I have really poor skin–awful elasticity and very fair, burns easily, horrid brown spots. Really bad distance vision and superior close vision–very disheartening I can see myself so clearly in the mirror!
I hate the crepe paper look less estrogen gives, and I’m getting there too quickly. I’m a Botox, chemical peel and Retin A fan, but the recurring maintenance gets annoying. Also allergic to anything with fragrance, which makes buying facial products extra challenging.
Well, they did used to say that semen was good for your skin.
Of course, that was probably just the male doctors who would claim that. 
Hemorrhoid cream and semen!!! Yikes!!! I like my face the way it is - wrinkles and all! :))
Unfortunately (for some) the current formula for prep H does nothing for wrinkles.
I use La Roche-Posay Cleanser, Mela-D, in the morning with my clarisonic and Caudalie foaming cleanser in the evening. Both followed by Metrogel lotion for rosacea. The morning cleanser suds up a lot, so much that if I didn’t use it in the shower I don’t think I’d be able to rinse it off.
My mom is interested in the Vichy cleanser. She’s in a nursing/rehab facility and has trouble rinsing cleanser off her face - getting close to the sink while she’s in a wheelchair is really difficult. Just received the 20% off coupon from Ulta, so we’ll give it a try.
No horizontal forehead lines for me, just a single vertical crevice/canyon between my eyebrows. One of these days I’ll get tired of trying to fill it and I’ll go for Botox or something.
zeebamom, the Vichy cleanser rec comes from Tish Jett of Forever Chic… fame. Great book, BTW.
I feel so lucky! I aged out of my oily skin. Am often thought to be younger than my age (vanity consists of wearing short but not layered hair to hide the graying temples). Current regime at 60+ is using Dial vanilla/honey body wash for my daily shower and sometimes washing my face with foamy Dial hand soap in the evening when I find my glasses becoming smeared and also clean my glasses and do not want them to acquire face oils again.
A lot depends on heredity, life long practices and willingness to be natural and embrace one’s age. My early adulthood never included that much makeup (and I find some hideous with outlined eyes et al). I wore contact lenses and did not want daily irritation. I used to use powder (Cover Girl) and a shade of lipstick I liked plus blush in winter months up north.
I guess cosmetics are there to attract a mate- but men never need them… They also do not spend money on all of the junk women do to “enhance” their looks.
I noticed that I rarely need dry skin lotions living in humid Florida. Being overweight has the advantage of filling out one’s face as well.
Please ladies- accept who you are. So much more than a superficial face. Botox, btw, will stiffen your expression. Think HEALTHY, not trying to cling to youth. One of the delights of no longer being in one’s twenties playing the mating game is being mature enough to accept yourself as a whole person.
I too often see women with artificial faces- painted with cosmetics. A smile and twinkle in the eyes is so much more pleasant to look at.
I know I’m in the minority. Also refuse to wear heels (if they were that great men would wear them) and dress up. Feel sorry for those of you obsessing about your looks at your ages. There is freedom in being natural.
Who I am is a person with a lot of energy, wisdom, maturity, a slim body and youthful looking face (sounds like a match.com description). We put work into becoming a smart, socially savvy, mature person. Why is it when it comes to our appearance, we should accept what’s given to us? Why shouldn’t we spend 5 to 10 minutes a day to make our face more healthy and youthful? We exercise to be healthy and keep our figure. When we apply those creams on our face, it is feeding nutrients to our face.
I am not playing the mating game (maybe I should, but it is the furthest thing from my mind now) because I take good care of my face. I do it to make myself feel good.
" I know I’m in the minority. Also refuse to wear heels (if they were that great men would wear them) and dress up. Feel sorry for those of you obsessing about your looks at your ages. There is freedom in being natural."
I am also not into clothes, makeup, or obsessing. Natural is good, particularly if one has great genes. However, I have always been a big believer that if there is something that you don’t like about yourself, deal with it. Whether it is something in your appearance, personality, family life, career, whatever. Don’t just accept that this is the hand that you are dealt, if there is something that bothers you.
I take a large number of supplements and bioidentical hormones. I feel so much better since I started doing this, and can’t imagine how crappy I’d feel if I didn’t. I’m not taking random stuff, but prescribed by a longevity clinic that blood tests and specifically targets whatever your issues are. I had a session with a personal trainer at my gym for the first time, a young lady who was supposedly quite experienced. When I told her what I was doing, she was horrified. She told me that we should just accept the effects of aging, it was normal, natural, for people to slow down mentally and physically. Well, that’s the last time I went to her. I did resist the impulse to say, “You can kiss my butt little girl, I’m not going gently into senility and infirmity like I am supposed to!”
