Reading: 10 More Fabulous Anti-aging Beauty Tricks

1. Highlight, don’t “contour”

The contour craze designed to hide jowls, sculpt cheekbones, or narrow noses has gotten out of hand. Blending brown creams or powders in an attempt to alter your natural beauty never looks natural and practically screams that you are insecure about aging.

Instead, embrace your changing face and use makeup to highlight all your best features, creating a look that is more naturally polished and less “painted.”

To accomplish the look, brush Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder on the tops of your cheekbones, under your brows, and on the inner corners of your eyes to restore radiance. Use a bold (think berry or rose, not red) lip color to make a statement or a jewel-toned eyeliner to showcase your beautiful eyes.

2. Peel off the peach fuzz

Have you seen all the television ads for facial hair removal machines like Flawless and no!no!? Maybe you’ve tried creams like Nair that remove hair or Jolen, which bleaches it? Well, in my opinion, all of these are a waste of time for most women.

If you have very dark, thick facial hair I suggest laser hair removal (there are at-home kits or you can go to a salon) or waxing. Find which works best for you.

If you just have light peach fuzz then go ahead and shave it off. It’s an old wives’ tale that shaved hair will grow back thicker and more coarse. Hair follicles do not multiply as we age! We are born with a certain number of them and they stay steady. (Note: If you shave in the opposite direction of the hair growth, the hair will start to feel thicker over time.)

Shave downward, following the hair’s natural direction, to clean up peach fuzz fast. This way makeup will go on smooth and not collect powder.

3. What to do about losing your lashes

As we age, we lose hair on our heads and volume and thickness in our eyelashes.

I love using products like Latisse or Revitalash to restore lash growth and keep lashes looking lush and beautiful. Apply the product each night before bed, and in about a month your lashes will be visibly thicker. I have also used the product off-label on my thinning brows and found it restores them nicely.

After about a month, applying either product just a few times a week will keep your brows and lashes growing. But beware: If you stop using the product, your lashes may slide back to the way they were.

The alternative solution of the moment are eyelash extensions, which last about six to eight weeks and cost anywhere from near $100 to $300 to apply. They look amazing as long as you stick to a natural length; go overboard and you risk looking like a giraffe. Note, too: maintenance can be a pain as extensions fall out quite quickly and need to be reapplied constantly, ratcheting up the cost in time and money. Also, you can never really moisturize around the eyes properly because this will cause the extensions to come loose and fall out faster.

4. The truth about “makeup” tattoos

Many women over 50 consider going for permanent makeup tattoos to replace thinning eyebrows or for lining eyes and lips, believing this will cut the time they spend on their beauty routine or provide better outlines for laying down cosmetics. Listen up: This is an absolute no-go in my book!

Here are my three reasons to steer clear of all permanent makeup:

• As time goes by, the tattoo color will fade into another shade than the one you originally chose.
• Makeup styles are trendy and constantly changing, so you could easily find yourself stuck permanently with a look that is totally outdated.
• Skin texture and firmness can shift over time. The permanent makeup can move as well and may end up highlighting a sagging mouth or crepiness. And you can’t remove it when this happens!

The only long-term form of makeup I believe in is microblading for brows, which is only semipermanent and will fade away if you don’t like it. You can have it redone if the shape of your face changes.

5. Lighten-up on lipgloss

I think women of a certain age look best wearing moist lipsticks and tinted lip balms sans gloss; my favorite brands are Marc Jacobs Beauty Le Marc Lip Creme or Kosas Lipstick. A full-on glossy shiny lip can look messy and odd on a mature face. I don’t mind a light swipe of gloss on the center of lips over a nude or neutral lipstick for an evening look, but a super bright lipgloss never looks sophisticated and chic.

If you like to wear red, coral, or bright pink lipstick avoid gloss — the color is enough.

6. Try a trend — but cautiously

When it comes to trends that seem to go in-and-out with the blink of an eye, there’s a way to play that works for women of all ages. If we are seeing models on the runway or in magazines wearing sapphire blue eye shadow, you can be on-trend without having to fully commit to the look.

Interpret the trend to work for you at your age, and you will look fabulous. Try a sapphire blue eyeliner instead of a full-on eye shadow. If the trend is glitter on the lips, opt for a slightly iridescent champagne lipstick. If you are seeing black cat eyes with severe wings out to the sides, apply a black waterproof liquid eyeliner and end it just slightly at the outer corners of your eyes. Instead of using silver eye shadow all around the eyes, try just a tap of silver on the center of the lid to give your eyes a pop at night.

Don’t take the trends literally: use them as inspiration to reimagine your look.

7. Back off the cakey under-eye

Dark circles around the eyes is a tough issue for many women. The depth and darkness of circles is generally genetic and usually can only be fixed with makeup. But you want to keep the layers thin and moist.

Start off with a layer of liquid foundation. Chances are you will discover that you don’t really need as much concealer as if you started with bare skin. Then tap on a brightening concealer under your eyes on top of the foundation just in the places you need it. If darkness still shows, use your finger or a brush to tap on a little stick concealer in a shade that matches your foundation. Apply this concealer on the recessed area only, not on the raised puffy parts. Stick or pot concealers work better here to grab the skin than liquid ones from pens.

Avoid liners, eye shadows, and mascara on lower lids because they tend to smudge later on and increase the sense of darkness. Lastly, apply a highlighter under the brow bone to redirect the focus away from any darkness under the eye.

8. Use shine — but judiciously

We have heard that after a certain age women should avoid shimmer or sparkle in all makeup. That is only partially true. High shimmer, frost or glitter particles can settle into lines, accentuating crepiness and age.

Now there are new formulas of highlighters, shadows, and lip products (such as Tom Ford Sheer Highlighting Duo) containing a more refined iridescence that restores radiance and makes your skin glow.

Also important: where you apply shimmer. I love to place these new highlighters on areas of the face that tend to stay smooth as we age — i.e. under the brows, on the inside corners of the eyes, and on the tops of cheekbones — giving the face a kind of candlelit luminosity.

To test these formulas out, apply the product on your wrist and look at it in the daylight. If you see little squares of frost or shimmer, you know the highlighter offers too much high shine. If it simply looks glowing and radiant, you’ve got a perfect formula.

9. Volumize your cheeks

If your face has lost its volume and your cheeks seem a bit flat, you don’t need to change the way you apply blush from the way you did in your 20’s and 30’s.

To bring your face back to life, simply smile and apply a soft pop of color to the top front part of the apples of your cheeks. This will lift the cheeks and bring back that youthful fullness. Sweep a bit of highlighter right above that onto the tops of your cheekbones and you will look cherublike.

Those with really dry skin should opt for a cream formulation such as RMS Beauty Living Luminizer. If you’ve got normal to oily skin, use a powder such as Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder.

10. Get the gray out — of your eyebrows

If you have full gray eyebrows but have not decided to go fully gray with your hair, you can have your colorist match your brows to your hair color.

But most of us simply have one or two gray brow hairs that pop up now and again. The fast and inexpensive solution: go to the drugstore and buy a box of men’s beard dye in a color that matches your natural brow. Then apply it to just the few stray gray brow hairs so it blends in naturally with the rest of your brow.