A veteran magazine beauty editor/writer (and a member of the 40+ club), Genevieve Monsma created MediumBlonde to help Gen Xers and Baby Boomers age the way they want.
All month long, I’m asking discerning beauty insiders to share their favorite hot-weather staples. First up: Celebrity colorist Rita Hazan on the super-chic products she stockpiles for the season
August to me feels like adult summer break. Not the sleeping-until-noon and spending-all-day-at-the-pool breaks of yore, but it's more laid-back than the other eleven months. So, I plan to spend the next 31 days basking in summer's waning glow—and asking beauty industry veterans what products they stockpile for the season. That interview series will officially start tomorrow, but I’ll kick things off now with a few of my favorites:
More than 80 percent of us wear lipstick. If you’re reading MediumBlonde, I’m guessing you’re one of them. And while so-called National Days (Caesar Salad Day…really?) are pretty silly, tomorrow is National Lipstick Day, and I thought I’d use it as an excuse to share (and re-share) some of my all-time favorite lipcolors.
Despite writing about nailcare and polish trends for decades, I’m terrible at a DIY manicure. My fine motor skills are nothing to brag about; sewing on a button takes effort, and my “scissor skills” (or lack thereof) screwed up my GPA in preschool. Thus, when I “do” my nails myself, I typically stick to a buffed finish. However, pigs must be flying because I just discovered a polish even I can apply—and be pleased with the results.
If every anti-aging product on the market really did what it claimed, we'd all look 18. And while there are many effective products that help make the most of our looks as we age (and I, for one, like the way I look better at 45 than I did at 18), there are also many that are nothing but snake oil. Thus, I've created this series, Spend or Skip?, in which I will apply my twenty years as a beauty guinea pig to objectively road-test and review buzz-generating, anti-aging products that everyone's talking about. The mission: to help you decide whether to buy—or bypass—the latest fountain of youth. My latest testee: GrandeBROW
As part of a regular series, I’ll be asking inspiring, in-the-know women (all 40+, of course) to share their best tips and favorite products. The point? As always, to find out what works. Today's beauty insiders: Lynne Florio and Renee Tavoularis, founders of Well Within Planted In Beauty
As part of a regular series, I’ll be asking inspiring, in-the-know women (all 40+, of course) to share their best tips and favorite products. The point? As always, to find out what works. Today's beauty insider: Erin Cotter, GOOP's Vice President of Beauty
Do you remember how exciting Prescriptives Custom Blend Foundation was in the ‘90s? The idea of getting makeup made just for your skin tone was so…novel. I recall going with girlfriends to a Parisian Department Store in Atlanta and being color matched for the first time. We sat in stools with flesh-colored tiger stripes along our jaws, debating which one “disappeared” into our skin. I’ve always been a sucker for customization, lured by the promise of something made just for me. Thus, when Bare Minerals partnered up with MatchCo. to create a color-matching foundation you can order from your iPhone (that’s right), I was all in.
I love a gritty, dense body scrub. My favorites: Juara Coffee Scrub and Fresh Brown Sugar Body Polish. But several friends have mentioned that colored body scrubs are really hard to clean up in their natural stone or glass tile showers. So, on my Sunday of sloughing, I decided to try an exfoliating bar instead, which feels a bit like a pumice stone and releases fewer dark granules onto your shower floor.
I exfoliated my scalp. Yes, my scalp. I recently wrote a piece for a national magazine on scalp skin health, which got me thinking how most of us spend a lot of time and money exfoliating our aging faces, but few (next to none?) do the same for the scalp…which is also aging skin.
When we were first dating, my husband said I worked the word exfoliation into almost every conversation. I was a new beauty editor at the time and obsessed with peels, scrubs, microdermabrasion, retinoids, derma-planing, you name it. Anything that cleared out clogs and sloughed off old skin. I believed it helped with breakouts, fine lines, sun spots, calluses, even just tired, hungover skin (this was my twenties, after all). And I still believe this—probably more so now that I’m nearly 46, and my skin cells aren’t turning over nearly as quickly or efficiently as they did twenty years ago. So, when I have a day off (rare; freelancing life means deadlines are always looming), I love nothing more than to do a head-to-toe deep exfoliation.
It’s been six, not four, weeks since my last Lash Boost update. I stretched the time between posts in hopes I would have some notable changes to report. So, here goes…
Do you ever have days when you're just dragging? Not sick. Not more sleep deprived than usual. Not hormonal. Well, maybe a little hormonal, but not unusually so. Just tired. And, unlike in my thirties when I felt fatigue but my face didn't advertise it, 40-something tired is pretty obvious (pale, shadowy, drawn—at times verging on Ignorance and Want in A Christmas Carol). Well, I was suffering from tired face last Thursday as I was dressing for an evening event. Not pretty. Luckily, after years of interviewing experts, I do have a few fatigue-hiding tricks up my sleeve (or in my makeup bag).
If you’ve never had your face dermaplaned, you’re missing out. It’s noninvasive, relatively inexpensive, and a non-irritating way to slough away dead skin. It also removes peach fuzz from your face, enabling your makeup to go on like silk. My friend Jane just did it for the first time (followed by a Hydrafacial) at a dermatologist’s office here in Ann Arbor, and her skin looks gorgeous: glowy, smooth, poreless.
As a longtime beauty editor, I've been asked countless times for eye cream recommendations. And for years, my answer was disappointing: I don’t have one because I don’t use one. That’s not to say my under-eye skin hasn’t required TLC. Like most women, my eyes are aging faster than the rest of my face. But I found regular face creams (coupled with twice-a-year Botox) worked just fine at keeping my delicate under-eye skin smooth. Plus, an eye cream with too many bells and whistles often either irritated my sensitive eyes, made me puffy if I wore it overnight—or caused my concealer to pill if I applied it in the morning.
