Chapter One
Forget Aging Gracefully
All right, I'm just going to come out and say it. Aging sucks. As my generation of women hits 40, 50, 60, we are for the first time discovering things about our faces and bodies that we never noticed before. Icky things such as age spots, crow's-feet, gray hair, chin hair, marionette lines, saggy boobs, spider veins, bunions - need I go on? I don't think so. You know what I'm talking about. The question is: What are you-what are we-going to do about it? We're going to fight aging-and we're going to look great doing it.
Whether it's by our sheer numbers (78 million strong-the largest demographic group in history) or our sheer chutzpah, we baby boomers are pros at shaking things up as we hit each decade. We know how to do this. From rock music in the '60s, to "Me Generation" therapy in the '70s, to the "Let's Get Physical" fitness boom of the '80s, to the spa fad of the '90s, to the green movement of today, our generation has no problem rewriting the rules to suit our needs as we move past life's milestones. Now that we are going to live to be 100, our mission is to reinvent retirement and the golden years. Although we haven't nailed that yet (for some of us, retirement is still a ways away), we already know that we're not going to just stand there like a bunch of Willie Lomans and accept our gold watch with a thank-you and a smile at the retirement party. (If we even get the watch - or the party.) Neither are we likely to be sailing into the sunset spending our days and playing golf or tennis, or sitting around the pool with a cocktail in hand.
What else aren't we going to do?
We're not going to grow old gracefully (or gratefully).
We're not going to celebrate our wrinkles (you've got to be kidding).
We're not going to join the Women Who Have Had Too Much Work Done club (like our mothers and their friends).
We're not going to look old.
The last bullet point is where this book comes in. How Not to Look Old is the boomer manifesto, a comprehensive plan of attack on aging, all those little beauty and style tweaks that you can (and should!) do to look Younger and Hipper-and still show up for work the next day.
Younger and Hipper is a concept I'll use a lot, so let's just say Y&H from now on. As opposed to looking like an Old Lady (OL for short).
The chapters in are organized from head-to-toe, from "Cut Some Bangs" to "Step into Sexy Heels." This master list of to-dos leads to even more things you can do to get gorgeous. If you go chapter by chapter and cross off the to-dos as you go, you will look ten years younger, ten pounds lighter and ten times better. Maybe even more than ten years younger. At the start of each chapter, you'll find the words "Look X Years Younger," which show the approximate number of years this to-do will set back the clock. Don't add all these up, or you'll be back in the womb! Instead, use the number to gauge the visual impact you'll get from doing this to-do.
Ever wonder why some fifty-year-olds look like they're forty and others look like they're sixty? Today everyone wants to look ten years younger than they are. Forty is the new thirty; fifty is the new forty, and so on. Looking younger not all about lucky genes. It takes work. But if you do too much work, the comments you'll be hearing will not be, "Wow! You look fabulous!" but rather, "Wow! What did you do?"
This book is not about Extreme Makeovers. I have nothing against plastic surgery. In fact, I have personal experience to share (see Chapter 6). But I don't think plastic surgery guarantees that you're going to look young. You might not have any wrinkles after a face-lift, but if you look like you had work done, you're obviously old enough to have a face-lift! So who are you fooling? A face frozen in time is the face of a Woman Who Has Had Too Much Work Done. As fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi recently said to me, "I think plastic surgery is the most aging thing in the world. If you want to look seventy, boy, get a face-lift. Get your lips done."
Another reason why there's no chapter on plastic surgery is that many of us just don't have time for downtime. Instant gratification is part of our DNA. We want fast fixes. That's why there's also no mention of the fact that diet and exercise are essential to looking younger and staying healthy over the long haul. There isn't a woman alive who doesn't already know that. Eating salmon or doing yoga are good things to do for sure, but they won't give you the instant results that the to-dos in this book will. We want results. Real results. Visible results. Other antiaging books tell you to run a bath, light a candle, chant and practice acceptance. Not this one. I've tried all that - and guess what? It doesn't work!
