Postmenopausal Makeup Application

Peach lips

Post by Sharon

Today is my 57th birthday and I'm giving y'all a gift! Makeup tips!

I am a baby boomer. My face saw the makeup of my modeling era in late 1970s to early 1980s. It saw the crazy eyeliner and lipliner of the 1980s, and overall it has rolled with the changes and trends from thick eyebrows to drawn-on eyebrows, from nearly no makeup to pancake face. 

But, hitting menopausal age made me rethink trends and begin to look at my face as a showcase of not only experience and living, but knowing who I am and being okay with it. I don't want to make my skin anything other than even toned and I don't want my eyes to be anything but bright and twinkling and I don't want my lips to be bigger than they are. 

As an ex model, pageant girl, and theater/film makeup artist, I will share some tips -

Forget the other eras of style

Throw out the lip liner. For goodness sake, bag the clear mascara. Forget contour powder. If you're still using that eyebrow pencil whittled down to a nub, it's time to look for a brush and some powder. 

As you get grays in your brows, even dyeing seems resistant to these boogers. Using a powder with brush for brows works very well to nix the grays. It also creates a soft brow and not a drawn-on look. 

EYES/LIPS

There is a rule of thumb for lips that if your eyes are smoky, lips are pale. If your eyes are daytime look, your lips are strong. It has a nice balance to focus on one or the other, but the priority for lip color as you age is to be a realistic color. 

Throw away the mauve/brown tones - they are dirtying and aging. Strong reds are aging. Fuchsia is too intense. If you liked Fuchsia, consider switching to a carnation pink. If you liked mauve-brown tones consider going for peach. If you liked full-on red, consider coral. 

Skin and hair: Two things happen as we age - our skin gets paler and needs softer colors and our hair color needs lightening too as bright and dark colors begin to look unnatural near pale skin. I had medium auburn as a teen. But as a baby I was a strawberry blond tone. I began to lighten my hair back toward my childhood color as the darker auburn looked harsh on my skin tones. 

DAYTIME HAVE A MEETING LOOK

(peach to soft coral lips - my peach lipstick is listed under face/cheeks below)




(This is the coral I use)

NIGHTTIME

(coral tones on lips)

Red lipstick for a special event is okay, but how about trying something a bit stronger than your natural lip color for everyday wear? Try tones that are called "watermelon," "coral," "bubble gum," and "peach." Avoid frosted lipstick. It has a way of looking unappetizing and pasty. 

When you apply lipstick, don't swipe it across your lips the old-fashioned way. Stamp your lips! One of my favorite techniques to strengthen and make color last is to take a deeper tone, like a red or fuchsia and stamp the lips with it. Then, stamp with the lighter color like peach or shell pink. It creates a strength of tone without being too strong or too pale. The nighttime look (with feather boa) above was done by stamping red and then stamping coral over top. The daytime color was simply the coral lipstick.

EYES

This is my professional, nothing to hide look

As you can see in the feather boa photo above, smoky eyes can be worn, but be sure you don't use hard lines - smudge your liner! Eyes appear smaller as we age and you don't want to look beady-eyed. 

This look - above - is my professional daytime. I wear a coral lipstick stamped onto my lips, the coral blusher, and for the eyes, I do eyeshadow under the eyes with a smaller brusher. I use either green, aquamarine or sometimes purple. Then, above I do all light variations of peaches/mauve/brown. I keep it simple and clean. At night, I do a similar pattern, only I add dark eyeshadow liner - using a thin brush that is wet and dipped in black and run it along the top eyelashes and upward in the outer corner. I use darker tones of the same daytime makeup. 

This is my going out with the gal pals daytime into night. Note how the touch of color under the eyes makes them look brighter and not closed off and beady.

This is a stronger amount of daytime makeup on the eyes for night. Makes my golden cedar brown eyes look green, huh? You can see my eyes. In fact, you can't NOT see my eyes with that colorful draw to the area. Now, compare that to the blond below with the super dark eye makeup - where are her eyes? 

The goal of makeup 

Remember, dewy and barer looks always seem much younger. Harsh and strong makeup makes you look older. Note some time how much younger someone looks without makeup at all - 

On the left she looks like a kid

Think of makeup as your "contrast" button on Photoshop. It brings colors into focus more, makes it possible to see depth.

Here I am with no makeup on the left and with makeup on the right.

The goals are simple - here's my eyes - here's my lips - my cheeks are blushing - my skin tones are even. 

FACE/CHEEKS

My daytime lipstick is Revlon Lustrous "Peach Me"

I use a kabuki brush and Dermacol foundation. The combination is like a Hollywood movie star on the red carpet or a model in New York getting a photo shoot. It is amazing! If you complain about uneven skin tones from years of tanning in the 70s, this is for you! Throw away sponges and don't use your fingers. This gets into every pore. Use the brush in a circular motion. Oh wow! Very life changing. Even my cheap daytime Cover Girl foundation looks amazing, but I prefer Dermacol because the effect is so flawless. The brush and foundation together on Amazon are like 23 dollars total! 

I wear 209 for my skin as I am light and apricot/golden

I use Maybelline Master Glaze "Coral Sheen" It's a really universal blush color - works on everyone. 

I always use cream blusher. Powders on already flaky and dull older skin go down uneven and don't last. A cream stick is a good way to go. 

Pinch your cheeks, see what the natural tone is they blush in. Use that. Cream gives a dewy fresh young look, as if you glow under your skin and not on top of it (unnatural). 

Blusher cannot be overlooked as we have less surface blushing as we age and we need that to keep from looking pasty and sallow. 

First thing in the morning, not much color to my face but I look much more like a youth. Use makeup with a delicate hand. You want to retain that fresh-faced kid attitude. 

SKIN FIRST 

Ultimately, when you take care of the skin, everything that goes atop of it looks flawless. Avoid the sun. Exfoliate daily. Use cream - don't worry about blemishes, your hormones are vastly different now. Drink water.

I don't spend a lot of money on the skincare routine. It's pretty simple for me. I don't like the retinol creams, they make my skin cell turnover too fast and I can't exfoliate enough. 






I use a vitamin C cream. I remove my makeup with baby wipes - the unscented gentle skin ones. I wash my face in the shower and use an exfoliating battery-operated scrubber or I use baking soda on a newly patted dry face. I avoid the sun. I drink lots of water. I make sure I get lots of healthy fats in my diet, i.e. olive oil, avocado, whole milk. Before I go to bed, I often times spread a tiny bit of coconut oil on my face. 

Ultimately, when reconsidering your makeup routine, remember your skin gets paler - color is needed, but with a much softer hand as your pale skin will contrast. Lighten the tones you wear. If you wore Fuchsia on your cheeks, consider a soft pink. Don't line your eyes with dark - you will be beady-eyed. Don't forget lip color - it looks healthy. 

Forget the trends of past decades. Embrace a youthful more bare appearance.