It’s a conundrum: Now that we need more maintenance than ever, we’re just not in the mood to fuss. Emily Listfield explores our desire to do less but still look great—and shows us how to get there.
It’s a cruel irony that at the very age when you probably need to spend more time on your skin care and makeup to look presentable, you suddenly feel like doing less. Chalk it up to rebellion (“Enough already!”) or confidence (“Take me as I am”). Or to simply being frustrated with how much effort it now takes to look the way you did naturally five years ago. Whatever the reason, most women over 40 wake up one morning, stare at their bottles and brushes, and, like Bartleby the Scrivener, find themselves declaring “I should prefer not to.”
Shifting Priorities
“Maintenance is a bitch,” says Kimberly Kitts, 42, a financial planner in Orleans, Massachusetts. “It seems like I am forever plucking my eye-brows and packing more products onto my face. I want to look professional, and it makes me feel more confident to put on a little spackle, but other things take precedence over my looks now. I’ve got kids, clients, a life. Sometimes I just get fed up with the whole routine. On weekends,” she adds, “I don’t do a thing.”
The impulse to get off the makeup merry-go-round may spring from other issues besides just the time involved; it can also come from shifts in your body image, priorities and expectations. “Makeup becomes a metaphor for everything that’s going on in your life,” says Ann Pardo, life management director of Canyon Ranch spa, in Tucson. “Women are designing themselves for their next stage, and they face a conflict between the desire to be visible, especially in the workplace, and the urge for more authenticity."
Complicating matters is this unfortunate truth: The chances of your totally naked face looking as fresh as it once did are close to nil. (Sorry.) “Skin starts to show signs of sun damage: fine lines, brown spots, redness and broken capillaries,” explains Macrene Alexiades, MD, a New York City dermatologist. “At the same time, the elastin in your skin is breaking down, which makes it begin to wrinkle and sag.” Face it, most of us don’t want to look that authentic—at least not all the time.
