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Farewell to Youth, but
Not Beauty
by Maria Russo, The New
York Times
March 1, 2012
Picture
Credit: Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images
SHE startled me
the other day, walking down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills: a middle-aged
beauty with long, blown-out hair in a shade somewhere between butter
and margarine, her body narrow and svelte but large-breasted. She
perfectly hit a certain look: gently tanned face as smooth and puffy as
the moon in a children’s book, a delicate shine to the skin. Nose
small, lips pumped up. The space between arched eyebrows a smooth
plateau. Her age could have been 40, but then again it could have been
60.
At
the beginning of the millennium, this look was all over moneyed New
York and the Westside of L.A. Then in 2005 arrived “The Real Housewives
of Orange County” to take it downmarket, exaggerating its many details
until it conveyed not carefree, extended youthfulness but rather a
ferocious middle age, a grim determination to throw money at the
problem of getting older, via regular trips to dermatologists’ offices,
hair salons and cosmetic surgeons’ operating tables.
Then
came the financial crisis, and even in the high-end ZIP codes the look
began to fray. That day in Beverly Hills I realized I hadn’t seen a
woman sporting this level of the look in quite a while. Granted, I’d
moved to proudly unglamorous Pasadena. But still, I wondered, could the
type be in its final iteration?
There
are other versions of middle-aged beauty visible now: While the
Housewives TV franchise was hauling its Botox needles and gallons of
filler to more workaday places like Atlanta and New Jersey, the beauty
industry — the beauty industry! — was broadening the range of
middle-aged looks. By 2008 we had Diane “La-Di-Da” Keaton and Ellen
DeGeneres as faces of L’Oréal and Cover Girl. Once a middle-aged
woman could sell cosmetics only if she was an ex-model, an official
Aging Beauty like Isabella Rossellini or Andie MacDowell, and even they
were airbrushed liberally. But Ellen and Diane are both average-looking
people who look their ages. In the ads their makeup looks nice, but
what makes them beautiful is just that we love them.
And
then on PBS’s “Downton Abbey” arrived Elizabeth McGovern at 50: If her
creased visage peers out at us a little sheepishly, that’s because her
character is a fish out of water, not because she is apologizing for
her lack of access to collagen. With its even more bewitching Dowager
Countess, played by Maggie Smith, this is a show that put to rest the
idea that women should hold tight to a particular age, a particular
look, rather than giving their faces permission to move through the
life cycle.
For
me this stuff is not just theoretical, because at 45 I’m the advance
guard of Gen-X middle age. As our youth peels away, my peers and I are
just beginning to admit that we aren’t sure how we’ll keep looking
good. How will we age? We are often called “quirky.” My own approach to
beauty products no doubt qualifies.
In
flusher times, I would buy Dr. Hauschka lotion, because just looking at
the old-fashioned minimalist bottle relaxed me, making me think
friendly but no-nonsense German people were in charge of my skin care.
Surely they knew better than I did what was good for me. When I used
their products, I could discern a kind of toned freshness to my skin
that, along with the outdoorsy but studiously nonflowery scent, would
call to mind a walk in the Alps, or maybe the Black Forest. I also
liked Yonka, because the company was French but not in your face, as it
were, about its Frenchness. There was a mystery there that drew me in:
Why would someone French name a skin-care line so unalluringly?
In
my late 30s I decided I needed to use something “anti-aging” for the
new “fine lines” I saw. I looked into the futuristic department store
lines whose aqua-green ads coolly promised breathtaking results, but
the prices only furrowed my brow further. I wished I could try Retin-A,
which I remembered a smooth-skinned 40-year-old woman I worked with in
my late 20s swore by, but which you can get only with a prescription
from a dermatologist; I avoid doctors besides my OB-GYN religiously.
But then I had the idea of using Roc antiwrinkle cream from the
drugstore because it has Retinol in it, which sounded appropriately
medical. I stuck with that for years, and it seemed to be working O.K.,
though I periodically wondered if the real, forbidden Retin-A would
have packed a much more satisfying punch.
As
for makeup, a similar feeling of resignation crept into my routine. At
35 I discovered the Nars Multiple in a rosy brown, a chubby flat-topped
obelisk, a combination product that was hands down the best lipstick
and the best blush for me. It felt like falling in love, a euphoric
thrill followed by a slight backdraft of ennui, because I knew my
lipstick and blush explorations were effectively over.
Then
two years ago I discovered the cosmetics aisle at T. J. Maxx. This
place is the Island of Misfit Toys for beauty products. The very
presence of a product there is evidence of a failure, a mistake or at
least a disappointment. If I crave something there, I also sort of feel
sorry for it. There, seeking beauty also builds acceptance and
compassion. Major brands are represented only by their flops. Seemingly
ambitious but never-quite-got-there brands with names I have never seen
in Allure sport circa 1997 prices. I ask myself, why is this cream not
proudly full price at Sephora? Often the problem seems to be not the
product itself, which in my experiences have all worked fine, but the
presentation — a label puzzlingly naked of any graphic design, or a
scent that is one millimeter away from Pond’s cold cream.
And
yet I’d rather use Pond’s than whatever it is that the Beverly Hills
woman I saw that day joylessly (I imagine) slathers on her face at
night. They say every generation naturally inclines toward its
grandparents’ generation, as a relief from the claustrophobia of the
parent-child bond, which is why Gen X has children named Max, Sadie and
Henry, and why cold cream seems endearing to me. It makes me think of
my own Nanna, a chain-smoking five-foot-tall dynamo who “put on her
face” every morning at the counter of her Stuyvesant Town kitchen.
In
one respect, anyway, we may prove lucky in our timing, in that not just
middle age but even old age is losing its beauty stigma just as we say
goodbye to our youth. Now there’s even Iris Apfel, the beloved
90-year-old former textile magnate and style icon — and inspiration for
a new line at MAC, making her perhaps the oldest woman ever to
personally represent a line of beauty products.
That’s
her gloriously aged face looking forthrightly, unapologetically from
the line’s publicity photo, which appears in store displays. Her giant
round black glasses are charmingly askew. Her lipstick is a tasteful
matte orange-red, a shade she’s named Scarlet Ibis. On her eyes a
greenish-blue shade called Robin’s Egg is swathed over a subtle gray
lid. Her skin is wrinkly, a little saggy, but somehow bright.
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