and glossing. Your MLBB shade makes you look better even when it's the only makeup you're wearing. It will compliment your complexion and make your teeth look whiter.

You find this shade checking the color of the inside of your bottom lip. Go up to a mirror, roll down your lower lip, and check the shade. See how it's darker than your lips--but just a bit? That's the shade you're aiming for.

Here are some suggestions to start you on your search:

Revlon's Super Lustrous Lipstick in Smoky Rose
Revlon's Super Lustrous Lipstick in Gold Pearl Plum (this is actually a bit pink on me)
Revlon ColorStay Soft&Smooth Lipcolor in Fabulous Fig (this is a bit dark, so I apply lightly)
Revlon ColorStay Mineral Lipglaze in Infinite Rose (lovely, but not infinite! I have to reapply)
Bobbi Brown Shimmering Lip Gloss in Berry and Orchid

Other makeup junkies recommend MAC Hug Me; Palladio Nude; Urban Decay Naked; Clinique Guava Stain; Nars Dolce Vita.

Keeping your look fresh: Cull

When you want to freshen up your look, the first thing you think about is buying something new. And this is a great idea--if you've just graduated from college and are working at your first office job.

But in my stage of life, my closets--yes, that's closets in the plural--and drawers are overloaded with clothes. When I go on a real laundry-doing binge, I literally can't shut my dresser drawers. (You know, it may just be possible that I need to get rid of my Red Sox 2004 World Series Champions t-shirts. Maybe owning six of them is overload. Ya think?)

It occurs to me that this is as embarrassing and confessional as anything I could have come up with as a mommyblogger. You know the old saying, "Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you what you are?" My version of that is "Describe the contents of your closets, and people will sign you up for Hoarders."

So OK, maybe you aren't in the same situation. But the fact remains, at our point in life, it's far more likely that you're dealing with too many clothes than too few. Nowadays it's easier to have too much of something than too little. Unless you ruthlessly curate your clothes, you're going to end up with a closet full of stuff you never wear.

Not to mention that some of us change sizes with a certain sad regularity. We lose weight and whee! We buy tons of new clothes. Then we gain back the weight--but does anyone ever get rid of their "skinny" clothes? Please leave a comment if you do, because otherwise, I'll refuse to believe you exist.

And the sad reality is that getting rid of stuff is much harder work than just going shopping. It's grueling and unglamorous and a lot of emotions are bound up in our clothes. Each one speaks of personal successes or failures. A lot more is bound up in them than just money, although the financial aspect has its own power.

Which is why your instincts want to send you to the mall. Resist this instinct. First find out what you own that's worth keeping.

Part 2--Keeping your look fresh: how to cull

The Beauty Boomer Manifesto

Hello, invisible internet friends!

I have a confession to make. I'm older than you are.

I'm 53, and at 53, I have to work twice as hard and spend twice the money and time to look half as good as I did when I was 27. Well, I have two options; I can continue to fight the good fight, or I can give up.

I plan to keep fighting.

I plan to keep fighting because I feel better about myself when I do. I plan to keep fighting because it makes my husband and children feel better about me. Most important, I plan to keep fighting because it shows the world that I'm still in the game. My glory days are not over; they're just beginning.

Like it or not, people judge you by your looks--and they do it all the time.

One of the things they judge is your age. Another is your perceived level of hipness.

Here's the deal: age and hipness do not have to co-relate. Perceived age is the combination of the impression made by your size, silhouette, complexion, coloring, grooming, clothes, accessories, and makeup. Some of these things can be easily fixed. Others you have to live with. But hipness? Looking in the know? Can easily be tweaked. And that makes you come across as younger.

It takes work. You have to leave your comfort zone. Because let's face it; your comfort zone is frumpy. It's the same hair style for 20 years. It's the overcoat you bought in 1995 that still has plenty of wear in it. It's glasses from 2004.

And frumpiness sneaks up on you. Like age, a lack of hipness doesn't happen overnight. You get busy with other things, and you gradually lose touch. You look up and the 90s--the decade you were hoping to catch up on because babies and graduate school made you miss most of them--are already being revived.

Now, I may be a recovering frump, but at least I've developed some taste and discrimination over the years. Forty years of reading fashion magazines tends to have that effect. In this blog, I'm planning on sharing what I've learned.

I also want to find out what you've learned. What has worked; what hasn't. Some of you posted comments back when I first starting moving in this direction. I've got several posts in draft that are dealing with these issues, so please keep the comments coming!

Elsewhere:

Poppy at BlogHer BeautyHacks:

Shimmery Makeup: Not Just for Teens

Nail Polish Trends for Spring, 2010

Upcoming:

I. The Five Cs of keeping your look fresh:

1. Cull
2. Coordinate
3. Cost -- How to prioritize
4. Change
5. Compromise -- When a fashion from your past is resurrected

II. 30/10--a month-long series of posts--10 minutes to looking younger.

1. Find a MLBB lippie
2. Update your eyebrows
3. Establish a beauty triage
4. Curl your lashes
5. Perk up the girls
6. Exfoliate
7. Rethink your jewelry
8. Make friends with concealer
9. Loop on a scarf
10. Lighten up, Francis
11. Make new friends
12. But keep the old
13. Wear a camisole
14. Wear blusher
15. Bump up your nails
16. Rethink your hair products
17. Be a brownie
18. Grow
19. Be true to yourself
20. Think like a decorator
21. Back away from black
22. Blot, don't powder
23. Find a younger mentor
24. Be all wet
25. Break some rules
26. Bags are the new shoes
27. The legs are the last to go
28. Move on
29. Use your rear-view mirror
30. Play