On Your Own Terms

*image one of the only few showing a happy woman in midlife with greying hair - see below!

10 minute read

I’ve been thinking a lot about beauty this past year. About our relationship to powders, paints, potions and dyes and how it’s changed in the year of distance. When we resorted to Instagram’s Paris filter instead of foundation, masks removed our mouths entirely and Zoom showed shadows where there were none before, resulting in a surge in the sale of ring lights and light-reflective concealer pens. It feels like the beauty landscape has changed entirely.

But how are we with it all? Are we still following skincare regimes and doing our makeup? Is it all over - changed irrevocably? Or is this, perhaps, just a pause?

I feel a sea-change out there. I feel a new sort of beauty confidence growing, especially amongst women over 40. There is a desire for authenticity over artifice. Due to pandemic closures and distance from our hairdressers especially, we are seeing what we really look like, many of us for the first time, and we are at last settling into our skin and real hair colour.

It takes a lot to accept who you really are. Often, it’s the work of a lifetime.

It also takes a lot to like who you really are, I maintain this is a sort of mental metamorphosis that happens in midlife specifically, but it needs work - and it needs to be mirrored - in media especially, so that women can see themselves reflected in it. Their real selves - the version of themselves with greying hair and ‘wrinkles’ on their faces (I prefer to call them ‘life lines’).

When I research imagery to use for HEYDAY, there is an enormous drought of accessible (by accessible, I mean affordable) photography of women over 40 for use by media brands. You can either find an older woman, with pure white hair, aged approximately 80, or you can find a wealth of resources featuring wonderful women of all colours and creeds, shapes and sizes - under 40. Very little in the middle.

The phrase saying that ‘if you can’t see it, you can’t be it’ rings true for so many things in life pertaining to women. At this age, do we feel we can’t age as our bodies naturally do because of the fact that we can’t see it around us very much - that we almost don’t have visual permission to age naturally? The ratio of silver-haired, ‘distinguished’ ageing men we see on screen and in media compared to women isn’t great. And when we do see older women, are they un-retouched or medically un-enhanced? Sometimes yes, often no.

The Beauty Industry’s Messaging

Having had a first career as a makeup artist and beauty editor, it doesn’t leave you - I am still interested and invested in, the beauty industry at large. It’s familiar to me. I understand how it works and more than that, I understand how it speaks to women. How it makes them feel. It has improved greatly in terms of overall messaging, but it still strives to initiate desire, it still psychologically manipulates us. ‘You can be more beautiful if you just buy this.’ In essence, that’s the message. ‘You give us money, we’ll give you beauty. Until we launch our next product and then you’ll give us money for that too.’ It’s quite the co-dependent relationship, it sets us up with!

Then it told us we were worth it (worth what? The financial outlay? Oh thanks). Or we were told we were good enough as we were. But what had made us think we weren’t? Oh yes - the beauty industry. It told us to be feminists, to be part of the sisterhood of women, supporting each other, safe and proud of the knowledge that, together - we buy the same soap.

Now forgive me, I am more than a little cynical sometimes, I do actually love the industry, but I love the side of it that empowers women to choose their own path amidst the marketing. I love the element of care. And I love how it makes people feel good about themselves. I owned a makeup school for a few years where my friend and I, both makeup artists, taught women how to do their own makeup. We used our professional artist’s kit of products, not sponsored or affiliated with any particular brands - we were brand agnostic - and we were known for creating natural, enhancing makeup looks where each woman looked like herself. Not an image of a model. The students learned techniques to suit them, rather than being sold products. They had more agency. It just felt a bit more authentic that way. They could engage on their own terms.

Into Our Own Hands

The past year has called a lot of our feelings on ageing into mind, with our grey hairs sprouting out and skin not tended to by lifting facial treatments designed to add a youthful glow. Our nails have been only minded by ourselves, our hair removed (or not) by our own hands. Bikini lines are surely burgeoning with a new mass that may end up initiating a new waxing trend once we’re back at the salons - a return to the pubic style of the 70s perhaps? I don’t know if my fragile emotional state could handle the harshness of a Brazilian anymore - I think I’d cry!

