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.
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.
As it becomes steamier and stickier outside, many of us wrestle with the right way to moisturize our aging skin. Slathering on a rich cream worked well in mid-February, but that same product probably now leaves you feeling more gooey than dewy—and it may be causing your makeup to slip and slide around your face. Not good. My solution? On days that are super-soupy, I skip lotions and creams altogether and sub in a hyaluronic acid serum.
Back in the dead of winter, I wrote about how I was using Vita Liberata’s Self-Tanning Serum to provide a subtle boost of color when my skin was looking late-January drab. However, now that it’s sundress-and-sandal season again, I’m finding the result is too understated. I’m not after a Giorgio Armani tan (although it does look quite chic on him, UV damage be damned), but I would like to appear lightly sun-kissed. So I’ve upgraded to Clarins Radiance-Plus Golden Glow Booster, which I find imparts deeper color, faster.
I wrote about the hydrating and scalp-nourishing benefits of coconut oil a few weeks ago. But today, as I was researching another magazine story, yet another expert (this time, a dermatologist who specializes in disorders of the scalp) said coconut oil may also help with dandruff, seborrheic dermatitis and get this, a greasy scalp. What can't this oil do?
Four and half years ago, on a cloudy December afternoon, I was sitting at a picnic table in Central Park with some girlfriends, watching our 9-year-old sons play baseball. Suddenly, our smart phones began to ping simultaneously with a news alert: School shooting reported in Connecticut. As the pings revealed increasingly grim details about that horrible day, our group went from chatting animatedly about holiday plans…to silence. Two of the mothers began to cry. I’m guessing many of you also remember where you were when you first heard about Newtown.
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. This week's beauty insider: Laura Geller, makeup artist and founder of Laura Geller New York cosmetics
Two new, easy-to-wear cheekcolors from Mary Kay are low-risk purchases. Either color will look good on you: One is a pigment-rich pink, the other a sheer peach, and both are spiked with luminescent particles that are particularly flattering on aging skin. But those aren’t the primary reasons to purchase one (or both).
