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.
If you’ve ever tried Retin-A (or one of its many cousins: Renova, Avita, Tazorac, generic tretinoin, etc.), you know the usage downsides: redness, flaking, stinging. Some MDs will tell you to just push through the irritation period (and walk around with a flushed, flakey face for months)—or to wait thirty minutes after you cleanse to apply. However, I don’t know about you, but by the time I get around to washing my face at night, I'm beat. No way I’m delaying bed for another half hour.
Applying bronzer hardly seems like something that requires instructions. You sweep a big, fluffy brush over copper-colored powder. Dust it over your face. Done.
Not quite.
I believe in the confidence-boosting power of beauty products. I'm talking about the way wearing Chanel's black-red Vamp Nail Colour made you (okay, me) feel current/cooler/chicer in the mid-1990s.
As I write this, my face is slathered in Fresh Vitamin Nectar Vibrancy Boosting Mask ($62; fresh.com).
As we age, there are some things we hope to increase: retirement savings, vacation time, wisdom. Makeup opacity? Not so much.
After the birth of my son, Heath, in my early thirties, gobs of my hair fell out; only some of it grew back. Thus, a year into motherhood, I became a client of Liz Cunnane, a trichologist (that's a U.K.-trained hair ‘doctor’) at the Philip Kingsley Trichology Clinic in New York City.
I had oily skin in my teens and twenties. I was even on Accutane in college to stem my skin’s over-abundant sebum flow and clear up my chronic acne. So, for me, for years, oil was the enemy.
I get the appeal of sheer, pale-pink polish. It's classic, goof-proof, universally-flattering, and it goes with pretty much everything. It's like the lacquer equivalent of a white, button-down shirt. But allow me, for a moment, to make a case for blue.
Around the same time we start seeing hair where we don’t want it (on chins and necks or, worst of all, growing out of noses), we suffer the double injustice of having it grow sparser where we do want fullness, like along our lashline. Thanks very little, hormonal fluctuations.
Maybe it’s because I frequently handle stinky hockey equipment (thanks, Heath), we live on a dirt road, and I'm uptight about germs, but I wash my hands. A lot. This is murder on a manicure.
When a beauty product is billed as maximum-strength, I’m in. Why waste time with something that provides moderate results when a super-charged formula gets you to the finish line quicker? Not so fast.
It’s not your imagination: Brows do grow thinner (and grayer) with each decade. If you battle Eugene-Levy-like brows, this may be a welcome change. But for those of us with barely-there or fair brows, this is not a happy transition. I fall in the latter camp.
I got my ears pierced in kindergarten. Thus, my lobes spent nearly four decades supporting oversized hoops, dangly plastic circles (hello, ‘80s) and chandelier earrings. By my late thirties, my earring holes had morphed into stretched-out slits, and the diamond studs my husband gave me as an anniversary present drooped from my ears like wilted flowers.
I have naturally wavy hair and choose to wear it that way most of the time, especially now that I live in Ann Arbor where a DryBar has yet to open. (Totally unsubtle hint, Alli Webb.). However, achieving beachy waves is trickier as you become older and hair becomes dryer and more fuzz-prone—a reality for anyone who colors, blow-dries, flat-irons or is in the throes of peri, post or full-blown menopause. So basically, all of us.
Last spring, I made a desperate, early-morning run to Sephora on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. What I walked out with surprised me...