But with all this new-found confidence in our DIY skills comes the contrast too - the want to be taken care of by someone else. We’ve done so much self-care, that won’t it be lovely to have a different ‘self’ look after us. I, for one, will be running back to the wonderful facialist I go to, and not just for my skin - but for the whole experience - being wrapped in a blanket, being gently touched and held; it’s so soothing. Again, I might cry - but for better reasons - the surrender of feeling cared for. The glowing skin, post-treatment, will most certainly be secondary.

I have probably bought more products in lockdown than I have when free. For a multitude of reasons, of course, especially the time I’ve spent watching Simone’s Insta Stories for skincare recommendations (current wishlist is Supergoop SPF50) and the mesmerizing Celine Bernaerts makeup transformations. Minus my usual lash extensions, I have researched Revitalash obsessively and bought many new mascaras to find The One (Victoria Beckham’s Future Lash, Nars Climax and L’Oreal Lash Paradise are current front runners). I have bought serums, sheer bases (Trinny’s BFF) and concealer (Nars Radiant - sublime), and all of them have made me feel good as I look at myself in the mirror. They don’t hide me, they enhance the almost 46-year-old me. And I like it.

Beauty is self-care

And we shouldn’t forget that is what beauty can be - it can be one of the highest acts of self-care we can give ourselves. I think when we are younger, it’s all about improving something we don’t like - concealing and recreating - but as we grow older and more confident it’s different. It’s about soothing and treating ourselves. And that’s really beautiful.

Maybe that’s where we are after this past year, maybe beauty represents a way to touch and cherish ourselves, as that is what’s so badly needed. We don’t need a narrative of improvement - we are already improved. We don’t need a narrative of concealment - we are not to be hidden. Look what we’ve been through! We should be celebrating and minding ourselves.

These are perhaps narratives that lie far beneath the surface of what you feel beauty products are, or what dyeing your hair represents, but they are a part of the new normal of our lives now. What we see in the mirror right now is the real us; the person who has weathered a pandemic, who has lived both cooped up and distantly, who has missed much and cared for many, but sustained herself. We may look different on the outside, and that is because we are different on the inside. Our appearance, in this instance, is mirroring our interior. We look older because we are older. The constant search for youth is frankly, weird.

Looking the age you are feels empowering. And I didn’t know this until now.

The hair though. I am going grey. Very grey. I have known this for some time, of course, but prior to Covid, I didn’t really know how grey I was. I was dyeing my hair every 5 weeks and all was standard. Now, though, I see what I really look like. I see I have my father’s pepper and salt hair genes, I see an entirely different person in the mirror looking back at me - and it’s been a shift.

A shift in how I view my entire self, not just my reflection. It feels like a milestone that I should pay attention to. It’s thrown up lots of questions to me; why don’t I let it grow out? Would I look very old? Would people judge me as an older woman? Would I still be relevant? Would I still feel attractive?

And therein lies the crux of it all - we see our real selves, without intervention or artifice, but do we feel attractive? I guess it depends on what you think ‘being attractive’ is. It calls on a new set of values I think. Is ‘being attractive’ being something for someone else, or is it for yourself? Why do we need to feel attractive?

To me, so far, it’s been a tricky line to walk. Deep in my heart, I know that being attractive is a soul thing rather than a skin thing. It’s a mental rather than a mirror thing. It’s that ‘at home in your skin’ thing - that sense of being a free woman who accepts and loves herself for herself, not for anyone else. It is someone who stands up for herself and speaks her truth. It is someone who respects herself, her path and the people around her. It’s someone who is fluid and open in heart and mind - not rigid. What is attractive is the energy that brings - that light in the eyes.

But part of that - because we are human, complex and full of contrasts - is on the surface too. It’s the confidence you feel when you like how your eyelashes look and you feel your skin is good. But it’s also when we look in the mirror and see an older, greyer version of ourselves and it messes with our sense of identity a little! So, like a lot of life’s glitches and contradictions, perhaps, for now, we just roll with the jaundiced adage “when you look good, you feel good” and let that mean whatever that means to you.