What works is going to the dermatologist and, if necessary, making her or him your new best friend. From Botox to fillers to peels to lasers, there are so many noninvasive options in our beauty arsenal these days. To find what works best, I've called on my friends-some of the best beauty and fashion pros in the biz-to share their secrets throughout this book. Not ridiculous, over-the-top ideas, but advice we all can put to use. I know they have the real deal-many of them have worked their magic on me. And even though most live in New York City, as do I, their suggestions apply to all types of women, and encompass all price points.
At this stage, we don't take kindly to spending $350 or even $35 on a wrinkle cream and then finding out six to eight weeks later that those little lines bleeding off the top of your lips have not disappeared. In my former years, I was beauty director at Glamour and editor in chief of the late beauty Web-site eve.com, and I've made a career out of being a beauty guinea pig. There's nothing I won't put on my face in the name of beauty. Magazines are packed with advertisers' products, and we're inundated with commercials and ads, but how do we know what really works? At the end of most chapters, you'll find my Brilliant Buys, the results of my heavy lifting. I personally tested more than 1,000 beauty products, most of which had already landed on "best of beauty" lists in the major magazines. I am a very tough customer. To make the cut, my Brilliant Buys had to: (1) deliver results, (2) be user-friendly, (3) look good enough to keep on the bathroom shelf, and (4) not be insanely expensive. Somewhere along the line, we learned that the more money we spend, the better the results will be. I'm here to tell you that that is simply not true. Some of the best cleansers, moisturizers, mascaras, foundations, and shampoos can be found at Target.
The older you get, the more you need maintenance. This book is very much about maintenance; in fact many of the to-dos are offered up in a high-, medium-, or low- maintenance menu. In Nora Ephron's hilarious book I Feel Bad About My Neck, she says this about maintenance: "Maintenance takes up so much time of my life that I can barely have time to sit down at the computer. You know what maintenance is, I'm sure. Maintenance is what they mean when they say, 'After a certain point it's just patch patch, patch.'" The daily, the weekly, and monthly patch, patch, patch is the difference between a fifty-year-old who looks forty and a fifty-year-old who looks sixty. The truth is, we cannot afford to let ourselves go!
For our generation, looking younger isn't just about vanity. (Well, okay, sometimes we are a little vain.) Looking good is about our personal and financial survival. We are the first generation of women in which the majority of us went to college and then to work. But many of us do not have husbands (rich or otherwise) to support us. Many of us do not have kids to take care of us, or kids who want to take care of us. Many of us are on our own, and we need to stay in the workplace until we say it's time to go.
And let's not fool ourselves: looking good is key to keeping our jobs. Studies on attractiveness have shown that people who are better-looking, younger, and slimmer are more likely to get a job and keep it - as well as to win friends, influence people, and keep their partners interested. In psychologist Ellen Berscheid studies of the 1970s and 1980s, Overview of the Psychological Effects of Physical Attractiveness, she concludes that people believe "what is beautiful, is good." That is, we attribute positive qualities such as kindness, sincerity, and warmth to people who are good-looking and negative qualities to people who are not. Alex Kuczynski, in her book Beauty Junkies, analyzes a number of attractiveness studies and concludes, "To get a good job in the United States, the scientific data suggests you not only have to be relatively trim and good-looking but you have to be young."
Looking younger will keep you in the game longer when everyone around you is a kid. It's a no-brainer. Many of us have had the experience of being at work and realizing that we are the oldest person around the conference table - and not by a few years. We've reached the age where some of our colleagues are young enough to be our kids. We have to look younger to help level the playing field.
But shouldn't we be showing off our wrinkles? Shouldn't we be proud to go gray? Yes, that would be awesome in an ideal world. But that's not the way the world is today. Only when women who look as "good" as Morley Safer and Andy Rooney are allowed to thrive well into their seventies and even eighties on the public stage will it be safe for us to let ourselves go without endangering our livelihoods and our legacies. Until then, to keep our paychecks and our self-esteem, we need to look young; we need to look current. And the stakes have been raised so high that we need to look fabulous.
Make no mistake: This doesn't mean you need to look twenty! You need to look youthful, as if you're still swimming in the stream of all things current. You're going to look out of it if you show up in a fussy suit when everyone else at the office is in jeans. You're going to look OL if you have a "helmet head" loaded with hair spray when everyone else has long, lush locks. So how do you look current without wearing a mini skirt, flip-flops and an iPod in your ear?
