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.”