if i could only ever use one skincare brand, it would be this one

just one (middle-aged) girl's opinion!

The thing I like best about my day job — a job which I both love and am many levels overqualified for (and thank my stars every day that someone actually took a chance on me when it truly made zero sense on paper to hire a former Chief Content Officer/soured high-ranking executive turned professional middle-aged bitcher/blow-up-the-system career memoir writer as a corporate beauty blogger) — is being on the ground reporting on the skincare industry, trying all the stuff, not living in a craving/delusional state imagining that if I only had more money I would somehow age like Michelle Pfeiffer. Over the past year, having access to beauty products and treatments has weirdly settled so much of my angst about getting older, helped me define how I want to age (both aesthetically and emotionally) and led me to some peace about the process overall.

The job requires that I talk to dermatologists both on the record and off and, because I’m not there to dump thousands of dollars on hope, many give me the real deal about what’s possible and what’s not. For example, I’ll ask if the newest magic lotion someone’s selling will fix my melting neck skin and they will say “no, it will improve the crepey appearance, maybe” and then they will offer me Botox and filler for my deep horizontal neck bands explaining in a perhaps more revealing tone than they might if I wasn’t a journalist that both have risks (are you willing to roll the dice on even a slight struggle with swallowing for a firm nape? I personally am not!). Then they tell me that I could try Soft Wave or Fraxel treatments as these will soften wrinkles and tighten the whole situation up a bit but really if I want this shit “fixed” I should have a neck lift, which, at this point, I am unwilling to do.

I’m 51 and have struggled (like many/most of us!) with internalized misogyny my entire life. I grew up with an excessively vain, naturally-skinny (but still constantly dieting) mother who considered striving toward a conventional ideal of beauty paramount to most anything else. As an adult, I worked in women’s magazines for nearly a decade. For most of my life, I never felt pretty or thin or even “good” enough. When I look back, I see just how much time I spent obsessing and self flagellating over my appearance. This time, time I’ll never get back, remains one of my life’s deeper regrets.