How Not to Look Old is about looking young without looking ridiculous. Unapologetically written for the over forty generation, this is a cheat sheet that cuts through the clutter of what's in, what's hot, what you must have this season - in other words, what you are presented with when you pick up most fashion magazines, which are nearly all targeted to the eighteen- to thirty-five-year-old set. The problem is that what looks good on Scarlett or Lindsay or Paris will probably not look good on you. And even though I spent my career as an editor working in the trenches of fashion magazines, I am not, by any means, a fashionista. In fact, I am the one who sits in on the fashion run-throughs and says about the bag that costs $7,500, "Do you know anyone who's going to buy that?" I grew up in Wilmette, Illinois, and my husband is from Kansas City, Missouri. We go back to both places a lot. I know that what plays in New York and LA will not necessarily translate. We're bombarded with inappropriate fashions, and it's not just from magazines. As I'm writing, I'm watching a morning TV style segment showing crotch-high mini dresses and short-short suits for spring. Hello? What about us? Is there anything that we might put on without looking ridiculous? Part of the mission of this book is to reinvigorate the term "age appropriate." Every single beauty and style tip is presented with that in mind. Look at the photos, and you'll know what exactly what's too young/too old/just right.
Despite all our good intentions, there are little things we all do that can betray our best efforts and scream OL to the outside world. Right now, for instance, are you
in dark lipstick?
wearing an eyeglass chain around your neck?
covering your face with a mask of foundation?
wearing granny pants or mommy jeans?
wearing a bra that doesn't boost the girls up halfway between your shoulders and your elbow?
From now on, you'll be on high alert to the telltale signs that can creep up on you and threaten your look if you're not paying attention. Each chapter starts with a "shout out" called "Nothing Ages You Like ..." covering things such as:
Too-long hair that's parted down the middle
A solid block of hair color
Gray or white brow hairs
Half-glasses
Obvious lip liner
Yellow teeth
Dragon-lady nails
The point is, if you've been outlining your lips the same way since college, you're overdue for a change. And throughout this book, you'll find "The Newer Way To?" do everything to make yourself look modern, not stale.
Before many of us can climb out of our beauty and fashion ruts, we need to escape our comfort zones. And to do that successfully, we need a new mind-set. Think, "You, only in a gorgeous new dress." We're not talking inner beauty here. We're paying attention to your outer beauty, the package you present to the world. Think this is superficial? Sorry, but this is the real world. Every day people size you up in a nanosecond, making judgments that could affect your future based on whether your nails are too long or your skirt is too short. You can't afford not to look your best every time you step out the front door.
You know that the benefits of looking younger and better are not superficial at all. I hate to use this word because it is so overused, but it is empowering to pass a mirror, and think, 'Wow, I look great!' It gives you a lift. Every time I walk out of the hair salon blown-out and blonder, I swear, I feel as if I could conquer the world. Our looks and our self-esteem are inextricably wired. You need to invest time, money, and interest in you, because if you don't look good, you don't feel good about yourself. And if you don't look and feel good on a daily basis, no one close to you is going to feel good either. If you have any doubts about the "look good, feel better" connection, volunteer at a women's organization such as Bottomless Closet or Dress for Success and see how a new outfit can make a down-and-out woman suddenly feel optimistic and hopeful about her future.
How Not to Look Old is about looking Y&H, but to truly be Y&H, you need to embrace a youthful attitude. You need to jump into life and wrap your arms around change. Whether it's beauty or fashion or life in general, what is truly OL? Being too invested in the status quo. I hate it when people say, "That's not the way it's done." So? Are you saying that you can't ever change the way that it's done? Why not? Only OL people make a big deal about change. That's not going to be you!
What's great about coming of age at this particular point in time is that unlike our mothers, we have so many things we can do to look Y&H before resorting to extreme measures and joining the Women Who Have Had Too Much Work Done club. What follows is the to-do list to end all to-do lists. Here's to looking younger, feeling better, and winning the battle. If I can do it, so can you.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from How Not to Look Oldby Charla Krupp Copyright © 2007 by Charla Krupp. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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