One of the benefits of this time in history is the wide variety of choices available. I like to make some stabs in the direction of looking better, though don’t have time or money to obsess, and my town is quite low key. Coming from various parts of the country, we all have differing social milieus, and expectations vary widely. Like it or not, we are the products of our environment to varying degrees. Wi75, I totally get where you are coming from, literally and figuratively.
Busdriver, I was given a prescription for bioidenticals by a Dr. I really respected, though she was leaving practice, and I had no one to follow up with who knew that world, so didn’t start. I still wonder how I’d feel if I had started on them.
Sometimes the long explanations of why one doesn’t believe in cosmetics, botox, hair color, makeup etc are just code for “I think it’s hopeless and I’ve given up!”
I worry if I look too good I might have a hard time fighting off men.
Bus, you are too funny. I would leave too, I don’t like people lecturing me either especially the ones that I’m paying for their service, I’m not paying for their lectures.
^^^That’s my biggest concern.
“Busdriver, I was given a prescription for bioidenticals by a Dr. I really respected, though she was leaving practice, and I had no one to follow up with who knew that world, so didn’t start. I still wonder how I’d feel if I had started on them.”
@great lakes mom, if you are not feeling good, consider searching long and hard for someone who knows what they are doing in this field. Not just someone who might consider prescribing a thing or two, but someone who is an expert in it. There is a good reason why this is popular now. People don’t think that they should feel terrible, just because they are aging, and there are tremendous benefits to this. It is not hormones made from horse urine, anymore! I know it is rare in many areas of the country, but it is getting more commonplace now. My sister’s clinic (one of the few in Tennessee) shut down, and she said there were all these women walking around the clinic, crying because they were despondent that they thought they wouldn’t be able to get the bioidenticals any longer.
Is there any way to get ahold of the doctor that you respected, and ask her for a referral to someone that she trusts? Or perhaps someone at the practice can give you a referral? My PCP doesn’t really believe in them, so I just go to a specialist to get what I need.
Busdriver, the irritation from the Juvederm injections has started to fade (except for one spot where there must have been a lot of bleeding under the skin), and I can see that the lines between my nose and mouth, and going down from the corners of my mouth, are a great deal less noticeable. (If they vanished entirely, I think it would look unnatural, which is the last thing I would want.) So I’m really very pleased. Although I had dinner with my son last night, and when I asked him if my face looked different to him, he had no idea what the difference was until I pointed to it. To which he replied that he had never noticed the lines before in the first place! But he doesn’t spend a whole lot of time looking at women’s faces, so I’ll give him a pass. And anyway, the important thing is that I notice the difference, and feel good about it.
That’s wonderful, Donna!! I hope you took some “before” pictures, so you don’t forget how much it has helped. I’ve heard that can be useful. I’m really glad this has turned out well for you, I know it was a big deal. Thanks for the update, that’s really encouraging to hear.
“Feel sorry for those of you obsessing about your looks at your ages. There is freedom in being natural.”
I can get away with wearing little makeup precisely because I take good care of my skin, including staying out of the sun. I don’t “obsess about my looks” but I think I’m reasonably pretty and would like to stay that way. Every time this topic comes up, wis75, I get the feeling that you never felt good about how you looked and so you’re just throwing in the towel and giving up and justifying it to yourself by pretending it’s “superficial.” Not caring about yourself is far sadder than obsessing over one’s looks.
By the way, I see no reason not to do whatever small things make one feel better about oneself, rather than “aging naturally” – which, as far as I can tell from old photos of my two grandmothers, made them both look like old ladies by the time they were 50. Something I have no desire to do. Unlike most of you, after all, I never had the chance to be a young woman (with all its negative as well as positive aspects), at least on the surface, so I want to remain a middle-aged woman as long as I can. And I don’t take being complimented on my appearance for granted, given that nobody ever did so from the time I was about 5 until I was in my mid-40s and started presenting as “myself.” After which, for the first few years at least, strangers used to compliment me on my skin (undoubtedly my best quality!) – salesclerks in stores, a court reporter at a deposition, people in the street, even a waitress who asked me if my skin was “real” (?!). Why not do what I can to try to preserve it?
And I’m not playing the “mating game” either.
I wish I could age as naturally as my MIL. If I had such beautiful features and skin, I would be thrilled to accept what came. Alas, it was not to be, so something’s going to have to be done. Dang it.
Busdriver, the prescriber was my regular family practice Dr. who got into the subject on my final appointment from another angle, then had the lab work done and wrote the script. She was an open minded, research oriented physician. Next Dr. was not as savvy on the topic, despite promotion as alternative health. At some point I’ll have to poke around in my HMO and see if there is anyone available, but my quick impression is that those in the know are not on my insurance plan.
If I eat right, exercise right, take my supplements, etc, etc, I feel pretty good if tending towards low energy. I’m just curious as to how much better things could be. And the other issue is that testosterone can increase cholesterol levels, and I’d prefer to avoid a statin, with marginal cholesterol levels at this point.